How to learn Radiant Silvergun?

[farewell]

Hey all! Apologies if this isn't the right place or if there's a thread my search didn't find.

I was wondering if anyone had any resources / tips / etc in terms of how to learn Radiant Silvergun. I've played a lot of shmups, and usually, you can just kind of approach them in terms of survival, learning movement, slowly picking up mechanics, then - finally - scoring. RS seems to be completely unapproachable in this way - for instance, if you're not chaining, as far as I understand it, you're not leveling up your weapons - and leaving yourself underpowered.

Not to mention, the way the game is structured, it seems like you need a high amount of strategy just to survive. I've only been working on this for a few days, and not for a ton of time - but I'm lucky if I make it to 3C, let alone through it.

So - does anyone have any advice for how to approach this game? Am I doing the right thing just kind banging my head against it? For those of you who have beaten and even 1CCd it - what was your process like?

Thanks!

[ATTRACTS]

I was attempting to be helpful and hook you up with the strategy link on here for the game but I was actually pretty shocked to find out there isn't one! We have one for everything on this site lol. Someone will chime in here.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Watch some vids. I found a basic one in seconds.

[Jeneki]

Go for 100% destruction on bosses (destroy all parts before finishing it off). Those add to weapon levels as well.

You don't need to full chain every stage to get decent firepower. I found that chaining all of the stage 3 sections except 3-C (save that one for when you have high confidence) gave me enough levels that I didn't feel underpowered the rest of the game. After that I picked up some of the easier chains, and the boss 100% bonuses I could handle.

[farewell]

Watch some vids. I found a basic one in seconds.

Yeah! I've watched some, but when they hit every single secret as well, I dunno. I can find it hard to tell what to actually do!

I found a playthrough with commentary that I'm going to use. I dunno - still wanted to ask! I do better with things written down but of course there's good videos out there.

[CStarFlare]

As someone who never got much farther than the first set of stages this probably isn't useful, but if I went back to RSG I'd spend most of my time in stage practice. I tend to do full runs in other shmups and inch my way forward unless I really try to score but I don't think there's any success to be had in winging it in Treasure's shmups. And in some ways, RGS splits itself into so many sections they are probably fairly quick to learn if you focus on them one at a time.

[STGAlmond]

I originally watched ben shinobi runs on youtube. Looked at the guide book. Shmup.com has some material that is worth running through google translate if you don't speak french.

I posted this link to an old guide that was useful to reference in another thread. I believe I even read game faqs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071229080 ... vrGn0.html

I watched many other runs of the game too, but ben shinobi were the ones I came back to and copied from the most.

[Austin]

If you have access to the console versions, then Saturn/Story mode is a good way to start. It saves your weapon levels for subsequent playthroughs making your life easier. It's a good way to learn the stage layouts and boss patterns while not having to worry about chaining. When you're comfortable there, then go for arcade mode.

There's not much you need to know other than what your firepower options are and how to do chains. There are basically two types: 1. Shoot red, then *one* blue, then as many yellow as you can; 2. Shoot as many of the same color without breaking the chain. The first level is a great way to learn both kinds of chains. For instance, the second you're dropped into the game, you can do example #1 on the first set of enemies. After the first mini-boss, you can do example #2 with the red enemies (i.e., only go for the red enemies).

The secrets are good to know but not really necessary. And if you can get good at chaining the first level, you won't really *need* to chain for the rest of the game, if survival is your focus.

[John4300]

If you have access to the console versions, then Saturn/Story mode is a good way to start. It saves your weapon levels for subsequent playthroughs making your life easier. It's a good way to learn the stage layouts and boss patterns while not having to worry about chaining. When you're comfortable there, then go for arcade mode.

There's not much you need to know other than what your firepower options are and how to do chains. There are basically two types: 1. Shoot red, then *one* blue, then as many yellow as you can; 2. Shoot as many of the same color without breaking the chain. The first level is a great way to learn both kinds of chains. For instance, the second you're dropped into the game, you can do example #1 on the first set of enemies. After the first mini-boss, you can do example #2 with the red enemies (i.e., only go for the red enemies).

The secrets are good to know but not really necessary. And if you can get good at chaining the first level, you won't really *need* to chain for the rest of the game, if survival is your focus.

Isn't the story mode a bit more difficult than the arcade mode to balance out the weapon leveling? There's honestly quite a lot of misinformation about the game floating around, so it can be difficult to find correct info.

I haven't played the game much, but the weapon leveling mostly seems to go down to killing some of the later bosses quicker so you don't need to suffer from the patterns for that long (On some bosses you still might want to stall to level up/score), and most notably final boss does a pattern that is pretty much a damage check because it keeps getting faster until you kill it.

[Austin]

IIRC, the enemy layouts are the same in story and I doubt health pools have been adjusted. The big difference is you have to play all the stages, including a new one only in story mode. But again, it saves your weapon levels when you game over. Eventually you will just annihilate everything because you’ll be maxed out right from the beginning. It’s good for newcomers and for learning the stages.

[reckon luck]

Play Ikaruga mode, it's cool and good

[guigui]

One of the "hard" games I could 1CC, with a lot of time and effort, and a bit of luck on the final fight. My strategy was :

* try to chain, fail miserably
* watch videos, ben.shinobi, understand things and analyze
* try to reproduce videos, fail miserably
* leave the game alone for 6 months
* launch the game again not remembering many things, try to build my on routes from what I remember on videos and what I see on screen. Succeed a little.
* watch videos again, now able to determine what I can reproduce and what I must adapt to my abilities. Succeed a little more.
* stop watching videos and build my own routes, stick to it, try to score enough for bosses to be doable. Succeed up to stage 5.
* quickly give up chaining on stage 5, and just blast everything off !!
* have a tough time on Xiga boss fight, certainly because not leveled up enough. Still doable with good dodging and analysis though -- again a good exemple of Treasure's mastery of their games : perfect balance between needed level and difficulty of last boss for mid-level players like me.
* finally get the clear with my routes and an epic Xiga boss fight I reached with only one life left

After that I could reproduce the clear quite a few times, changing minor things in my routes.

General tips that helped me :
* red chains almost everytime
* better let an enemy go than to break a chain
* better trigger radiant sword than to loose a life
* forget about trying to level B weapon
* use A+C and B+C weapons often, milk with them when you can. They level up quite easily, and sometime give useful slowdown.
* dont try to get 100% on stage 2 final boss, too dangerous
* stage 5 is easy if you dont chain it, hell if you do.
* ben.shinobi : watch him but dont try this at home.

[davyK]

I'd forget about chaining and just play survival in Saturn mode to begin with. Or at least try and chain the early levels.

There's a lot to get through with RSG. Over and above the number of levels, there's the chaining and the hidden dogs on top of figuring out which weapon to use for each scenario.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Learning survival before scoring can apply to most games, honestly.

Though in the case of RSG I'm not sure how much I'd advise it, since the better you chain the stronger you'll end up, it won't be the same as just yolo-ing the whole game for practice.

Highly advise learning each stage individually instead, that way you can put them together into one consistently good run after you're ready. It's not something I'd say is a foolproof strategy for all shmups, but for RSG it should help ya.

[davyK]

Learning survival before scoring can apply to most games, honestly.

Though in the case of RSG I'm not sure how much I'd advise it, since the better you chain the stronger you'll end up, it won't be the same as just yolo-ing the whole game for practice.

Highly advise learning each stage individually instead, that way you can put them together into one consistently good run after you're ready. It's not something I'd say is a foolproof strategy for all shmups, but for RSG it should help ya.

Sound advice in retrospect.

[Austin]

Learning survival before scoring can apply to most games, honestly.

Though in the case of RSG I'm not sure how much I'd advise it, since the better you chain the stronger you'll end up, it won't be the same as just yolo-ing the whole game for practice.

Highly advise learning each stage individually instead, that way you can put them together into one consistently good run after you're ready. It's not something I'd say is a foolproof strategy for all shmups, but for RSG it should help ya.

Sound advice in retrospect.

It is if you are solely playing arcade mode, which might be the case if they are on a PCB or emulating the arcade version. In Story/Saturn mode, it doesn’t take long to build up a ship through repeated plays that just annihilates everything.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

If emulating, you can just savestate for each stage. There might also be cheats for stage select (never checked).
And in general, doing the above is sound practice no matter what your "main" system is. Doubly so since the standard legal procedure is "you can emulate games you have" anyway.

[yosai]

RSG is free with the xbox Games with Gold this month.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/c ... hgold/xbox

[Flashman]

This is my next Shmup to put serious time into (treated myself to a Mode modded Saturn for Christmas and so there is really no excuse) I've played a fair bit of the 360 version but never got deep into chaining etc.

YouTube is surprisingly lacking on decent guides which I can find, I'll check the above resources.

[Rastan78]

https://archive.org/details/Sega_Saturn ... _Silvergun

A great source, but ofc in Japanese only. Maps and so forth may still prove useful.

[farewell]

Fantastic stuff here everyone. Thank you so much! I can't wait to dive into this material.

Since a few people asked - I have the XBLA version! I'll definitely focus on story mode for a bit while i learn the layout and get better with my movement. This slow ship is killing me!

[Austin]

Fantastic stuff here everyone. Thank you so much! I can't wait to dive into this material.

Since a few people asked - I have the XBLA version! I'll definitely focus on story mode for a bit while i learn the layout and get better with my movement. This slow ship is killing me!

Awesome, let us know how it goes for you! It’s an excellent game when you get familiar with it.

And you’ll get used to the “slow” ship speed. Everything is slow in the game so you’ll never find yourself at a disadvantage because of it.

[pja]

My process of 1CC-ing it was definitely of the "bang head against the wall" variety, but I was also really stubborn not to look up strategies But the game was so fun that I enjoyed that.

... but at some point I did turn towards savestate practice on a Saturn emulator (Mednafen), especially for Xiga, it's a ridiculous boss.

I would like to note that in Saturn mode weapons level up slower, so it might not be ideal for practicing an Arcade mode clear I'm actually not sure what even the advantage of this mode is for practicing, you get unlimited continues in the Arcade mode but limited ones in Saturn mode so that makes it even harder. Saturn mode has some ridiculous bosses that Arcade mode simply skips (I haven't beaten some of these without dying yet )

edit: right, obviously saturn mode can save your weapon levels, I guess that's obviously an advantage that people already mentioned and I wasn't reading the thread very carefully

[Zaxdar]

Does anyone know how to unlock the visible hitbox / ship speed options for Sega Saturn? im playing on Mednafen and I dont think theres a cheat code. does it have to be unlocked via playtime in-game ONLY, or simply playtime in general (the timer that goes up even in menus)? and what are the playtime requirements?

[pja]

Does anyone know how to unlock the visible hitbox / ship speed options for Sega Saturn? im playing on Mednafen and I dont think theres a cheat code. does it have to be unlocked via playtime in-game ONLY, or simply playtime in general (the timer that goes up even in menus)? and what are the playtime requirements?

I saw "playtime requirements" mentioned before but I'm pretty sure some of these options didn't unlock for me for a very long time until I simply cleared Arcade/Saturn mode. Sadly don't know the specifics.
(... and maybe it's complete bullshit and I just happened to pass that playtime requirement when I first cleared the game, but I would be pretty surprised about that).

[Zaxdar]

Does anyone know how to unlock the visible hitbox / ship speed options for Sega Saturn? im playing on Mednafen and I dont think theres a cheat code. does it have to be unlocked via playtime in-game ONLY, or simply playtime in general (the timer that goes up even in menus)? and what are the playtime requirements?

I saw "playtime requirements" mentioned before but I'm pretty sure some of these options didn't unlock for me for a very long time until I simply cleared Arcade/Saturn mode. Sadly don't know the specifics.
(... and maybe it's complete bullshit and I just happened to pass that playtime requirement when I first cleared the game, but I would be pretty surprised about that).

yeah i ended up getting 12 hours of playtime (on the pause menu, not ingame) because one site said the hitbox unlocks at 12 hrs, nothing yet :/

if you have your savefile avaliable, would you perchance be willing to share it with me? im playing on mednafen emulator. or at the very least, if youre willing to take a screenshot/video showing the hitbox for reference (since i cant even find that much on google images u.u)

[pja]

Screenshot I just took:

Spoiler

My saves, hope you enjoy it:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... _saves.zip
I hope these are the right files at least, surprisingly hard to find which ones should these be - I took them from mednafen/sav.

... also, can't believe I'm using Discord as a file sharing service... I think being able to upload files through forum itself wouldn't hurt, and would prevent from lots of resources being lost I've already seen plenty of threads that are image graveyards.

[Zaxdar]

Screenshot I just took:

Spoiler

My saves, hope you enjoy it:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... _saves.zip
I hope these are the right files at least, surprisingly hard to find which ones should these be - I took them from mednafen/sav.

... also, can't believe I'm using Discord as a file sharing service... I think being able to upload files through forum itself wouldn't hurt, and would prevent from lots of resources being lost I've already seen plenty of threads that are image graveyards.

thank you so much!!!

[gray117]

* ben.shinobi : watch him but dont try this at home.

Pretty sure this has been solid advice for like 15 years?

Love rsg, have never learnt it, just focused on surviving, very happy with that... but given it kind of ties into the experience - it's a tricky *&^*!** ... in the best way.

Arcade mode is a smidge shorter and actually kind of the way I tend to just bumble around with rsg over the years...

Saturn mode is probably the better way to have fun getting into the title; run up play time, increase the continues etc. and also get that weapon advancement.

... So in an effort to maybe not just echo most of what's come before, I might even suggest starting on arcade mode, try switching saturn mode for a bit of a fun grind, and then back to arcade mode if you feel you've plateau'd a little on saturn mode. And repeat - getting into that story mode more and more with better levels, and either (at first) game-overing in arcade mode or (later on) credit feeding it to just kind of hang out with the game.

[farewell]

so! i finally got my 360 sent to me and have been able to really start grinding rsg in earnest.

thanks to everyone for the advice! it's really helped, i've got a nice route through the first two substages and am chipping away at the third. i've really settled into the methodical nature of the game and it's really fun for me.

i do have to wonder if i'm learning it "right" though - for some context, i'm a professional musician, so i tend to see any practice task through the lens of practicing a song, or an instrument. if you're learning a song by starting at the beginning and not moving on until you've nailed every measure, sure you'll learn the song well, but it might be a long and arduous process.

obviously there's a practice mode here, which i'll utilize - but i guess i'm wondering if there's any worth in credit feeding to get used to later stages earlier? i've had a blast with the first few substages but this is a long game, and if it stays at this pace - which i expect it to? - this is going to take forever!

so, credit feeding rsg... yea or nay?