GOING NOVA
Raiden makes a surprising return to our consoles and PC, but not in the form of Raiden VI or something.
This time is the "Experimental" spin-off shmup Raiden Nova.
RAIDEN NOVA - CRITICS ARE CALLING IT EVERYTHING FROM SHIT TO FUCKING SHIT!
The shmup fandom exploded.
Whoa, "Fucking Shit" are strong, harsh words when it comes to slander or criticize games, but in this case, the unexpected victim was Raiden, and calling Raiden like that sounds like a fucking suicide if you what you're asking for is to put the entire shmup community against you considering how legendary and memorable Seibu Kaihatsu and MOSS' franchise is.
¿Was Raiden Nova a true "Calamity", a real disaster of gaming or just a tragic case of mistaken judgement? Let your trusty reviewer Sturmvogel Prime check the aspects and flaws within the latest entry of the Raiden series to put an end to this debacle.
Need a session with limits or want to fight until you get inevitably killed?
The first choice to do is to select if we want to play Arcade Mode or Unlimited Mode.
To begin with, Arcade Mode is your main campaign where the top priority is to survive 6 action-packed levels, and that's what we'll check first.
First choice, latest model.
Regardless of your choice, now you have to select your aircraft. For some reason, the game assigned Azuma (Raiden V) as the default ship. ¿Azuma instead of the original Raiden? That's kinda weird because it's the latest and most advanced model. In any game you've played you'll notice that recent and more advanced aircraft are the expensive unlockables while you start with the basic, older models. In Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown for example, your initial, basic jet is the F-16C Fighting Falcon and you have to progress through the game and get enough money to unlock more advanced aircraft like the F-22 Raptor or the SU-57. Raiden Nova's case would be like if in R-Type Final 2 you had access to the R-99 Last Dancer, R-100 Curtain Call and R-101 Grand Finale right out of the box instead of the R-9A Arrowhead, R-9D Shooting Star and R-9F Andromalius which are the "basic ships" that form your R-Type starting pack there.
In the ship select screen you don't just select your aircraft, but the weapon type as well. You do this by changing the ship's color to the alternate "Formerly-known-as-Player-2" color. For instance, Player 1 Color Azuma uses the Vulcan as default while Player 2 is Laser. Speaking of colors, I think it would be great if the game allowed the player to customize the colors as well rather than forcing them as "Weapon Selectors". Color switching deserved a bit more of emphasis. In R-Type Final 2 (again), the player was given the option of customizing the color of the fighter's body and canopy to their likeness and even giving the option of stickers/labels for further personalization. Here, it only features Red or Blue due to the linking given to a specific weapon, crippling a lot of potential of having your very own personalized Raiden.
Speaking of weapons, all ships utilize the same weapons. For instance, the old Raiden has the 3-Way Vulcan as the lowest level shot rather than a single shot and it carries the Plasma weapon. The Plasma is the same super-flexible purple laser since the days of Raiden II, but the flexible laser is shot instantly like in Raiden Fighters and Raiden IV instead of merging the laser shots like in Raiden II/Raiden DX, allowing you to hit several enemies at once.
Urban Strike - Raiden Edition
Raiden Nova ditches the traditional gameplay of all the main titles and Fighters spin-offs and focuses in one thing: Twin-Stick shooting action. Rather than having the enemies from the upper part of the screen, it pits you in a 360° shooter, and with that, we will have more enemies on screen, and they're not gonna lock fingers, gaze into your eyes and softly embrace you. No, man. We're talking enemies of all sizes armed with bullet hell delievering weaponry, raining fire coming from ALL DIRECTIONS ready to shoot you down at first sight. From the air and rarely from the ground, you'll be facing more danger than before, but as a Twin Stick shooter, you can aim on any direction, so we're no longer defenseless against surprises from behind or from one side. One thing that favors you is the fact that you have a life bar just like in Raiden V, but that is not enough guarantee to survive all the 6 levels of combat which are an looping arena (think Thunder Force and the vertical levels of Thunder Force II) since there's no borders/barriers to corner you like in games like Jungle Strike or X-Morph Defense. With a combat zone with no limits, both the action and trouble will be in full pursuit of you. With the traditional "Red-Blue-Purple Crystal" power up system gone, you still need power to fight back. Well, pay attention because this information will be important for you to learn and survive as long as possible and when I say "As long as possible" I mean it, 'cos this game has no spare lives. Six levels in one shot.
The most important thing to learn about Raiden Nova is that the ship is always centered on the screen, so when you move, it is the screen that does move. This might be confusing and disorientating at first and it will be the cause of your death in your first playthroughs.
Good, Free, Fast.
Pick ONE.
Powering up your ship has dropped the basic rules here. This time, the main way to power up Raiden is through an RPG-styled Upgrade system. Like CrossCode, Everytime you kill an enemy you'll get experience and that experience will fill the XP Gauge on the top of the screen. Once you level up, you'll be granted an "upgrade". You can choose one of three upgrades, randomly selected by the game just like in Sea of Stars. Rarely, you can be granted four, being the last one the "Lucky" upgrade. I really like how MOSS managed to allocate ship upgrades from Option upgrades, giving 6 slots for Ship upgrades and 6 for Options, allowing a good enough range of combinations to give a try.
There's a relationship between powered evolution and equipment.
There's no powered evolution without the equipment, nor equipment without powered evolution.
All your weapons have a standard power up system that maxes out once it reaches level 9. At first you might think it's fully upgraded, but actually you have to unlock (or "Evolve") level 10. If you pay attention, you will notice that some upgrades evolves another in this synergy of Raiden's weaponry (Example: Sub Wide Vulcan and Vulcan Power Up Register evolve the Wide Vulcan and transform Raiden). All your weapons and defense upgrades are related, and learning which upgrade evolves which weapon is required in this game and is essential to unlock the original Raiden since you need to unlock and evolve all the upgrades.
Azuma Strikes!
There's also new-yet-easy to learn in this game is the new habilities of your aircraft. The first one is the Options. Unlike Raiden's traditional "Missile or Homing" format, here we're given the option of having these pods that provide a much better backup fire. Along with the Vulcan, Laser, Plasma, Missile, Homing, and Radar backups, Raiden Nova introduces two new weapon types for the Options: Cluster Bomb which is a retake of the Napalm from Viper Phase 1, the Energy Field that is a barrier-like weapon that surrounds Raiden as a close range weapon, pretty much like the Ring Laser from Pulstar and the Energy Spark Gun that acts as an "Energy Bomb" which deploys a spark burst (Spark Field) that keeps damaging nearby enemies. While most of the Options are "Autoaiming" toward enemies, only the Sub-Wide Vulcan is player controlled as its aim points wherever Raiden is moving to. It's too bad that there's no "Aim lock" button like in Pulstar (remember the Non-Bits "Ios"?) that would make targeting enemies a bit more easier.
Since the missile backup is now given to the Options, Raiden has a new move: The "Super Booster" which is the "Dash" feature of the game. When you use the Super Booster, you are immune to enemy fire during the fast dashing, but you can't pick dropped items. So any "Hit-and-Run" tactic to obtain an item and avoid enemy fire is out of the question.
Luck was on your side this time.
The second way to upgrade your weapons is the "Gacha System" which works like this: Throughout the stages, you'll be granted "Missions". Clearing a mission will drop an orange canister called "Barrel" which acts as the giftbox. Barrels can give you all kinds of bonuses: From Medals and HP Recovery, to Bombs and Ship upgrades. There's three rare grades: Blue (Common) which grants you 1 bonus, Red (Rare) gives you three and finally Golden (Ultra Rare), which grants you five randomly selected bonuses. Random level up upgrades and a "lottery" like item. "Random is Always in Play" indeed.
Let's talk about the Medals. While the classic Raiden games had one or two types of medals as a fast way to obtain bonus points, Raiden Nova features three types of "Medals" in the game. The Yellow Medal (actually a "Coin") which is the basic 20 credits, Green Medal is the uncommon 100 credits giving coin and the rarest Red Medal that grants you 500 credits. Yeah, I said "Credits" because unlike Raiden's traditional medal score system, Raiden Nova utilizes Medals as currency for the Shop and Power Up stores of the game. I'll explain this in a while, but right now, let's keep going with the Arcade Mode analysis.
Miclus always gets involved in the fight.
No Raiden game is complete without its familiar character and former Wiz boss Miclus, and it is nice to see him around this game. As a hidden bonus, you need to find it by blasting its hiding spot. There's parts of the scene that will take a hit from your shots. That's where Miclus is hiding. Once that invisible spot explodes, Miclus will pop out and there you go, 50,000 points and the Trophy "Capture The Miklas". The Fairy (and "Save The Fairy" trophy) also appears in this game, but this time as a random item which can be dropped from the item carriers. Since weapon powering up is now assigned to the Upgrading and Gacha System, item carriers can give you a Fairy, or a bomb or an HP recovery item. In Stages 4 and 6 a green variant of the item carrier will appear, but they will drop Medals and sometimes an HP Recovery item, acting more as "Money Boosters" which give us easy money as long as they keep appearing.
The 2024's Shmup Collectables are very colorful.
Another bonus element is the "Metal" enemy. This special ship is the "Bonus Mission" that updates a few times before its fully completed and repeats a few times. Destroying one of these ships will drop an experience crystal and a Barrel for a quick level gain and bonus upgrades.
There's three types of metallic enemies in the game. While all the three drop a Barrel, each one holds 1 unique reward that makes them different from the rest.
METAL ENEMY: The common type. Drops 1 Green Crystal for a quick-but-small experience boost and 1 Barrel.
GOLDEN ENEMY: Like the "Metal" type, this one is the second "common" enemy. Drops 1 Red Medal and 1 Barrel.
RAINBOW ENEMY: The rarest of the bunch. This one gives you a Red Crystal that gives you a quick and larger experience boost and 1 Barrel.
I don't know how to trigger the rare type since the game drops the more common Metal and Golden, but feels like the frequency and the rare grade of the ship is very pure-luck based.
Now this is what I call "Blast Processing".
Despite the switch in gameplay, Raiden Nova's main focus is by plunging the player on "Missions" until the time runs out. While five minutes doesn't sound too much, it is actually pretty much the average time spent on any other shmup stage. The most common missions will be taking down a required number of enemies which will increase as you complete it. Occasionally, it will drop new missions as you keep track of the current one. For example "Destroy Huge Enemy" which requires you to take down one large ship. This mission only appears once per level. The most common is the "Eliminate" a specific number of enemies that will increase as long as you keep completing them (Example: 100>300>600) There's no "Mission Failed" or something since the objective will sooner or later become unreachable before time runs out and what's actually more important is to level up and upgrade Raiden as much as possible. On the first levels once you complete a specific amount of missions, the game will still be throwing enemies at you, but there won't be more enemy elimination missions to complete (Stage 1 for example).
Curious about how many missions you'll find in the game? Here's the list of common enemy and "Huge Enemy" takedown missions. I didn't count the metal enemy ones since their numbers vary through multiple playthroughs from 1 to a rare total of 8.
STAGE 1: 100 > 300 > 600 + 1 Huge Enemy + Platon
STAGE 2: 200 > 500 > 800 + Sky Carrier
STAGE 3: 300 > 600 > 1000 > 1500 + 1 Huge Enemy + Spice Birds
STAGE 4: 300 > 600 + 1 Huge Enemy + Kraken
STAGE 5: 400 > 700 > 1200 + Golden Fleet
STAGE 6: 400 > 700 + Humpty Dumpty
One great hint to get most targets is to head towards the direction of the enemies, have a powerful weapon and shoot non-stop: Wide Vulcan is a great idea along with burning bombs when needed. This is extremely effective in stages 3 and 4. Ironically, its impossible to reach the final objectives in stages 5 and 6.
Target's on our scope. Take'em out.
Once the time reaches zero, you'll be facing the stage boss and this is where the game switches from mindless navigation to standard vertical scrolling, but retaining the full 360° control of your ship. One thing that I've noticed is that the boss main attacks don't follow a pattern (Example: Spread curtain > destructible bullets > thin laser shots) making each boss fight unpredictable and completely random where the only way to survive is to max up the main shot and having the most effective options like the Cluster Bomb and Sub-Wide Vulcan which are the strongest of the game. Those come in handy especially when you don't want to use a bomb against the boss.
Curiously, the best way to get a challenge from Raiden Nova is to playing the game in "Very Hard" because when you play with the original Raiden or the Raiden Nova original fighters, the bosses will go down almost immediately. Just take a look at this longplay with Crimson Fury --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goXV8ULS09A
Your gameplay will be back after these messag...er, cutscenes.
Time to talk about the negatives of Raiden Nova, and I think this is one of the aspects of the game where most of the shots against it are going. The most common and annoying aspect of the game has to be the in-game interruptions. Every single time you pick a giftbox that triggers the Gacha System, the game will be interrupted so the game will arrange the upgrades you'll be getting from it. For a Raiden game, this kills the fun factor as it slows things down when it was actually unnecessary. Compare this with let's say Mario Kart 64, when you picked an item box, it made this "roulette" thing flashing through all the items until it stops giving you a random item, and it made that WITHOUT interrupting the gameplay because Nintendo realized that the process can be done while the player drives and even be manually stopped by pressing a button and getting the item immediately. Raiden Nova could do the same thing by placing the Gacha System on the upper part of the screen and showing what do you get while keeping the gameplay going. Boss battles suffer the same problem. When the boss appears, the game stops and an animated cutscene is played, and when its a boss that transforms or splits into two, it interrupts you once again. This might worked on the FMV novelty of the Sega CD and those old PC games of the early-mid 90's but not in "present day" videogames because they utilize the in-game graphics. Thunder Force V for example, it made spectacular boss sequences without interrupting the game's pace. For a game like Raiden, what we've saw on Raiden Nova that's pathetic. I mean instead of appearing and transforming in-game they had to interrupt you with crappy videos making things far more slower than they should. This is EVEN WORSE than the Story Mode of Triggerheart Exelica Enhanced.
Alright, pick up what you need to get out of here, we can celebrate when we’re back at Rowsdower!
In terms of plot and ending, Raiden Nova takes several steps back from what we saw on both Caladrius Blaze and Raiden V where we had dialogues and a plot that unfolds as you save Earth and head into space and your performance led to different epilogues (Although I prefer the more "Freedom of Choice" Darius-like preset branches than that). Raiden Nova just pits your ship like "Stage 1 is a city, Raiden takes down the ships within the time limit, the boss pops in, take it down. Now go to the desert, now the forest-industry-farm, now in open sea, time to finally go into space and repeat the process. Well done, you finished the game". The ending is bleak as well, just pics of space, a city, desert and a beach with no explanation whatsoever about this new Earth invasion and the decision of using all Raidens for the assault. To put it simple, they went on the "Commercial" way and just threw a mindless action game just to rack quick profits using the Raiden franchise. On the bright side, there's one thing that I appreciate of this decision and is having a Raiden game without being criticized for my performance (That goes for you, Eshiria!).
IT'S PERFECT PLAY AND GAME IS OVER.
THANK YOU !!
To close the playthrough, whether you clear the game or die in any of the stages, you'll be getting an evaluation of what weapons and upgrades you've obtained and a list showing how many enemies you took down, along with your ship's current status and how much money you racked in your play session.
Think you can survive 3 hours?
Pick your ship and try to shut our mouths.
Unlimited Mode is the second game mode of Raiden Nova. While the main objective of Arcade Mode is based on surviving and clearing missions before the boss arrives, here, the time will go up, focusing on surviving as long as possible. In this mode you will be facing the same Missions like in Arcade, but with a more increasing rate that applies not just the regular objectives, but the appearance rate of the "Bonus Mission" ones as well.
Kill Count is definitely "Somewhere Over the PAIN-bow".
ELIMINATE *number* OF ENEMIES: Increases from a hundred to exponential rate until it hits 18000 enemies. It applies the same for all 6 stages.
START: 100-200-300-400-500-600-700-800-900-1000-1500-3200-6400-10000-12000-15000-18000 (END)
ELIMINATE "METAL" ENEMY: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16 (1-4 common and 5-16 being the rarest)
ELIMINATE HUGE ENEMY: 1/1 (Yeah, once per play session)
As you've noticed, the enemy is not just the main challenge of this mode, it is the exponential increase in the required targets, forcing you to make crucial decisions that involves the powering up of your ship. So, here's my strategy and I'm sure you'll be appreciating it. The best option is to use a Vulcan-based Raiden (Azuma, Crimson Fury, Fighting Thunder ME-02Kai, Raiden Mk-II, Raiden) and pick the following upgrades and options:
RECOMMENDED UPGRADES: Vulcan Power Up Register, Assault Frame, Defender Frame, Optional Power Register, Full Court Armor, Bomb Power Register (this one is extremely useful due to the 1 bomb per level up when evolves)
RECOMMENDED OPTIONS: Sub-Wide Vulcan, Gatling Machine Gun, Radar Missile, Nuclear Missile, Homing Missile, Cluster Bomb
Note: You can replace the Optional Power Register and Nuclear Missile with Repair Support Kit and Catch Plasma.
NEON
GENESIS
RAIDEN NOVA
EPISODE:1 ANGEL ATTACK
This mode will trow you one more surprise along with the traditional "Missions". After more than half and hour and without warning, the boss will appear which is no other than Angel, the 6th boss from Raiden V. Unlike the Arcade Mode boss battles that switches from the more basic shmup like vertical scrolling, Angel appears as one more enemy in the arena, and to make things worse, it takes way too much hits before dying. To put it simple, it can take more than 10 full powered bomb attacks and several minutes of continuous fully powered attacks altogether at the point that you might die before killing it. So you might be asking "Is it worthy to fight the boss instead of evading it?" Well, believe it or not, Angel can take punishiment not even Humpty Dumpty (final boss) could survive, but it can be defeated, and when it does it grants you a red crystal as an experience booster, and to make things better, Angel itself gives you a lot of experience for taking it down, making it an "Ultimate Challenge" for those who want to give Unlimited Mode a try and keep in mind. Once you destroy Angel, it will appear once again with time.
This not just "Another Trophy Hunt" anymore.
Trophies for Consoles and PC's are everywhere and Raiden Nova is no exception. But before you think "Agh, ¡¿Another Trophy Milker?!", Raiden Nova adds a twist that justifies their existence. Each Trophy (and the Platinum) grants you rewards, from 1,000 Coins and additional strength to new aircraft, and even unlocking the option of select the default weapon of your ship once you get the "God of Raiden" Platinum trophy, which is actually a "Weapon Select" as the first level up upgrade rather than an "Loadout select" (think Axelay or Ace Combat).
By the way, THERE'S SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT YOU NEED TO LEARN ABOUT GETTING THE "BOMB SAVER" TROPHY: The description says "Stage Clear without bombs in Arcade Mode", but guess what?, YOU HAVE TO COMPLETE THE ENTIRE GAME WITHOUT USING A BOMB. I mean, why saying one thing when in reality is other? "False Information" is what this thing is.
You only have access to one ship.
Why not check the store to pursue your (Raiden) adventures?
"Shop" is one of the two stores of this game. Despite its name, this is actually the "Hangar" where you can buy new Raidens as you keep progressing and unlocking them by completing specific Trophy-related objectives. While Raiden V's ships are cheap, the price tag will increase as you go all the way from Raiden Nova to Raiden, being the original 1990's Raiden the most expensive of all with a 40,000 medal price tag (2 or 3 full playthoughs).
While, each ship carry the same weaponry (Vulcan, Laser, Plasma) and Options, their differences are their very own and unique special capabilities, from being "All rounders" to weapon specific, but also they carry "Passive Skills" which makes them unique. For example Fighting Thunder ME-02 (Raiden III) obtains more money from Medals, while the classic Raiden is strong and gives more experience after leveling up, but it carries a lethal weakness: It goes down with one hit, but can revive thrice as it trades the life bar for spare ships, known as "Resurrections", making it an "Experts only" ship, so you can pick the ship that fits to your needs.
The Megadeth Principle: Peace Sells...But Who's Buying?
To close the gameplay part of the game, we will talk of the "Power Up" section. This is the second "store" of the game and this one is focused on upgrading the default configuration of your Raidens. From strength to firepower and even their Passive skills, but the most important of all, adding "Resurrections". But let's check which part works for.
BODY STRENGTH: It increases the initial amount of HP, more health is more chances of survive and progress much further in the game.
FIREPOWER: Increases the strength of all your weapons, but that doesn't mean you can no longer rely on power up upgrades or evolving your weapons.
ADDITIONAL ARMOR: This upgrade increases the damage tolerance of your ship, making it less brittle to enemy fire.
ARMOR RECOVERY: You can reduce the amount of time required to slowly regain your HP after taking a hit. This increases the effect of the Repair Support Kit plug-in.
THRUST: Improves the overall speed of your ship, especially the Super Booster function.
EXTRA BOMBS: No need to explain this one. Increases the starting amount of bombs.
EXPLOSIVE CHARGE: Bombs are screen clearing and devastating, but ¿What if you could increase their destructive power further? That's what the explosive charge does. Increase its overall power through the prolonged duration of the blast. TLDR (Too Long Didn't Read): Makes the bomb burn longer.
VULCAN CONTROL: Increases the effectiveness of your Vulcan, mostly its strength and the rate of dealing "Critical Damage" (Red numbers).
LASER ENERGY: It does to the Laser what Vulcan Control does to the Vulcan: Increase the strength and "Critical Damage" rate of the Laser.
PLASMA FIELD: Enhances the strength of the Plasma and the capacity of dealing more "Critical" damages.
OPTION UNIT ENHANCEMENT: Increases the offensive capabilities of all the Options regardless of their assigned weaponry.
CPU: Reduces the experience required to level up. Its effectiveness is improved much further combined with the Level Up Register upgrade and if your Raiden has a level up boosting Passive Skill.
EXTRA FIGHTERS: Remember the "1-life and you're dead" issue of this game? Here's the solution. Spare lives or "Resurrections" are sold separately. While they're expensive (10,000 each) they're essential to progress and even game completion.
RE-ROLL MODULE: Turn the tables against the randoms in the level up Upgrades with the Re-Roll Module by giving you an upper hand re-arranging the random-given upgrades with a free Re-Roll. Now you can have better chances of powering up a specific upgrade of your ship or add as many Options as possible. Keep in mind, you can get up to 15 free Re-Rolls.
PASSIVE SKILL: The special attribute of your ship can be powered up, increasing its effectiveness and when its maxed out, adds a second Passive Skill (ME-02's 200% money earned and 600 Credits after clearing missions).
Unlike most games that do the "increase the price on the next upgrade", Raiden Nova plays fair and respects the price of each upgrade. If you paid 500 Medals for the first Vulcan Control upgrade, the next ones will retain that cost, saving you time from doing money grinding.
In case some of you are wondering who the best is, they are up here on this plaque.
Do you think your name will be on that plaque?
The game has online leaderboards for both Arcade and Unlimited Modes, which is not a bad idea considering how connected modern gaming is nowadays. But the simplicity just shouts "Laziness" since each mode covers scores regardless of which difficulty was played, which stage was selected and which Raiden was used instead of having Leaderboards for each category. Compare that with Triggerheart Exelica (XBLA and Switch), they have leaderboards for each mode, and each character and each difficulty, resulting in a more organized and fair score board and that was a game with two characters, less than Raiden Nova. So, what happened here? Was MOSS really that cheap?
Local TV quality is IMAX in comparison.
The graphics are the worst part of the whole game. I hate to say it, but you'll be noticing the low quality of the graphics right out of the company logos. When the UFO Interactive Games logo animation and the attract mode demo have a low quality proper of the early days of YouTube where the common norm was between 360-480p. ¿360/480p Video resolution in a PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch? That's unthinkable. And that's on all the FMV cutscenes of the game. If you've played Raiden V and then you check Raiden Nova, you'll see the abyssmal breach between both games in terms of visual quality. Stage 1 is the starting point of the decay of graphic quality. The buildings are simply textures applied to flat surfaces and they repeat constantly, not to metion the texture bitmap is too blurry as if it was done on the cheap and with very questionable quality. Compare that with X-Morph Defense, the buildings were unique and they had massive detailing up to seeing the furniture inside them so you can get surprised by the destruction you can inflict on them to clear your turrets line of fire or block the enemy's path. For a small studio like Exor Studios, this was an accomplishment. So, this brings the question: "¿Why a bigger studio like MOSS failed on that aspect?" Well, I know the answer to this dilemma and debacle: They had a Christmas hurry. I know the game was released on October 31st in 2024, making this more of a Halloween release (how appropiate since the graphics are pure horror), but it was announced on July, so that's very few months of development and that rush-to-release resulted in the graphic flaws and interruptions we had right now. Basically its a reprise of the downfall of Atari (Remember Pac-Man and E.T. The Extraterrestrial?).
Cheap CGI cutscenes.
So cheap they won't make a splash!
The boss introduction cutscenes are from bad to terrible. Kraken's intro scene is the worst of all as we will notice the lack of visual effects on it. Want an example? The boss will emerge from the water WITHOUT SPLASHING like any other sea vehicle would do. ¿Crystal-based physics bending technology? No, just the rushed job of developers rearing its ugly head.
The ins-and-outs of low-cost game development.
The amazing trick of "Texture Layer over flat CGI".
Ship models doesn't get away. You can notice that when you buy a new fighter on the shop. While there's visible airframe detailings on the blackened Raiden V and Raiden Nova's original aircraft, the lack of details drops dramatically on the ships from Raiden IV to Raiden, being the ME-02 Kai the major offender of this situation. Anyone who played Raiden IV will surely remember how the ship had an ambitious level of detailing (even more than Azuma). Here it is reduced to a lame, blurry rendered bitmap texture layer. I mean, ¿Where's the effort on bringing detailed ships? ¿Isn't great graphic display what PlayStations 4 and 5 and the Nintendo Switch weren't meant for? Bah, why I'm blaming Sony and Nintendo when the problem comes directly from MOSS themselves. For some reason, the alternate blue color uses a green canopy instead of yellow like it was on the whole Raiden series. Not to mention, that blue-white-green makes Player 2 color look more Refined Vasteel Replica-like. Back to R-Type Final 2, each ship was incredibly detailed at the point that you can see inside the cockpit of the ships. Raiden Nova failed on the execution of giving us something above Raiden V.
Another flaw that I noticed is the removal of the transformation animations on all the ships. When you evolve the main weapon there's no animation to see your ship transforming, reducing it to a "Pop! there it is!" instant change. The lone instance where the ship does transform is in the "leaving" sequence of the Stage Clear animation, and apparently that animation only applies to the Raiden V ships.
Krak-ed Kraken
Click on the pic for full size.
The texture applications are of VERY dubious quality. Not only on the ships or stages, but on the bosses as well. Just take a look at poor ol' Kraken, it looks like a red mess with horribly applied textures, which like the first stage and the majority of the bosses, it looks not just bad, it is also harmful to the eyes and the experience you expect from a legendary shmup of the scale of Raiden.
Here's a small gallery of the worst graphic displays in Raiden Nova (*Dire Straits' "Walk of Life" plays*).
That sector of the galaxy is X-Rated.
That's why its censored.
Exclusive look at The Asylum's mockbuster "Thunderbolt Starburst".
Raiden Combat: Skies Awful
Here today, gone and blurred tomorrow.
Reality glitch on the U.S.S. Margaret Whitetail.
Navy command denies the incident despite the evidence.
"Global Low Definition"
Earth can't catch a breath alright.
Today in "Wonders of the Universe": The "Great Dividing Rift" of Planet Symmetria
And the mirror flipped geography on the west face of the planet.
You are flying on top of the edge of the universe.
And this is what I said when I saw the graphic quality of Raiden Nova...
Yeah, I know.
Quoting the debriefing of Project Wingman's "Consequence of Power" all over again.
It may sound like an overdone and cliché punchline of mine to quote "Calamity. That's what this is" in my reviews constantly, but in reality, that's the only logic way to describe this mess. I don't know, but it looks like Humble Games, Sector D2 and AWACS Galaxy's voice actor Kyle Quibell unadvertedly invented that quote not just to describe the Cascadian Calamity Event, but to also describe overall disasters in gaming, and Raiden Nova's graphics are indeed A FUCKING CALAMITY!.
One thing I've noticed on YouTube videos is that the PC version has a slightly better graphic quality than their respective console counterparts like the Nintendo Switch or the PlayStation 4 (which is where I took the screenshots for this review). That can be noticed on both Stage 2 and 4 bosses which had their "textures" well applied and you can see the detailings on Kraken. ¿Did MOSS screwed up the console versions? ¿Was it intentional to favor the PC version or just a sad, pathetic happenstance of fate? Only God knows.
Unused art for No Man's Sky "Adrift" expedition.
Despite lacking of an artwork gallery, the game's art is actually recycled from previous Raiden games. One of the menu illustrations is the promo art from Raiden IV, and the loading screens for each stage are concept arts from Raiden V. This is basically MOSS doing an exercise of "The Three R's" mentioned by Captain Planet: "Remember the Three R's: Reduce, Reutilize and Recycle. The power is yours!"
Control Tower
< < Be nicer to their intellectual property, Mage MOSS. > >
One thing is that Azuma, Spirit of Dragon and Moulin Rouge remind me of Silph, Valkyrie and Seylen from Kuhga: Operation Code "Vapor Trail" due to their respective wing and speed configurations, and another is blatant plagiarism. Well, check this example. The second boss of the game (formerly the Medal Mission 2 boss Sky Carrier from Raiden V Director's Cut), to be more exact the "jet" part is clearly a ripoff of the ADF-01 Falken from the Ace Combat series with more "alien" detailings.
"Copy Nothing" they said.
Looks familiar already.
If the ADF-01 ripoff wasn't enough, one of the new Raidens is a ripoff as well. Unless we're looking at the first Raiden from Solont in an uncredited Game Arts collaboration, the Russian Raiden Crimson Fury is a blatant copy of the SA-77 Silpheed from the shmup of the same name, just "Raiden V-ified", and when it evolves, it kinda resembles a Delta Saber from the XBOX 360 game Project Sylpheed. Well, this doesn't surprise me anymore. Disney and Pixar already ripped off Azuma with the XL-01 from Lightyear, so we can expect anything at this point.
Speaking of Raidens, this idea of all the aircraft of the Raiden saga in one game reminds me of the R-Type Final series where it had a lot of fighters including those from "Non-R-Type" games such as Image Fight and In The Hunt. Raiden Nova had the same potential of including the non-prop plane from Fighters such as Ixion and Hell Diver and the Judge Spear from Viper Phase 1. Another miss is the cast of enemies. Since the game had all the main Raidens from the saga, you might be expecting to see a major cast of enemies from all the games, right? Sadly this isn't the case here, as the game only features the enemies and bosses from Raiden V at the point of feeling like the beta of a DLC mini-game of Raiden V with old Raidens as bonus.
Thunder Cresta?
More "Homages". The evolved forms of Eagle Warrior and Red Star Blade have an uncanny "Raiden V-ified" resemblance to Wing Galiber from Terra Cresta as the evolved parts resemble small combined ships in pure Wing Galiber style. Not to mention, the use of the word "Eagle" makes a hint to the Firebird/Phoenix Blaze from the Cresta series. With Ace Combat and Silpheed, that's three ripoff-homages in a row.
Engrish is completely out of control in this game. Need examples? Check these out:
Spoiler
- "Boms"
- "Destory"
- "MainWeapon"
- "OptionWeapon"
- "Machinegun"
- "SparkGun"
- "Miklas" (Can't spell "Miclus" right)
- "Micras" (Twice? What the fuck?)
- "Unolck"
- "Raiden1"
- "Raiden2(DX)"
- "RaidenIV"
- "RaidenV"
- "RaidenNOVA"
- "Reroll"
- "Shied"
- "STAGE*number* CLEAR"
- "Subwide"
- "ArcadeModeClear"
- Tagging "Rescue" as "Capture"
- Calling "Mission Update" as "Continuation!"
- Calling "Cancel" as "Going back one level"
- Calling "Spare Lives/Remaining Ships" as "Resurrections".
NOTE: "Armour" is not added to the list because it's the british writing/spelling of "Armor".
- "Destory"
- "MainWeapon"
- "OptionWeapon"
- "Machinegun"
- "SparkGun"
- "Miklas" (Can't spell "Miclus" right)
- "Micras" (Twice? What the fuck?)
- "Unolck"
- "Raiden1"
- "Raiden2(DX)"
- "RaidenIV"
- "RaidenV"
- "RaidenNOVA"
- "Reroll"
- "Shied"
- "STAGE*number* CLEAR"
- "Subwide"
- "ArcadeModeClear"
- Tagging "Rescue" as "Capture"
- Calling "Mission Update" as "Continuation!"
- Calling "Cancel" as "Going back one level"
- Calling "Spare Lives/Remaining Ships" as "Resurrections".
NOTE: "Armour" is not added to the list because it's the british writing/spelling of "Armor".
Spoiler
CLUSTER BOMB: "Releasing a bomb with multiple small bombs" | CORRECTION: I think "Fires a bomb that scatters into small exploding droplets".
NUCLEAR MISSILE: "Fires a missile that goes straight in the direction own fighter is heading" | CORRECTION: "Fires a missile on a frontal trajectory based on the fighter's direction".
LIGHTNING LASER: "Fires a laser that attacks continuously" | CORRECTION: "Fires a laser dealing constant damages to the enemy".
HOMING PLASMA: "Fires plasma that is automatically guided toward enemy | CORRECTION: "Fires a plasma shot that locks-on a specific target".
RAIDEN PASSIVE SKILLS: "Damage is compensated 100 times" | CORRECTION: "Damage is increased in 100%".
NUCLEAR MISSILE: "Fires a missile that goes straight in the direction own fighter is heading" | CORRECTION: "Fires a missile on a frontal trajectory based on the fighter's direction".
LIGHTNING LASER: "Fires a laser that attacks continuously" | CORRECTION: "Fires a laser dealing constant damages to the enemy".
HOMING PLASMA: "Fires plasma that is automatically guided toward enemy | CORRECTION: "Fires a plasma shot that locks-on a specific target".
RAIDEN PASSIVE SKILLS: "Damage is compensated 100 times" | CORRECTION: "Damage is increased in 100%".
The music in this game is a subject of debate among fans claiming that it sounds like an JRPG, so I'll analyze each stage theme. "Out of Vision" (Stage 1) indeed sounds like if you're playing Romancing SaGa or any of the Tales of series with the battle-themed orchestra that slightly contrasts with the shmup element of Raiden. "Desert Eye" (Stage 2) delivers something more shmup like with the electronic instruments mixed with slight orchestration, the same thing can be said for "Strike on Verdure" (Stage 3). "Ocean's Dance" (Stage 4) makes another shift in the style by going more electronic/rave-ish ditching the bells and trumpets in a style that evokes Raiden III and IV. "The Day of Aries" (Stage 5) returns to the JRPG vibes again in a musical techno-orchestration that makes you think more of escaping the dungeon with the princess/queen rather than dogfighting and finally, the song "Gallantry for Nova" (Stage 6) which brings classic Raiden nostalgia since the theme is no other than an epic arrangement of "Gallantry" (Raiden stages 1 and 4) that sounds even more spectacular than the FM Towns version we've heard on Raiden Trad. As for the boss themes, "Over Concentration" (Boss 1 - Platon / Boss 3 - Spice Birds / Boss 5 "Gold Fleet") has a strong influence of Hitoshi Sakimoto's "Stage Boss" theme from Gradius V with a slight chillout in the mid section rather than going fanfaric like Gradius V did. "Symphony No.0" (Boss 2 - "Falken Imitate"-Sky Carrier / Boss 4 - Kraken) starts with suspenseful notes similar to the style of the superweapon or ace squadron encounter in an Ace Combat game. "Is that a fighter? At this stage?" (adding more inri to its ADF-01 nature), but that's only at the first 10 seconds because when the orchestration hits it goes all JRPG changing from Ace Combat-esque to a Xenosaga styled battle theme, unless you want to think they've tried to pull an Ace Combat 7 Mihaly/SOL Squadron styled theme. And finally we have "Go to Blazes!" (Boss 6 - Humpty Dumpty). There's no need to explain, the legendary boss theme from the first Raiden makes a comeback.
But if the music still sounds like if you're in a turn-based battle with swords and magic, here's an alternate, more shmup-like playlist for Raiden Nova.
Stratovarius - "Hunting High and Low"
Cheap Trick - "Mighty Wings" (Or check the more anime-styled Miki Asakura version if you want)
Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding - "Miracle" (both original and "Valentino Khan Remix")
Deniz Akbulut - "Battle 2" (For an RPG, fits well on shmups such as RayForce and Gridseeker, so it will work with Raiden Nova)
Deniz Akbulut - "Raid" (CrossCode made the spiritual successor of "Lightning Strikes" from Raiden III)
Jose Pavli - "Consequence of Power"
Freedom Call - "Terra Liberty"
ZZ Top - "Stages"
Metallica - "Fuel"
Spectre General - "Nothin's Gonna Stand In Our Way"
Peter Gabriel - "Shock the Monkey"
Stratovarius - "Millennium" (Very Raiden-fitting, "Gallantry II" if you want to call it like it. You can also try the Energema version too)
TRIVIAIDEN NOVA
The Power of Jaguar, The Excitement of the Arcade.
We're chewing up the competition bit by bit.
- First Raiden game where the traditional gameplay is ditched.
- First time in the series where the "Energy" type weapons are used.
- Third time where Gallantry makes an appearance and the second arrangement of the game (console conversions aside).
- Second time in-game where the original Raiden is colored in dark blue instead of light blue since the Atari Jaguar port (Although the arcade flyer depicted player 2's ship with a dark tone of blue).
Artwork and in-game sprite may vary.
- The original Raiden is depicted based on the Rafale-esque arcade flyer artwork rather than the "F-14 lookalike" in-game sprite.
- Raiden MK-II also gets a dark blue color, nodding its depiction in the Fabtek promotional flyer of Raiden II and the cover of the PC port.
- Eagle Warrior, Red Star Blade and Crimson Fury were originally intended to be part of Raiden V's cast, but they were discarded during development.
So let's sum things up: Arena-style shooting is OK for Raiden as it still remains vertical like the original games, its fun to play, adds the classic cast of ships and newcomers, new power up mechanics and fair in-game store pricing are the positive aspects of the game while the constant in-game interruptions, horrible graphic quality in consoles, lack of story and dialogues, ship variety with unexploited potential, recycle of Raiden V's enemies, a 1990 Raiden that is as fragile as a paper bag, lousy cutscenes for bosses, atrocious engrish, blatant plagiarisms and the JRPG-like music are the negative and controversial aspects of the game. Raiden Nova has a lot of potential with the idea of going all Twin-stick like other shmups such as X-Morph Defense, but MOSS really needs to fix the flaws that are the major obstacle on the way of becoming a better game (No Man's Sky is a good example of how an initially bad game is improved and perfected through constant updates that lifts the game up). Raiden fans will be glad to have one more title in the saga as we keep waiting for Arcade Archives: Raiden II to come out.
To all those who are looking for a Raiden to call "Fucking Shit", that's Raiden Trad on the SNES, the Atari Lynx and Java ports of Raiden, those two are one fucking hell of an atrocity altogether.
If it wasn't for all the negatives in the game, this would get 8 or 9 R-9's in the R-Scale.
Thus, Raiden Nova gets 6 R-9s in the scale:
Dubious decisions led to a questionable result.
The "Eda Scale" knows that pretty well.