All the crappy PS2 shooters (or we hate R-Type Final thread)

[Turrican]

1) They are not. Some ships have useless weapons that cripple a player when collected. Some ships have useless chargebeams that are mere gimmicks. Some ships have game-breaking overpowered weapon selection. All are variations on the same theme, with "added bonuses".

yes. You see, out of a hundred ships, having gimmick chargebeams and useless weapons is taken into account.

At least in 3 and Delta the main ships all played differently - the R9 would have strengths based around its main laser weapons and screen coverage, the RX's had great defense and the semi-intelligent Force Device added a strategic dimension to the use of detaching the Force, the R13 would use its Anchor Force as a primary weapon, but still had good strength with its lasers.

Heck, even the POW Armor played differently to the main ships.

You have RX, R13 and POW in Final - and at least another dozen of similarly well-thought crafts. Isn't this enough to forgive a sixty gimmicks/clones?

2) That is my point. a handful of completely individual ships would have been a better choice than 101 variants of the same theme. Think Batrider - 18 ships, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, all useful in some way and all crafted to play the game in their own particular way. Can't say the same for the 101 in Final.

You don't have to say the same for the 101 - it suffices to say the same for 18 out of those 101.
I might add that the selection of ship is organized as an historical progression of R models - so it makes sense that each significant new model gets a number of minor improvements. You can consider Lady Love, War head, Strike Bomber, Delta, Sunday Strike all slight variations of the Arrow Head, so all of them count for 1/18 in your example... And this doesn't detract from gameplay, as long as you still have significant difference to choose from...

3) Don't agree: "the stages are intelligently balanced around the R-9" and the R-9 only. If the stages were crafted to fit the strengths and weaknesses of the other ship variants then perhaps. But as it stands, Delta still has the better stage design over Final, for the simple fact that each stage makes you use your chosen ship's strengths and weaknesses. See point 1.

As the situations are quite repeated (underwater stage, big battleship stage, enemies coming from behind and such) I can't see how Final stages don't take into account the strenghts and weaknesses of at the very least Tentacle and Anchor forces. To say stages are around R-9 alone is serious understatement: a lot of different forces are actually useful in stages.

The stage design in Delta was clever enough to allow you to play the complete game without the use of the Force Device, or without the use of powerups. Can't say the same for Final (and believe me, I've tried).

That is stage balance, not the retarded design evident in Final.

Judging stage design is always something very subtle - I should ask you detailed step-after-step examples of what makes Delta so much superior. I don't ask because I didn't deny that superiority in first place, but I don't think either that Final' stage design is retarded. Far from it, it offers plenty of different threats in each stage. The warp effect that is reduced accordingly to your speed is clever, for example.

Might I remind you that when someone mentions a "superfluous element" with regards to a game's balance and design, they are talking about gameplay.

I'd accept this if we were talking about the huge number of ships - but regarding paintjobs, no, it not related to gameplay in any way. At worst, you can criticize Irem's use of resources, arguing that their time would have been used better in other ways. Still, no relevance to Final's actual gameplay, just assumptions.

[Icarus]

yes. You see, out of a hundred ships, having gimmick chargebeams and useless weapons is taken into account

You have RX, R13 and POW in Final - and at least another dozen of similarly well-thought crafts. Isn't this enough to forgive a sixty gimmicks/clones?

No. Icarus does not forgive.

1) If proper thought and care were put into the development of the ships, then there wouldn't be any gimmick charge beams and useless weapons.

2) No. Four archaic ships out of 101 does not excuse the fact that the rest have no use except as mere novelties in a badly balanced game.

You don't have to say the same for the 101 - it suffices to say the same for 18 out of those 101.
I might add that the selection of ship is organized as an historical progression of R models - so it makes sense that each significant new model gets a number of minor improvements. You can consider Lady Love, War head, Strike Bomber, Delta, Sunday Strike all slight variations of the Arrow Head, so all of them count for 1/18 in your example... And this doesn't detract from gameplay, as long as you still have significant difference to choose from...

Pfft. "Historical" upgrades is an excuse to add micro-variants to the hangar of ships. You could say the same for Gran Turismo and the many variants of the Nissan Skyline - they're all historical upgrades with minor tweaks, but they still play the same as each other.

Perhaps if the history of the R-series was confined to a database and only key ships - for example, ships integral to the continuing development of the R-series, or played an important role in the fight against the Bydo, such as the R-90a or the Cerberus (upon unlocking) - were selectable in the game, then Final might have been a better game than it is.

As the situations are quite repeated (underwater stage, big battleship stage, enemies coming from behind and such) I can't see how Final stages don't take into account the strenghts and weaknesses of at the very least Tentacle and Anchor forces. To say stages are around R-9 alone is serious understatement: a lot of different forces are actually useful in stages.

... and completely useless in others. If stages were properly crafted, a portion of the Force Devices wouldn't be so redundant, and actually have some use in the game, instead of being relegated to the status of quick-release shields, there to protect you while you charge up a planet-destroying Bydo Beam.

Judging stage design is always something very subtle - I should ask you detailed step-after-step examples of what makes Delta so much superior. I don't ask because I didn't deny that superiority in first place, but I don't think either that Final' stage design is retarded. Far from it, it offers plenty of different threats in each stage. The warp effect that is reduced accordingly to your speed is clever, for example.

Again, the stage design in Delta is far better crafted to the strengths and weaknesses of each ship, and was still balanced enough to allow each ship the chance to get through the whole stage without the use of major weaponry like the Force Device and Bits.

Again, I cannot say the same for Final's stages. Many of them have quite baffling gaps in the action (4.0 being one culprit). Or sections that are ridiculously easy, followed by parts that are ridiculously hard (all variants of 2, and 5.0). A lot of them seem to be designed around the "swarming" aspect of formation design, almost forcing the use of a Force, no pun intended (all variants of 6, F-A, F-C). The way to switch stage variants is also retarded, and can seriously screw up a player who is unaware that blasting a blue or red switch on a particular boss or section triggers the change. Some variants are pretty lethal as well (all variants of 2).

And the "warp effect"? What on earth has that got to do with stage balance and gameplay? That's just a superfluous element as the paintjobs you like to mention.

I'd accept this if we were talking about the huge number of ships - but regarding paintjobs, no, it not related to gameplay in any way. At worst, you can criticize Irem's use of resources, arguing that their time would have been used better in other ways. Still, no relevance to Final's actual gameplay, just assumptions.

Do you even know what gameplay consists of?

Look at games that have selectable ships. Garegga's stage design is well balanced and allows all eight selectable ships the chance to score with properly crafted strategies. All selectable characters in Shikigami no Shiro 2 and 3 have just as many good scoring oppurtunities as each other. Even the different Options Types and Weapon Edit in Gradius 5 had stage balance, and each type and individual weapon had its uses.

[Turrican]

No. Icarus does not forgive.

1) If proper thought and care were put into the development of the ships, then there wouldn't be any gimmick charge beams and useless weapons.

2) No. Four archaic ships out of 101 does not excuse the fact that the rest have no use except as mere novelties in a badly balanced game.

Exactly, I see you don't forgive this abundance - but please keep in mind that this is your personal strictness. In other words, you find Final guilty of lacking focus, but I still can't see how this cripples gameplay.

Pfft. "Historical" upgrades is an excuse to add micro-variants to the hangar of ships. You could say the same for Gran Turismo and the many variants of the Nissan Skyline - they're all historical upgrades with minor tweaks, but they still play the same as each other.

It's a good comparison, yes.

Perhaps if the history of the R-series was confined to a database and only key ships - for example, ships integral to the continuing development of the R-series, or played an important role in the fight against the Bydo, such as the R-90a or the Cerberus (upon unlocking) - were selectable in the game, then Final might have been a better game than it is.

You're getting ridiculous, come on: if Final would be exactly as it is now, but with less ships, only the important ones, it would be better, you say. Why? You still have to explain this, why Gran Turismo would be better with just twenty landmark cars instead of several hundreds. Once you admitted that they mostly play the same, what difference does to you the raw number? And how adding even more detracts from gameplay?

All I see is that you're uncomfortable with the idea...

... and completely useless in others. If stages were properly crafted, a portion of the Force Devices wouldn't be so redundant, and actually have some use in the game, instead of being relegated to the status of quick-release shields, there to protect you while you charge up a planet-destroying Bydo Beam.

The point is, while I admit that 80% of weaponry in game is redundant, you refuse to concede that the rest (like the four archaic you mentioned, but of course there are a bunch of others) works.

Again, the stage design in Delta is far better crafted to the strengths and weaknesses of each ship, and was still balanced enough to allow each ship the chance to get through the whole stage without the use of major weaponry like the Force Device and Bits.

I'll trust you on this - I haven't tried myself. What do you mean by not using the force. Not picking it at all? And, what exactly does change between using the RX or the R13 if you don't collect the Force device? You can't even charge the delta weapon without - so each ship is the same.

Again, I cannot say the same for Final's stages. Many of them have quite baffling gaps in the action (4.0 being one culprit). Or sections that are ridiculously easy, followed by parts that are ridiculously hard (all variants of 2, and 5.0). A lot of them seem to be designed around the "swarming" aspect of formation design, almost forcing the use of a Force, no pun intended (all variants of 6, F-A, F-C). The way to switch stage variants is also retarded, and can seriously screw up a player who is unaware that blasting a blue or red switch on a particular boss or section triggers the change. Some variants are pretty lethal as well (all variants of 2).

Hmm. If you say so. You're repeating some criticism to which I answered before - and anyway none of these (action gaps, difficulty bumps, retarded choice system, lethal variants) is directly linked to ships' differences. I thought you were talking of that.

And the "warp effect"? What on earth has that got to do with stage balance and gameplay? That's just a superfluous element as the paintjobs you like to mention.

How can it be superfluous if you alter it by switching speed? It's an interacive element of the stage: of course it's more difficult to see what's happening if you have the screen warped. Herr Schatten already explained this before in this thread.

Do you even know what gameplay consists of?

Look at games that have selectable ships. Garegga's stage design is well balanced and allows all eight selectable ships the chance to score with properly crafted strategies. All selectable characters in Shikigami no Shiro 2 and 3 have just as many good scoring oppurtunities as each other. Even the different Options Types and Weapon Edit in Gradius 5 had stage balance, and each type and individual weapon had its uses.

Icarus, what do selectable ships have to do with paintjobs? I'm talking of the option which lets you change the color of the ship and / or cockpit. I'd just assume you misunderstood me, as I can't see how this can be considered a gameplay element while it's purely cosmetic.

Oh, and there's no need to be so aggressive.

[BulletMagnet]

Garegga's stage design is well balanced and allows all eight selectable ships the chance to score...

..within a few million points of each other...

with properly crafted strategies.

All selectable characters in Shikigami no Shiro 2 and 3 have just as many good scoring oppurtunities as each other.

Even Fumiko?

Your overall point still stands, but I couldn't resist.

[Twiddle]

Fumiko downs boss forms in a few seconds each (faster than roger, even) so if she isn't good for scoring points she's good at that

now there are ships in games that are absolutely pointless for both scoring and survival but garegga and sns have neither

gain, however is a broken son of a bitch when it comes to the high-level task of milking bosses to timeout i'll tell you that

[Turrican]

Garegga's stage design is well balanced and allows all eight selectable ships the chance to score...

..within a few million points of each other...

with properly crafted strategies.

All selectable characters in Shikigami no Shiro 2 and 3 have just as many good scoring oppurtunities as each other.

Even Fumiko?

Your overall point still stands, but I couldn't resist.

Actually, his point would stand if Final was built too around those score mechanics / score opportunities. Since it isn't, the difference between ships mostly concern survival issues.

[Icarus]

@BulletMagnet:
With Shikigami 2, side from Fumiko2/Kofumiko who is incredibly hard to use (WR: ~5.8bil) all other characters are roughly level in scoring, at around 6.2 to 6.8bil. Yuuki Sayo is the highest scoring at ~7.1bil.

Even with HT-MAX, all characters in Shikigami 3 are between 9-11mil. I'd say that's fairly balanced scoring, even with the massive range of differences between each character.

Also, with Garegga, Mahou ships are known to score about ~10-15% higher than default ships. WR for all default ships except Wild Snail is around 14.5 to 15.5mil (Snail hits 17.5mil). All Mahou ships except Gain hit 16-17mil. Gain only hits 20mil because of its easily exploitable multi-drop Weapon, something the other ships don't have, giving Gain the scoring advantage.

[Icarus]

Exactly, I see you don't forgive this abundance - but please keep in mind that this is your personal strictness. In other words, you find Final guilty of lacking focus, but I still can't see how this cripples gameplay.

Lets make this clear: the process of good game design is to carefully design and balance many aspects of a game - control, ship selection, stage design, weaponry, base difficulty, score systems, rank systems etc etc - and the better crafted a game is in all the main areas of design, the better balanced a game will become.

If a game is severely lacking in focus and balance in one or two of those areas, then the rest of the game's design fails. Losing focus in ship selection by stuffing a hundred variants of one base design into a game makes the rest of the elements poorly balanced as things have to be chopped and changed in order to compensate for the oversaturation.

Its good principles and practice in anything that requires design: put in only what is required to make the design work.

You're getting ridiculous, come on: if Final would be exactly as it is now, but with less ships, only the important ones, it would be better, you say. Why? You still have to explain this, why Gran Turismo would be better with just twenty landmark cars instead of several hundreds. Once you admitted that they mostly play the same, what difference does to you the raw number? And how adding even more detracts from gameplay?

Do you actually play with all 101 ships? Would you ever give all those cars in GT a go? I doubt it. Give someone too much choice and they always go for particular ones based on favourites.

My point is that having a smaller, more focused selection could give more importance to acquiring that selection, and more interest into how they fit into the R-Type world. Irem could have even tied it into a better design stage route system, where performance would lead you down different routes with the chance to acquire the different ships. Heck, even having less ships would allow for more stages to accomodate an altered stage route system.

Imagine being able to unlock Cerberus after fighting your way through the Bydo Dimension to the Forest, and after destroying the "holding cell" that controls the R-13, the game would switch to you controlling the R-13 itself in an escape attempt.

Or a hidden side story documenting/recreating a stage from R-Type 3, with you playing as the R-90a with your selection of Force Device (Round/Shadow/Cyclone), and on completing the side story, you could use it in R-90a-centric stages.

The point is, while I admit that 80% of weaponry in game is redundant, you refuse to concede that the rest (like the four archaic you mentioned, but of course there are a bunch of others) works.

In all previous R-Types, 0% of weaponry was redundant. They all had their uses, and stage design was constructed to allow players the ability to progress if using a particular laser/Force type in each section, with varying degrees of difficulty depending on what was selected.

For example, in R-Type stage3, players could navigate the battleship with any of the lasers - red, blue and yellow - but it would be harder get around the ship using the red and blue lasers, while the yellow laser made the stage a breeze.

In Final, a large proportion of weaponry is rendered useless either by poor strength or crap range (or both), and your ship is effectively crippled if you accidentally collect that weapon.

I'll trust you on this - I haven't tried myself. What do you mean by not using the force. Not picking it at all? And, what exactly does change between using the RX or the R13 if you don't collect the Force device? You can't even charge the delta weapon without - so each ship is the same.

R-Type Delta's stage design allowed players to play the game without using a single powerup. It was possible to do it with all ships, but easier with the RX.

Here's a partial No Powerups guide. It had accompanying replays which I can upload somewhere, since the videos have been removed.

The Notes section in Delta even awarded you for achieving that type of ALL.

Hmm. If you say so. You're repeating some criticism to which I answered before - and anyway none of these (action gaps, difficulty bumps, retarded choice system, lethal variants) is directly linked to ships' differences. I thought you were talking of that.

Those problems with stage design have nothing to do with the ship differences, but poor effort on the part of the stage designers. The many ship differences add to those problems.

How can it be superfluous if you alter it by switching speed? It's an interacive element of the stage: of course it's more difficult to see what's happening if you have the screen warped. Herr Schatten already explained this before in this thread.

Its still a background element of stage design. I thought we are referring to IMMEDIATE elements of stages such as scenery, enemy placement and so on, not a fancy graphical effect controlled by speeding up/down the player craft.

Actually, his point would stand if Final was built too around those score mechanics / score opportunities. Since it isn't, the difference between ships mostly concern survival issues.

Survival in Final is relegated to quickly switching your shield around while you charge up a mega-beam. What fun.

[Turrican]

Lets make this clear: the process of good game design is to carefully design and balance many aspects of a game - control, ship selection, stage design, weaponry, base difficulty, score systems, rank systems etc etc - and the better crafted a game is in all the main areas of design, the better balanced a game will become.

If a game is severely lacking in focus and balance in one or two of those areas, then the rest of the game's design fails. Losing focus in ship selection by stuffing a hundred variants of one base design into a game makes the rest of the elements poorly balanced as things have to be chopped and changed in order to compensate for the oversaturation.

Its good principles and practice in anything that requires design: put in only what is required to make the design work.

It's all very well put - except maybe Irem was aiming to different goals than the ones you are looking for. Take the ships for example: you assume they should be a limited number, with enough key differences to be offer a good gameplay variety. As it is in most shmups, I might add.

I think you are in error, as you keep to see them only as a gameplay element in that sense, while it's obvious that the vast majority of them was introduced as an unlockable goals. Exactly like GT cars - it's not required that you have to play with all of them. And if you finally see them for what they are, you see they're integrated in the game's design.

Most of the ships still play very similar to the R-9. This similarity is what makes the game work, since every stage is doable with any of them. Undoubtely you are right: creating a limited number of very different ships could have led Irem to build more interesting stages around their specifications, who knows.
I honestly didn't feel the stages crippled or anything - they may be basic or "classic" in the approach: this was intended after all, since the setting and situations are the same of the original...

Do you actually play with all 101 ships? Would you ever give all those cars in GT a go? I doubt it. Give someone too much choice and they always go for particular ones based on favourites.

So what? Is that a bad thing?

My point is that having a smaller, more focused selection could give more importance to acquiring that selection, and more interest into how they fit into the R-Type world. Irem could have even tied it into a better design stage route system, where performance would lead you down different routes with the chance to acquire the different ships. Heck, even having less ships would allow for more stages to accomodate an altered stage route system.

A smaller, focused selection was already tried twice. Final keeps all those force devices (including that "focusness" in its unfocused rooster if you want). The 101 ships were meant as a selection to acquire, and as a result, only a fraction of them is interesting gameplay-wise. On the other hand, it's also true that it offers a great deal of customiszation. For example, if you like a particular model but feel it's a bit too powerful, you can often downgrade to the previous one which offers nearly all the same qualitites but has a leveled down beam.

Imagine being able to unlock Cerberus after fighting your way through the Bydo Dimension to the Forest, and after destroying the "holding cell" that controls the R-13, the game would switch to you controlling the R-13 itself in an escape attempt.

Or a hidden side story documenting/recreating a stage from R-Type 3, with you playing as the R-90a with your selection of Force Device (Round/Shadow/Cyclone), and on completing the side story, you could use it in R-90a-centric stages.

it's all very nice , but I was here to defend the actual finished product to the accuse of being crap. Not crying over how cool might have been another hypothetical R-Type game. Do you think I don't have regrets with the game? Do you think it doesn't bug me, for example, that they had to adjust every craft to the same weapon setup so that they all have to get a Force Dev? Wouldn't extra stages accessible to R-90 be lovely as you say? I guess that we could stay here and think to additional cool stages for every shmup we can think of - why not a secret stage for Lord British in GV, huh? But it's a digression.

In all previous R-Types, 0% of weaponry was redundant. They all had their uses, and stage design was constructed to allow players the ability to progress if using a particular laser/Force type in each section, with varying degrees of difficulty depending on what was selected.

Debatable - you cleared Delta without even using the force, after all. In fact, it's not like the three ship selection in 3 or Delta ever felt "necessary". No wonder that they always give the choice to use a R-9 clone in them. As you see, the Okham razor to "remove all which is redundant" is double-edged.

For example, in R-Type stage3, players could navigate the battleship with any of the lasers - red, blue and yellow - but it would be harder get around the ship using the red and blue lasers, while the yellow laser made the stage a breeze.

In Final, a large proportion of weaponry is rendered useless either by poor strength or crap range (or both), and your ship is effectively crippled if you accidentally collect that weapon.

You are talking about the main difference between lasers in R-Type, where of course the yellow is great for ground enemies / battleships while the red goes full frontal power and so on. Needless to say, these categories are kept in Final, and usually regardless of the ship, there are situations where "yellow" is best suited than "red". While it's true that in Final usually a ship has a "crap laser" out of three, this trend actually started in Delta. And it's not that much of a flaw: if all three weapons of a ship would be very effective, gamers wouldn't have any incentive to try the others.

R-Type Delta's stage design allowed players to play the game without using a single powerup. It was possible to do it with all ships, but easier with the RX.

Of course man, my bad - I was forgetting the all-important difference between ships that is the beam. I have no doubt that RX beam was the one with most chances to accomplish that. By the way - can you obtain the same achievement present in Final's records page?

Those problems with stage design have nothing to do with the ship differences, but poor effort on the part of the stage designers. The many ship differences add to those problems.

You're exaggerating those problems - like the "retarded prong" thing. Come on - hit by accident the first time, it won't ruin your playthrough at all (it will just affect your next play session), and the second time it's what determine the game's end: sure a bit of attention while playing wouldn't hurt, would it. Action gap, stage 4 being the culprit: it's true, it keeps the action slow-paced, but unlike the slowdown is evidently a deliberate choice by Irem. And you seem to agree with me that all twisted ecology variations are around the same difficulty level.

Its still a background element of stage design. I thought we are referring to IMMEDIATE elements of stages such as scenery, enemy placement and so on, not a fancy graphical effect controlled by speeding up/down the player craft.

Heh, many kept thinking it was just a fancy graphical effect all the time, swearing at the stage. Anyway, we can go technical and talk about enemy placement and scenery, why not. I doubt we'll find flaws so huge to break a game, as they'd be evident at first playthrough.

Survival in Final is relegated to quickly switching your shield around while you charge up a mega-beam. What fun.

Hmm. strategic positioning of the Force has been R-Type's main element since the first one. Don't tell me you wrote all this to get to Neon's conclusion, that the game isn't just "fun" for you.

[Strider77]

There is no way you could balance a game to cater to 100+ ships.

I don't know how many folks here have played fighters extensively, but if you have then you know this also.

All fighters have a top tier, there are about 3 to 5 in the standard fighter. No designer can possibly imagine every tactic a player may create to use. Even a game like marvel vs capcom 2 with TONS of characters, it still boils down to about 12 to 13.

There is no way to balance a game perfectly to that many ships. Not unless you made all the ships incredibaly similar. So should they have left them out? I think that would have been stupid. Them being there is only a bonus. You don't have to use them.

That's like saying after the top tier characters in a fighter are discovered you should edit the rest out. That's a silly idea. Just b\c they are worse doesn't mean they aren't fun or usable.

[BulletMagnet]

That's like saying after the top tier characters in a fighter are discovered you should edit the rest out. That's a silly idea. Just b\c they are worse doesn't mean they aren't fun or usable.

Methinks it's worth taking into consideration that you're talking to (mostly) basically "tournament level" players here...and when you enter a fighter tourney, every character except the top tier does indeed pretty much cease to exist, heh heh.

For more casual players it's a different story (says the shameless Dan Hibiki fan ).

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I think a number of "features" were really horrible. One of the more annoying ones are the long breaks in action. It just isn't fun if the Bydo take a thirty seconds break from trying to kill you mid level. Add the slowdown and I often feel like drowning myself with my own saliva while waiting for anything to attack me. Then, there's some of the boring backgrounds and the nausea-inducing level 5 (I think) avoidable only if you don't mind crawling ship speed. I could go on but nah. I want to save people time when they start refuting my points one by one.

I guess some people could just shrug it all off and appreciate the right things about the game, but I just have better games to play.

[Turrican]

I could go on but nah. I want to save people time when they start refuting my points one by one.

thanks - I do appreciate

[Twiddle]

I want to save people time when they start refuting my points one by one.

it's not so much refuting as it is "you can't dislike the game for that reason ever"

[elvis]

Icarus does not forgive.

elvis doesn't like poeple who talk about themselves in the third person.

[Dandy J]

rtype final sucks and is boring

[Twiddle]

Icarus does not forgive.

elvis doesn't like poeple who talk about themselves in the third person.

twiddle points out that it is a 4chan running joke that apparently few in these forums care about

[PFG 9000]

PFG 9000 completely misses the joke.

Anyway, I don't think it matters that there are a certain number of "top tier" ships out of the total 101 in Final. Different players will gravitate toward different playing styles (moreso than in games like the previous R-Types, because the tight level design in those games demanded certain tactics to pass certain parts). And therefore different players will gravitate toward different ships or ship classes.

It makes no difference if I like the Kiwi Berry and hate the other 100 ships in the game (which isn't the case, but for argument's sake...). There will be players out there who like Mr. Heli the best, and there will be those who like Cross the Rubicon, and those who just stick with the basic R-x ships. The ship variety isn't intended to provide every player with a regular rotation of 101 ships in their playthroughs. It's intended to allow every player to find something that fits their style, and the open level design takes this into consideration as well.

Except for the parts with no enemies. Those just suck.

[Neon]

rtype final sucks and is boring

Dandy J wins the thread

Short, and to the point

[Generiname]

I like XII Stag and Trizeal for their spirit, Chaos Field for the music & R type final for the presentation. GWG is a bit choppy but not bad. I'm easy to please. The only shmups on the ps2 that really deserve to be called crap are Guerilla Strike, Shadow of Ganymede & Search and Destroy. These games are all phoenix games PAL stuff & they've even another shooter on the way that'll no doubt be of exactly the same quality as the others. Avoid these like the plague.

[Strider77]

Survival in Final is relegated to quickly switching your shield around while you charge up a mega-beam. What fun.

Your force pod has been a pretty important part of that series...

[Icarus]

Your force pod has been a pretty important part of that series...

Congratulations for completely missing the point.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

There is no way you could balance a game to cater to 100+ ships.

-And why would they want to? Surely the shitty ships are there to challenger the high-tier players.

[Kaiser]

Your force pod has been a pretty important part of that series...

Congratulations for completely missing the point.

lol funny anyway r-type final sucks badly...

[gavin19]

For me R-Type Final just said 'style over substance'. Aside from that, I thought Silpheed was dull but still enjoyable (picked it up for £5), and Shienryu Explosion was too easy on defaults but still (for me) much more playable than XII Stag/Chaos Field/Trizeal.

[rib]

will i like trizeal if i didn't like xii stag?
or which ps2 or gc shmup can be compared with trizeal the best?

[Kiken]

Looks like we have the next "Which version of TFV is better: Saturn or PSX?" and "Battle Garegga's rank sucks!" with "Why does R-Type Final suck?".

will i like trizeal if i didn't like xii stag?
or which ps2 or gc shmup can be compared with trizeal the best?

XII Stag and Trizeal are two very different games. Closest thing to compare to Trizeal would be Raiden III... although, the graphics don't look as good but the ships sure as hell move faster.

[Fighter17]

R-Type Final doesn't suck. It just has some flaws like other shmups. At least it got the most ships you can play in a shmup.

[Turrican]

Looks like we have the next "Which version of TFV is better: Saturn or PSX?" and "Battle Garegga's rank sucks!" with "Why does R-Type Final suck?".

It's depressing when intelligent discussion over a game is no more distinguishable from trolling. I don't think everything Twiddle, Shocky, Icarus, Strider77, bVork and myself wrote so far is a load of bullshit only worth for a laugh. Unfortunately it's very easy to jump on a thread and flood it with smart comments like "the game sucks" - thus lowering discussion beyond repair.

Hey - at least we were discussing a game, instead of quality differences among ports.

[Kiken]

It's depressing when intelligent discussion over a game is no more distinguishable from trolling. I don't think everything Twiddle, Shocky, Icarus, Strider77, bVork and myself wrote so far is a load of bullshit only worth for a laugh.

No.. but it has collapsed into a stale-mate. And Turrican, even you have to admit that the general consensus on Shmups has been that R-Type Final was a disappointment.