Anyway, let's see if this game could be a good one or it will become a "Rayging" Disaster?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nALsATCGnUU
Gameplay: 6/10
Unlike the previous games, instead of select one, you can pick two ships, one as your "Leader" and other like your "Mate" (or Wingman), each one with different attacks and they have their own energy meter, so when one is down, the other will appear, but you can switch your ships between the gameplay, but unlike G.I. Joe, Megaman X3, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse or the Donkey Kong Country games where you pressed a button for switch your characters, in RGB's you have to learn the stupidest character switching system ever made in a game. For switch your ships you have go to a space in the left or right side of the screen until you fill the Change gauge at 100% and the other ship appears, the idea of ship switching could be good, but the idea of how it was executed is just stupid, this will be like if in Megaman X3, you have to crouch for 5 seconds for change X and play as Zero. Back to RGBs again, if the Ship Swtching (RGBs System) is already a problem, there's one time where the switching becames one heck of a problem, and that's in Stage 3, since the stage is like 3 screens long, you'll be moving from one side to another, but when you're moving you'll end up filling the change gauge because the "switch areas" are on the sides and the other ship will come out and you'll end up losing your targets because of that, it'll be more useful if you can change ships with one button rather than the "Move to the side" stuff.
Tooru "plays teacher" for explain the girls about the stupidest character switching system ever made in a game, from my point of view, the Rayging Blue Team gets an "F-" in my qualification
There's a variety of special attacks in this game like Raystorm style Lock-On Lasers, Bullet destroying explosions and even a Ninja Gaiden style Pinwheel of Fire, and you have to select your ships wisely since the game is more ''Strategic'' than its predecessors, so switch ships will be a priority more than a necessity, you'll need to switch for repeair the damaged ship, and you'll be doing this A LOT of times since one hit can take almost all your energy and it becames a real pain when you try to beat this game without using continues, so what's the point of have an Energy Bar when ALMOST EVERYTHING kills you with one hit, this just happens with some ships, if one of the ships is down, you have to wait like 30 seconds for being able to switch again, and that's a lot of time, even for repair, because most of the times you'll end up in a bullet rain and when you desperately need the other ship, you don't have it, blowing your last ship to oblivion, and if that's not enough, when you beat a level the game designers didn't had the courtesy of refill the life bars of your ships, instead of make it a challenge, it makes things even worse. I think section S should call this game Rayging Blue's Mission Impossible.
Another thing that sucks is the lack of the Raiden Fighters style bullet-scratching ability, this was a cool feature in Rayging Blue II along with the "Alpha Strike", so why they didn't keep it in the game.
Also when you fight a boss, there's a time limit, so you'll think "If i let it escape, i'll get a bad ending because of it" (like in the missions 3 and 5 of Cybernator for example), but guess what, nothing happens, so you'll get the same ending, so you can beat the game without shooting down all the HSB members (Except for Mother Maria in stage 5) and win the game.
Then we get to the "Briefing" cutscene and this is a ''press the button to skip a dialogue'', so you'll be pressing the fire button over and over and over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN!. but after pressing the fire button (the "Z" key) like 20 times you'll be sent to the game, i found that if you press the ''Ctrl'' key you'll make an "Auto-Skip", sending you to the game almost instantly.
Once you're on the game let me tell you this: First, The "Leader" starts with 40% of the energy and the "Mate" with 60%, when the mate is in "Stand-By", she'll recover energy 1% per second, what's the point to start with less energy, why not send both players with full energy, 100%?. Now the second thing that i have to tell you is: Don let any enemy escape or else you will lose 1 point on your power level for each enemy you let escape, because you'll need 255 points (Color points) for increase your level and refill your "Almost Useless" life bar, and i say useless since the damage is completely random. that's real creative use the Level Up for refill, why they didn't made an energy recovery item.
Another piece of challenge in this game is the "Stage Hazards" like the blocks in stage 2, some of them are destructable, and others don't. or the lasers in stage 4, so the gameplay looks regular, and unfortunately, things are gonna get worse and worse because of three MORE ANNOYING things, here's where the "Oh so genius" about gameplay comes to ruin the entire thing.
First: You can only save your score if you don't continue or beat the game without continuing like in Thunder Force VI, i mean IT'S A GAME!, not some sort of Top Gun flight instructor, so there's no need for things like "No points for second best", if that's the case you can call this game Rayging Blue with Thunder Force VI standards.
Second: when you reach the boss, the game will be interrupted because of the in-game interruptions (Like in Cybernator and Triggerheart Exelica), honestly why they don't just shut up and let me fight?, well i can tolerate this since this is a doujin game, something created by 4 or 5 people who made the whole thing with a home computer.
The Third one is the absolute display of unfairness: in the last stage. When you reach the final boss you'll see one of this ''endings''
- The Final Boss appears, but instead of fight her she'll say "Is it OK that you are now being off guard?, Farewell, Aoi." and you'll get a "To Be Continued..." (If you play with Aoi and Be-Mate ship as leader)
- The Final Boss doesn't appear, the game fades to black and ends. (If you play with other character/ship as leader)
That's not fair, it's like if the game decides to pull the plug on the whole thing because you're winning instead of being a Cliffhanger, the game could call it "To Be Continued...", but as a gamer/shmupper i call that "Sore Loser", a game that doesn't admit defeat and pulls the plug keeping the victory out of your reach.
So you'll ask yourself "How the @#$%! i can get the real ending of this game?", the game doesn't tell you what to do for unlock the ending, so you'll probably think "Did i reach the end using continues?", no, even without using continues the game will give you this "Cliffhanger" before you fight the final boss, so what you have to do for beat the game?, well let me tell you: you have to play with ALL the characters as Leaders, unlock Tooru and her Alsters ship, play with her as a leader, then unlock Aoi and the Brynhild, play with Brynhild as leader and there, you'll be able to fight the final boss and see the ending of this game, what kind of unorthodox and frustrating idea is that?, imagine if in Megaman X you can't fight the second form of Sigma unless you have all the Armor Parts, get the 8 Energy Hearts and have 4 Sub-Tanks and without any clue to figure that out. That's some screwed up rules even for a doujin game, because they should know how to and how NOT to make a videogame, and probably that's the part that section S forgot when they came out with this game.
Graphics: 7/10
What i should criticize first: the character design or the game graphics?, well, let's start with the game's graphics. Honestly they're not bad for doujin standards, it reminds me of the early days of the Nintendo 64 (Super Mario 64 to be exact) and the Atari Jaguar era (Cybermorph and Tempest 2000). About the character design, it's really weird, Aoi has an Anime-style look, but Akane and the rest of the characters look like cartoons, that's one mess of a character design (not to mention it looks like a joke). If i was Aoi Sorano i would ask myself this two questions, one: "Did i woke up in a strange universe where everyone looks like a cartoon?" and two: "If i'm not in an universe where everyone looks like a cartoon, what the HELL i had been smoking out there!?", or how about a third option: Aoi was abducted by those cartoons, just like the Looney Tunes did with Michael Jordan in Space Jam (i almost expected to see Akane and the others playing basketball).
There's an explanation for this weirdness: There was two artists involved in the character design of this game: S3, who made the design for Aoi, and yakkey, who made the rest of the characters, sounds crazy but it's the truth, in my opinion a messed design like this will be like if Bandai makes a Macross game with Shoji Kawamori and Matt Groening as character designers (it will be horrible to see an Anime Style VF-1S fighting a bunch of Simpson-esque and Futurama-style looking Zentraedis, the result will be a D'oh! in the design department). If the game designers re-used the designs of Rayging Blue II, or at least yakkey made all the character designs and S3 the mechanical ones then will be fine.
During the gameplay you can see the mugshots of your "Leader" and "Mate" like in U.N. Squadron, but unlike U.N. Squadron, the pilots don't get upset when they're hit, and when someone is shot down, they don't disappear of the screen in a "Signal Lost" kind of thing, instead they turn black, yeah your girl turns black like Optimus Prime when he dies in Transformers: The Movie.
One problem that i have with the pilot mugshots is the fact that they're blocking the screen, sometimes they end up being another Stage Hazard or even a "Death Trap" during gameplay because they can hide enemies or traps like mines or asteroids, and you can't notice them until it's too late, and that's really a problem, once again let's compare it with U.N. Squadron.
As we can see, in U.N. Squadron, the mugshots are in the upper part of the screen, without blocking the visibility, so there's no excuse in Conflict Warred, they could reduce the size of the pilot mugshots as well as the score fonts.
Another problem of character design is the size of your ship, some bullet patterns have narrow spots and due to your size you'll get hit or die, not to mention when you're facing the stage hazards like flying blocks or lasers, and some bullets are too small and because of that you'll not notice them until your ship goes down or you get the Continue Screen.
Sound: 10/10
Once again, TakMi has potential as a good composer, and he learned a lot from Rayging Blue II. The musical variety of this game consists of Techno, piano, trance and electronic tracks, and they fit well on the game, the musical compositions really fit on their respective places, the ''Briefing'' sounds like Ace Combat, Stage 1 sounds like Raystorm, and there's even a vocal song for Stage 5, and it's not a J-Pop song like in Triggerheart Exelica Enhanced or an Opera vocal like in Darius Gaiden, it's a singed techno track called "Releation", and it reminds me a lot of Gundam Seed Destiny and the japanese Transformers animes like Transformers Galaxy Force, but the only way to hear the "singed" version is playing with the Brynhild as the Leader. As for the sound effects, they reused the same samples from Rayging Blue Try-Alpha and Rayging Blue II.
Although the music is really good, You can turn off the music if you like to play the game with your own music (If you want to hear "Rising Blue Lightning" during gameplay). There's also a Sound Test option, but i can't get it to work, i have the full version of the game and the damn Sound Test doesn't work, so it demands an explanation.
Replay Value: 8/10
Well, once you unlocked your ships, and get the real ending of the game, you will be able to play with ships like Kamui and Samidare, so it's not bad at all, i never expected to see a ''Crossover'' like this, it will be like if Capcom makes an U.N. Squadron game with secret characters as Triggerheart Crueltear, X-02 Wyvern (Mobius 1), Vic Viper, RVR-01 Gauntlet and R-9 Arrow Head. Unfortunately, the Crossover characters are only playable in "Try-ning Mode", that sucks.
Another thing that ruins the replay value is the Vermillion Fall patch, because for activate it, you need the game's serial code in the CD case, so what happens if you downloaded the full game via torrent?, you're f@#$%d. Why they had to do that, IT'S A DOUJIN GAME, not Norton Antivirus for God's sake!
Pro's
- Switch between 2 characters.
- You have a life bar.
- Unlockable characters from other doujin games, along as variants of RGB ships.
- The Stage Hazards, making the ship switching someting "Strategic".
- Nicely made music, the song "Releation" (Stage 5-C) is one of my favorites.
Con's
- No Bullet-Scratching like in RGB II
- No Alpha Strike
- It takes a hell of a lot of time for recover the "Killed" character.
- Sometimes the character switching becames a problem.
- Random Damage: Even with a life bar, you'll go down with one shot (that depends of the selected ship).
- Messed up character design (Welcome to the Space Jam, here's your chance, do your dance at the Space Jam, alright!)
- The mugshots of the pilots blocks the visiblity (Death trap from the beginning and all the way to the end).
- In-game Interruptions during gameplay (Come on section S, this is not Cybernator).
- You can't save your score if you continue (Any similarities with Thunder Force VI are purely coincidentional and merely unintentional).
- The victory conditions are just unfair, unorthodox and ridiculous.
- The ending is a disappointment (at least is not a disgraced letdown like Triggerheart Exelica).
- The Secret Characters are only playable in Try-ning Mode.
- Sound Test option doesn't work.
- Update Patch needs serial code.
Curiosities
- The company name "section S" stands for "section Shooting", their former name "Freams" stands for "Free Dreams"
- First and last Rayging Blue game developed under the "section S" name.
- The game's development name was Rayging Blue's Platoon.
- In the first trial version of the game, the "Brynhild" was originally a ship called Be-Maid, and it was a recolor of the Be-Mate ship.
- S3 had a design for Akane and Midori, but during the game development yakkey made it's own versions, making S3's designs being discarded.
- Not only S3's version of Akane was discarded, also all the HSB side characters had their respective designs by S3, later changed by the definitive ones made by yakkey (Except for Aya, who remained the same).
- HSB stands for "Hyper Symbolic Babies", and that's because of the symbolic references of this girls. Aya (Snow Fairy), Issiki (Angel), Ranmei and Rinmei (Twin Magicians), Hikaru (Valkyrie, and not the Valkyries from Macross), but their leader, Mother Maria doesn't have symbolic references, she's a naked girl with a white cape, but her true look is more of a "Crueltear-Exelica Hybrid", breaking the "Symbolic" pattern (you can call her "Triggerheart Maria" if you want
).- The Stage 5-C name "Operation Rayging Blue" was used before for the Final Stage name in Rayging Blue Try-Alpha.
References to Rayging Blue II / Proofs that Rayging Blue's Conflict Warred is Rayging Blue II
- Akane's RGB-02R "Rande-Vouz" ship is actually a remake of the RGB2-02R "Revolte".
- The "Ayanokohji Company" logo on the Sky Tower in Stage 2 is a reference, Ayanokohji was the company behind CYMK, the enemies of the Rayging Blue Team.
- The promotional video on YouTube doesn't make any reference to the events of RGB II
- In the early gameplay screenshots, there was plans of re-using some of the character designs from RGB II, check Aoi's mugshot in this pic.
Overall, Conflict Warred is not a bad game, it has some unfair things, but it's an acceptable Doujin shmup for your collection.
Rayging Blue's Conflict Warred Final Score: 8/10