Shmups where recovery after dying is annoying/too difficult

[gray117]

I remember original r-type being a fker ... /goes off to look at whatever happened to that dl port+remake combo...

[royalfan84]

Gun Frontier

Awesome when you restart from a checkpoint with the default weapon.

Oh boy do I get my bell rung repeatedly when that happens....but I must say figuring out how to survive at certain checkpoints until you get powered up can be pretty rewarding when\if you accomplish it. Your ship\plane is just so large and slow....gah!!

[Bydobasher]

I think Pulstar checkpoints are crazy hard in the later stages. They're spaced far apart too. Love the game though....

[evil_ash_xero]

The Gradius games have the "die and you're screwed" thing, that's pretty damn frustrating.

R-Type, for example, is a lot more forgiving(for the most part).

I like some games that are designed around the checkpoint system, so I don't think it's a bad thing at all. Just some games kind of make me turn the system off when I die.
I barely play Gaiares because of it's checkpoint system. It's just too hard.

[Sinful]

K, for real guys, I'm really starting to think that the only game that really, really applies in this category is Darius II Arcade. So much so that I wouldn't recommend anyone starting out with this game on normal difficulty unless maybe you have quite a few 1cc under your belt to begin with? Otherwise the restart syndrome will wear you out big time, as I'm finding out (though it wouldn't of been as bad if I spaced my playthroughs over time more instead of serious back to back playtime, I think?).

Darius II AC is the only game in the series where if you die you lose everything (and in this game I don't think it's possible to max out everything on normal difficulty to begin with in a no miss playthrough. On easy you get more powerups so you should reach it?). And the only thing the game tosses at you to help you out with recovery is this powerup orb (gives you one powerup for each of the 3 weapons) that you may not see for an entire level after death, lol. Can't believe how many times that happens to me. So yeah, you make it all the way to second last level, make a silly screwup, and *BAM* say hello to stage 1 again for the millionth time. Oh, you got plenty of lives you say? Well watch them dwindle down in count real fast without any powerups. Like your on a timer. So unless your at the last level, making the countdown last till the very end is insanely hard. And continues don't really help practice much at all since play style with tons of powerups VS non = a massive difference. ... It being not properly optimized from the original 3 screen version to 2 screen version greatly adds to difficulty too. And only the 2 screen version has home ports, hence what most play.


So yes, I want to know if there are any other games as bad with restart syndrome as Darius II AC? Cause if there is, I'm not budging away from easy difficulty until I've 1cc'ed it on easy np first. Otherwise I'm just asking for it. To begin with, I'll keep some games mentioned here in mind, but whenever I see games like the one mentioned in my quote below, I really lose faith into what's credible and what's not?

The Gradius games have the "die and you're screwed" thing, that's pretty damn frustrating.

Sigh, seeing this line repeated so many times just tells me everyone who says it don't even put in the effort to recover and just reset the game always or most of the time, or... just shut the game off. Which is fine, but it does also means you have no say on this matter.

[gs68]

Darius Force also instates a full powerup loss if you die, although it's lessened by the use of checkpoints to ease you back in instead of forcing you to fight a boss with the absolute minimal DPS.