Been playing quite a bit more of Gear (Switch, I did buy the big Japan retail box set of Operation Night Strikers that came with the early release DL code), some more thoughts:
1) I'm not sure what I think of the main mechanic: you have a "gear" meter that fills by killing enemies and serves as your only way to power up your shot. At MAX rank 5, that means a fast and powerful auto shot. At rank 1, your maximum shot frequency goes way down (and might even be weaker damage per shot, I can't confirm but would not be surprised). It feels a little awkward to drop to rank 1, to the point that the first couple times I played it I wondered if I was having a controller connectivity issue or a glitch (nope, I wasn't).
Anyway, a power-up system is all fine and good. But your ONLY button other than shot is to transform into powered up robot form, where your shots gain homing properties (and maybe a damage increase?). But when you transform, your Gear gauge is consumed quickly. It can take you from your max shot rank all the way to pea-shooter mode by staying in robo-form for just a few seconds. It tends to either (a) make me want to avoid going into robot mode, where during the levels I mostly opt for not risking the loss to offensive power (exception being I'll sometimes use it for the homing shot to ensure I hit the shield-giving ship that appears once per stage), or (b) in some situations where it IS effective (like, it decimates the mid-bosses and you have a lot of chance to refill on normal enemies right after) it can feel a little cheap and cheesy. Oh, and defeating stage bosses automatically refills you to Max - just don't exhaust your whole meter without killing the boss, or you're stuck grinding the end out with your weakest weapon.
IDK, it makes the game feel rather simplistic to just have your normal shot, and kind of disappointing to lose your power by using the ONE other ability at your disposal. I could see a game designed in a way to lean into those elements of risk/reward, and encourage you that you really want to use the transformation in some spots then quickly refill your meter - but the design here doesn't really do much with that idea, IMO.
2) I do like a lot of the stuff M2 did here to make the stages feel kinetic and full of 3D action. The highway stage feels closer to the road and more like a fast driving game, with highway guardrails really making stuff like the boss fight feel you're racing down the road while fighting. The sky stages feel more like a shooter up in the air and have a different feel. There's a boss where you're shooting down a series of rotating rings, and it really gives a good feeling of depth (somewhat reminiscent to me of Taito's effective use in the Ray series of using 2D elements that give a 3D-feeling perspective in some moments). Same for the final level, it's in a mechanical tube like thing, and really does a nice job of making it feel like you're zooming through a pipe in 3D space.
3) I don't know how to get to the "true" final stage and True Last Boss, but I've managed to do it a few times, always in Pacifist Mode (choosing that mode from the menu, you get no shots at all). Have done it on Pacifist on a non-1CC on Easy difficulty too. Not sure if that's a quirk of Pacifist Mode always providing access to the true last stage, but feels like that might be the case (I don't recall ever NOT getting the final stage when playing Pacifist Mode).
Have not yet been successful in reaching the stage in Normal/arcade mode. I tried playing "pacifist style" in that mode by just not firing the entire game, even 1CCed the full 4 stages/bosses doing route A-B-C-D, that didn't work. So it does not appear that just not killing certain enemies is the key, nor is it a simple 1CC. I've also completed each stage/final stage in separate playthroughs, so it doesn't seem to be some sort of cumulative result of getting through all levels. If anyone is aware of the requirements, I'd sure like to know!
4) Once you clear the TLB (including through Pacifist Mode), a third game mode is unlocked on the main menu, B-Side Mode. That is a mode where you have to play arranged versions of all 11 levels in order, with no Outrun/Darius style branching stage select. You just move on to the next stage and have to do them all. I've yet to clear that, it's pretty tough.
5) Game feels a bit short in a normal Arcade run, it only takes like 10 minutes to do the 4 stages and get an ending. Adding the optional/unlockable 5th stage & TLB, we're talking like 15ish minutes. Now, I usually never complain about short run times, give me a 20min short and sweet game over a 1-hour shooter epic any day. But this feels a little light even for me. In comparison, the B-Side Mode doing all 11 levels feels a little excessively long. I think I'd prefer something like the original Night Strikers, where a run is 6 branching stages (A-U).
6) 1 additional credit is unlocked per every 1 hour of total gameplay, not counting time in menus or paused. I assume eventually it gets up to free play, I'm not there yet.
7) On the Switch, I've played with an arcade stick and it feels nice. No Cyber Stick USB support out of the box was a bit disappointing for me. But the controller I've settled on as my favorite for this game was a bit of a surprise - the Gamecube wireless NSO pad! The analog stick has just the right amount of tension to re-center strongly but smoothly (it's tighter than, say, the Switch Pro Controller stick), it's ergonomic as heck, and the one big A button that just begs to be pressed is perfect for this mainly one-button game, with the smaller B button being perfect for your Gear transformation.
Jonpachi wrote: ↑Tue Aug 19, 2025 5:07 pmI feel like the LE was a big rip-off since the game is not on the cart. For the same price, you could buy the normal version and the separate release of Gear and have both games physical.
I would have bought the LE box even if it didn't come with a Gear DL code. Same as how I bought the Ray'Z box set even though that had no exclusive download. It's a Taito+M2 shooter (or at least shooter-adjacent) release, I'm always up for springing for a special version with stuff like music CDs, a nice book, the little physical art cards. Don't really care about a papercraft submachine gun Joycon holder, but it also doesn't bother me.
Sure, it would have been even better to have Gear physically on the cart too, but not a dealbreaker for me.
