R-Type Final 3 Evolved announced for PS5.

[Steven]

I had to rebuy the DLC that I already had. It was only 22 yen for some reason, but that's how it was.

[Austin]

The rollout of Final 3 Evolved has clearly been a resounding success.

[Jonpachi]

Yeah, this is a hot mess. I actually brought it into work this week just to give everyone a good laugh at the pathetic attempt at current-gen presentation.

[xxx1993]

Is it really that bad? I already paid a ton of money just to get this. Of course, this is only because I want the R-Type franchise and the Bydo off my back for good.

[Steven]

As I've been saying for the past 2 months or whatever, it's just Final 2 with a few extra mediocre stages that are almost certainly not worth it if you have Final 2 already.

[Darkseed_5150]

The updated graphics on the Final 2 levels and DLC makes them a lot easier on the eyes IMO. Better geometry and effects. The game does have slowdown and stutter from time to time though. Not a deal breaker. It's good that they got in early with Unreal 5. The soundtrack is awesome and really gets the atmosphere right. I'm definitely buying the new DLC.

[xxx1993]

I still need to do those stages regardless.

[Steven]

Actually, can the PS5 do 360FPS? If it can't, that means that Final 3 Evolved still isn't even the best version of this game. My monitor can't even go that high (and yours probably can't, either, unless you are from the future when 360FPS is the standard, which will be a long-ass time on consoles, which are still struggling to hit 60FPS, like on R-Type Final 3 Evolved lol) and I am not sure if there are any on the market that can, but if you do have a monitor that can go that high, PC version is still going to be the best because it can actually do that framerate.

[Flycast]

Actually, can the PS5 do 360FPS? If it can't, that means that Final 3 Evolved still isn't even the best version of this game. My monitor can't even go that high (and yours probably can't, either, unless you are from the future when 360FPS is the standard, which will be a long-ass time on consoles, which are still struggling to hit 60FPS, like on R-Type Final 3 Evolved lol) and I am not sure if there are any on the market that can, but if you do have a monitor that can go that high, PC version is still going to be the best because it can actually do that framerate.

wait a second...what is the frame rate of a SHMUPS ?

[waiwainl]

Why does FSP even matter? R-Type Final is not by any means a hardcore bullethell game where you remotely need high FPS.
Don't use FSP as an excuse because you suck at it

[xxx1993]

Well, now that I beat the game, just give me Aleste Branch, Ubusuna, Radirgy 2, Visegunne, Stellanova, Ex-Zodiac, CYGNI: All Guns Blazing, Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission, and a console port of Time Crisis 5 and Senjin Aleste already, please...

[Lander]

wait a second...what is the frame rate of a SHMUPS ?

~60 is the standard set by arcades, which is what most use in practice.

The definitive answer in the context of modern stuff is more complicated, since it's not standard to 1:1 couple your game tick rate to render frame rate anymore.
Nowadays you can do technical trickery to turn 60Hz of game into ∞FPS of frames, or increase the game tick to 120 / 240 / etc to reduce lag, or various other things.

Most will stick with a 60Hz game tick as a lowest common denominator - so it can play on weak hardware, and have a level playing field for competitive scoring - and either lock FPS or interpolate it up to whatever is native for the monitor it's running on.

Why does FSP even matter? R-Type Final is not by any means a hardcore bullethell game where you remotely need high FPS.
Don't use FSP as an excuse because you suck at it

Conversely, don't use the existence of more intense genres to excuse developer suckage.
If R-Type is so trivial compared to omg 1337 bullethell, writing a performant implementation for a cutting-edge engine on cutting-edge console hardware should be a breeze.

[Steven]

The ace versions of the bright pink flightsuit and bright pink helmet give the highest amount of whatever that green shit is that you never have enough of. I have now unlocked every ship in the game other than the ones that require you to finish 5.1. I am still not sure if the Grand Finale looks cool or hideous...

Now that I have the R-99, R-100, and R-101, what does everyone use for these ships? I really can't see much of a reason to do anything other than give them the Leo II's Bits and Force and the Giga Wave Cannon to make a better Leo II. No idea what the best missile is, though.

Why does FSP even matter? R-Type Final is not by any means a hardcore bullethell game where you remotely need high FPS.
Don't use FSP as an excuse because you suck at it

Framerate always matters, unless it's Zork or something like that. Given a choice to play a game at a lower or higher framerate, the only instance in which a higher framerate is not superior to a lower framerate is when the higher framerate causes the game to break or otherwise become unplayable.

[Austin]

Why does FSP even matter? R-Type Final is not by any means a hardcore bullethell game where you remotely need high FPS.
Don't use FSP as an excuse because you suck at it

It's not just about reducing things like input lag and making the game easier to play. It's about making a game feel good to play (i.e., game design 101). When a game begins to stutter because it can't keep its framerate locked, it takes the player out of the experience. This applies to any game genre, not just shooters, but it affects stgs especially since precision is king. Also, if I'm going to drop $50 on a game like this for PS5, it better damn-well be flawless. With today's hardware, there's no excuse for a game that looks like Final 3 to have the performance issues it does, regardless how minor or insignificant some might think them to be.

[Steven]

I have all of the ships now, aside from the expensive crowdfunding ones that are unobtainable. R-9Sk3 Seraphim is a lot of fun, even if the flames can obscure enemy shots.

Anyone have any good custom courses? I have not played the DLC courses at all yet, just the Final 2 and Final 3 Evolved main courses, so I don't have everything unlocked, but if there is a nice custom stage order that uses DLC stages or something, let me know.

[Samildanach]

I have all of the ships now, aside from the expensive crowdfunding ones that are unobtainable. R-9Sk3 Seraphim is a lot of fun, even if the flames can obscure enemy shots.

Anyone have any good custom courses? I have not played the DLC courses at all yet, just the Final 2 and Final 3 Evolved main courses, so I don't have everything unlocked, but if there is a nice custom stage order that uses DLC stages or something, let me know.

It was posted previously but this order I constructed by placing the dlc levels in the same order they appeared in their respective games for a generally sensible difficulty escalation that you would normally get in any shmup:

X3.0 (Delta St1)
X5.0 (Final St 2)
X4.0 (R-Type St 3)
X1.0 (III St 4)
X6.0 (II St 4 but Super St 5...so 4.5!)
X2.0 (Leo St 5)
X7.0 (R-Type St 1)

Y3.0 (Tactics II)
Y1.0 (II St 2)
Y2.0 (Image Fight St 3)
Y4.0 (Delta St 4)
Y5.0 (Final St 4 or 5 if 3.5 played... 4.5 again!)
Y6.0 (Tactics II again, bigger gap for variation)
Y7.0 (R-Type St2)

Z3.0 Final Stage 1
Z1.0 Mr Heli Stage 1 & 2 (kind of)
Z2.0 Image Fight Stage 3 in the PS port ( Stage 5 in Arcade but heh, this is an easy level and boss)
Z5.0 R-Type Stage 4
Z4.0 R-Type II Stage 5
Z6.0 Delta Stage 6
Z7.0 Image Fight Stages 7 & 8
OR
Z7.1 Final's Stage 7.1 (far enough from Final's Stage 1.0 for better variation.

[Steven]

Yeah, I did the first DLC course a little while ago and the difficulty curve seemed really weird and inconsistent. Arranging it like this will probably help a lot.

It's really too bad that you have no choice but to put one of the final stages at the end; I think the R-Type 1 stage 1, while being a stage 7 here, would be perfectly doable as a stage 1 here, and it's honestly probably better as a stage 1 than either stage 1 from Final 2 or Final 3 Evolved, both of which are pretty weak. Too bad R-Type 1 stage 1 being stage 7 in its course prevents you from using it as anything but a final stage, as I'd like to start with that and then end with... well, I am not sure yet, but something else.

[Samildanach]

Yeah, I did the first DLC course a little while ago and the difficulty curve seemed really weird and inconsistent. Arranging it like this will probably help a lot.

It's really too bad that you have no choice but to put one of the final stages at the end; I think the R-Type 1 stage 1, while being a stage 7 here, would be perfectly doable as a stage 1 here, and it's honestly probably better as a stage 1 than either stage 1 from Final 2 or Final 3 Evolved, both of which are pretty weak. Too bad R-Type 1 stage 1 being stage 7 in its course prevents you from using it as anything but a final stage, as I'd like to start with that and then end with... well, I am not sure yet, but something else.

I agree it is slightly irritating, indeed having any of the final levels being available to put in any position would be a pleasing update. It would take a smidgen more work however, as each final level directly segues into the end credits, so they would need to code in a different finish to each of them.

[Steven]

They don't go into the credits if you play them in score attack mode, though, so they have some code for doing that already. It really is somewhat annoying that they can't just recycle what code they need from that to let us use the final stages anywhere.

Speaking of score attack, when I was grinding materials to get ships, I noticed that 6.1 on normal gives like twice the green shit that 7.2 does on R-Typer 3. That's... interesting. I wonder if there are any stages that give more green shit than 6.1, although I have nothing to spend it on now. Well, I guess I could use that to speed up the process on PC and Switch, but there really is no point in playing those now that I have Final 3 Evolved. Not entirely related, but I also noticed that Switch and PC seem to lack the B-99 Apocalypse for some reason.

Oh cool, there is a new patch for this now, too. If you are wondering what it does, I don't know. Sony decided to get rid of patch notes on PS5 for some idiotic reason, so PS5 owners have to either

1. not care
2. go find out by looking online somewhere

Great fucking job, Sony.

Well, I checked and we got some new decals to celebrate the 2th anniversary of the game.

Spoiler

I can't believe it's already the 2th anniversary! Can you?

Actually, it feels like it's been way longer than that. I can't believe it's only the 2th anniversary.

Oh shit, 2 new ships are in the R's Museum. Well, kind of. They added spots for them, but you can't make them yet since they are still in development. It seems they are both part of that weird transforming ship type that I think everyone probably hates.

[Samildanach]

There is a bigger update planned for 'after' May, so I suspect those two new ships will drop then. It looks like we will get a new level too, for all versions rather than just PS5.

[jehu]

Dang golly, two years already - 2th Fairy must be a little short on magic if all she's got for us are a few decals.

[Steven]

There is a bigger update planned for 'after' May, so I suspect those two new ships will drop then. It looks like we will get a new level too, for all versions rather than just PS5.

Oh cool. New stages are always good, except for when they aren't. The DLC stages that I have played here are all pretty good, though, so whatever it is that comes next should hopefully be good. I am seriously hoping for one of the harder/cooler stages from Kaitei Daisensou, although I guess even stage 1 would be good; the sub is here, there are already enemy Bydo submarines in 5.1, and Kujo worked on that game and he really likes it (and so do I), so it would be great to have some more stuff from that game.

I have not really been paying attention, so I'm not really sure about what to expect in the future, but I imagine Granzella is going to continue to make new stages and ships and stuff for Final 2/3/Evolved for a while. That was the plan as of some time ago, anyway. Maybe the pace will slow down since they have those Tactics remakes, but for now I should go play the rest of the DLC that I always bought on release day but never played for some reason.

Dang golly, two years already - 2th Fairy must be a little short on magic if all she's got for us are a few decals.

It's the 2th anniversary and I got mine the day before launch somehow and just 2 or 3 days ago I learned that missiles actually get powered up when you collect a second missile powerup. I somehow went for 2 years without ever knowing about that. Yeah, don't ask...

Too bad the decal scaling still looks really terrible for whatever reason. Most of the decals look like pixelated messes, no matter how big or small you make them. Of course, you can't really read the text outside of the launch cutscenes, so I guess it really doesn't matter, but it would be nice for them to be of higher quality.

[Lander]

There is a bigger update planned for 'after' May, so I suspect those two new ships will drop then. It looks like we will get a new level too, for all versions rather than just PS5.

R-Type Final 4!!!!

[xxx1993]

There is a bigger update planned for 'after' May, so I suspect those two new ships will drop then. It looks like we will get a new level too, for all versions rather than just PS5.

R-Type Final 4!!!!

Don't get me started, please... At this rate you're already milking this more than how Universal is milking the Fast and Furious movies. And speaking of which, there isn't just gonna be a Fast 11 after Fast X, I also heard there's going to be a Fast 12 sometime in the future, too...

[Steven]

They should just do like Microsoft and skip 4 entirely and kind of skip 5 and go directly to Final 5 Evolved. That would be mildly interesting.

Anyway, I may or may not have stayed up until 0230 playing this game just now and gotten a new no miss. Sadly, that hypothetical no miss would be on the Final 2 course. Final 3 Evolved course no miss is coming soon, though, as soon as I can decide to not suck at the stage 6 boss. I am using the R-101 Grand Finale with the Giga Wave Cannon that insta-kills bosses when fully charged or whatever, so it feels kind of ultra cheap. Maybe I'll go back to using something that isn't super broken.

[Samildanach]

They should just do like Microsoft and skip 4 entirely and kind of skip 5 and go directly to Final 5 Evolved. That would be mildly interesting.

Anyway, I may or may not have stayed up until 0230 playing this game just now and gotten a new no miss. Sadly, that hypothetical no miss would be on the Final 2 course. Final 3 Evolved course no miss is coming soon, though, as soon as I can decide to not suck at the stage 6 boss. I am using the R-101 Grand Finale with the Giga Wave Cannon that insta-kills bosses when fully charged or whatever, so it feels kind of ultra cheap. Maybe I'll go back to using something that isn't super broken.

Nice work. Which route did you take for your no miss?

[Steven]

7.2, the easiest route in the game by far lol

[xxx1993]

7.2, the easiest route in the game by far lol

Well, except for that stupid Bydo squadron blocking your way after the mini-boss.

[Steven]

7.2, the easiest route in the game by far lol

Well, except for that stupid Bydo squadron blocking your way after the mini-boss.

https://youtu.be/zfZIvDo9H7U

[xxx1993]

https://youtu.be/zfZIvDo9H7U

What fighter is that? Because I don't think I used that.