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No shoot-em-up games list would be complete without at least one entry from the Raiden series. Beginning with its initial installment in 1990, Seibu Kaihatsu created a shooting game dynasty with the original Raiden. The original game's simple, vertical scrolling, twitch-reflex dodging, giant bullet spread action was innovative and impressive upon its original release, and has been an inspiration on countless vertical shmups over the last nearly 3 decades. The game spawned a sequel just 3 years later, followed by a "DX" or deluxe version a year after, as well as spawning the successful Raiden Fighters series of games through the mid-late 90's. They also created Viper Phase 1, which, while not directly a Raiden game, is more than inspired by its predecessors, and is often considered an unofficial entry in the series. Sadly, developer Seibu Kaihatsu faltered at the end of the 90's, shutting down their arcade division, and ceasing production of new games.

Thankfully, a few years later, some of the design team moved over to developer MOSS, and bought out the rights to the Raiden games. Raiden III soon followed in arcades and on PlayStation 2, and then Raiden IV just 2 short years after that, released in arcades and to the Xbox 360, and later, the "Overkill" edition to PlayStation 3 and PC. Released initially in 2016, Raiden V marks the first series entry to be direct to consoles. The "Director's Cut" of the game came to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows PC in 2017, with the Xbox One version being exclusive to Japan (physically), and the US PlayStation 4 version releasing with a bonus soundtrack CD. The 5th main line entry in the series, it takes the basic formula of the series and takes it in a bit of a different direction, adding a lot of story elements and dialog, as well as a new "Cheer System" that allows players online to "cheer" for one another virtually in game, which causes different effects, like cancelling bullets, and powering up secondary weapons. Also, unlike earlier games, there are no one-hit deaths, instead opting for a single life, and a shield meter that depletes as your ship takes damage. There are also multiple craft to select from, bringing in a bit of an element from the Raiden Fighters series. Come join in the fun in August 2018 for the RF Generation Shmup Club's 3rd game, Raiden V!

Raiden V is currently available digitally on the Xbox One, physically on the PlayStation 4 as a Director's Cut, complete with CD soundtrack, and as of this post, can be had for under $20 on Amazon. Raiden V is available on the Microsoft Store for just $12, and the Director's Cut is on both Steam and Gog for $34.99.

PARTICIPANTS:
MetalFRO
Addicted
Duke.Togo
Pam
Golem
EZ Racer
Square_Air

In it to win it (although probably not winning it).

September = Silent Service!

LOL, I don't think that qualifies as a shmup ;)

Silent Service is too good to be played for only one month.

Anyone else gearing up for our first vertical shoot-em-up?

I'm playing as well but I need to stop playing Phantasy Star 4 first.

Oh man, that's a commitment! I've heard it's excellent, so I hope you're enjoying that :)

I'm in! I like this game, other than the constant chatter from the characters.

Welcome! Also, I believe all versions of the game have an option to turn off the voice acting, by going into the options and turning voice volume down to 0. I want to say there might be a button you can use to turn off the text crawl as well, but I need to look into that further.

Just tested, this works on my PC, so I'm in! Seems a good deal easier than the other Raidens at first glance.

So funny story to share. None of the game stores in the town I'm in had Raiden V. However, I had to go out of town during the weekend, and called a store in the town I was heading to, and they had a copy. Went to pick it up, and realized the store had closed for the day 5 minutes before I got there. Funny thing is, on the way I had stopped by a different game store, and happened to find a Gradius Galaxies (and got an excellent deal on it to boot!)

I've made arrangements to get Raiden V by the end of the week, so I'm in

Welcome aboard, Golem! As far as being easier or not, I couldn’t say, but I hope to find that out this month! :D

That’s a fun story, EZ Racer! And congrats on the Gradius Galaxies pickup - that’s a solid game that I would also like to cover at some point.

I posted this in the Gradius thread to answer Square_Air's question, but it appears as though the PC requirements for Raiden V are pretty minimal:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz.
OS: Windows 7 / 8 / 10.
VIDEO CARD: Graphic card with 512MB VRAM.
SOUND CARD: Direct Sound.
FREE DISK SPACE: 6 GB.

So if anyone has the Steam version, or is on the fence about it, you shouldn't need a very powerful PC to run it. And this is for the Director's Cut.

It seems to work fine on my PC, so count me in for this month. Hopefully I can manage to sink a decent amount of time into this.

Also, a note to people that may be on the fence about this. The Steam version is on sale right now for 60% off until august 6th, so this is your chance if you want to grab it for cheap.

Steam page link (https://store.steampowered.com/app/570050/Raiden_V_Directors_Cut___V_Directors_Cut__V/)

@Square_Air - welcome aboard! Also, thanks for the tip on the Steam version - that means it falls in line with around where the physical version is for PS4, currently, so either way, folks should be able to grab it for very little money.

I have put some time into this the last couple nights, and I'm enjoying myself. I've always liked the Raiden series, since the very beginning, and I have to say, this game is a good indicator as to why I'm not a first impressions person. When I first played this game about 3 months ago, it didn't excite me very much, and after credit feeding through and beating the game, I shelved it, and figured, I'll go back to this at some point," but not really intending to do so any time soon. Kudos to Addicted for suggesting this game, however, because I'm finding much more to like about it, now that I'm looking at it more seriously, and really digging in. I'm already reaching Stage 3 most of the time, and I've already been able to pass 10 million points:

[img width=700 height=525]https://i.imgur.com/LNeyJSV.jpg[/img]

I also dig the soundtrack so far, at least what I've been able to hear of it. I really like how the music ebbs and flows with the various "scenes" throughout each stage. It really gives the game a sense of rhythm.

Nice work! You are on point about the soundtrack--the tone of the music matches the tone of the gameplay. I have voices turned off, though, so I am unsure how well it matches the whole "crystals and coffee beans" tale.

On the plus side:
-The screen zoom changes are quite novel.
-The zoom effect, music, and sheer length of stages gives the gameplay the feeling of an epic.

On the negative side:
-I still have trouble seeing certain bullets in certain situations (e.g., yellow bullets mixed in with medals).
-The game is short on enemy variety, at least for its size. There's some sweet enemy craft in here, but I feel like I see the same two or three bogeys for minutes at a time.

I got this score by scumming through with Spirit of Dragon, Homing Plasma, and emptying out my bomb stock and cheer attack. I died quite a ways into stage 5.
[img width=678 height=280]https://i.imgur.com/bE0vhoX.png[/img]
(If anyone is on Steam, my name is "golemio".)

I would like to know when you spawn those healing fairies! You know, when you get hit, and a fairy flies out that raises your health higher than before you got hit.

Negative:

I need to turn off the voices. They are too distracting.
It's sometimes hard to see the enemy bullets depending upon the environment

Positive:

I like the frantic pace and the music fits well.
There's enough variety in the weapon load-outs to suit different playstyles.

The plasma homing and red wave shots seem the best so far. I can't find much use for the blue laser.

I will echo what you're both saying, regarding the bullets sometimes being hard to see. I think that's an issue in general with more modern shmups that go for detailed graphics, because the more simplistic sprite-based look for bullets would contrast too much with the more slick graphical approach, so there's a bit of a compromise that I think does slightly hinder the game. Thankfully, once you learn which enemy types fire shots that are harder to see, you can more easily pick them off as they come on screen to help minimize that. I also found the voice acting to be a big distraction, as well as the text at the top of the screen. It's too small to realistically read, unless you're inches from the screen, and it obscures the action toward the top. After turning the voice volume down to 0,and using the R2 trigger (on PS4) to turn off the text crawl, and relegating that to the information bar on the right side of the screen, I find the game to be a lot more manageable.

Golem - excellent score, and great progress! I'm still struggling to reach Stage 4 most of the time, so kudos for getting so far so quickly. I will have to disagree with you slightly about the zoom changes - I don't mind the zoom outs so much, but some of the zoom ins are a little too close, and give you very little room to move, or avoid enemy attacks. With a little practice, it's not that bad, but I could have done without those extreme close-up bits. That said, I think I understand why they did it that way, given the perspective they were probably trying to achieve. As far as the fairies, I think certain enemies spawn them. In the first 2 games, they were hidden inside the terrain, such as in a tree in the first level of the first game. But here, I think it's just certain enemies that will grant a fairy if destroyed.

Addicted - in terms of the blue laser, it depends upon which one you're using. The center laser, with the wide shot, can be quite useful. By not firing all the time, and letting it charge up, you activate a wide beam. The longer you charge, the wider it will be, depending upon how powered up it is. After 3 or 4 power-ups collected, a full charge covers something on the order of half the screen or more, and it becomes an absolute death wave for enemies. I found that particularly useful for bosses, to take them down more quickly. I will say, however, I don't care for the 3rd blue laser option, with the spinning crystal that splits your lasers out into a rotating formation. Perhaps I haven't learned to time it correctly yet, but it seems like the laser spin isn't strong enough to do much more than take out popcorn enemies, and against tanks, turrets, or larger craft, it's a bit underpowered.

I started with the Azuma, but now I'm focusing on the Spirit of Dragon, and playing around with the different weapon types to get a feel for them. Overall, I prefer the wide shot vulcan, wide laser, and for the plasma laser, either the full on homing shot, or the spread plasma that targets enemies. Question: anyone making sure to go for bonus point items, like the tower in the first stage, finding the Miclus on each level, or the red car on Stage 1 as it speeds across the road? Those are all pretty decent point bonuses.

I played the game again last night with the voices off.

[img width=700 height=525]https://i.imgur.com/Zi9svrO.jpg[/img]

Nice score! I didn't get a chance to play last night, and the night before, I was tied up with something, so I'm hoping to go back to it this evening for some more shooty mayhem.

Spent an hour or so going through the story mode on normal last night. I know I've finished the game before... but I kept getting new achievements everytime I beat a boss. Maybe I wasn't on my own profile when I previously played it.

I really like the purple weapon that seems to reach out and punch enemies as they come on screen. However I made the mistake of taking the blue prism weapon, which I HATED. I was so upset when I'd accidentally grab the weapon power up when it was blue.

This isn't my favourite shmup. I find it a little generic and the levels all kind of blend together without much visual distinction in environments or enemies. I'm not a fan of the UI either. I wish the game field was a bit bigger and the side areas were less busy. I find it distracting. Also, the dialogue is poorly written (or translated) and it never stops. I didn't see a way to turn off.

Thanks for the feedback, Pam! I don't think you can turn off the dialog completely, meaning it will still be in the right-hand sidebar, but at least on the PS4 version, you can turn the voice volume down to 0, and the R2 trigger shuts off the dialog updates at the top of the screen. But yes, the UI is way too busy, and could have been trimmed up a bit. I kind of wish they had done a story mode, to include all the dialog and text, and an arcade mode, where it was just the base game. I wonder, since Raiden V is the first in the series to be developed specifically for consoles, if they decided to forgo that kind of thing in favor of just a single campaign. As for the plasma weapon, that's a good way to describe it - I liked that one as well, and how it sought out enemies and "punched" them by immediately snapping to their position. It's a cool mechanic that made that variation of the plasma weapon a neat addition to the game.

Shifting gears: has anyone messed with the Cheer system very much? I have found the Cheer Call attacks help take down bosses MUCH faster, and if you keep up with the Cheer notifications in the top-left (on the first side panel, at least), after using a Cheer attack, you can quickly fairly refill the Cheer Call bar by "cheering" for other players. Every time I've played the game, I've always found that I get several cheers, and plenty of opportunities to cheer other players on, so it's cool to see that, as we approach a year since the game's release in North America, and just shy of a year in Japan (for the Director's Cut), there's still an active contingent of people playing the game. Also, I think the Cheer Attack is based on which base weapon you're using, but I haven't been able to pin that down completely. Sometimes my ship will fire off a flurry of homing missiles, sometimes it will fire off 2 large columns of forward missiles, and then sometimes it's a plasma-purple pair of laser melee type weapons that cancel out some bullets, and do pretty healthy damage. Anyone else find another variant of a Cheer Attack?

First run through:

[img width=700 height=525]http://i.imgur.com/amJwx2e.jpg[/img] (https://imgur.com/amJwx2e)

I went with the default weapons, so I'd like to try some others out. While I like the lock-on abilities of the purple shot, I really can't see what on earth is happening when it out. I tended to rely on the red shot instead as it covered well and I could see more clearly.

I didn't read up on any of the systems before digging in, so I need to take a little time to understand cheer, and what impact different things have to get the different grades for each stage. I didn't make it to Mission 2, and I'm assuming it's because my grade was too low.

@Duke.Togo - did you reach the boss in Stage 1? As far as I'm aware, your grade per stage doesn't matter in terms of progression, I believe you just have to beat the boss.

I can't stand that variation of purple, haha, I think it makes the game harder to see!

A friend of mine made an interesting observation about the blue prism. Normally for a laser weapon, there's no such thing as focus fire--it's all one stream of laser, so of course all of it hits your target. The prism, however, opens up a chance for focus fire by splintering the laser into multiple shots. If you can plant the prism inside a boss, then all four streams hit the boss, and you get focus fire.

Granted--blue prism is still too zany for me to tolerate.


Shifting cheers, I was surprised to see people still online as well (playing the Steam version). But the cheer networking is weird. If my friend plays at the same time as me, I can cheer him plenty of times, but he never sees opportunities to cheer me. And then he cheers people who never cheer back. The cheer system is already pretty arbitrary, but this adds another layer on.

I'm not sure what determines the cheer attack. I think I've only seen the homing missiles, but I also haven't experimented much with different setups (ships, weapon loadouts, weapon color choice). I think activating cheer also cancels bullets, which is pretty handy.

I thought so, but Stage 6 was the end for me. There must be something else I have to do, or a higher difficulty. I'll have to check.

Latest score:
[img width=700 height=525]https://i.imgur.com/A6Ncc7P.jpg[/img]

I'm SLOWLY making progress on a single credit, to where my last 2 attempts I reached Stage 4, and completed Mission 1, though rather sloppily, because I have only managed to C Rank that mission.

6 or 7
I think I misread your previous post, taking "Mission 1" to be "Stage 1" instead. So you have obviously made it past Stage 3 and Mission 1, but haven't reached Mission 2 yet, which I assume is somewhere in between Stages 4 and 6 or 7. Are you doing this on a single credit, or are you continuing, just so you can play through the main story mode? If it's the former, kudos, because you're progressing nicely!

Good observations, Golem. I noticed the thing about the Prism Laser early on, that if you fire it directly into a boss, or larger enemy, you can take them out pretty quickly, but that requires some precision sniping. That's probably something that a more high level player would be able to wield effectively. I found myself not able to do much with it, and dying pretty quickly.

Finally getting a chance to start playing after a couple of crazy hectic weeks. So far my high is only about 4.4 million so I got a ways to go. Is there any way to switch between weapons other than the diamonds? While powerful, I feel like I'm defenseless when I have the blue weapon (after looking at Pam's comment, I may not be the only one.

So far it seems like a well made game overall, and I love the music soundtrack.

I just continued to see all the stages - haven't focused much on score. Mission 1 ends at Stage 6. You can see it all on the stage select. There must be some minimum grade to earn to pass into the later levels.

Glad to hear you've jumped in, and are enjoying it so far. 4.4 million is nothing to sneeze at, considering you have to at least reach a decent amount into Stage 2 to see that kind of score. The Raiden series has never had a mechanic to switch weapons via a button input, and it's only by using the weapon icons. However, I believe that V may be the first in the series where the 3 weapon types upgrade independently of one another, though I could be remembering that incorrectly about IV. I'd have to go back and play it to make sure. As for the blue weapon, try the center blue laser. As I mentioned, if you let up on the fire button for a brief period, you charge up a monster version of it that cuts a wide swath, and is great for taking out weapon drop ships, those pesky ships that fire the 2 streams of bullets at you, and for whittling away at bosses more quickly. It's also great for taking out enemy waves, if you can time it right.


Makes sense. I'd be curious to know how far you're getting on a single credit. And yes, it looks like Mission 2 comes after Stage 7. I'm not sure how I did it in my first play through, but I'm sure I played all 8 stages, and I was credit feeding. I haven't been able to find anything concrete, in terms of how to ensure that Mission 2 comes up. Not sure if it's getting a certain rank in Mission 1, or achieving a minimum rank in the subsequent stages.

I think my goal is going to be to try to break 10 million. Getting closer.

Very nice! How far into the game have you reached? And what weapon load-out having you been using?

I can make it to the Stage 2 boss with some degree of consistency, and a few times into Stage 3. I don't know about anyone else, but I like the Homing Plasma weapon the best, and occassionally I'll use the Swing Vulcan as well.

Anyone still working on Raiden V? I wanted to share a 1CC run that Addicted brought to my attention, so if anyone wanted some additional strategy, this is a good approach to the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSlokBHMFzY

Maxing out all 3 weapon types is necessary to trigger the "TLB" or True Last Boss of the game, similar to completing both loops in the DoDonPachi series being necessary to get to the true last boss of most of those games in the series, Hibachi. This is an impressive run, and definitely worth a watch, despite being a bit long.

I was practicing stage 3 (the boss' blue bullets are impossible), but then life happened. Raiden V is a huge game, I'll be glad to move on to Warning Forever. :b

I found the best way to avoid the blue bullets is to either drop a bomb, or trigger the Cheer Attack at the moment the boss spawns those, so you can eliminate them. They're not impossible, but certainly you absolutely have to find the safe spot at the bottom of the screen, and micro dodge a bit to avoid them. I haven't had much luck with that, either, so when I reach the Stage 3 boss, I've often found myself expending my entire bomb stock to get through it. That's kind of my roadblock right now, though I did make a bit of progress last night, and actually got through the boss okay, mostly dodging its incoming fire.

I was planning on powering through Raiden V in the last week of august, but my video card decided to give up on me. I was hoping I would have another before the month ended so I could at least put in a bit of time, but now it seems like that's not going to happen. :(

Hopefully things go smoothly enough so I can actually participate sometime soon.

Wow, sorry to hear about your video card. That's a bummer, and I hope you can get that sorted out. I guess the bright side is, Warning Forever requires almost no specs to run, so if you had another machine to run it on, a laptop, or even an older video card to use in the meantime, and still wanted to participate, that could be an option. Good luck in getting your video card issue remediated!

Made my goal!

10 million points, very nice! That’s no easy feat, great job! I’ve sadly capped out at 16 million for now.