August 2018 Shmup Club - Raiden V

[MetalFRO]

@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.

[Golem]

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.

[Addicted]

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.

[MetalFRO]

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.

[Addicted]

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

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

[MetalFRO]

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.

[Pam]

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.

[MetalFRO]

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?

[Duke.Togo]

First run through:

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

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.

[MetalFRO]

@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.

[Golem]

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.

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 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?

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.

[Duke.Togo]

@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 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.

[MetalFRO]

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.

@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 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.

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.

[EZ Racer]

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.

[Duke.Togo]

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.