R-Type is one of my all-time favourite shoot em-up series. I have vivid memories of playing both R-Type DX for the Game Boy Color and Super R-Type on the Super Nintendo with my favourite being R-Type DX. So, it’s very fitting that once again, I have been playing R-Type both on a Nintendo console and also handheld.
For the uninitiated, R-type is a horizontal Shoot-em up originally produced by Irem which favours a more slow and methodical approach, unlike bullet-hell style shooters. The series as a whole follows what I would describe as a ‘firm but fair’ approach to gameplay, there are no ‘cheap’ enemies that jump out and insta-kill you so you do have (some) time to prepare an attack on your enemies.
With R-Type Final 2 I am happy to say that this is a ‘proper’ R-Type game through and through, it really feels like an R-Type game if that makes sense. Everything you remember is here, great music, progressive powerups and fantastic grand end-of-level bosses. I was worried that the R-Type ‘formula’ might have been interfered with, opting for some a little more frenetic but luckily Final 2 is very faithful to the series play style.
Like a lot of shooters and shoot-em-ups in general, R-Type Final 2 relies heavily on trial and error and pattern recognition, as you make your way through the game’s levels, there will be what I would call ‘safe zones’ usually around the top or bottom of the screen where you can hide from enemy fire and take a couple of moments to plan your next move. It almost becomes like a game of chess at times.
R-Type Final 2 follows the usual system of progressing through a level, evading and destroying numerous waves of enemies and finishing the level up with a boss fight. If you have ever played an R-Type game before then you’ll be pleased to know the bosses are as great as they used to be. Bosses tend to fill pretty much the whole screen and are a lot of fun, these used to be the most enthralling part of the R-Type series for me as a kid and I happy to say they still are.
Throughout the game, you’ll collect materials that can be used to unlock different ships with each having a different move set. You can customize your ship with different weapons and even tweak a few cosmetic elements like the colour of your paint job. This means you can find what type of weapons suits you and stick with them, that’s what I did!
Now, the difficulty of the game is something I should mention. I previously mentioned the series has a firm but fair, methodical difficulty to it but R-Type Final 2 is pretty hard and the game acknowledges this with a variety of different difficulty settings, I played on normal and found that more than enough of a challenge at points.
Checkpoints make a return here in R-Type final 2, however, they seem to be pretty inconsistent, but I am still glad they are there. One section on the third level had you navigating through an area full of tank-like enemies and it was an absolute slog to get through, even with the checkpoint just before that area. It was times like this when I noticed an imbalance in the number of enemies, suddenly, the whole screen was full of enemies whereas before, the game was somewhat sparse on the enemy count. This happened a few times throughout the game and felt like an unnatural difficulty spike, almost as though I changed the difficulty setting in the options. I wish the game was more consistent.
Made in the Unreal Engine, the game seemed to run fine on the Switch in both handheld mode and while docked with framerates being smooth and consistent, however, having the game docked and displayed on a 27” screen made a couple of flaws apparent in the effects used for explosions and the lightning-like effect around your ship at times, this looked particularly pixelated and while I am glad they didn’t opt to use aggressive bilinear filtering over the image, some softening of these textures would have been nice.
A small thing I must note is the enemy design, while there are a ton of different and unique enemy designs which I love, however, they look a little dated by today’s standards. What I mean by this is some of the models look like they came right out of a PS2 game, it would have been nice to have some more defined edges and something that looked a little more ‘HD’. This wouldn’t be as noticeable by itself, but the designs for the bosses are great and it kind of makes everything else look a little worse by comparison.
Having compared how the game looks on other platforms compared to the Switch, I have to say the Switch version definitely looks the worse out of the bunch, but this once again is offset by the ability to play the game portably which seems to be a very modern compromise.
Conclusion
In conclusion, R-type Final 2 is a good game and it definitely feels like an R-Type game. Final 2 has all the R-Type ‘stuff’, like the great music and big bosses etc but still left me yearning for the older 2D iterations for some reason. The ability to play handheld is a big thing for me personally but others might not care either way. The bosses are great and if you are an R-Type veteran I would definitely recommend picking it up, However, I feel the game suffers somewhat from being a little too empty at times and overly busy at others with no real middle ground.
The, at times crushing difficulty, might put off the more casual player, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had here for any R-Type or Shoot-em up veteran.
7
Nintendo Switch review code kindly provided by NIS America