"R-Type has returned!" says the store page, and that's about all there is to this game. Final 2 is so oddly named because it's a direct sequel to one of the very best PS2 games, R-Type Final, and most of its ideas come straight from that source, for better or worse. Expect a difficult struggle as you fly through stages old and new, advancing through a tech tree of spaceships. R-Type goes back to 1987, a time of many spaceship shoot-em-ups (or shmups). In it, the screen scrolls to the right, and you wobble around a side view of the action and shoot down the enemy ships. Two primary features made R-Type notable: a charge shot known as the "Wave Cannon", and the powerup system tied intrinsically to the "Force". Like many shmups, there are powerups corresponding to different weapons, but here, they're not for you . Instead, they summon and upgrade a ball of energy called a "Force", and the Force opens up a lot of interesting strategies. First, it deals contact damage and absorbs enemy bullets, which is handy in a game where you die in one hit. Second, it can attach to either the front or rear of your ship, and fire lasers corresponding to the color of the weapon powerup you've got (yellow lasers shoot vertically, blue diagonally, and red horizontally). When the Force is attached to the left, its weapons fire to the left. Third, it can be tossed off the ship at the press of a button, left to float around the screen and fire sort of independently of your actions. These elements add forethought and strategy to a twitchy genre. Do you keep the Force close and use it as a shield, or fling it away to attack from new angles? Do you rapid-fire, or charge up your Wave Cannon for huge burst damage? R-Type is a slow-paced shmup, but that slow pace is there to give you time to plan. By the time of R-Type Final, those core gameplay elements have been refined. Where you once only had one ship to choose from, now there are over 100, bringing new Wave Cannons and Forces with them. For example, the "Cerberus" introduced in R-Type Delta boasts a Lightning Wave Cannon that homes in on enemies and arcs through multiple targets, and an Anchor Force made to be thrown and stuck to large enemies. The Cerberus is here too! It's a lot of fun to iterate through the R Museum, to unlock new ships and try them out, to notice parts of stages where a certain Force or Wave Cannon makes it much easier (or harder...) to get through. You get old faces like the Cerberus, cameo appearances from other Irem games like Mr. Heli, and some buckwild ideas like the Platonic Love. At the very end, you gain fully customizable ships that can use any Force and Wave Cannon you want. This encourages wide knowledge of the game and rewards that with the ability to cook up some busted combos. As nicely as R-Type Final 2 scratches that itch for a less twitchy and more tactical shmup, it doesn't do much that Final 1 didn't. There are a few new ships, but most of the 100-plus craft are direct holdovers from the previous game. Whereas Final 1 mostly gave you new ships after certain amounts of play time (in general or with specific ships), Final 2 has a crafting system, where beating stages rewards you with four different currencies, three of which are spent to unlock new ships...but it still comes down to playing the same game over and over. Branching paths offer different configurations of the back half of the game, and lead to one of three endings. Many of the new stages of Final 2 follow similar progressions and themes to Final 1's, and all the DLC stages are actually throwbacks to past Irem games--including Final 1. Longtime R-Typers won't see very many new things here, but new players can see a wide swath of R-Type history represented in one easily accessible place. Well, I say "accessible", but this game can be harsh. R-Type games have sometimes been called "memory shmups" because it's less about reacting and more about knowing what comes next. The past stages in the DLC are the biggest offenders--sometimes they even appear to offer a branching path between high and low, but taking the high path just gets you crushed against a wall every time. Enemies can appear onscreen from any angle without warning, so sometimes moving near an edge of the screen gets you into a sudden crash. The new stages of R-Type Final 2's main game rely less on these cheap shots and checkmates, but they're still there. You die in one hit, and are sent back to a checkpoint with all your powerups gone (which sometimes sets you up very poorly for the next attempt), so these traps are very punishing. Worse, some special effects can make it difficult to even see incoming enemy attacks. Destroyed enemy ships and some of your ships' weapons have the same color scheme as the enemy bullets, while spherical blasts like Balmung missiles and the Shock Wave Cannon can entirely occlude the action. Between tricky spots you have to memorize, and the possibility that you literally won't see them coming, it's easy to feel like you're being punished for a mistake that you had no way of knowing you were making. I didn't mention the tickets in my first iteration of this review, but I've realized, these things matter a lot. When choosing your difficulty, you can open a submenu for additional options. Four special options correspond to the tickets you can buy with real or in-game money, and the only one I use regularly is Arms Warranty. With it, you don't lose your powerups on death. It feels like Final 2 was balanced around using that one. Each ticket only lasts for one run, but higher difficulties give so much currency, one ticket pays for itself. With Arms Warranty, the game is still hard, but no longer punishing--especially once you unlock infinite continues. Beating a stage unlocks it in Score Attack, so you can play just that one or add it to an "original course" of seven stages in the order of your choice. And you can use Arms Warranty there too! This all combines to turn the grueling vibes on their head. Speaking of vibes, one thing R-Type Final 2 is missing is atmosphere. Over time, the R-Types have leaned more into horror, incorporated themes like "man is the real monster". Delta has a sort of Pyrrhic victory vibe all the way through (especially for the Cerberus), and Final starts every stage with a little blurb from the pilot as they gradually lose their mind in the face of a war with an unbeatable enemy. Notes in the R Museum (almost all copy-pasted from Final 1) go into detail about how the Force attached to your ship is actually a Bydo alien embryo trapped in a torture device, and some of the ships are torture devices for the pilots. Stages went from abstract space stations and tropey hives to facilities and even cityscapes that underscore that this is, in fact, war. I'm making it sound more heavy-handed than it actually is, but I think it's neat that the series evolved its excuse plot into such melancholy. Final 2 feels very gamey; it doesn't interact with the series lore, and when it does, it's not doing anything Final 1 didn't already do (better, imo). Even the visuals are...the lighting engine and overall style can make everything look like toys. Maybe this isn't a huge deal for you, and you're just here for the gameplay, and that's fine, the gameplay is tight. But if you're a series vet looking for more of the lore or the horror of R-Type, this ain't it. R-Type Final 2 is simply more R-Type, as its name and its store description imply. Granzella hasn't iterated the R-Type formula in any meaningful way, but this is very much a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The core gameplay loop is incredibly good, challenging reflexes and tactics in equal measure, and offering lots of different playstyles in the form of new ships. If you're interested in R-Type as a series...I would still recommend Delta or Final 1 first, if you can acquire them somehow. But if you just want a shmup on Steam, this is one of the best.
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