906th played so far
Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Playstation 2
Year of Release: 2003
Developer: Irem
Publisher: Irem
R-Type Final is the final of the three R-Type games that we’ve played, with R-Type Delta being the middle game. They were both good looking horizontal shooters that were difficult – but I could make enough progress with the help of some extra lives to see some good shooters.
The last one will build on that – a generation of hardware later as well as, I assume, a build up on the systems… and maybe less of a reliance on arcade life counters.
Our Thoughts
I did enjoy playing R-Type Final. It’s a horizontal shooter that has the graphics that you expect to get from the Playstation 2 era, with 3D models for your ships and enemies and semi-3D, I guess billboard backgrounds that give some illusion of depth, but where that element isn’t really played with. I understand that there are a lot of ships, but I don’t quite know how that worked, but early on you end up with a lot of weapon options anyway that combine together, which means it feels like you can often have many projectiles flying around. With that you have a droid item you can eject that will give you some extra range in your attacks. The only thing I’m missing is some form of backward attacks, which felt like an annoying omission.
That came out especially strongly with the bullet sponge bosses, who’ll crawl around the entire screen. It means you can’t hit them for part of the time, but with the size of their health bars it takes a long time to get through. It feels like it makes it unnecessarily difficult. At least the game is generous in the number of retries it provides, but its checkpoints could have been placed closer to the boss. The amount of time you need to get back to the boss is a bit too long, and that crab-like boss I got blocked on was a bit too much.
Final Thoughts
While I enjoyed R-Type Final, that final boss was a killer and I feel I could have had more fun if it hadn’t been so much of a road block. It’s certainly a step up in the genre and it works especially well here as a good game.