Thank you ININ Games for sending us this game to review!

As far as horizontal shoot 'em up games goes, R-Type is one of the most celebrated classics of them all. The first two games started in the Arcade, but eventually the series moved to home consoles. R-Type III: The Third Lightning was the second R-Type game on the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) after Super R-Type, and the first game without any Arcade representation (half of Super R-Type's levels are from the arcade game R-Type II). R-Type III brought some innovations to the R-Type formula, and is a well-loved game.

R-Type III retained much of what gamers expected after the first two R-Type games. The first, of course, is the wretched difficulty. While the first two games were difficult because they ate quarters, on the home release it remained difficult to extend playtime. Like all shoot 'em ups, they aren't that long of a game if you can avoid dying, but with the incredible difficulty, most gamers may never see it to the end even after many hours.

R-Type Dimensions III is a remake of R-Type III for modern hardware, with the option to switch between the new 3D rendered graphics and classic 2D pixel art. The content of the game (the ships, weapons, levels, and so on) is largely the same between this remake and the classic game. Dimensions does add some new features; more on that later.

Like other R-Type games, there is some kind of story where you have a reason to blow up the Bydo menace once again. And like in those games, I don't really know what the story is. Even if it was explained it wouldn't matter, as you just blow up what's in front of you without questioning it. The shooting action, and avoiding death as much as possible, is the driving force behind the gameplay and the main draw.

R-Type titles are all horizontal shoot 'em ups. In each level, you move from left to right while blasting whatever gets in your way. While a majority of enemies do approach from the right, enough of them come from every direction that you really have to be careful and stay on your toes. On top of just the enemies, the screen is filled with bullets to avoid, keeping you on the edge of your seat at all times. With instant deaths from a single hit, there are no shortage of ways to die.

You have more than just the enemies to worry about, but also the environmental hazards of the levels themselves. Walls, debris, and more all play a part in trying to kill you. All of these, along with enemies, work together to force players to manage many things at once to avoid death.

R-Type Dimensions III is as tough as nails, as you might expect. There are difficulty levels offered, but there is nothing like an easy option; there is Normal and Advanced, aka hard and harder. Fortunately for those of us without lots of practice, skill, or patience, there is another mode. Classic is the, well, classic mode that gives you a limited number of lives and a set number of continues. Despite the number of lives offered, I almost certainly wouldn't make it to the end anytime soon if I was limited to Classic. Thankfully, there is also an Infinite mode, which makes clearing the game much easier.

Infinite mode grants you a couple of useful bonuses to aid in completing the game. The first one is simple, but straightforward: you're granted infinite lives. You would think that this would be enough to make the game easy, and I mean yeah, you can't lose. But it's still tough - I died plenty of times on my first Infinite playthrough. The other handy bonus in Infinite mode is they grant you a fully powered-up ship with the press of a button (in this case, pressing in on the right analog stick). Some areas are just brutal, with or without the powerups, but every little bit helps.

Speaking of powerups, there are several, and managing them is key to victory. The basic powerup of any R-Type game is the Force, which is a ball that can attach to the front or rear of your ship. The Force can be powered up by collecting red, blue, or yellow orbs that change the active attack to the one corresponding to the color. Red tends to be direct straight-ahead damage, blue spread out or homing attacks, while yellow tends to be wide area or top/bottom attacks. Red is the most powerful in most situations, and yellow the weakest, with a few notable exceptions.

While there is only one ship, R-Type III is the first game in the series to offer multiple Force options. The original Force is the Round Force, and it has basic powerups with a simple Force behavior. It's generally considered the weakest of the three. The Red and Blue lasers are useful and powerful enough, but the Yellow is pretty bad unless you need things above and below you shot at.

The next is called the Shadow Force, and is pretty powerful. This one might be my favorite. In addition to the Force, there are one or two shadow balls that shoot in addition to your normal shots. As good as that is, I just like the shots themselves. Red is the most powerful, and Blue is merely alright (though the shadow balls' blue lasers are nice). Yellow isn't my favorite, but it's still useful, as it shoots forward as well as up and down, making it a choice that doesn't handicap you.

The last is called the Cyclone Force. While typing this up and testing it, I just realized how powerful this one actually is, so I'm not so sure if Shadow or this is better. Whatever the case, what makes this Force so unique is the Force itself can do a ton of damage when impacting enemies. All three Force types do some damage when touching enemies, but this one probably does the most. The shots themselves are also interesting. Red shoots straight ahead, and does good damage. Blue shoots out in a spread. Yellow is the most unique, as it leaves a stationary dot that shoots in a straight line for a few seconds even if your ship moves. While this can be less than ideal when swarmed by lots of enemies, it can do tons of damage to bosses.

There are powerups other than the Force itself, though those are certainly the most important for many reasons. The bits/options (I'm not sure what this game calls them) provide some protection, and with some combination of Force and colors, can shoot as well. If you have one bit it's above you, and with two there is one above and below. They can damage enemies and absorb shots they impact. The other upgrade is the missiles. Each ship's missiles are slightly different, but they essentially just shoot another shot towards the bottom of the screen or towards enemies. More damage always helps, but it's the most forgettable of all of the upgrades. You can also collect speed upgrades, which helps you move your ship more quickly.

There are a couple of other parts of your arsenal that shouldn't be forgotten. Most of the time, I would hold the button that does repeat fire to clear an area of baddies as I moved my ship around. But there is another fire button as well, which fires a single shot, or if held, charges your beam. After charging up, you can release the beam to not only do significantly more damage than the repeated shots in the same timeframe would likely do, but also clear out a bit of the area around or in front of you. The charged shot does a shockingly high amount of damage, taking out some bosses in just a few hits. It's highly recommended to get to know this weapon and use it in many circumstances, especially since it can shoot through walls when most other shots cannot.

The last power is Hyper mode. If you press the left shoulder button, the charge beam switches from beam mode to Hyper mode. In Hyper mode, once you fully charge it up, when you release it your shots are replaced with very powerful hyper shots. This can also take out some bosses quite quickly, and you can use it often, though it does have a cooldown once it runs out - but you can do it again. If timed correctly, this can be a serious game changer.

Using these many pieces of your arsenal is critical to doing well. Since the Force can block impacts or shots in many cases, as well as help you shoot in whichever direction it's attached, managing whether it's attached to your front or rear is critical to surviving many levels or defeating bosses more quickly. R-Type III's levels are all pre-planned and never random, so memorization is a critical part of overcoming the many difficult obstacles the game offers.

R-Type Dimensions III, like R-Type Dimensions (and EX) before it, is a full remake of the original title for modern consoles and PC. I'm fairly certain it's a full remake, and not an emulator underneath. While most of the changes are graphical in nature, some may go beyond that.

First is the addition of a two-player mode that the original lacked. The way they handled it is interesting, and a nice compromise to avoid making it too easy. In the single-player game, when you die you respawn, but on continues you restart it at the section you are in. In two player mode, when you die the other player keeps playing, and if your player has lives left, they can respawn as well. However, the player that runs out of lives first has to wait for their partner to also run out, forcing them both to continue and respawn. From what I can tell, there doesn't appear to be any new enemies or anything, so if you have a friend, the game should be easier overall when played with a buddy.

Graphically, I appreciate that this game scales to almost any resolution, or at least it can handle 4K just fine, and my 5K ultrawide monitor also works with it. On my ultrawide (21:9 aspect), there are some graphical bugs with some text appearing off of the screen at some points, but nothing game-breaking. The art style itself is fine, and I like how this looks more than how the older Dimensions titles looked. The pixel art is of course nice as well. The upgraded music is also nice.

At this point, I should probably address the elephant in the room: the player reviews on Steam are atrocious; as of this writing, the reviews are 18% positive. Some complain that the price is a bit high; I can relate to that. Other issues are things that I as a casual player who hasn't played the original much just hasn't really noticed. I am not saying they aren't there or that they aren't real issues, just that I haven't really noticed some of them.

Some common complaints include some bugs, some of which I did experience. I ran into some issues where the Round Force wouldn't always shoot properly with the Red powerup, which was strange. Another thing I ran into was when in two player mode, the second player died and then never came back. It worked properly on a second try, though. There were also text alignment issues, especially on my ultrawide monitor, as I noted above.

Other issues are more subtle, and I'm not familiar with the original game well enough to notice. For example, some players note that the collision detection is different than in the SNES R-Type III, making this game more difficult than necessary. That could be the case, but I died so many times that it was hard for me to tell the difference to know if they were earned or the game being buggy. Other issues noted include audio changes compared to how the original behaved. There are long posts in the Steam discussion forums talking about these many issues, and the developers have acknowledged that they have stuff to fix. Fortunately, they wrote a long post explaining their plans on fixing the game, and they are including community ambassadors to assist in the process. As of this writing there aren't any patches yet, but hopefully that changes soon.

On a positive note, it ran pretty well on all of my PCs, and runs perfectly well on Steam Deck. I played through the game multiple times on Deck, and actually have most of my playtime of this game on there.

Morally, it's not too far out of what you might expect. There is a lot of spaceship and shooting violence. Most of the enemies are mechanical, but later on they become strange and organic. There are no language concerns that I noted.

R-Type Dimensions III is a decent but imperfect recreation of a beloved classic shoot 'em up. The price is a bit high at $34.99, but hopefully it goes on sale. Whatever the case, it's a lot of fun if you enjoy a challenge and don't mind trying and trying again. If you get frustrated easily, I recommend you look elsewhere. If you like classic shoot 'em ups, R-Type Dimensions III is a good entry in a well-loved classic franchise and certainly worth your time, as long as the more glaring issues are addressed.