Thank you NIS America for sending us this game to review!

I remember the R-Type games from when I was young, and I really enjoyed revisiting them more recently with R-Type Dimensions EX, which is a collection/remake of the early arcade titles. R-Type Final 2 is a sequel to one of the more popular games in the series from the home console era, R-Type Final from the PlayStation 2. This game was originally launched on Kickstarter on June 3, 2019, and was successfully funded to the tune of nearly 99 million yen (around $900,000).

R-Type Final 2 has you defending Earth from the Bydo menace, which is an organic life form bent on wiping out humanity. Though, to be fair, you could easily use that to describe the entire series - a deep storyteller, it is not. However, what it would be is a classic, genre-defining side-scrolling shoot 'em up series where you blast a combination of fleshy creatures and mechanical enemies out of, well, mostly space.

At first glance, R-Type may seem simple: the screen (generally) scrolls left to right, with new enemies appearing as you blast them. And on some levels, that's true. However, rather than that being all there is to it, there are actually several layers of depth.

Like most games of this genre, there are upgrades you can pick up. Here, certain round-shaped opponents always drop certain upgrades while you play; the upgrades are predetermined, so it is up to you to skip certain ones if you don't like them. For example, there are red, blue, and yellow pickups, along with the much less common missile and bit upgrades. However, the first of any of the common color pickups will grant you your most important upgrade, the one unique to R-Type, your Force.

The Force powerup is your most basic, and most useful of powerups. It takes the form of an indestructible yellow ball, that you can use in multiple ways. Weapon upgrades attach to your Force, and while attached to the front or back of your ship, it shoots in that direction, once you pick up another single upgrade of any color. It can also be used to ram into enemies, absorb bullets, and a lot more. It can also be launched off of your ship towards enemies, and can offer a secondary source of firepower. The uses for the Force are only as limited as your imagination (and skill level). It's one of the unique things that makes R-Type what it is.

As for the common pickups themselves, red, blue, and yellow all seem to have different focuses, and depending on your chosen ship, may be more or less powerful per shot than another. On the ship I finally was able to see the credits with, I used mostly blue weapons, though the others certainly came in handy whenever I didn't have my preferred weapons available, as something is most certainly better than nothing. Red powerups tend to focus on direct horizontal attacks, while blue are at an angle, and yellow are vertical, or sometimes, depending on the ship, will hug the floor and ceiling.

Missile drops are relatively rare, but are always welcome, as they help take care of lower-powered enemies around you. The type of missile your ship has available is chosen at the beginning of the game when your ship model is chosen. Each model of ship can choose from some selection of the twelve missile types. (You can also change ship types between levels.) Most of the available missiles drop below your ship, though a few also shoot in other directions. They shoot pretty much constantly while you attack with any other kind of weapon, and certainly come in handy. The more firepower the better, right?

Bits are the other rare upgrade, and are potentially quite powerful. They are a small orb of sorts that adds to your arsenal, and float near your ship. They can absorb hits, not unlike your Force can. And, ... well I'd love to share more, but honestly? There are 3 pickups for them in the entire game, and are gone when you die. I have never had them long enough to have any clue what else they do. As a result I've never had a fully powered-up ship, since you need two bits for most ships to max them out. (The relative lack of bits is an extremely common complaint about this game; I am not alone here.) There are twelve types of bits, and I have no idea what most of them do. A couple of them look to have turrets on them, so maybe they shoot stuff... but the rest? No clue - I haven't kept them long enough to find out. This game is difficult!

And difficult it is. Now I do not claim any particularly special level of skill, and I tend to get past tough parts of games through sheer force of will, repetition, and perseverance rather than anything resembling thinking fast on my feet. And this game does support that play style, since enemy patterns can be memorized through repeated playthroughs. But... I still lost something like a hundred lives before finally beating the game - on the easiest 'Practice' difficulty level. After 'Practice' is 'Kids', then 'Normal', 'Bydo', and 'R-Typer'. As a test, I found not just the number of enemies and bullets change based on difficulty, but also some of the bosses were dramatically different. For example, after beating the game once, I tried the first level on 'R-Typer' difficulty. That first boss was completely different than even what I played on normal - and it didn't go well.

Thankfully, playing on higher difficulty levels isn't for nothing. Every mission you beat rewards you with a certain quantity of development resources - Solonium, Etherium, and Bydogen. The fourth resource/currency seems to be some more general 'R' coin, that is used to purchase things like decals, since you can decorate your ship - though you can trade them in for the other three resources as well. Honestly, much of the fun is not only in beating the levels using various difficulties, but unlocking more and more ships in the R Museum, where the main technology tree is managed, and trying out your new and more powerful ships. Of course, more powerful ships makes conquering the incredibly difficult levels a lot easier, thus reinforcing that gameplay loop. I must say, it can be great fun, especially when you find that new and powerful ship that meshes perfectly with your play style.

While it may not seem like much, there are only eleven levels, six of which are branch dependent; near the end of level five, you choose which path you will take next, knowingly or not. The first time I beat level five, I ended up grabbing some colored orb that sent me down the .1 route, so my next two levels were 6.1, and 7.1. There are also .0 and .2 routes for those last two levels, which leads to different endings, and also unlocks different ships in the R Museum. A small number of additional levels are available via DLC.

Outside of just playing the normal campaign over and over, you can also create a custom course arrangement, which is limited to whatever courses you have currently already beaten, which then become unlocked. Several in-game features open up once you complete a single route; this might be one of them, though I'm not certain. There are other bonus features like enemy information, how many of each enemy you've killed, a picture gallery, an in-game manual that explains more of the back story, a place to customize your craft(s), and so on. It's clear that the developers truly love this series - and it makes sense, since Granzella is made up of several who used to work on R-Type for many years.

From a technical perspective, the PC version is quite solid, other than a known bug that they promise to address: if you click into a text field that brings up an on-screen keyboard, you can't manage this with just a controller; it's a goofy bug that I hope they fix soon. Interestingly, the game plays great otherwise with both a controller (I used Xbox) or the keyboard + mouse; the WASD keys move your ship, while the mouse buttons shoot or launch your Force. It's not perfect, but it works quite well. I do wish that the button prompts would switch over to the keyboard automatically if your controller gets disconnected, though. You can choose to show keyboard icons in the configuration options, but it's not otherwise automatic, and assumes you have a controller (which isn't unreasonable).

Other than the controls, it runs well on my systems (which are admittedly high end), and supports a range of refresh rates and resolutions, from 30 frames per second (recommended for iGPUs) to 360Hz - if you have the best and fastest displays, this game should look gorgeous. It looks and plays great otherwise. I tried to play this game on my GPD Win Max using the Intel i5-1035G7, and it borders on playable, but it stutters a lot. On systems with a dedicated, reasonably modern GPU, I do not expect any issues. While I haven't gotten to test this myself yet, other gamers report that it works perfectly on Linux via Steam's Proton other than the missing intro and ending videos.

From an appropriateness standpoint, it's fairly clean. You shoot space aliens, and they do indeed die. So do you, but that's besides the point. Some enemies seem to shoot some kind of purple blood out of them, while others explode. That's pretty much it.

R-Type Final 2 is a game that frustrated me at first, then showed me how great it can be - and frustrated me then, too. But for some strange reason, I kept coming back for more. I still have a long way to go before unlocking all of the ships I want, not to mention beating the game on harder difficulty levels, but once the game started to click, I enjoyed it immensely. You know you like something when, while typing up a review suspiciously like this one, you start to lose valuable time playing more and more levels for some reason. While I can empathize with those who wish the price was a bit better, if you get sucked into the gameplay loop involved in upgrading your ships, I suspect you'll more than get your money's worth. Recommended.