Please post some info about raiden v if you get the chance digi! I haven't heard much and don't know what's up with it at all, do I finally have an excuse for a xbone purchase?! Is it region free, or are you playing it on the same regions hardware? Sooooooooo cool, please elaborate!!
Yes it is region free. I am playing it on a UK console. The copy I got came with a CD Audio and personally I think the OST in this game is pretty decent.
I was pretty bummed out because raiden 4 and Raiden Aces never made an official appearance in the UK so I can't really compare V to those games.
you start by selecting 3 ships Azuma, Spirit of Dragon and Moulin Rouge, All have a different stats such as less speed but more armor, more attack but less speed etc and a basic missile attack. Each ship also has an energy bar so once that is depleted it's game over.
You then select the laser weapons (Bend or Catch Plasma, Wide or Swing Vulcan, Lightning or Charge Laser) you want to pick up and how it reacts in battle. There are 3 types (red= Vulcan, blue = Laser and purple=Plasma) and each can be leveled up to 10 by collecting the desired power up.
There is something called a cheer meter which once fully powered up you can summon another raiden ship to provide a brief few seconds of arsenal although you can still take damage.
Plus you have your standard bombs.
During each stage there is an option to branch out to different paths but I haven't figured this out yet.
The Left and Right Triggers switch between different side panels, the Right is in-game dialogue relating to the action and game story while the left side shows stat data.
Graphics wise it's not very pretty, graphics look like something from the ps2 era and I think Gradius V and Ikaruga look better. The transition from completing a stage and going to the next or loading of a certain boss area also looks a little amateurish . It's basically a low budget release with barely any 2D sprites or artwork in-game. You get a normal game mode, boss mode, gallery, options, leaderboard.
Even though it is a vertical shooter the game rotates, zooms in and out etc. Feels like some of the inspiration is borrowed from Treasure and CAVE games. You also can collect medals and when you are not shooting if you leave the fire button alone for a few seconds the medals gets sucked towards you and even power ups zone in on you in this mode. You can also collect fairies and that blue mascot thing for points but I don't know what other features they offer.
You can see the first stage here although video is 30fps the game runs at 60. I don't think it's worth grabbing an xbox one for this. I don't know if it will turn up on any other console or even hand held but I think it's been tweeted that it will come stateside and EU/UK too. Also the game has unlimited continues which if you do use em all can quite possibly complete the game on the same day. I find that after the first stage which is quite short the levels that follow get longer and bullets start to rain down. I actually find that I keep coming back to this and try for that impossible mission 1cc. Unfortunately I have had the game crash on me several times and you will lose your progress if that happens.
The packaging, I wish they still provided with manual there isn't any and also both the game and music disc are placed into one single spindle and I found it really hard to remove the game disc to the point where it felt like I was going to crack and split the disc trying to get it out!
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/Digichan2006/video/15452371This is the stage branching but I haven't figured out how to branch out..
