How To Play R-Type Final 3 Evolved: The Definitive Review
Or any of the R-Types Final, as it goes
I had the realisation that while feverish evangelism is all very well and good for promoting the virtues of the glitzy modern horizontal shmup, it’s probably worthwhile explaining how to actually get the most out of them, lest they remain some austere fringe oddity to be admired from afar. R-Type Final 2 and 3 would very much like you to play them, and so do I, so it’s best that I lay out some easy hints and tips to get a shmup newbie going in the brutal war against the Bydo.
To kick us off, let’s establish some common terms:
Sequence
Literally the sequence of events through a stage. The arrivals and departures of enemies, changes in geography, changes in movement and so on. Also, checkpoint locations.
Traversal
Your physical route through the sequence and your enemy engagement strategies. In the R-Types Final, your choice of craft can have a profound influence on the style of your traversal.
Craft
Your choice from the 113 ships in the R Museum. Beside its visual appearance, a craft is determined by its type of Wave Cannon (the chargeable mega-shot) and the Force (the type of orb companion your craft uses).
Opening Comments On Difficulty
Play it on easy lol. No, seriously, knock the difficulty down. Hell is filled with idiots too proud to play on a difficulty level labelled ‘Kids’, and I say play one easier that - ‘Practice’. The reason for this is that Craft are locked behind stage unlocks, currency grinds and other Craft unlocks, so to get the most out of the game in the early stages, lower difficulty will give you the momentum to start exploring the Craft roster and accrue the currencies. Practice difficulty starts you off with a Force already attached, which is very handy for trying out new unlocks. However Practice does dramatically reduce the amount of shots flying at you and the enemy density, resulting in a considerably deceptive passage that’ll give you plenty of surprises if you notch the difficulty up to farm more currency. That caveat aside, Practice will teach you the general sequence of the stage and it doesn’t fuck with any of the geographical hazards that are part of the sequence, making it great for learning the shape of each stage and putting together a generalised traversal that’ll be largely the same at higher difficulties.
A Practice run through all stages is a great way to accrue at least one craft unlock per completion, but for specific currency grinding it’s Score Attack that offers the most fun. This is mostly because it starts you off with a fully-powered craft, making it much easier to go in at Normal or above and reap higher currency rewards.
Basic Shmup Technique: Observation
For a complete newcomer, the visual chaos and onslaught of aggression a shmup launches upon you can be daunting, if not overwhelming. To cope with this, engage in a conscious strategy of active observation. This involves moving the focus of your attention from a general scan of the whole screen to the scrolling edge of the screen where new hazards are emerging, to concentrating on your craft and its immediate locality. There is a skill in knowing when to switch - the reality is you could likely complete any given stage by just focusing attention on your craft. Having your vision there means you’re much more alert to hazards that pose an immediate threat and, given a suitable level of power-up, you’ll probably eliminate the majority of enemies without having to look at them. However, you will need to pay attention to the scrolling edge to see upcoming non-destructable geographical hazards and enemies that may have hidden weak spots, meaning a shift in Force orientation may be required. It’s also just good practice to have an idea of the overall screen situation at any given moment. Focusing on your craft is incredibly important when battle is at its thickest - when there’s lots of ordinance on lots of trajectories in play, and when geography is tight and/or enemy population is high. It’s something you may have to consciously force yourself to do when the intensity ramps up, but the benefits are immediate. Not to mention that focusing on the craft, particularly if you have it in the left-hand half of the screen, will alert you earlier to the classic R-Type shenanigan of having enemies arrive behind you (or appearing out of the geography at deliberately inopportune moments).
Basic Shmup Technique: Kill Or Avoid
When fully powered-up, the temptation is to fill the screen with electric death and eliminate every single enemy as quickly as possible. However, a counter-intuitive consequence of that is you may actually be increasing your risk. This is down to craft placement - trying to bump off everything will generally mean moving offensively in pursuit rather than defensively in avoidance. In tight moments, this actually increases your exposure while taking your attention away from hazards. It’s worth breaking out of flow to deliberately take a defensive route, particularly if your craft is underpowered, which will happen to you a lot after dying and checkpointing. Some checkpoints are really unfair in chucking you back into full-on combat with vastly diminished powers, and relying on a ‘kill ‘em all’ strat in this situation can be counterproductive to say the least. Sometimes it’s best to just get out of the way of danger, particularly if you have a fancy Wave Cannon that needs a few loops to get to max. Adopting a dodging, near-pacifistic approach will also hone your movement skills no end, and give you a bit of extra bandwidth to learn the sequencing and geography1 and/or marvel at the beautiful lighting.
R-Type Technique: Shot Or Charge?
It’s a little-known fact that you can easily complete the first stage of R-Type with just charge shots and Force rubs,2 and this charge-sniper technique carries over nicely into the R-Types Final. To shoot or to charge is the fundamental equation to be balanced in your offensive strategy and this is highly dependent on the specifics of your craft. Differences in Wave Cannon and Force really affect outcomes, where certain Craft seem built around a charge-sniping strat whereas others have Wave Cannons that are so shit, they’re barely worth using, even on bosses. It’s worth mentioning that the R-9O2 Ragnarok II, which has the most powerful Wave Cannon in the game, has terrible normal shots, yet it requires seven loops and about 45 seconds of total charge time to get to max. Therefore utilising it effectively is about the darker arts of Wave Cannon management: the partial charge. These have varying effects depending on the specific cannon, but partial charges have been part of the R-Type arsenal since the original and with the right cannon, can be better than the fully-powered normal shots in some instances. Wave Cannons can also have different effects depending on the number of loops charged. Ragnarok II’s first and second loops are the same as a basic R-9, but higher loops gain splash damage factors, with the final loop effectively being a screen-clearing smart bomb as well as an obscenely damaging bolt of death. A real stalwart favourite of mine, R-13B Charon, has a lightning Wave Cannon that dances between enemies as lightning would, with larger charges increasing the damage and range of the dancing. Its partials are fantastic for rapid close-range killing and in low-powerup situations it’s a godsend. R-9DP3 Kenrokuen’s physical pile-driver cannon is only really useful for killing medium-to-large enemies, mid-bosses and bosses, but it’s thoroughly brutal at full charge, making it the ultimate R-Type sniper craft for pacifist stage traversals and quick boss kills. There’s a particularly satisfying parsimony in trying to charge-snipe an entire stage, which will also draw on your dodging and navigation skills to fulfil without dying. However, it’s all too easy to have a Craft with decent Wave Cannon/normal shot balance and lean too heavily on charge-sniping when normal shots are actually the better option tactically. The wisdom to take from this is to experiment in your traversals. If a segment is particularly sticky, it’s worth trying to vary shooting technique.
R-Type Technique: Force Wrangling
The original R-Type blew minds with its innovation of The Force, an indestructible orb that you can use as a shield or as an offensive weapon with a single button press, as well as offering the ability to shoot megalasers from the front or the rear of your Craft, depending on where you attach it. In the R-Types Final 2 and 3, The Force is so central that you can unlock it as a playable Craft. Wrangling The Force is a key skill to master and to this end, I recommend changing the button mapping so that Force launch/recall is on the right trigger. This not only makes it much more fun to pew-pew The Force into enemy gobs, but means you can undertake complex repositionings and tactical Force manoeuvres while charging the Wave Cannon, something that’s a bit unwieldy, inconsistent and prone to error with face button maps.
Knowing when and where to reposition The Force is a key part of any traversal and once again, if you’re finding a section to be really sticky, consider using a different part of the screen and repositioning your Force to suit. There are no general guidelines to follow for Force attitudes - you’ll just have to thrash them out in combat. However, it’s definitely worth mastering a quick change by launching, recalling and moving up and down as appropriate to avoid the Force re-attaching to its last position. This little dance may be clumsy at first, but you can actually pull it off in quite tight spots once your thumbs are decently trained. As an aside, use the D-pad for Craft movement rather than the sticks. The pad is so much better for rapid, incremental movements in small spaces.
The Force has generally consistent behaviour across Force and Craft types save for a few exceptional cases, one of which being the R-13 lineage. This Force has a ‘chain’ linking the Force to the Craft, and the chain does damage. The Force also clamps onto enemies it’s fired at, giving much more reliable behaviour when you want to Force rub enemies to death. Force wrangling develops a unique strategy for this lineage, especially when dealing with big numbers of popcorn enemies with bigger bastards embedded in them.3 As such, I urge you to unlock that lineage as quickly as you can because they’re all brilliant.4
R-Type Technique: Special Weapons And DOSE Meters
Introduced in R-Type Delta, the Special Weapon and its attendant DOSE meter are a smart bomb replacement that has plenty of tactical applications beyond saving you in a moment of crisis. DOSE is the meter that charges up the Special Weapon, which is done by having your Force absorb bullets and causing contact damage. However once charged, the Force gains additional contact damage and an extended area of effect in the form of a red glow.5 R-Type Final play, and particularly in 2 and 3’s case, can be categorised into efficiency and expediency styles. Efficiency is where you are maxing the kills to reap the most currency, but also maximising your DOSE charging to get the meter full. Expediency is going for speed, which means you may well be discharging the Special Weapon at tricky choke points to accelerate your traversal. The Special Weapon also eliminates enemy bullets when discharging, making it useful for fraught boss fight cycles and so on. Now, in the lower difficulties the DOSE meter fills much faster, meaning that some stages can offer more than one opportunity for discharge and still have a full meter for the boss fight if you’re particularly adept at DOSE harvesting. One thing to note, though, is that if currency grind is your thing you can get a 25% harvest boost at Normal difficulty by turning off Special Weapons and extra lives. For the sake of a few extra seconds in restarting a stage and being forced away from rank cowardice, this is more than worthwhile over a seven-stage run.
R-Type Technique: Geography, Navigation And Craft Control
R-Type, perhaps more than any other, is a shmup known for its demand of rote learning its sequence and learning the geography is a fundamental aspect of that. Geographical challenges vary between lethal parts of the environment and obstructions that can kill, should you get stuck behind them when the scrolling leaves the screen. There’s no advice here - you just have to learn them. However, there are sometimes happy accidents in the geography that can offer the nimble player a safe haven or two in sticky moments. This is the skill in knowing when to advance towards the right or retreat to the left, or when to park in the centre. A lot of this is down to specific aspects of the sequence - Stage 5.1 of R-Type Final 2 has horrific death clams that spit out Danmaku-grade laser dashes at fixed angles and the interplay of two or more of these makes for a supreme bullet-dodging navigation challenge, but there are a fair few spots where getting parked at the right time puts you in a favourable place and saves you an awful lot of hassle. The point here is that you should pay attention to the wider geography of the Stage as it passes, as there could be nooks and crannies to stow away in when things are tricky. In combination with well-judged Force shifts, finding the right spots can radically alter your traversal and your chances of survival.
A Note On Craft Speed
The R-Types Final allow you to adjust the twitchiness of your Craft with two buttons, often the left shoulder and trigger. You may consider this fairly redundant as the default speed (2) seems to be fine for all circumstances. However, upping to speed 3 has colossal advantages on certain boss fights and navigation challenges. The Stage 4.0 boss in R-Type Final 2 has its weak spot on a rotating collar that demands you swap sides of the screen to do damage and as it’s a giant swinging ball that takes up nearly the full height of the screen, getting around it is a whole lot easier when you’re moving faster. Likewise, several bosses have phases where they chase you around the screen and staying on speed 2 will make your escape much more difficult than it has to be. Again, this emphasises the need to use the D-pad for movement as precision is everything at higher speeds, especially if you’re trying to whizz through the slim gap under a boss as it defecates an exploding blob onto the floor.
A Note On Checkpointing
The checkpointing in the R-Types Final is frequently brutal. The most lenient are boss approaches, which generally won’t fuck you about and don’t offer too much immediate peril until you meet the boss, but they still leave you seriously underpowered for the confrontation. Other mid-Stage ones can be absolutely infuriating, with one of the final Stages having no checkpoints at all after the first third of the Stage. Yah, you have to grind out 66.6666% of it, even if you die right near the end. Annoyingly, only Score Attack offers the option to restart a stage from the beginning. This would be so much more preferable to more than a few mid-stage checkpoints I’ve had to grind my way out of. So yeah, if you’re doing the whole game runs and aren’t amazing, you’re going to be rinsing a lot of cruel checkpoints. I wouldn’t give up, though. Battling through lets you learn the sequencing, which in R-Type is the real meat of the overall battle.
R-Type Technique: Craft choice
Ultimately, this is up to you. It’s really a matter of taste. Any Craft can clear any Stage if you’re skilled enough, though I pity the grind on some of the more esoteric offerings in the R Museum. As a general rule of thumb, Wave Cannons with more loops make Boss fights shorter. That’s it! The rest is down to what you’ve unlocked and what suits your playstyle. Naturally, I think everyone should want to try a 1CC in the default R-9 Arrowhead, but there are later Craft that are much more fun to use. In general, the lineages will offer increasingly capable Craft as you move along them, so planning out a grind on a lineage you like the feel of is definitely worthwhile, and don’t settle until you reach the ultimate craft of that line.
I’d also recommend buying all of the DLC.6 Obviously you need the Craft to complete the full roster, but these each come with free wads of grinding currency. You need to visit the Shop to get them, and it’s a great way to open up huge tracts of the R Museum once you’ve acquired the stage unlocks. It should be noted that the DLC Craft are pretty badass, too. That might feel a bit unearned and cheaty, but the game is stern enough to make sure it’s not a pay-to-win situation.
Closing Remarks
I fucking love the R-Types Final and sincerely hope this guide helps you love them too. As I’ve tried to mention in this piece and all my previous writing on them, the Final games have this unique quality of allowing hundreds of possible traversals, each with their own difficulty curves and skill demands. Some Craft are so divergent from the R-9 Arrowhead orthodoxy that they almost present a different shmup entirely to the R-Type template. It’s a superb box of delights to explore and, as with nearly all non-Danmaku shmups, the joy increases the better you get at traversing the stages. R-Type has a leisurely pace, which at the lower difficulties means that hopefully, a lot more people can get the joy out of it than they might from something transcendent but brutally impossible like Progear No Arashi. I sincerely hope you’ll join me, pilot, in the endless battle against the evil Bydo!
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It’s worth pointing out that in full Super-Nashwan mode, you’ll be destroying popcorn enemies so quickly that you probably won’t notice when and where they specifically emerge, nor their planned trajectories across the screen, leaving you with a significant knowledge gap that’ll bite you on the arse in different craft or when checkpointed and downgraded.
Yes, I checked this while writing. I believe you can actually get a no-miss for Stage 1 if you herd some of the enemies and use partial charges at the right moments.
Stage 4.1 is a classic example. This features huge fields of popcorn enemies that come in diagonal sheets from the vertical sides of the screen. You’re given a yellow power-up just before the first wave starts and with the Charon, you can get the Force on your rear and sit at the very top-right corner and trivially shoot them all. However you need to quickly swap the Force to the front and be in the bottom left corner for the next wave, which descends from the top.
In R-Type Final 3 Evolved, it actually takes a fair bit of unlocking to get to old Charon but hey, it’s all fucking brilliant so just get the fuck on with it, fucko.
Truth be told, I’m not sure the enhanced damage is all that significant. Even if it’s considerable on paper, in practice I don’t see a huge advantage in maintaining full DOSE, but it does look really cool.
Seriously though the DLC levels are pretty awesome, if a bit disjointed in sequence terms. It’s a shame they’re both non-contiguous, meaning you get arbitrary clumps of them in sequence, nor are they individually separated so you have to play through levels you might not want to in order to see the true greatness (like the recreation of R-Type stage 3).