February Together Retro: Off the Rails

[BoneSnapDeez]

Treasure doesn't always agree with me. I find their games to be way more flashy & radical than "fun" a good chunk of the time. Good on you for trying it out though.

[marurun]

Treasure is, in some regards, an experimental studio. They take a theme or idea and really run with it. Sometimes that works great. Sometimes it can leave folks a little cold. But I'm glad they do what they do.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Agree completely. I love some of their games, but others leave me cold. Sin & Punishment is in the latter category, but it’s sequel is in the first. I’m going to push through to the end on “normal” difficulty, and then I may give a quick go at “easy” mode to see if that helps a bit.

[pierrot]

Oh~ you're playing it on Normal difficulty? That's probably the first problem right there. Normal may as well be Ultra Hard for newcomers. Are you playing with save states also? Even on easy mode I had to spend a lot of time figuring out bosses, and the mechanics to really get anywhere. It's not a game anyone should play as a straight through point A to B experience. It's one that really needs to be approached more like a shmup: Learning mechanics, patterns, and stages; Chasing new personal bests. Polestar is a perfect example of the game telling the player to get good, or get wrecked. The sequel is a much more approachable game, but not as rewarding. Most bosses in the original have something extra going on with them, and figuring that out is probably 75% of the fun. Also, the final boss can be a nightmare even on Easy, so--.

I guess since there seem to be a couple other people playing it, I'll just drop some tips: Start with Easy (it's really not that easy). The manual shot (red reticle) should be your main shot type. The lock-on shot (purple one) has its uses, but you have to be really discerning about when to use it, or you're going to be at a significant disadvantage. The close range attack should almost be your main attack. Any time you can swing your sword, you're probably better off doing that than firing. This is especially true when the enemies are firing missiles, or other things that can be knocked back at them. When knocking things back at enemies, they fly back to wherever you're aiming, so you have to be aware of that if you're trying to also deal damage. Learn to dodge (this should be much easier on dual stick controllers, I would think), because you'll need it.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I wasn’t using save states...but I am now after getting wrecked by the incredibly cheap homing missile boss...

[marurun]

I dabbled briefly in a game called Jinmu Densho. It's sort of a rail shooter. You are a samurai running along the ground. You can jump rather high and swing your sword to attack. When you power up your sword swing shoots. You can also charge your sword attack. I derailed quickly because the game just doesn't appear to be that fun. But it's definitely trying to do a lot of things.

Imagine the designer who sold this idea to his execs.

Designer: "So, it's like Space Harrier except you have no jet pack and you can't shoot. You just run into the screen and swing your sword!"
Exec: "That sounds a little boring. No shooting or flying? Can't we have any shooting or any flying?"
Designer: "How about we allow high, floaty jumps that are sort of like flying and we let the sword swing shoot when it's powered up. Is that OK?"
Exec: "Deal! Let's do it!"

There's probably more to this game, but I'm not investing any time to find out.

[pierrot]

I wasn’t using save states...but I am now after getting wrecked by the incredibly cheap homing missile boss...

Are you talking about Polestar at the end of Airan's stage, or the final boss? I'm not trying to insinuate that you need to prove yourself without save states in order to truly get it, or anything, I just think you're potentially setting yourself up for a really bad time. You could end up spending hours on the final boss alone, because it sort of assumes a certain base level of mastery with the game, and trying to brute force it might not go so well. That's partly why I say starting out on Easy is ideal, because it's not necessarily a world of difference in difficulty, but it's much easier to figure out things in "Easy" mode, and then apply them in Normal.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I’m talking about the one where, if you don’t defeat it before it hits Airan, you die instantly. I do OK up until then, but the margin of error on that fight are so small and the instant death so infuriating, that I decided to use some save states to get through it...

The next level, on the subway car, seems much better, but now that I’ve started, I’ll probably use save states to get through the rest of the game, sadly.

.....

I can see your point about the easy mode, and I probably should have started on it. Still, though, and unlike a traditional shmup, in feel the controls are just too imprecise. Even with a really difficult shmup or platformer, I may want to throw my controller against a wall, but I always feel in control. I’m not getting that with Sin & Punishment. (Again, though, I think it’s just me. The controls don’t “click”with my brain for some reason.)

[pierrot]

No, it's not just you. The controls are not easy to come to terms with. At least, I struggled with them for a while on the N64. I assumed they'd be a little easier to deal with when remapped to more modern controllers, but maybe not. While they're not the most intuitive, I don't really feel like they are much of a hindrance once they actually click with one's brain. From that point, it's mostly just a matter of getting good at aiming, I feel.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Knocked out Sin & Punishment! The ending wasn’t too bad. Apparently, it is just the level where you fly around on a piece of shrapnel while destroying an army that gave me trouble. (To be fair, destroying an entire army while flying around on a piece f shrapnel would give anyone trouble.) The final boss was a bit strange. It basically threw the game’s dodging mechanics out the window and had you play something like Missile Command re-imagined as a bullet hell shmup. You rack up so many points during the fight, you can pretty much continue as much as you need to beat it.

I re-started the game on easy after rolling the credits. It is soooooooo much easier. That mode may even redeem the experience for me...