Recent reviews by Mistress Spitfire

A genuinely life-changing game no matter how you look at it, it's just as gripping as I remember it being all those years ago.
Don't let life slide you by, make the most of it.

Now that the Epic account business is sorted, I am finally confident in changing my review, because this game is the craziest this franchise has ever been.

A lot of stuff has been ported over and recycled from 5, and a lot of people aren't cool with that, but this series has been doing that since day one. It also makes perfect sense in the context of the story, and the new mechanical changes for each class have made playing through the game an absolute blast.

The story continues directly from 5, and went so far off the deep end I still haven't picked up my jaw from the floor. An absolute wild ride from start to finish, and a must-play.

My only warning is to anyone using AMD hardware that there are likely to be some crashing issues. From what I can tell from the forums, there are workarounds, so beware of that if you buy this with AMD stuff. Asides from that, I cannot recommend this game enough.

If you already thought the base game was hard enough, this DLC certainly isn't for you. But I mean come on, if you care enough about shmups that you're buying Devil Engine you'll be getting this anyway.

An absolutely fantastic remixed campaign with some absolute banger songs, but it's so insanely difficult that without the knowledge and routing to get through it, you will be burning through lives and continues like nobody's business.

New ship is fun, new levels are great, new bosses are insane. But good god, a full 1cc can't come soon enough, I need to know how some of these stages are even possible.

Dear Granzella.

Please, please, PLEASE, remake every single R-Type stage on this engine. I would happily buy each of them for full price.

Thank you,
R-Type community.

SPOILER WARNING: This DLC is not just three stages. There is one extra hidden one, do not read on if you want to keep it a surprise for yourself.
Well, well, well. Ever since it leaked that R-Type Delta's infamous Stage 6 was going to be added to the game, I was worried. For anyone who doesn't know, the stage in the original was full of blood and gore, with one of the most terrifying renditions of the Dobkeratops in the series' history, that somehow slipped into an E-10 rated game. After playing the full pack, I was right to be worried, they butchered the stage.

I'll start with Z5.0 first, a remake of R-Type's stage 4. I really like the change of visual style here compared to the original, the digital vibe really helps the stage stand out. A really solid stage that I have no complaints about.

Z6.0 on the other hand? Please, go look up R-Type Delta's stage 6 for yourself and then watch a playthrough of Z6.0 to see how badly they butchered my baby. Some of the gore and blood is still here, sure. But the stage got heavily gutted in terms of its music and content. Shortened music, as per the other Delta remake stages. The real criminal part is the leadup to the boss. In the original, the ship select tower you start the game from is revealed to have been taken over, as it slowly dramatically opens to the crescendo of the music, infected R-9 units escaping from inside that come to fight you.

That entire cinematic element of the fight is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GONE. No tower, they just lazily fly up from off-screen. They do in fact have some fun AI to fight against though, so I can give points for that. The boss? Also heavily gimped. Instead of growing out of the bottom of the tower from a pile of gore, it looks more like a dead, gimped up Dobkeratops in robo-fetish gear. The scary nature of the boss is just completely gone. Once again, a nice touch to add an extra phase, but too little too late.

As I don't particularly care for the Image Fight stages, I was expecting to be leaving a big thumbs down on this review, only the Final Stage of the original Image Fight remade to go, but to my shock, I was met with a surprise remake of the F-B stage from the original R-Type Final. New enemy layouts and a neat new boss, I couldn't complain, I had a big goofy smile on my face (You can even refight the original R-9A, if you choose the R-99 to fight the boss with!).

For a hidden four-in-one finish, I can't complain at all. A very welcome surprise, and despite the very gimped Delta remade stage, I enjoyed the pack.

Please, please make more of these, and not pay-to-win DLC packs for in-game resources.

Video games have peaked as a genre.
To call this game anything but perfect innovation of the FPS medium as a whole is an insult.

They turned a game like Devil Daggers, that slowly made the early game boring and grinding for times lame, into a fast-paced as you want it to be, eye-wateringly beautiful score-chaser with so much depth it's horrifying.
From the outside in it looks almost imperceptible, but after a few hours of play it'll all start making sense.

Without a doubt, the most perfect score chasing game ever made. We have peaked.
There is no bettering this game.

Dear Granzella.

Please, please, PLEASE, remake every single R-Type stage on this engine. I would happily buy each of them for full price.

Thank you,
R-Type community.

A very surprising combination of stages in this DLC set to be sure, but it makes for a welcome breath of fresh air.
First stage of the set is Metropolis Quietus (now worded as The City That Sleeps) from the original R-Type Final. The enemy layout feels a lot more dangerous this time around, with a few pattern changes that'll catch veteran players by surprise. The boss of the area, Xelf-16 has seen a bit of an upgrade too, much more of a back and forth fight, with a vastly different attack pattern seeing walls of liquid metal hands moving back and forth, and a lot less waiting around. A very fun stage, but I feel lacking in certain visual departments. Some of the destruction effects seem very tame compared to the PS2 original, and as good as the water looks here, the splashes of the laser in the water look cheap by comparison.
Second stage of the set is Stage 5 from R-Type 2, one of my most feared stages in the entire series, proving memorisation hell for anyone who doesn't know the stage layout inside and out. With the addition of the warning markers, a-la DLC Set 1's X1.0, I found the stage a lot less intimidating compared to the original, finding my way through with relative ease, as the stage is nearly identical to its original, with lots of new visual flourish that help make it unique (The stage in the original game is quite visually dull, IMO).

HOWEVER
Reaching the boss met me with what I had feared the most, one of the nastiest bosses in the entire franchise, a boss so fearsome that most of the 1 credit clears of the original game seem to safespot the boss and time it out. No such luck here, as destroying one of the Blender's weakspots electrifies the area around it, meaning you can't safely tuck into it as before. The boss's enemy spawns are more predictable this time around, flying from top to bottom instead of all around the arena, so the boss shoots additional projectiles to spin the arena around as well, and the lasers coming from the mid sections are telegraphed now to make the fight a little more predictable, but it's still a SEVERE fight. Took me well over an hour on just Normal difficulty alone, so god knows how horrifying the fight is on R-Typer 3.
The stage itself has a little jank too, with a section near the end having an invisible wall that seems to block your movement, and the hitboxes of the boss' walls proving MUCH larger than they appear, especially compared to the original game. As visually stunning as the stage is, I feel it could have used a little more time in the oven.

A very challenging DLC set this time around, definitely one for the experts. Be warned.

Dear Granzella.

Please, please, PLEASE, remake every single R-Type stage on this engine. I would happily buy each of them for full price.

Thank you,
R-Type community.

Stage Pass 3 finally here, and what a shiner of a start. Stage 1 of Mr. Heli and the Deep Sea Ruin from In The Hunt, two pretty great Irem shmups (and only one of which I've played).
The first stage of the pack is the Mr. Heli one and the stage is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bright and vibrant, some pretty touch and challenging enemy variety too. Like in the source material, there are no POW Armors to get upgrades from, all of which being buried underground in the dirt that you have to break open. The stage also has a pretty cool midlevel transition and a really faithful boss recreation. They even made it bleed this time, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, Granzella absolutely ruthless.
The second stage of the pack is Deep Sea Ruin. Unlike the source material, it's an autoscroller of a stage instead of a mad rush away from the giant Stone Golem (Now a Robo Golem), and the blocks you have to break/touch to push through from the original are replaced with spiky blocks that you HAVE to shoot, and contact damage destroys your ship instead. A little bit of a shame but now that the stage autoscrolls you're not exactly in as much of a mad rush anymore I suppose.

Both stages are very challenging and good fun, and leave me hopeful for the returning R-Type stages they have coming down the pipeline. One of the more enjoyable DLC stage packs.

Please don't just stop at a third stage pack, Granzella. Keep making more, they're so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good.

What an agonizing, but amazing experience. My ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ arm hurts.

Dear Granzella.

Please, please, PLEASE, remake every single R-Type stage on this engine. I would happily buy each of them for full price.

Thank you,
R-Type community.

With that out of the way, the end of the second Stage Pass is finally out, and they certainly picked some interesting stages to give the Final 2 treatment.
Abandoned Lab is the first of these, Stage 4 from the original R-Type Final, and considering how the other Dobkeratops depictions in Final 2 so far are rather static, I was interested to see how they'd handle the boss at the end of the stage.
The stage itself is absolute eye-candy, the glass of the "tank" still teasing at the contents inside it, all of the stage elements are there. The boss itself has an obnoxious checkpoint leading up to it that's around 15-20 seconds long that can't be skipped, which is a shame, but shock horror! The boss isn't an embryonic, anemic Dobkeratops having been experimented on, but is in fact a fully grown Dobkeratops in the SubAtomic armor from R-Type 2! It was an interesting twist, for sure, with the water in the tank drained and a new variant on the fight itself, it was a nice surprise. It's good to see they're keeping up the tradition of making the Final stages slightly different to their original counterparts, but it still would have been nice to have seen the original boss.
The second stage, Glitnir Station, is another Tactics stage, and made for a more enjoyable stage in terms of its music pacing compared to Fortress Geirrod from the previous DLC Set 5. A Hyllos model ship also guards the generator this time around, taking a lot more damage than the waves of ships prior. But even more interesting to me, replaying the stage on a higher difficulty, there's a second segment AFTER this boss where the music changes! One of the carrier fleets tries to make an escape and you have to gun the thing down before it gets away. A much more solemn song plays for this one as well. If this stage can do mid-stage song swaps, why can't DLC 5, butchering Delta Stage 4's music so only half of it plays? But I digress.
The final stage is stage 2 of the original R-Type and it is candy for the eyes, a gorgeous stage without a doubt. It's a hell of a lot harder than the original game's stage too courtesy of being the final stage in the stage pass, with one of the midstage checkpoints being near impossible on R-Typer and higher if you die thanks to being too weak to fight some of it back. With absolute onslaughts of high-HP enemies coming at you, including a new, heavily pregnant one that spews its young as it passes you, it's a stage I feel I'm going to dread doing in the future.
The boss itself though is the return of the Gomander, one of the series' staple monsters. I wish it had stayed out of this game.
GOOD LORD IT'S HIDEOUS, A boss already ripe with visual symbolism of female reproductive organs with giant worm-like maggots inside of them, and you animated the thing to make it move and squirm! Blegh, it's a much larger Gomander than the one in the original game too, but it still fights in seemingly the same way though.
Overall I think they adapted all three stages very nicely in this one, and I look forward to seeing what they do with future stage passes!

...
There will be more stage passes, right Granzella? There better be.

Dear Granzella.

Please, please, PLEASE, remake every single R-Type stage on this engine. I would happily buy each of them for full price.

Thank you,
R-Type community.

Now, as for the DLC itself, the first of the stages is an interesting one, an entirely new stage created for Final 2, based on Fortress Gerrod from Tactics 2, I think? (One of the few R-Type games I haven't played, forgive me!) The stage itself is very visually interesting, and it's fun to fight against different sets of ships that haven't had much limelight in the past, like some of the Beam Force compatible ones. The stage layout seems a little barren though, even with the inclusion of three different paths to the "boss", which is just a generator at the end of the stage that the enemies defend. My main gripe is to do with the music, where the intro to the stage still plays even when past the start of it, and it lasts 20 seconds long. Especially for casual players, having to die and restart to not get to the meat of the music is very disappointing. Once the intro plays once or you hit the first level checkpoint, it should start from the main point of the song.

BUT, the main attraction of the DLC, Stage 4 of R-Type Delta, was so perfectly teased from the DLC's initial trailer, with the stage intro playing to snippets of moon landing audio playing in the background, almost brought me to tears.
The stage itself? Gorgeous, flawless, probably one of the best looking stages in all of these DLC sets next to Azure Grotto.

But the music, THE MUSIC! They butchered my baby! Only half of the stage's music from the original game plays, the stage's intro music plays at the END of the song for some reason, it's wrong, wrong, wrong! One of the special parts of Delta was the fact that it was the first ORIGINAL R-Type game to use a CD based soundtrack (R-Type Complete CD doesn't count, as it's a remake of R-Type 1), so a lot of elements in Delta are synched to the music. Having half the song itself missing and the song so out of place and cut up is agony to hear, none of the checkpoints are synched to the parts of the song they should be either. It was so close, yet so far. An impeccable stage, TAINTED by a lack of effort on the audio department, which is a shame because the previous DLC stages did it so well.

All they'd need to do is add the full song back in, and sync the different stage checkpoints with the music to make sure the parts play when they should, and it'd be perfect, but now unless you're huge on R-Type Delta like I am, this Stage Pass is a pass from me. I still want to give it a recommendation for the enjoyable stage, because I hope that they can rectify the missing music in the future.