Review Chovus 3/5 · Jan 14, 2019
Short review
R Type 3, for SNES
Rating: 6.5/10; Above average
This game is a 2D side scrolling spaceship shooter with bullet hell. The story is nearly non-existent, being only a few lines long. That really makes it hard to care about what you are doing in the game, and it could have been much better with a little extra …
R Type 3, for SNES
Rating: 6.5/10; Above average
This game is a 2D side scrolling spaceship shooter with bullet hell. The story is nearly non-existent, being only a few lines long. That really makes it hard to care about what you are doing in the game, and it could have been much better with a little extra work done on the story. The best feature of this game is the detachable weapons system. There are 3 different types to choose from at the beginning, leading to some replayability, and each has 3 different attack types depending on which color power up you pick up during levels. The weapon system can be attached to the front or back of your ship, and detached and recalled. When on its own, it fires when you do, though it has only the most basic of movement (pretty much just drifting until you recall it). All of this helps greatly to deal with enemies from all angles. On top of this, the system does melee damage and blocks projectiles. By far the most fun in this game is manipulating the system for greatest benefit.
Also included are 2 power ups: missiles that give you another straight forward attack, and side satellites that can inflict melee damage and block projectiles. You can also charge up your normal attack into 2 different super attacks. All in all, this is a good variety of tools to use for combat, though the game encourages keeping the fire button pressed because there is no limit on ammo or firing rate. The sole exception to this is the reflective laser, which fires 3 beams that can bounce off walls. A new beam cannot be fired until the previous despawns (the 3 different beams are independent of each other, so sometimes you may only fire 2 beams at a time while the third is busy bouncing around). I preferred this weapon, and had fun using it tactically to try to set up the angle of reflection to hit enemies, and setting up beams that would bounce back and forth in a small area for a long time as a booby trap.
The main flaw of the game is the level design, and its interesting platforming-like mechanics. There are crushing ceilings with only a small safe area, corrosive dropping goo that can destroy walls and floors that block your way, jets of plasma that shoot out and follow a path which can be hard to predict, and a portal thingy which spawns enemies while forcing you to also be inside it sometimes to pass through walls. As if the enemies and their projectiles were not hard enough, these environmental hazards significantly ramp up the difficulty and will result in many cheap trial and error type deaths. This is the where the game loses most of its points.
