i don't see the two things you said as flaws. the entire concept of sin & punishment (and you should know if you played the original) is its risk-rewarding mechanics. you're not punished for sending projectiles back, you're punished when you're not good at doing that. it's a game brutal in its own way, you HAVE to get better yourself if you want to get better. there are no power ups, levelling etc, you have no excuses. you have to take the hard way and learn. that for me is great.
Just to let you know, risk vs reward means that a situation has aloted risked and rewards associated with it, and you do the action based on weighting them together. Since you have to hit the missiles, it's not risk vs reward because you have to do it anyway. It's not a "option." Since you have to focus on the missiles, the enemy, your character and the mechs, I say it's far too unfocuses.
Which is part of my problem. The game doesn't create difficulty by making an interesting attack or changing up the boss's pattern, it's just add more **** on screen. That is why the boss fight sucks.
long leveles and the number of bosses aren't an issue either. the key to getting better at S&P2 like any other SHMUP is pattern memorization. it will be too easy if levels were so short you could memorize them in a couple of playtroughs. it's thanks to lengty levels if S&P2 has much more lasting appeal than it should have. and as for bosses, everyone loves boss fights. i never saw anybody saying there were too many boss fights in any game XD
Most games have 1 or two bosses per level. Some RPGs have two or three in a row, and a lot of the time they are the final boss. This game has most levels ending with 3 bosses in a row. And that's every level. Most levels have anywhere between 5-7 bosses. The only ones off the top of my head that don't are 0 and 5, and 5 still has three bosses, well over the norm for most games.
There is also another genre all about memorization. Never heard of it? It's called the bullet hell and uis one of the worst things to happen to an entire genre. It's basically "stay in a spot and don't get hit." If S&P didn't have a dodge, it would be a true bullet hell.
I disagree. Not only is there the risk/reward system that DarkCronos identified in place, but in reality there are very few (none?) situations where you can't do something to extract yourself from harm; you just have to prioritize your actions and react quickly.
You can to very little avail. In the same fight, you can destory the mechs, but they come back. In most games, destorying something came make the fight easier. Here, not only is it somewhat manditory, but they just come back next go around anyway. But again, my point was that there is too much crap on screen. It doesn't help that to make the fight hard, they throw more crap at you in the form of a giant laser.
Take the boss you're talking about. The soldiers are a non-factor: they shoot perfectly level only, so they don't restrict much space. The mechs are a bigger issue, but they take time to deploy. The missle launcher fires a volley of five separately-fired missles, separated by about a second-and-a-half each. The boss is immune to normal shots.
It's up to the player to figure out the best manner to proceed. If you have Isa, you should use your charge shot to eliminate one of the gun-mechs (and conveniently two or three soldiers as well), focus your fire on the second gun-mech, launch the first rocket to finish off that mech, then turn the remaining rockets on either the boss or the last mech (your choice).
You're missing the point. The point is there is still too much garbage on the screen. Compair this to Star Fox 64 and you'll see what I mean. Typically it's one foe who attacks. Not the stationary boss and it's massive army of tanks, minions and a giant laser that comes half way though. The closest boss like that in another game is the Space Armada stage in Star Fox for the SNES.
Simply put, the same element that you're identifying as a problem is actually the solution to your issue! And this same theme is apparent throughout the game; if it's dangerous and bigger than a regular shot, you could probably use it to your advantage. You should also note that your melee attack destroys or deflects nearly everything in the game, including small-rounds.
My problem is that there is too much crap in general. It's the problem with the entire game. It's sloppy game design. Rather than make an interesting boss, they made a mess. Take Dr. Robotnik's little wrecking ball in Sonic 1. Now, remove the ball. Instead, add the little beetles (at least 3 from each end) and a crap ton of the bees (who shoot 4 balls). Every so often, have a bog laser come across the screen. Oh yeah, and he'll do the wrecking ball every so often. That was this fight, and it's most fights in the game.
Regarding the length of the levels, all but Stage 6 can be done in about 15-20 minutes, and they all have checkpoints spread liberally throughout. This is a perfect balance: if you just want to have fun and play the game, there's no penalty for dying, and the levels are just long enough to hold your interest. If you're going for high scores, you must strategize throughout each level: you COULD get a higher score by taking risks, or you could play it safe and guard your health instead. The fact that every second you spend walking, rather than flying, increases your score shows that the developers were very cognizant of this risk/reward system. I think it mostly works perfectly, although the best approach to the final level still eludes me.
What. Since when did 15-20 minutes become the norm in action games? You can finish a level in Mario in anywhere from 3-5 minutes. Sonic levels will kill you if you go over 10 minutes.Half of that interval would be 7.5-10 minutes per stage, still longer than most action games (at least the classics).
What I'm doing is comparing S&P2 to other games. Other games don't fill the screen with garbage. Other games don't have 15-20 minutes long levels. Other games don't have almost 7 bosses par stage. Take a look at Star Fox 64. That stage was ~ 6 minutes, less than half of the low end of a stage in S&P2. S&P 1 levels were also a lot shorter. This stage took only 7 minutes. Not to mention there were 5 bosses, all of which weren't trying to be the final boss (BTW, I could never tell when a level would end as every boss felt like it was the end boss).
Also, most of the levels started to bore me half way though.
