Raiden V: Director’s Cut

I generally know what I'm getting in to when I buy a Raiden game, so there's not a whole lot I can add to the review section as far as it goes to critiquing the gameplay. However, the one thing I wish I could see from the makers of Raiden is a full, widescreen version of the game, rather than the classic portrait style. Much like the other reviewers, it can get distracting to see the added visuals on the left and right hand side of the screen, so I'm hoping the next Raiden game will ditch the portrait mode and give us a full landscape view.

I've been playing Raiden games since 1996, when I got Raiden Project for my PlayStation 1. I fell in love with the pure arcade action, the narrative subtly woven through the gameplay, and especially how it makes you feel that you're in control of a very powerful little ship.. No distractions, just surprisingly tactical gameplay in a simple package. While I love the selection of ships and weapons, I can't forgive the removal of TATE mode. ESPECIALLY in this day, when we all have monitors which can easily be turned for a proper RAIDEN experience. Most of the action is drowned out with excessive information outside of the game window... and very bad voice acting. It's truly irritating to hear about how you haven't destroyed enough for so-and-so-level, while focused on an artificially small window that always feels claustrophobic. I'll admit that I don't really understand the Cheer system, only because I haven't played enough of this formerly-anticipated game to truly understand it. I truly hope that the Raiden series can survive this unfortunate chapter in its history. It deserves better than this.

I personally found this game amazing, there is a good choice of customizations for the player, the game is long and difficult with it's many stages, but is also fair and forgiving enough to let you save and continue or restart from the last checkpoint if you want to stop playing and continue later, or just do better in a certain segment. The soundtrack is amazing as it always been in the Raiden games, and while the story isn't well delivered (at all), it still gives an insight of what is going on in the game universe. The only issues i personally have with this game are more annoyances than anything, like the fact that the game seems tugging at your sleeve to use a cloud service everytime you start, or how Eshiria (the mission control) treats you like a moron whenever your destruction ratio/speed aren't perfect. Raiden V is an amazing game to me, it has some annoyances but what it does right is top notch. The original pricetag is way too high, but if you find it on sale is a must buy for SHMUP fans.

The gameplay its decent. I was curious it borrowed a similar shield bar from UN squadron. My issue with this game is the fact that they made a visual novel story with shump stages to advance instead of the usual arcade gameplay I am used to. This makes it a hindrance to my experience. If it just had the usual arcade mode action with the screen rotation as a choice besides that lame "story" mode. This mess would have been fixed... Please make a real Raiden next time.