Iga_Bobovic said:

Okay, I guess it is time for my Red Steel impressions.

First some little background info. This Thursday we started training with swords at my ninpo dojo. So it seems suitable that I would give some impressions, given that I have some experience with katana sword techniques.

Okay back to impressions, lets start with the presentation. The graphics obviously look pretty. It really looks like a clash between East and West. You have all the cowboy saloons and all these Tokyo like neon signs. Rolling Tumble weed and Japanese like temples and gardens with giant carp statues. The theme remains the same up until now, but there is still great variety within that theme. The menu's also look very slick and the picture you see before fighting an powerful enemy/mini boss is just awesome.

The technical side is also nice. It runs very smoothly at 60 frames per seconds. It has nice draw distance and the loading times are very manageable. The sound is nothing remarkable and the voices sound like a Saturday morning cartoon. Kinda reminds me of Bravestarr, with the futuristic western theme and the snake, bear, etc techniques. The voice acting is not as bad as some review say, it is fine. The story so far is pretty simple, but again not that bad. Just like a Saturday morning cartoon.

But that is not important, how is the fighting system. Well to be short it is awesome. WM+ allows you to have all the different direction of swings. This is best showcased with the wooden dummies. You can decapitate these dummies with a horizontal attack. Cut them from shoulder from hip with a diagonal attack from either upwards and downwards directions. But you can also slice them horizontally from head to groin, or even better, from groin to head.

You can do fast strikes or more powerful wide strikes. You have 3 different sensitivity settings and relaxed is the best, the other 2 ask you to swing like a loon. Fun but tiring for most of you fatasses. You can block strikes by pressing and holding A. This will block all strikes both horizontal and vertical. But it wont block power strikes from the enemies. A horizontal power strikes needs be blocked by keeping the wiimote pointed to the screen and vertical by blocking it overhead by pointing the wiimote at the side.

Then there are the lock on. Which you should put to manual immediately. You point at an enemy and press and hold "Z". It feels like Prime and Zelda in control. You can use the A button to dash around, just like Zelda and Prime.

The combat begins simple, but soon you earn more moves, and it becomes very varied and awesome. Each of these special attack will cause a status change. For instance a running stab will cause your enemy to fall over. Opening him up for a Zelda like downward stab. But each special attack has a finishing animation. When a enemies has a certain status like fallen over, stunned, or on his knees, you can use a certain special attack to finish the enemies in a brutal and awesome manner. My favourite being, grabbing an enemy by the head with one hand and putting the gun under his chin with the other hand and then pulling the trigger.

Fighting technique is half of the battle system, the enemies are the other half. It begins with stupid weak enemies that are easily dispatched. Then the game introduces other enemies. A dual wielding gun enemies, hammer guy, enemies with armour that requires strong slashes to knock off, robots that are similar to the Metroid Prime 3's flying drones. Enemy encounters take place in enclosed areas. It is not like Okami, you still have enough room to manoeuvres, but there is a forcefield that prevents you to simply run away. If you kill all enemies, you can move on and you energy is recharged.

The game really mixes up the enemy encounters. It throws like 2 brutes 2 gunners and a armoured enemy. Do you take down the gunner first? Or do you get rid of metal head? It keeps changing up, I am now up to the point where enemies block your strikes, causing you to use horizontal strikes when they block sideways and horizontal strikes when they block overhead. Sometimes the enemy encounters are really difficult, like when to hammer guys attack you in a small enclosed area.

The battles are really in your face. You dash from enemy to enemy, hit, block, see a stunned enemy. You quickly stab him. Your sword enters his stomach and life leaves his body and he crumples. You dash back,  launch an enemy in the air. Jump after him and knock him down, then slash again to jump on him and stab him in the chest killing him. You really do feel like an agile ninja. Shoot a guy, he kneels over, than a horizontal attack kills him instantly. You see a warning sign, that an enemy is about to attack you from behind. You do the spinning attack and kill him instantly with a backwards stab. So awesome.

That brings us to the final part, level and mission design. The level design is kinda a weird mix between Metroid and a linear experience. You see lots of alternative doors, that you cannot open until you have chosen the correct mission. You always see a green arrow that shows you were to go, but there are side missions that require exploration. The missions are chosen in certain missions hubs, the more you complete the more that level opens up. Until you reach the end of that level and move on to the next level. The game warns you that this is the point of no return, so if you want something to do, go do it.

The level design goes like this. You get a mission to save Tits, I mean Timiko. You succeed, and in her hideout you can accept a missions. You do them and you will reach Jud's hideout and accept another missions, sometimes multiple ones at the same time. One of them is the main missions and the others are the side-missions. Slowly and surely the level opens up until you reach the end of the point of no return. Some missions take place in Zelda like dungeon, but with very simple puzzles. So an Okami like dungeons then.

The side-missions are usually destroy 8 cars, get rid of the wanted posters, find stolen money.  little boring, but they do give you money that can be spend upgrading you weapons RE4 style. Exploring the levels required to complete these side-missions, but exploring in itself is enjoyable. The environments look lovely, and there are plenty of things to smash. Bottles, trash cans, telephones, fans, lockers all hide money. Money is sucked towards you Okami style, very addictive and weird. Why is there money hidden in strong liqueur? But honestly the level design and missions are just excused to get to the awesome battles.

So in short, It is like a mix between a brawler, Metroid and Zelda with an added sprinkle of   WM+ awesomeness.

Great:

Theme

Graphics

Battles

Good

Level design

Meh

side missions

story

characters

Bad

It is associated with that crap that is Red Steel 1

conclusion: this is what we have been waiting for when we first saw the unveiling of the Wii. this is the sword fighting game we all want. Striking is not 1-1, but close enough to be effective. Hit is horizontally, then diagonally, then upwards is all possible. Blocking kinda works like a simplified version of real sword fighting. And later on an even learn a parry move. You really do feel like an badass sword fighting samurai cowboy while playing this.

Excellent post.

Cubed 3 review:

http://www.cubed3.com/review/823/

Ubisoft have created an amazing adventure. They have taken everything from the last Red Steel and completely revamped it for the sequel. From the fluidity of the controls, to the impressive and tough boss fights, it's easy to pick up and ridiculously hard to put down. If you own a Wii, Red Steel 2 should not be overlooked.

9/10

hamzik said:

Right now Red Steel 2 is kicking my ass and kicking ass at the same time. I am trying to make my way out of the Kusagari temple and wow. The benemies are stepping up and the fights are defintely getting pretty challenging. I'm playing on ninja btw. Loving this game more and more for every second I play.

Yeah I am playing Ninja difficulty also. The enemies block your attacks and force you to block their power strikes too. It is definitely challenging. But it seems the challenge was to much for my poor nunchuck. I can't get the game to start anymore. The problem is in the nunchuck, I think.

Agnates said:

No jumpy cursor in RS2 for me, are you playing against a window or sometthing, direct (or close) light can affect it. If anything RS2 has some of the smoothest cursor with Prime 3 style cursor smoothing and you can even adjust it in the options. Did you change the Wii's sensor bar settings to "below the tv" when you changed its position? Though your shots don't really line up either way, it's more like a distanced mouse than an exact pointer (except of course for lightgun games that have proper calibration like HoTD and Ghost Squad), so maybe you just need to get used to it a bit after you change the position. You can also try moving the sensor bar a bit forward so that its extending beyond the TV it stands on a bit, if it's too far back it can affect the line of sight. Maybe stand up?

 Yeah I tried all that. I got it back on the smaller TV, and it sorted most of the problems out, it glitched occasionally, until I drew the curtain half closed - still glitched once in a while very occasionally. I think with the huge tv - 50 inches -the sensor bar is too high as I get problems with other games using IR too. The huge glass reflective table in the middle of the room isn't helping, light from the TV or from the window just bounces off it and throws things off. 

Usually I've found that the the imaginary line between the end of the remote and the point on the TV I've pointed at has been pretty dead on. But it changes with setup and TVs, distance etc. 

I'm playing on normal and really enjoyed the pitched battle against the second boss, having to use proper defence and the tiger move too. 

So what are your feelings so far on the games overall quality guys?

I can understand the 8.5 reviews. I don't know how far I have left, second boss here, but I would give it a 9.0 because technically, both in visuals and gameplay I feel it reaches a certain level of quality. 

However I do think it could be improved and isn't totally wowing me or anything. I think variety in design, more unique set pieces and a decent story for motivation's sake would help a lot. 

The game is built around swordplay, so the levels aren't set up for shooting, for cover or for elevated positions and small rooms and doorways. I can see why it's built the way it's built. If you were playing a game like this in traditional FPS type levels, you would get incessentely frustrated getting backed up against walls, or caught in corridors or doorways. The way the gameplay is designed around circle strafing and multiple enemies - you need room to move.

I do think some big bosses might work, like a giant robot and you can shoot the red marked parts to blast off armour, then slash at wiring or something. That would be cool. Perhaps do some horseriding, make it more like zelda in that respect, get on or off horse.

Caldera could stand to be more populated too, with people other than your meagre handful of contacts. Its strange seeing them talk in cutscenes then sit there like mutes in rooms. I also wouldn't mind some more metroid prime 3 like console manipulation - I think the stuff in MP3 beats this, things like welding circuits and rotating locks.  

Agnates said:

I think I had heard (possibly from NeoGAF or something a long time ago) of some Motion Plus units having a problematic port, that could be it and you should be able to return it and get a new one somehow... As long as your nunchuck (or classic controller or whatever) doesn't work in all games when you have motion plus plugged in but it works when you remove motion plus and play games that don't support it. And yes, when the enemies start doing strong attack combos that you have to change up how you block for every hit then retaliate it's awesome. Though I think the parry move is a bit overpowered but you probably need it on Ninja difficulty, I'm playing normal for now.

Yeah, you are correct.

I tested it with Boom Blox or however it is spelled. When playing with mote and chuck, it worked just fine, but when playing with WM+ and chuck, I suddenly get a warning to remove the chuck and my pointer is blinking on and off. If I get rid of the chuck it works fine. So wiimote works, wiimote and WM+ works, wiimote and nunchuck works, but WM+ & wiimote & nunchuck does not. So we have deduced that something is wrong with the WM+ nuchuck port. So I went on and played Endless Ocean 2 instead.

About Tiger, it is not overpowered on Ninja difficulty, because it does not really work at the second boss. He avoids almost all the counter attacks by jumping back. You have to block his attacks and stun him and then counter attack.

I'm still getting the reticule glitch, different TV, different room, different setup. It's not as bad but it's there. Why am I the only one?

Game has gotten better. Love the night scenes and the train ride is fun too. Those pesky ninjas are annoying. 

I think I haven't been properly upgrading as I have $350'000 in the bank. I think I need to up my sword and defence, get some new moves.