5th August 2015, 11:10 PM
I beat the game on Normal some time back, but recently I was playing W-Ring: The Double Rings for Turbografx-16 (well, PC Engine, since it's an import-only title) recently... and while Normal difficulty was easy, so easy that in fact I beat it without getting a game over on my first try when I picked the game up a few days ago, impressive stuff for me -- Expert is an entirely different story! As easy as the game is on Normal, it's BRUTALLY hard on Expert. The last level, level 6 plus level X (because game over in level X sends you all the way back to the start of level 6, so it's not a "full" level even though it really is), is super, super hard. I did beat it, but I ended up having to use a cheatcode to do so because it was just impossible for me otherwise. I spent more hours trying to beat that level than I did level 9 of TCD Zero Wing, to less avail. Level 6 is so narrow and confined, and there are SO many enemies on screen all shooting at you! Not getting hit is near-impossible at times, even with the best weapon for the stage, the Red + ? weapon that sends bouncy spheres around the screen forwards and back.
In all my tries, I defeated the final boss once, once without hte cheatcode and once quite a few hours later with it. See, theat first time, I beat the final boss, but somehow died moments later. I don't know how, I should have been safe with the boss dead. Killing me after beating the game was incredibly cheap, and I never managed to get that far again, frustratingly -- that time I got to Level X with four lives left, only to waste all of them and reach the boss on my last life since Level X is really hard unless you have weapon powerups when you reach it, which I didn't because I'd messed up at the Level 6 boss and got hit. Eventually I gave up and turned off the game... then looked on PC Engine FX and found a cheatcode. If you go into the sound test and start playing music tracks 7, 9, 3, and 10 (in that order), you get an additional pair of sphere-shields rotating around your ship. You're not invincible, but this help was enough to get me through on this second attempt, though it did take more than a few tries to get past level 6+X even with the help. I'll count it as a win. :p
Overall I do love W-Ring, more than many people seem to, but the difficulty level is so unbalanced! It's a very easy game on Normal, even EASIER on Easy... and a near-impossible nightmare of frustration on Hard ("Expert"). And in Expert, the last level (6 and X combined) is exponentially harder than any other stage. A smoother difficulty curve would be much better than what you see in this game. Also, I never really felt like I could just get through with pure memorization -- there is a random element to this, more so than an R-Type or Zero Wing. It's very hard to tell when a bullet was going to hit my ship, and when it was going to bounce off the shields, and the bullets are fast, small, and SERIOUSLY blend in to the background too, particularly in level 6. So, I often just had to take my chances, and this often resulted in getting hit. And in a level where taking even one hit is doom (because you lose your weapon when you get hit and weapon powerups in lv. 6 are far apart, so you'll get hit again and die), that is a problem. I still like this game, but I wish the bullets were easier to see, and it was more clear about when it was going to hit the ship or the shield ring. The game has great graphics and music, with impressively animating backgrounds and lots of color and variety, but the hard-to-see bullets are its one visual flaw.
Finally... why is the title "The Double Rings" when that shield around your ship is a single ring? There are some things constructed out of two rings, such as the red-weapon balls or that twin rotating shield from the cheat, but I don't know if it's meant to refer to any of those things, the single ring around your ship is the most obvious thing. It's a weird title. I wonder if the manual explains it... but I don't have the manual, just a loose card for this game, and it'd be in Japanese anyway of course.
In all my tries, I defeated the final boss once, once without hte cheatcode and once quite a few hours later with it. See, theat first time, I beat the final boss, but somehow died moments later. I don't know how, I should have been safe with the boss dead. Killing me after beating the game was incredibly cheap, and I never managed to get that far again, frustratingly -- that time I got to Level X with four lives left, only to waste all of them and reach the boss on my last life since Level X is really hard unless you have weapon powerups when you reach it, which I didn't because I'd messed up at the Level 6 boss and got hit. Eventually I gave up and turned off the game... then looked on PC Engine FX and found a cheatcode. If you go into the sound test and start playing music tracks 7, 9, 3, and 10 (in that order), you get an additional pair of sphere-shields rotating around your ship. You're not invincible, but this help was enough to get me through on this second attempt, though it did take more than a few tries to get past level 6+X even with the help. I'll count it as a win. :p
Overall I do love W-Ring, more than many people seem to, but the difficulty level is so unbalanced! It's a very easy game on Normal, even EASIER on Easy... and a near-impossible nightmare of frustration on Hard ("Expert"). And in Expert, the last level (6 and X combined) is exponentially harder than any other stage. A smoother difficulty curve would be much better than what you see in this game. Also, I never really felt like I could just get through with pure memorization -- there is a random element to this, more so than an R-Type or Zero Wing. It's very hard to tell when a bullet was going to hit my ship, and when it was going to bounce off the shields, and the bullets are fast, small, and SERIOUSLY blend in to the background too, particularly in level 6. So, I often just had to take my chances, and this often resulted in getting hit. And in a level where taking even one hit is doom (because you lose your weapon when you get hit and weapon powerups in lv. 6 are far apart, so you'll get hit again and die), that is a problem. I still like this game, but I wish the bullets were easier to see, and it was more clear about when it was going to hit the ship or the shield ring. The game has great graphics and music, with impressively animating backgrounds and lots of color and variety, but the hard-to-see bullets are its one visual flaw.
Finally... why is the title "The Double Rings" when that shield around your ship is a single ring? There are some things constructed out of two rings, such as the red-weapon balls or that twin rotating shield from the cheat, but I don't know if it's meant to refer to any of those things, the single ring around your ship is the most obvious thing. It's a weird title. I wonder if the manual explains it... but I don't have the manual, just a loose card for this game, and it'd be in Japanese anyway of course.
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