R-Type Dimensions III Nintendo Switch 2 Review
What can really be said about the original R-Type that hasn’t been said a million times before? It’s one of the all-time classics of the shoot ’em up genre, both popular and influential in equal measures. Many games have done their best to walk in the footsteps of the game, but very few have matched it. That, unfortunately, is a statement that also applies to its own sequels. Sometimes you just get it right the first time out. Still, you can generally look forward to a good time with any R-Type game. That should have been the case for R-Type Dimensions III, a remake of the Super NES-born third entry in the franchise.
Well, if you’re interested enough to be reading this review, you probably have at least caught a whiff of the situation around this ININ-published remake. It carries forward the naming convention of the remakes of the first two games that have been kicking around for a while, and even tries to maintain some consistency with the features of R-Type Dimensions. Even with a different developer and under the guidance of a new publisher, there was no reason this couldn’t have been a good remake of a game that deserves to be a bit more widely available. Sadly, what launched a couple of months ago was nothing short of a complete disaster.
There’s no reason things had to be that way, but I suppose, to ININ’s credit, it was swift to acknowledge the game was not where it needed to be. It outlined a plan to deliver some updates to fix things up, and since both of the announced patches have arrived, I decided to swing back and take a look at the results. I will say upfront that the current version is a vast improvement over the initial one in so many ways that I can’t even begin to outline them all. Like, just on the level of functioning as a proper game where stupid things like a boss attack killing you in a cutscene don’t happen anymore, we’re there. Provided this is your first time with any version of R-Type III, you probably won’t notice anything terribly amiss at this point.
On the other hand, if you’re familiar with R-Type III and are looking for a good way to play it on modern platforms, this is a considerably more mixed affair. Again, post-patch, it’s a lot closer to the game it attempts to remake. But it’s still far enough away in little ways that fans are going to notice. It’s going to mess with muscle memory and strategies. Here’s hoping the team is planning to continue acting on community feedback. It’s a lot better than the tragic Game Boy Advance port of the game, but that really isn’t saying much.
On paper, R-Type Dimensions III has a few compelling features. As with R-Type Dimensions, you can swap between an approximation of the original game’s style and a sparkly new modern take with the push of a button, and that’s still a neat little magic trick even if you know what it’s actually doing. You might want to turn off the scanline effect that is enabled by default, though, as it really overdoes it. You can also apply a handful of filters to the 3D graphics, but they’re not very useful either. Apart from that, you get a jukebox where you can listen to the game’s music, leaderboards to challenge, multiple difficulty settings, and the ability to play in either the original checkpoint-based style or a new mode called Infinite that gives you infinite lives and respawns you immediately when you die.
You will, of course, die a lot. This is an R-Type game, after all. With it originally being a Super NES game, it leans hard on set pieces that lean into that hardware’s specific suite of graphical tricks, but the R-Type heart still beats proudly here. That means memorization-heavy shooting action that rewards skillful use of the signature Force pod. You can choose from three different versions of the pod in this game, and each has its own behavior and power-up forms. Your ship can charge up its regular shot as usual, but you can overcharge in R-Type III for even more kick. The drawback is that you can overheat your lasers by doing this, and that’s going to be a very big problem in most circumstances. Many parts of the game rely on the player using the charge shot to hit otherwise inaccessible targets, so don’t think you can ignore it.
One of the big additions for R-Type III was the two-player mode, allowing a duo of fighters to take on the Bydo Empire together. That feature is here, but just like in the original game, you’re limited to playing locally with someone else. If you can swing it, you’ll probably have a better time with this game. Just flip on the Infinite mode and enjoy the sights and sounds with a buddy so you can laugh at each other’s mistakes without worrying too much. I will say that at least from a pure visual standpoint, the new 3D graphics look cool. The game is a lot less playable while using that mode, however, as things that were designed to pop out in the original 2D graphics can easily get lost in the 3D shuffle. And hey, what good are gratuitous scaling and rotation-based set pieces without that Super NES style?
Even after a couple of big updates, R-Type Dimensions III is still a flawed remake of a game that was always closer to decent than great. Frankly speaking, Switch and Switch 2 owners are spoiled for choice when it comes to shoot ’em up games. If this remake was going to be for anyone, it would have been the diehard fans of R-Type III. Yet the many little inaccuracies and impractical interpretation of the original game’s look and feel mean that’s the crowd likely to be most disappointed with this effort. Perhaps it will eventually get where it needs to be, but in the here and now, R-Type Dimensions III remains somewhat difficult to recommend.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by ININ Games
