Going from the original to this is a significant leap ahead, a swansong that pays its tribute to the miles and miles of experience, refined to such a degree that you can really feel it to an almost clinical level. In a sense this already fails at matching up to what it's paying respect to years in the past, as its edge is mostly sanded, the unique artistry of the single stream of consciousness replaced by a more general structure. Things rise, things fall, go to one climactic finish that blissfully spreads its message of a loving companionship versus the mechanical ends of humanity.

But yeah I love that more. An easy victim to the usual, the violent swells, the compounding final boss rush, the absolute insanity of an XBLA-vibe masterwork. What I felt with the original was that it lacked "impact", and even though it's on the more appreciation-over-time end, I kind of kicked its ass. It was too easy for me on Normal and I didn't spend a credit. The almost-but-not-quite formless nature of most of its music enshrouding its levels left me feeling very miffed and unflinching towards things on an initial level. For whatever inexplicable reason, though it's significantly less of an innate strength in tone versus the OG's harsh and heavy beat vibetown, I could really feel the energy through each mission in Star Successor. But it's definitely possible that it's more many things coming together in ways that definitely appeal to me way more. Treasure is simply encapsulating the most awesome parts and aesthetical sensibilities of the generation they're in.

Of course, the biggest demonstration Star Successor has on offer is how it has simply mastered layered action in its gameplay. There's actually such cool shit to how bullet patterns and enemies come together onto your mental stack, testing significantly more within its frame of movement than ever before. If nothing else, Star Successor is quite literally the best mechanical rail shooter, and it's lovingly difficult!!! Despite the intense "who the fuck would want to 1cc this" length, each mission is a perfectly paced piece with some of the best positional boss battles to rival most action games! While not the exact back-to-back variety you'll see on the N64 the whole of Star Successor also doesn't feel like it quite ever does the same thing twice, although there's some overlap. I was so expressively losing myself in the final stage too. Real piercing the heavens stuff. Good shit.

I apologize though, you'll have to forgive me for comparing the two so strictly. Star Successor is not Trying to be the original again, and while there's merit to meshing the two together to see their more apparent differences and how much the developers have grown, it's still a battle of appeals. People should be playing both of these because as a sequence they're reflective on the absolute best of us and how that culture of the best of us moves over time. The most poignant note is that we'll be making 100 different versions on the same determination of our spiral united power, yet still result in beautiful wholly unique stars that inspire the way forward.

S&P:SS is a rock solid rail shooter, albeit a much more crowd-pleasing affair than its predecessor, which was akin to an iron-deficient recollection of End of Evangelion as reflected through the lens of a fever dream. Star Successor takes a more generalised approach to the rail shooter formula, with fewer gimmicky segments and an easily digestible rosary of stages that begin & end in the ways you could predict. Being the sole game Yasushi Suzuki has expressly worked on as Art Director, their calibre of style and pageantry in Star Successor is absolutely off the hook - I doubt I’m being controversial in my assessment of their skill as an artist being some of the most refined aesthetic sensibilities to have blessed the medium yet. The level of planning here for boss variety is particularly impressive, I’m convinced the bones are here for a knockout boss rush title. Huge fan of the guy that turns into dolphins that bounce beachballs and jump through hoops which all become dangerous projectiles. As a whole, I’m fairly convinced that this game is more smartly designed overall than its predecessor, as the consistency with which it dolls out mindful bullet patterns that compound effortlessly on the mental stack, and contextualisations for the multi-layered hazards are nothing short of impressive.

Where things turn sour for me is in the dodgy hitboxes and how drawn-out the stages feel, as the excursions buckle under their padding and turn into fairly languid drifts across locales and enemy swarms. Nothing lasts as long as I’d feel they should, and I repeatedly find myself sighing with fatigue when another mob corridor is punctuated with another miniboss as opposed to a more meaningful perspective or narrative shift. Credit where it’s due, it’s ultimately a good thing that Treasure took a very different approach for this sequel, one that effectively showcases the ways their aesthetic and design tenets matured in the span of a decade. My preference for the original is just a consequence of it winning me over in the battle of appeals - in the personal and artistic fulfillment I gain from “imperfect” games that scan as confused little miracles. Star Successor is solid, but far too articulately concocted to give me any real sense of impact - feeling more like a product, and therefore more prone to being scrutinised over the mechanical minutia. Ultimately a miss for me, but a stunning little simulacrum of a game I still find otherworldly.

We as a society collectively failed Treasure by not buying this game when it came out. People were constantly clamoring for games on the Wii that catered to the "hardcore" or "serious" gamer. Here it was. Ultimately I guess people were looking more for games like Mario, Zelda and Metroid, the kind of games that the Switch would have at launch that would make it huge, and I can't fault them for that. But it still stings that Treasure gave us one last masterpiece and it was all but ignored. They may never make another game again, and we are all the poorer for it.

Stronger than S&P1 in terms of its mechanical depth, content and replayability. Weaker in terms of its emotional impact and difficulty curve.

This is the only game that feels well-designed around the Nunchuck, not even a contest. The new control scheme flows like butter and I'd love to be able to play S&P1 with this control style.

Star Successor's game feel follows much more conventional game design tropes compared to the first game. There's way more enemies on screen at a time, with more tech to learn and a wider variety of enemy encounter styles. Every fight is incredibly unique and often feels like its flipping its genre without disrupting the core flow.

The expanded options of freeform flight, dashes, and unlimited continues are cool but the game kind of uses them as an excuse to make a lot of fights utter bullshit under the pretense you can just dodge it if it's cheap. As much as I love the new artstyle, there's just way too many particle and light effects that make overall game visibility so much worse. There are fights where the enemy bullets flat-out block your view of the boss. The melee attack's also been given this super shitty cooldown on the third hit, and it's a lot more ambiguous this time around what you can and can't parry - a trial and error game design choice that kept me from parrying as often as I should've just so I could play it safe. I had to redo so many otherwise easy fights because of all of these irritations, and given how much longer this game is than S&P1, it often felt like a nightmarish slog.

Don't take the extensive criticism as damnation tho, it's still S&P and it's still rad as hell. I don't think anything this game explicity tries to do is bad - it just so happens that the higher ambition leads to more hiccups along the way. It's still an extremely fun and fast-paced time that I'm sure I'm gonna replay the shit out of, in spite of how many moments made me blow my stack.

Subsumed. Immersed, but not immersed in a world, immersed in a thrill. EVERYTHING IS SPRAWLING, it barely lets, up. Where games would you pause, rest, the game just ante ups. If MOP vocal bombastic energy were in a game it would become Sin and Punishment Star Successor. Its just adrenaline , and more important you contribute to it. Where other games make you feel like you on a thrill ride, your skill affects the feel of the thrill. Its that dynamism that takes the things I loved about Sin and Punishment 64 but makes it more impressive. Consider how in stage threee its the gact that parts of the death traps are propelling towards you in asidescrolling part and the only way is to shoot it in between shooting the enemies. Like You are pushing against the stage itself. In stage 3 there is a boss around movement and destroying blocks like a puzzle game in between shooting back at a giant monster. The entire boss battle is this big set piece around movement. It’s sprawling, it can be exhausting and I admit my reflexes are slow, so while I say its hard to keep track of all the bullets, it changes not the feeling that the immediacy of jumping back in to beat the boss that whooped you ? WOO. You don’t sulk in loss, its one of my fave elements. One of the things I havevn’t decided if its too exhausting.

Like in between boss losses, I am putting down the controller trying to redo sole self. In terms of my hand hurting because I AM ALL THE WAY IN. And when I say dynamism bosses FUSE AT THE END OF STAGES. The Komodo’s dragon boss with the switch?!? That’s real design, you have to damage the environment, can’t hover in the air, then get normal shooting galleries in between. I am a sucker for a hell of a set piece where you use your environment to damage your boss. Any moment of a boss that just gets more and more subbosses? Like that amazing boss births two other boss fights! It’s unrelenting pace is immaculate. This game is able to string together consistent action that the frenzy is perfect.

I think that the only thing that failed the game is me? I could only play on easy so I know that ending boss wasn’t as amazing as other set pieces because it should feel more stressed out, but I def couldn’t step up to the task. This is def a game I would replay because the best bosses are mind bending, the dual boss you faced before the main boss? It asks so much of you, so much to attend to. You can’t let up. The game is smart to only let up to give you a fun shooting gallery. You totally forget that between the bosses the normal moment rail shooting is so fucking awesome, that you wish there were just a few more . This game only lets up, to let you catch your breathe to give it your all again. This game is spectacular, if it’s end sequence only felt as special as the first, this game would be perfection

There's something so "you get it or you don't" about Treasure games and other japanese action (JAction?) devs like Platinum, and you can probably guess which one I am.

Sometimes I like to think of games like a conversation between designer and player, typically the designer is posing questions like "can you beat this level? can you dodge this attack?" and the players answers simply by doing those things, but it's not a one way street.

Sometimes the player asks something like "Can I knock that full screen meteor right back into the boss's face?" and in this game the designer said "Yes, yes you can do that, here's a medal for it" and that's why this game is good.

If the original Sin & Punishment is Evangelion, then this is Gurren Lagann: sort of a similar thing, but in a more fan-appeasing/pleasing form; a little louder, brasher and self-aware, a little less thoughtful, meaningful and aware of its surroundings - though still leaps and bounds ahead of its contemporaries.

The price paid for this bigger/badder/better package is a bunch of time spent flailing the dodge button to try and get through ambiguous hitboxes of pure particle that obscure your entire view. At times it feels like you’re the victim of a practical joke by Treasure, playing a part in a parody of their shmup excess and the “faster, more intense” aesthetic choices that ruled anime of this era. The decision to give the player unlimited continues and generous moments of invincibility feels like an outright admission that a lot of this is pure bullshit, but it’s hard to feel bad about slotting in another quarter from your boundless pocket when you’re going up against a pod of cybernetic dolphins who’ve decided they’re sick of jumping through hoops and bouncing balls on their noses. While there’s a few too many bosses here who exist to pad this to a longer length than the original, there are still some really memorable baddies and associated cutscenes - big fan of the one where Isa just starts idly blasting a baddie during his big “rule the world” speech.

I approached this via the Dolphin emulator with some trepidation, expecting that using my mouse as an emulated Wiimote pointer would kinda suck, but I was pleased to discover that Dolphin’s a much sturdier creature now than when I last tried to do this sort of thing in the early 2010s. Playing through Star Successor with half an Xbox pad in one hand and my mouse in another was super pleasing, and I actually felt like some crazed cyberpunk badass... I can now empathise with those sickos who play PC FPS games using the same setup…

People always meme about Nintendo "they don't know what they're doing, always making stupid decisions", but no one ever give them credit whenever they make those insane market decisions by greenlighting based games that appeal to like 5 people. (That would require said people who meme about Nintendo's decisions to care about anything that isn't Zelda or Mario, but still)
Nintendo knew no one would give a fuck about that game, but they still went so fucking in with it and I'm thankful for it. Treasure's best game, definitely.

A good bullethell time with the classic control scheme of its predecessor or (recommended!) nunchuck+ wii mote aiming.
awesome and challenging bossfights bundled in stages mish mashed of 3D and 2D environments.

Unlike the first game you can move freely about in every direction, with enemies compensating for your flexibility with extra barrages of projectiles amongst some rather spongy enemies designed for you to use your charged shot, which takes a bit of time to get back.

You have your neutral shots, lock on feature with weaker bullets and a powerful close range attack whenever you hit the trigger at something close in proximity. As well as a convenient dodge roll. The controls are constantly busy, and using the ir aiming instead of right analog clears out a lot of the harder hand cordination which the classic control scheme moreso requires.

The charge shot adds a constant pressure of prioritising whether to use it against rows of lighter enemies vs the more spongy units, maintaining the stage and keeping mobs at bay while dodging bullets and hazards is the meat of the game and mostly the game works except for a few segments where the depth perception makes incoming projectiles and enemy spawns hard to keep in track. .

Bossfights are a-plenty and they all stand out with fun and challenging patterns of bullethells and hazards you'll need to adapt to while slowly curving down sizable HP bars with as many charge shots as you can muster outside of your weaker neutral artillery.

While differing from its predecessor with its new couple implementations it is a really fun arcady shooter that does well in its own right.

I have played this game with a:
- Mouse
- Trackball mouse
- Drawing tablet
Each time, it was a spiritual experience. It just fucking works. On an unrelated note Yasushi Suzuki is the GOAT for this art man god damn.

Half a star docked off for no nightmare sequence in Long Island, easily the most realistic part of the previous entry. I'd say, "what were they thinking?" but to be quite honest nobody knows what the hell's even going on in both of these games anyway, and that makes it all the more better. If Nintendo greenlights a sequel I'll probably die.

Wow this game. I think it's the best rail shooter ever made. Stylistically it's absolutely mental. The art direction is excellent, the OST is full of high octane, pumping electronic soundscapes and most importantly the gameplay is so damn fun. I think there's another best that this game achieved and that's in regards to the use of the Wiimote. It harkens back to the feel of playing a shooter in 90's arcades. In true Treasure form, this game is bloody hard as it's really a rail/bullet hell shooter. As you weave manically through the different levels, explosive patterns are thrown at you everywhere which take savant like vision to interpret and avoid. Then there's the monstrous bosses who materialise several times per area and sometimes take many attempts to thwart but when you finally beat them it's a souls like euphoria. I'm currently on the last boss and taking a breather as I've had at least 30 attempts at this post apocalyptic, behemoth of a thing. I think everybody who considers themselves a game aficionado should play this as I think it's one of the most underrated games ever made. Play it!

Can't believe treasure looked at sin and punishment 1 and said "what if we made it better".

EVERYTHING is better. The game looks better, though that is a given, as the original was an N64 game and this is a Wii game. But both games have a stellar art style. The game PLAYS better, which more intuitive controls, better stages and even cooler bosses (the last stage 6 boss and the entirety of stage 7 especially dude holy shit). Surprisingly, the game even sounds better; I did not think they would be able to top Yamanaka's work on S&P1's soundtrack. DEFINITELY play this, if you enjoy rail shooters or good games in general.

Within the first hour of the game, a large trench-coat clad man just appears, monologues in front of you as the protagonist, Isa, just starts fucking shooting him until he gets him to shut up. If that doesn't convince you to play it, nothing will.

I think everyone has those games where they look at it, say, "this looks cool but I'll never get around to it" and Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is one of those games. But holy shit am I glad I got the chance to finally give a look, this is maybe the most insane Nintendo game I've ever played. It looks gorgeous, there is shit flying at you at all over, the plot just happens and you just got to roll with it, and its all fucking awesome. It is a crime we all didn't play this game, because the style and insanity this game oozes is to be celebrated. I cannot even begin to describe the utter shock and amazement I had during just about every moment in the game. One of the last things you do in the game is have a fucking handcuffed fist fight with the main villain, its awesome. Sometimes a game just activates every neuron in your body, and that is all you need. Go play it. Now.

reminds me of being younger and going to arcade chains and gravitating towards like random Japanese cabinets. Distinctively remember beating one of the house of the dead games with my cousin, took us like 2 hours and we just kept feeding the machine but eventually we beat it. Also a huge fan of panic park and magical truck adventure and the dumb Star Wars one. Wish Nintendo put out more of these weird on rail shooters, think this and uprising are really special, this one feels more strictly like a port of an old arcade game than uprising which felt like it was made to take advantage of the 3ds. Both of these games I don’t love nearly as much as I could because they lack proper like vibration in the controllers which I think is really important for shooters especially ones with as much clutter going on as these two, oftentimes was hard for me to tell if I was actually making contact with the enemies. Idk maybe I’ll actually play a star fox one day, I just have always thought people have acted really annoying about that series. The wii nunchuck and wiimote still feel just as cheap as I remember them always feeling, just very breakable and plastic-y but that setup does work very well for a game like this, giving you pretty precise aim. It’s very ugly like the models look scary but I think the level design is kind of unmatched, the swampy forest level is a real standout, had a lot of fun with that one and this entire game. Breezed through it in like three nights, doing a level or two after coming home from work. Love it and the fact that the cursor is a lizard made me smile

Sin & Punishment: Star Successor absolutely RULES holy shit this game is so good. It's a constant barrage of challenging boss fights and it controls like a dream. The Wii pointer is perfect for an adrenaline pumping rail shooter like this. The music is good as well and it keeps the spirit of older Treasure titles. Now, story has never been a strong suit of Treasure games, but I will say that there's a plot point that recontextualizes the story in a pretty neat way. But it's all about the gameplay here and it is so damn good. I couldn't put the game down after I started it.

Best rail shooter I've ever played.