I recall reading somewhere that Treasure didn't like shoot em ups much and made Radiant Silvergun as their way of "fixing" something they didn't like. Would that more games were made that way. There is nothing else like this, not even its (equally but in many ways opposingly brilliant spiritual successor Ikaruga.) The apocalyptic final boss (BE PRAYING...) has never been equaled. I've never beaten this without freeplay and probably never will, but that does nothing to diminish the brilliance of this experience.

Uma história incrivel de como os seres humanos irão sempre lutar para um futuro melhor e pelo o que eles acreditam mesmo apesar do fato de que talvez seja impossível, uma mensagem otimista que diz que apesar de todo sofrimento que passaremos nas nossas vidas, o resultado final sempre valerá a pena. Esse conflito se reflete no criador do jogo, Hiroshi Iuchi, que mesmo apesar da dificuldade que ele passou na criação desse jogo, vista nesse entrevista:

https://kotaku.com/1994-story-on-video-game-crunch-is-
brutal-reading-1846969165

Ele ainda lutou para a criação desse jogo pelo motivo de que ele acredita que a mídia dos vídeo games está num ciclo de destruição contínua de si mesmo, se transformando em "cultura descartável", Radiant Silvergun funciona como uma mensagem a todos criadores de jogos e jogadores para preservar o valor artistíco dessa mídia.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080419104927/http://www.emuxhaven.net/~silver/Link%20Stage%20Explanation.html

Gracias Radiant Silvergun por hacerme un adicto a los shoot em' ups.

Legítimamente es una obra maestra en muchos aspectos, pero vamos a hablar del mismo, me gusta esa mecánica de las 7 distintas armas, y sumado al tipo de situaciones variadas que tiene, algunas armas van a ser mas convenientes en ciertas areas que en otras, por lo que usar solo una durante el mismo no es algo recomendable, además, a diferencia de otros Shoot em' Ups, este juego también invita a ir grindeando las armas, ya que los enemigos no nos soltaran items para aumentar el nivel de las mismas, si no que conforme vamos eliminándolos o incluso atacando a los jefes con las mismas, el arma subirá de nivel, esto es importante ya que el juego va subiendo de a poco su dificultad, empezando con niveles sencillos y fáciles para luego ir aumentando su dificultad en próximos niveles, dando con sigo un reto bastante bueno y divertido, eso sin olvidar que si perdemos o acabamos el juego, podremos guardar la partida y al cargarla, desde el inicio las armas se quedaran en el mismo nivel que las subimos e incluso ir subiendo aun mas su nivel.
Gráficamente incluso a día de hoy este juego desprende magia, con un apartado visual bellísimo, independientemente de que te juegues la version de Arcade o la de Saturn (Como en mi caso), todavía se sigue viendo muy bien.
La banda sonora además de ser excelente, siento que combina muy bien con el juego y en algunos niveles hasta dando un toque épico a cada uno.
Los jefes es también otro punto que me gusta del juego, cada uno ofreciendo un buen reto, invitando al jugador a aprenderse bien los patrones de los mismos, porque un mínimo error te puede costar una vida.
Hasta en algo como la historia nos dieron un argumento bastante solido y bien trabajado.

Me es difícil encontrarle algo malo al juego, a lo mucho diría que puede ser algo complicado para los que no son fans de los Shoot em' Ups, pero no creo que esto ultimo aleje a la gente de probarlo la verdad.

En definitiva, es un juegazo en todos los sentidos, sencillamente espectacular.

Treasure is legendary and I’ve been hearing for years about how this is the Greatest Shmup Ever, and while it has plenty of neat ideas, I found it frustrating and a bit of a letdown.

To start with the good - Radiant Silvergun gives you six different weapons right from the start, and atypically for a shmup, actually designs stages, enemy placement, and boss fights around those weapons. This lends the gameplay a unique puzzle-like aspect and it can be incredibly satisfying to figure out the optimal weapon to get through a tough sub-stage or boss fight.

And then there’s the story mode, a unique reimagining of how a shmup can work on a home console. Story mode features no continues and a small life pool. As you play, however, your score on each run goes towards leveling up your weapons, and increasing your total life pool. These changes are cumulative across runs - as you play more and more, you slowly grow more powerful and the game becomes easier, mirroring the process of working towards a 1cc but in a more accessible and inviting matter.

My main problem is how slow the progression curve in Story Mode actually is. Later bosses have waaaayyyyy more health than in earlier stages and score accumulates slowly, even if you’re playing the system, so unless you’re really good, it’s going to take a lot of runs to finish this. That’s okay but, the game is very long (over an hour!) and by the time you’re powerful enough to hit the later stages, your weapons are so strong that the earlier ones become borderline trivial and turn into a major slog. By the time I finished this, I was absolutely forcing myself through each run, and it drained a lot of the joy out of the game. Maybe I would have enjoyed arcade mode more, but after all the runs I did in Story Mode, I have no real desire to go back to give it a try.

On top of that…something about the moment to moment gameplay just didn’t vibe with me. It just wasn’t as satisfying as many of the other shmups I’ve played, and that was a disappointment given Treasure’s general track record.

Not as great of a videogame as Ikaruga but if you're looking for an entry point to Treasure shmups this is definitely the better place to start. There's still a lot of depth to the mechanics but it's a lot easier to manage than Ikaruga. The "story" mode added for the Saturn port isn't perfect insofar as what it sets out to achieve but as an experiment in translating arcade game design to home consoles, it is incredibly cool and a great way to ease into playing shmups for a beginner. It's longer than an Arcade playthrough, with more stages and more bosses, but in return, you maintain your weapon upgrades after death and gain more and more credits the more you play. What you get is a mode that's more punishing in the beginning (since your weapons also level up much slower than in Arcade mode) but gradually opens up to you as you get better at the game in general. The problem is that Story mode makes it very easy to push through the game without having to learn the chains and bonuses you basically need to know to get decent weapon levels in Arcade mode, so it's better treated as its own separate version of the game than as an easy mode to practice in before playing Arcade (considering all the Story mode exclusive content this seems to be Treasure's intention for the mode as well). If you've played ZeroRanger, which is one of the best games of the past decade, some of this probably sounds familiar. It's clear that Radiant Silvergun was a big inspiration on that game and from the story mode to the bosses and weapons it was cool to see all the stuff ZeroRanger was referencing. I couldn't grasp much of the actual story here since I've been playing the untranslated Saturn port but from the little bits I picked up on, it seems to have influenced ZeroRanger's story as well. I do really need to play through the story mode again on a translated version, I only just started to notice some very cool metatextual stuff during like the last stage and I'd like to see what it actually meant. Outside of that, while I'm not the sort of person who commits to 1ccs in shmups (usually I'm happy if I can clear the game at all), I think I'll stick with Radiant Silvergun a little while longer, at least to check out the Arcade mode some more. It doesn't have the level of depth and complexity you'll get out of Ikaruga but it's still challenging, fun, and incredibly well made.

I know this is considered one of the greatest shmups of all time but I just could not get into it no matter how much I tried. The 7 weapons with 3 buttons mechanic is very cool but the game feels clunky and complicated in a way that Ikaruga does not. I feel that it is a great step in the right direction but I could never play this when I could be playing Ikaruga instead. I suspect that this game's allure comes partly from the many many years after release when the only way to play it was to import it from Japan at incredibly high prices. I know my opinion of the game was higher before I got it and was able to really sit down and play it for a while. It is still a great shmup though.

Radiant Silvergun utterly consumed me for a good three weeks, both inside and out of the game.

The other day I was falling asleep in the middle of class, and whenever I started dozing off, my mind would unconsciously channel a world of flight at blistering speeds, filled with red, blue and yellow dots or objects flying towards me. I simply could not get away from its field of influence.

I'm definitely no expert at the game tho, I could only beat it thanks to story mode, with all weapons maxed out and at least 61 ships lol. That said, it never stopped being fun; RS is the kind of game that I love, one that really entices you to keep improving with every run despite overwhelming odds.

I'm someone who has always been absolutely dogwater at shmups, just irredeemably bad, but the rogue-ish elements of Radiant Silvergun's story mode allowed me to see what the process of improving at a shmup is like without it feeling like I'm beating my head against the wall. That combined with the always excellent art, music, and game feel that I've come to expect from Treasure makes this game stand out a lot amongst its genre for me.

Also God damn that hyper sword makes my brain gush serotonin every time I activate it, insanely good mechanic.