izigame.me

Radiant Silvergun is a fantastic game, one of my all-time favorites, so I was quite excited to see it finally released for PC.
--- The Game ---
With regards to the game itself, RSG is a masterpiece of a shmup, with a unique style of play when it comes to the player deciding how to use the multitude of weapons at their disposal. This system gives the player quite a bit of flexibility with regards to how they take down enemies and score with the chaining system. Many are familiar with Ikaruga's color chaining system, but while RSG's is similar, it encourages the player to leave some enemies alive, which further enhances the challenge. It's also key to powering up the weapons, which level up in an RPG style. This encourages scoring well early in the game to ensure the player doesn't fall behind later on, when the stronger bosses appear. There's much more to describe about the gameplay, such as the use of the Radiant Sword, the massive bosses, and the unique level mechanics, but going into all that will already make this long review even longer.
The visuals are gorgeous for the era during which this game came out, especially the very dynamic backgrounds that really bring life to the levels. Two games that came out around the same time that I tend to compare RSG to are Einhander and R-Type Delta, which, while having better defined backgrounds, are not nearly as dynamic. (Though both are great games in their own right.)
The music consists of stunning orchestral pieces, composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto, who was also responsible for many well known RPG soundtracks, such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story. It's not the usual upbeat techno/rock fare of many other shmups, but its grand scope fits the atmosphere of the game's story very well.
Speaking of the story, RSG has a surprisingly deep one for a shmup, accompanied by hand-drawn anime cutscenes done by Studio Gonzo.
--- The Port ---
When it comes to the port, this is essentially a port of the XBox 360 port, so it contains many of the same features. Enhanced and redrawn graphics, which are fully optional, with various levels of detail that can be adjusted to the player's taste. Since the game wasn't originally released in the west, there are subtitles for the cutscenes. Many of the options from the Saturn are preserved (Arcade/Story mode, number of lives, extends) and several new ones were added (training stage select, the ability to select weapon leveling, saving weapon leveling for story mode, online leaderboards and replays).
Many of these features were already available in the XBox version (as well as the recently-released Nintendo Switch version), so I suspect some of the complaints about this release are due to expectations of added features for the PC. If you own it on those other consoles, there's not much new here, though as a PC game it probably has more longevity.
To address remaining complaints about the quality of the port, I'll have to first point out that I'm playing on a Linux PC, using Proton Experimental (at the time of this review, the stable release of Proton did not run on startup). I am running on an AMD GPU, and I haven't yet seen a single instance of the Fatal Error or any other crashes described. The game is completely stable and works well with both keyboard and arcade stick. (Logically, a gamepad should work fine too.)
With regards to input latency, I'll have to defer on that, as I don't have my setup for determining the frames of latency. If it's based on the XBox port, I'm assuming it will be around 4 frames, though to me it feels fairly crisp. (This is purely subjective, but I compared it to Zeroranger and Ikaruga, and it felt similar, so I'm sure the latency doesn't exceed 6 frames,)
Some complain about the 720p resolution, which I'm not sure is an issue. It's a game from the Saturn made in the 90s. Scaling it up past 720p would kind of be pointless. (I think this may be related to playing fullscreen, which is not a problem I've experienced.) Some complain about the framerate, but again, to my knowledge it's equivalent to the Saturn version.
The slowdown of the Saturn is NOT present (same with the XBox and Switch versions), but RSG's playstyle means this isn't as big of an issue as it would be in a Cave game.
There are definitely issues at the time of this review, such as being unable to remap the movement keys on the keyboard. Actually, the keyboard mapping was probably an afterthought, as the game was explicitly said to require a gamepad to play before release. There are also occasional UI issues (such as some messages not fitting the screen or text overlapping other text).
It also seems like the cutscenes won't play when running under Linux. This is often an issue with games out there, so it's not surprising. It's possible there's a way to fix it, but I'm still looking into it.
Some of these issues make me suspect that the final release was rushed (in spite of the delayed release), but from what I know, Livewire is pretty dedicated to supporting their releases. When the Switch version was released, it had 5 frames of input latency, but within a few patches, that was reduced to 4 frames. That attention to detail shows me that they listen to the community, and I've already seen them acknowledge some of the bigger issues, like the Fatal Error crash. I expect that many of the issues will be taken care of before long.
--- Final Thoughts ---
I can't recommend this game enough, and while the port has its issues, they'll likely be fixed sooner than later. Game runs fantastic on Linux with AMD hardware and dual monitor.