• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Galak-Z: The Dimensional |OT| Macross the Universe

The end of season three is so good.

I'm happy that there are still people making difficult and rewarding games. Even with its flaws, this game is really damn great.

EDIT: The patch did not fix the hitching on my end
 

SerTapTap

Member
Hai. There is a manual or something for the game. I'm in season 2, but I feel the need for a handy manual.

Controls are at the bottom of the screen, pretty much everything else is item descriptions (you see these when getting/buying them or in the Database, open the map then R1 to see it).

A big thing not explained well is Crash Coins, if you have 5 you can retry a mission when you die instead of starting the season over, and otherwise they'll be used to give you spare scrap at the start of the next season.

Say, speaking of, can you replay an earlier season to get crash coins to restart a later one? I lost my save on Season 4 again (quit the game on the ship deck, resume wasn't there) and I'm preeeeetty tired of it now
 

Alucrid

Banned
What the fuck. So I finally got some time to play the game today, get to S2-5, stop for a cup of tea, backing out to the title screen only from home base, and now I've gone back in to finish the boss and it won't let me resume. The only option it gives me is to start the season all over again...Honestly, I barely get much time to play so this has really fucked me off. Took my sweet ass time and had awesome gear etc to finish the boss and all.

Never had this issue before, and have always been able to resume episodes even after shutting off. Chances of me completing a season in one play session are slim at the moment, so this better not be an issue season/episode wide.

I could never resume a saved game from 2-5, only 2-4. Same with 4-3 I think. Couldn't resume from there either. I thought it might have something to do with it being a boss level, but assuming there's a 4-5, I guess that wouldn't be right. I started to alternate save back ups between cloud / USB because of the issue.
 

Kurdel

Banned
This game runs like horsehit, I really regret buying it at launch.

Hitching problems in Act 2 makes it unplayable seeing how fast paced it is. On second I am alive, then it hithes, and I am dead.

It's a shame because it is super fun, despite the technical mess it launched as.
 

SerTapTap

Member
edit: yeah, still hitching. Fairly early into the level too. I think it's shorter hitches now? Could be placebo effect. But totally still there.

I once again must complain about the shop. There are so many cool abilities, many of which I have unlocked and I still get 3 missile upgrade options, 2 ship movement options, repair, missile refill and only a couple interesting ones each visit. It hasn't really changed even in late game

I could never resume a saved game from 2-5, only 2-4. Same with 4-3 I think. Couldn't resume from there either. I thought it might have something to do with it being a boss level, but assuming there's a 4-5, I guess that wouldn't be right. I started to alternate save back ups between cloud / USB because of the issue.

This happened to me too, I really do not appreciate the half-way saving system. Binding of Isaac showed how to do Roguelike saves right, as have others like Road Not Taken. Save after every point of damage and respawn all enemies anyway for all I care, but let me resume.
 

No_Style

Member
Unless we're talking about something different, anytime I encountered hitching I would pause and I pause the game. It usually fixed it. Did notice framerate drops but not the intermittent micro pauses that I assume people are referring to as "hitching".
 

baconcow

Member
Did the reviewers talk about hitching problems, framerate issues, crashes, and lost saves/resumes? Nothing I read made it seem as major of a concern as is being mentioned here.
 

danowat

Banned
It's weird, I get some slowdown when there are a lot of explosions, but I've never encountered "hitching" so far.....I am up to 3-3...
 

SerTapTap

Member
Figured there would be more fanfare for the 4th boss? No voiced segment at all was really weird. Good fight, though honestly not super hard.

Mouth animations for the "viewscreen" people
Baron and Raider King
are fairly poor compared to even A Tak/et al.

Laser set up protip: go for high fire rate, high velocity and ice shots. Freeze + the chance of instant death (an impact can kill a frozen target) is way better than fire, and DPS highly favors high fire rate even if all your shots connect with low fire rate, which they won't. Precision muzzle/huge shots/double shot all seem like poor choices as a result. Kind of unfortunate how unviable almost everything is compared to assault/spread/autofire/supercooled/bounce.

Why is Poison Paint in the game. It's always in the shop and it's so useless. I buy it just to get it out of the rotation if I have extra cash.

Unless we're talking about something different, anytime I encountered hitching I would pause and I pause the game. It usually fixed it. Did notice framerate drops but not the intermittent micro pauses that I assume people are referring to as "hitching".

Yeah, the pause is a "workaround" but when I have to do that workaround multiple times per level...I mean I'm not even sure it's working at that point.

Did the reviewers talk about hitching problems, framerate issues, crashes, and lost saves/resumes? Nothing I read made it seem as major of a concern as is being mentioned here.

Technical concerns are all too often ignored unless someone's reviewing PS TV
 

Nothus

Member
Man, finally made it through season 2. I was in good shape going in to the last episode but ballsed things up on my way to the escape pod thing, which meant that I had to go into the boss fight with only 2 shield health and ONE ship health.
Thankfully I had 20 missiles ready to go which made pretty quick work of the boss.
At least there wasn't anything waiting to attack me by the warp point, I was expecting a ton of enemies there like there usually is!
 

SerTapTap

Member
I honestly think boss two is the hardest single moment of the game. Boss 3 only compares if you screw up/don't know what's happening (it IS a kind of scary boss) and boss 4 can be played fairly safe as long as you don't have only short range weapons and good movement speed. Multiple enemy mechs can be pretty hairy though. For the most part difficulty is small mistakes that add up over an episode/season.
 

Donos

Member
Vanishing save points in a game like this can totally destroy a lot of goodwill. I hope it's not really widespread. I have not much game time, so a vanishing save point so that i have to replay a whole season again would really put me off the game completely. Not had any technical problems with the game so far.
Still have the last level to play in season 1.

I still fuck up in fights when i want to go backwards (L2), while firing at an enemy.
 
The end of season three is so good.

I'm happy that there are still people making difficult and rewarding games. Even with its flaws, this game is really damn great.

I just finished that level last night.
Can you actually destroy the Pirate King's mech, or is it there just to emphasize the need to swap between the fighter and mech on a dime?
 
I just finished that level last night.
Can you actually destroy the Pirate King's mech, or is it there just to emphasize the need to swap between the fighter and mech on a dime?

I tried shooting him a few times but the bullets just seemed to bounce off of him and it didn't display damage numbers, so I'm fairly sure he's invincible.
 

SerTapTap

Member
Did .8% of players seriously finish season 4 without beating the boss of that level? That's what my trophy list seems to indicate

I just finished that level last night.
Can you actually destroy the Pirate King's mech, or is it there just to emphasize the need to swap between the fighter and mech on a dime?

It didn't seem to take damage when I hit it. I think it's just there to be scary and be a run-away boss. The only real trick is to get way ahead of it when it's time to warp. Even when it's not visible it's still moving, it doesn't teleport.

I still fuck up in fights when i want to go backwards (L2), while firing at an enemy.

Learning to fly backwards is tricky but possibly the most important skill in the game. Other good tricks include ramming frozen enemies (they can shatter instantly), rush then juke over charging mechs (they'll fly right past you and miss). Strafe is honestly not very useful unless your target is nearly stationary.
 
I tried shooting him a few times but the bullets just seemed to bounce off of him and it didn't display damage numbers, so I'm fairly sure he's invincible.

It didn't seem to take damage when I hit it. I think it's just there to be scary and be a run-away boss. The only real trick is to get way ahead of it when it's time to warp.

Ah, okay. Because I didn't even try to fight him.
And when he did get up close, I just juked and he didn't hurt me
. I swear, juke is a lifesaver.
 
Did the reviewers talk about hitching problems, framerate issues, crashes, and lost saves/resumes? Nothing I read made it seem as major of a concern as is being mentioned here.

People who have issues tend to share them so it might seem like a certain problem is more widespread than others. The one issue that all of us share is the frame rate slowdown when a lot is happening on screen
 

HORRORSHØW

Member
which one's the ayatollah trophy because that's the only one that didn't pop for me? i'm assuming it's for the last boss, which i beat.
 
Finished season 4 :) . The mech is GOLD after someone on here said you should slam your enemies into the wall to stun them for a few secs. I got the +1 mech sword upgrade in a crate so I didnt have to waste all my money on laser upgrades and could just spend it all on health/armor/thruster.

Game is fun, bummer we have to wait for season 5
 

SerTapTap

Member
Holy CRAP charged shot + Huge Blast is insane. I think I'm dealing 16 damage with a fully charged hit. And "overkill" damage to shields seems to transfer to hull health

Grimløck;174807015 said:
which one's the ayatollah trophy because that's the only one that didn't pop for me? i'm assuming it's for the last boss, which i beat.

Oh, huh, didn't know that was the glitched one...I thought people said there was one for season 5 which isn't out yet, but the ayatollah one is for the season 4 boss (at least it is as of patch 3)
 

Nixonomics

Member
Going to try beating the last boss again and see if the trophy pops for me, I think.

If you've beaten season 4 and haven't got the trophy - restart your game. There was a patch deployed this morning. I just started the game up and the final two trophies popped for me.
 

Tohsaka

Member
If you've beaten season 4 and haven't got the trophy - restart your game. There was a patch deployed this morning. I just started the game up and the final two trophies popped for me.

Yeah, I started it up again after the patch and the Ayatollah one still didn't pop even though I finished season 4. I still need some more Void Raider kills, I guess I didn't kill enough during the game.

edit: I was fighting the boss, and he ended up getting pushed off-screen into Deep Space where I couldn't hit him or see him anymore, so I had to kill myself and start the mission again. Great.
edit 2: Beat the boss again, and the trophy unlocked.
 
Did the reviewers talk about hitching problems, framerate issues, crashes, and lost saves/resumes? Nothing I read made it seem as major of a concern as is being mentioned here.
GameTrailers gave this an 8.5 even after mentioning severe framerate hitches and a game crash that toasted all of their progress for the season(!). I had to do a triple take at that one.

Looks like harrowing fun but I'm not going anywhere near this until it runs at 100%
 

SerTapTap

Member
OMG if you use Precision Muzzle + Charged Fire+ Huge Blast you fire a massive shot with a huge AOE explosion! It hurts you if you're too close too. ...do NOT use it with bounce shot.

Hm...it somehow does significantly less damage than just charged fire + huge blast. Disappointing and dangerous.
 

Alucrid

Banned
OMG if you use Precision Muzzle + Charged Fire+ Huge Blast you fire a massive shot with a huge AOE explosion! It hurts you if you're too close too. ...do NOT use it with bounce shot.

Hm...it somehow does significantly less damage than just charged fire + huge blast. Disappointing and dangerous.

I just like huge blast + three shot thing + wall bounce, so that as i frantically try to get away i also end up creating a field of death
 

todd360

Member
I thought season 4 was pretty hard. Took me a few attempts. I was so happy when the
last boss turned out to not be a huge threat since I didn't want to die and have to start over from 4-1 again.
 
I am so mad right now.

I spent the last two hours playing through Season 4, and got all the way up to the boss on 4-5, and right after I
delivered the data cube where it was supposed to go
, not only did the game lock me into mech mode, but it also stopped allowing me to do anything but use boosters. No laser sword, no shield....

The glitches have caused me way more irritation than anything in the actual game. The enemies and stuff I can handle just fine.
 

BSpot

Member
Just wanted to mention I'm all patched up and playing again. The chatter never bothered me, but it's worth noting that it seems just as common. I also still get hitching about as much.

Neither of those things bother me but it makes me a little spurious about whether the progress-glitches are resolved.

I truly hope so. :)
 
Got the patch in Europe. Seems to perform a little better but there's still plenty of hitching going on. I'm loving the faster transformation speed though.
 
How have I never heard of this game? Gameplay looks amazing. Art style looks fantastic, though the character portraits look more like '90s western cartoons than the rounded, clean designs of '80s anime. Hopefully the bugs will be mostly worked out by the time I can buy a PS4 model 1200 in the U.S., because this is on my download list.

p.s. nice OT.
 

Nixonomics

Member
An infinite season mode with leaderboards based on waves would make me play this much more.

Actually, a proper scoring system combined with different types of leaderboards for each mission would hook me.

/sigh

A boy can dream.
 

labx

Banned
Controls are at the bottom of the screen, pretty much everything else is item descriptions (you see these when getting/buying them or in the Database, open the map then R1 to see it).

A big thing not explained well is Crash Coins, if you have 5 you can retry a mission when you die instead of starting the season over, and otherwise they'll be used to give you spare scrap at the start of the next season.

Say, speaking of, can you replay an earlier season to get crash coins to restart a later one? I lost my save on Season 4 again (quit the game on the ship deck, resume wasn't there) and I'm preeeeetty tired of it now

Thanks man, I know that... I was asking like something retro made by the company. But the game its a little frustrating at times. There is no reward for being killed. Permadeath is cool, but not like that, something, a token, a star in the ship, a plate.
 

autoduelist

Member
Loving the game.

Totally unsure when it's safe to quit, though. I know I need to be on the ship... but can I press 'next' first? Or do I need to immediately stop playing?
 

Unit24

Member
Wow, I got to the first non-tutorial level of season 2, and I'm experiencing so much frame skipping that the game is now unplayable.
 

jkooXL

Member
Sorry, we're still trying to nab that hitching problem on a dev kit so we can profile it accurately, we have no idea what makes it hitch yet, but now that most of the other major issues are markedly improved or gone completely, we're going to spend all our effort on tracking it down, along with the freezing controls.

I understand everyones frustration, of course you want a game thats bug free. We're frustrated too, the game is getting *incredible* reviews, but many people have had at least one yucky bug. We're a small team and even with as much as we play, we've never seen many of these issues ourselves, we see them for the first time as people send us videos or watching streams online. We're going into full blown combat with these bugs, hopefully next week's patch will address them!

Thank you all for your support, patience, and willingness to be a part of the fight to make this one of the greatest space combat games ever!!
 

jkooXL

Member
Also, for a potential future endless/arena/score/horde/etc DLC mode, I want to hear your thoughts!! What other games have done it right? What would keep you playing GALAK-Z day in and day out even after you've completed the entire campaign? WE WANT TO KNOW!! Thank you!!
 

Tunavi

Banned
Also, for a potential future endless/arena/score/horde/etc DLC mode, I want to hear your thoughts!! What other games have done it right? What would keep you playing GALAK-Z day in and day out even after you've completed the entire campaign? WE WANT TO KNOW!! Thank you!!
Oh fuck. Fuck yes.

Survival Wave mode please. Like halo odsts firefight. Local coop would be nice too. Online if feasible. Leveling up with powerups after each wave.

Also how about a super smash bros like customization for replaying missions? (Ie bugs only, empire only, mech only, certain power up options ect)

Also, how about 1v1 deathwatch?

Also a wider field of view option please.

Any of these will be fine, thanks. Love the game, it's underrated
 
Top Bottom