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 wildly fun arcade-y experience. Star Successor is a big step up from its predecessor with tons of over-the-top setpieces and boss fights making good use of the updated hardware to better convey the original vision. The gameplay is still very fun and the new challenges let it shine much better than before. The story thankfully still makes very little sense but I quite liked how casual the main duo was and it ended up feeling more natural. It also helps that the game was about 3 times longer than the first, but still a reasonably short length to keep it a solid and condensed experience. My only problem with the game would be that some of the boss fights near the end are too challenging for my baby skills. The jump in difficulty especially for the final boss felt pretty unfair.

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.

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…

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.

Star Successor has a few problems with its oddly lengthy stages, confusing scoring system, and sometimes jarring visuals, but it is still a better game than its predecessor. Providing tighter controls due to the use of the wii mote and nunchuck; better combat, thanks to the focus on aerial combat, and charming visuals that are seen throughout the array of environments visited throughout the game. Star Successor is challenging, interesting, and overall weird enough to give it a look through for anyone. And if you're a fan of on rail shooters certainly pick this one up.

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.

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.

An excellent sequel to Sin and Punishment that improves on the core mechanics of the original by expanding the levels and adding more variety to the mix. It definitely shows that Treasure released Ikaruga between the two games, Star Successor doesn't mess around with the difficulty. Boss fights in particular are a highlight of the game; they're very tough but just as exhilarating and fun, it feels truly rewarding once you overcome them. The Wii Remote worked well with the game, clearing projectile barrages and aiming charge shots at enemies felt precise and responsive.

The story I was not as keen on, the first game felt more focused in a way and even a little emotional by the end, but with this type of the game it is secondary to me. What's more important is that the hefty eight-stage campaign takes the player to interesting locations and keeps the gameplay varied throughout. The levels are not as vibrant and colourful as something from e.g. Child of Eden but they are fun and big in scope. Music was nice but often drowned out by the on-screen action.

All in all I really enjoyed my time with this, a tremendous rail shooter that I'm sure would be even better with another player. Not many games like this one out there - especially these days.

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!

At the heart of Sin & Punishment is an undying dedication to emergence. Over time, the game demands more control over the player’s movement and the ability to aim properly has to adapt in response. It throws enemies, levels, bosses, and plenty of balls of energy at the player that take well advantage of this design. Everything falls into place, culminating to produce an experience like no other.

Naturally, Star Successor is an experience like one other, and it isn't nearly as emergent. But it feels deliberate, acknowledging that an attempt to recreate that beautiful curve of d-pad/joystick action would miss the novelty of it, given most people playing would’ve long since experienced the N64 game. Not to say this sequel brings nothing new to the table, far from it in every fashion. The player is now granted full control over movement in the Y axis, seemingly the next logical step after the point of control the original left off on. Star Successor lets far more loose creatively, coming off as a collection of insane, tightly designed levels, being less concerned with how it’s experienced as a whole. An increase in difficulty was clearly intended though, which is where this iteration’s closer focus on bullet hell comes in. This factor is not a main appeal, which is obvious given how much of it can be dodged through. Like any game with interesting gameplay, it pushes a lot of different scenarios gone about in ways unique from each other. This was present in the original through what I mentioned previously, but the scenarios feel much grander and bolder in the successor, independent of controls. It’s shown best through the bosses, one fight’ll be unhooking train carts across three lanes to impact the tailing enemy, another’ll be shooting at two platforms to move them upward while keeping them balanced to lead the boss into lava. Though that’s a small sample, it should clue you in on the range of crazed situations the game sets up.

To be a sequel is to be compared to what preceded, and Star Successor does its best to iterate on the formula left behind while ironing out some nuisances (timer) of the first game. To be a sequel is also to contrast itself from what preceded, and Star Successor succeeds in this regard as well, offering up plenty more newness mechanically, aesthetically, and in the content itself that makes it quite distinct from the original. Playable on its own, but it’s only enhanced by being aware of what came before. A gem of a successor. A true star of a sequel.

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