Sin and Punishment Star Successor

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We run like our lives depend on it...because they do.

Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies/Star Successor is the Wii sequel to the Nintendo 64 action game by Treasure. The gameplay resembles the original's, in that the screen moves along a fixed rail while the player moves and maneuvers around it (shooting everything as they go). But the sequel adds the ability to hover and fly in the air, adding an element of the 2D shmup, along with the great advantage of Wiimote aiming and two playable characters.

The plot isn't as much of a Mind Screw as the previous game's. The story is set in the midst of a war between Inner Space and Outer Space that has lasted for aeons, having escalated in the time gap between the original game and the sequel. Inner Space's outposts are seven Earths, each slightly different, and ultimately presided over by "the Creators" (a fancy way of saying "Gods").

On Earth-4, an alien spy from Outer Space appears. Isa Jo, the son of the protagonists from the original game, is dispatched to destroy the spy using his inherited strange powers. But when he eventually finds it, there's a problem - it's now a she. It's taken the form of an utterly innocent, amnesiac girl. All she can remember is that her aim was to find out about humans, and that part of her name was "...chi..."

Isa is intrigued and surprised by the girl, whom he dubs Kachi, and decides that alien or not, he isn't going to kill her. The Creators aren't especially happy about that. The Nebulox, five devout servants of the Creators with superhuman abilities, are sent to initiate some...forcible persuasion. Isa and Kachi flee, but sometimes the only thing left to do is fight.

Conceived by Treasure not long after the Wii came out, and greenlit due in no small part to the sales of the original game on Wii Virtual Console, Sin and Punishment 2 was released, with full English voice acting to boot, in Europe on May 7, 2010, and in the US on June 27. So now it's even less of a Widget Series.

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This game provides examples of:

• After Boss Recovery: Most bosses spawn coins and health upon death.
• All There in the Manual: As with the first game, S&P 2 forgoes even a proper opening sequence and leaves character introductions and backstory to both the lengthy prologue in the manual and the online prologue from the European and Japanese websites. Good luck figuring out what's going on without it.
• Anime Theme Song: Three in fact. There are two versions of the song "Anokoroe" depending on which character you played as. The third being Isa/Kachi mode ending theme Hakai.
• Baka: Hibaru sometimes calls the player this if he/she dies.
• The Battle Didn't Count: You fight all the Nebulox, bring them down to zero hit points, and they all live to fight another day.
• Battleship Raid: There's a segment of Stage 6 that strongly evokes memories of the original game's aircraft carrier level.
• Black and Gray Morality: The Outer Space... things are trying to corrode Inner Space away for some reason. On the other hand, the Creators, who are defending Inner Space, created humanity for the sole purpose of having a Redshirt Army in their war against Outer Space. They even go so far as to annihilate any strain of humanity that grows too peaceful, because peaceful lifeforms do not make good soldiers. Humans are just caught in the middle, pawns for both sides, and whoever eventually wins will not particularly care about humanity's well-being... or continued existence.
• Boss Rush: The second half of the final stage.
• Brain In a Jar: The first of the Nebulox you face turns out to be this, your boss fight having been against a puppet body.
• Chewing the Scenery: My blood...is on FIIIIIIRRRREEEEEE!
• Collapsing Ceiling Boss: Giant/Horror Keeper, the final boss of level 3: the beginning of the battle is mainly spent navigating a block maze and deflecting his missiles back at'em when he pops up to stop him from harassing you: the second phase of the battle consists mainly of this.
• Cores and Turrets Boss: Security Level 17, which consists of a number of large columns that open up to fire at you which the main target, a red column, keeps hiding behind.
• Cowardly Boss: Orion Tseng's level 7 form probably counts: once you damage him enough, he stays stationary while you'll be able to move around him and the attacks he uses depend on where you're currently positioned in relation to him. He only reveals his weak point if you're right in front of it so it can attack you.
• Cultural Translation: The Japanese word for "god" crops up often in the original script. The translated version either replaces it with "the creators" or removes it altogether in each instance, undoubtedly to avoid religious controversy in the West.
  • Granted, some of the boss names that were changed are for the better: An armed plane originally called the "Squirrel" is renamed the "NC Ironbat," and the first Keeper boss, a giant chicken named "Cock Keeper" was renamed "Phoenix Keeper".
  • Averted in the European release website, where all references to God in the original script are kept intact, since it is a direct-yet-flavorful translation of the Japanese pages. If you read it, it is clear that "God" is not supposed to be the genuine article, so there wasn't much to be upset about anyway.
  • Also, the Nebulox' Japanese name, "Group of Five Countries", is more commonly referred to in media as "G5". Make of that what you will.
• Cut and Paste Translation: The US English version suffers heavily from this, unfortunately; made crystal clear with the inclusion of the Japanese voice track. Entire lines are cut/changed entirely (including many of the Mind Screwdrivers, and numerous lines aren't even in the Japanese, making it arguably a different plot entirely. Among the major cuts are Isa's Freudian Excuse and outright hatred of the creators (referred to, unhelpfully, as "Gods" in the Japanese), as well as casual mention of his origins on Earth-2.)
• Deadly Walls: Several flying segments contain walls, struts and other structures that will hurt should you crash into them. Taken most literally in Stage 3, where you're chased around by several walls filled with buzzsaw blades.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: The Griffin Keeper boss of Stage 5.
• Degraded Boss: An unusual inter-regional example: In the Japanese version's Stage 4, the fourth and final midboss is the Wheel Keeper. In the North American version, not only is it moved to just before the Ninja Keeper (the second midboss), it loses its boss status--that is, it doesn't get a Life Meter nor a time limit.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: More like prophets, seeing as to how the Nebulox are servants of the Creators, but the fact that you do, in fact, literally punch one out, it's kinda hard to resist placing it under this trope.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Kachi and Isa have an...interesting conversation on what makes a human a human. Kachi breaks it down into body parts. Slowly. With the camera following pointing at her respectively.
• Dual Boss: Master Ninja Keeper and his frog-thing are the most obvious example; some other boss fights have between 2 and 10(! attacking targets to be destroyed).
  • And who could forget Hibaru's twin-swordsman transformation in Stage 7?
• Duel Boss: The sword duel with Hibaru in stage 3 springs to mind, but can be disqualified if you play on Isa & Kachi mode. The fistfight with Deko in stage 6 definitely counts.
• Dub Induced Plot Hole (The "creators" are referred to by name in the first game, but the translators handled the word differently. See Cultural Translation / Cut and Paste Translation above.
• Fisticuffs Boss: See the entry about Unexpected Gameplay Change: also doubles as You Will Not Evade Me
  • And triples as Fetish Fuel.
• Flash Back: Isa has one in Stage 4. In it, we see that Saki eventually lost control of his monster form again while Isa and Airan were present, attacking a city and possibly fulfilling Achi's vision to Airan from the first game. It also shows where Isa developed his strong denial of God's existence.
• Flunky Boss: First form of Deko at the end of stage 6: he spends most of his time floating stationary while his army of Mooks and mechas assault you.
• Hey, It's That Voice!:
  • Isa is Shichika
  • Kachi is Kamijou
  • Hibaru Yaju is Celty Sturluson
  • Ariana Shami is Olivier
  • Deko Gekisho is Roy Mustang circa 2003
• Jerkass Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The creators, who made humanity solely for the purpose of having soldiers in their war with outer space.
• Laser Blade
• The Lost Woods: Stage 4 probably qualifies as this. Except that it isn't real.
  • .....Then how the hell did Ariana appear there...?
    • It was a world inside someone's dream (Isa's?) that they accidentally wound up in while teleporting. Presumably, Ariana has some sort of spiritual power that let her astral-project to the same place, once she got a lock on their position.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Hibaru Yaju meets Isa for the first time, immediately checks him out, and if you're playing as Kachi, asks him out for a date "once she's done killing his girlfriend." Girl moves fast.
• Nay Theist: Isa's doesn't believe there is a real God, as a real God would not tolerate "the creators", who he has no respect for as told on the European web page.
• Nintendo Hard: Even if you have played through the original game, you're probably better off starting on easy mode.
  • Funnily enough, its original incarnation was apparently much easier, due to the Wiimote being better suited to the game than Treasure anticipated, and they were told by playtesters to ramp up the difficulty. Satoru Iwata's reaction to hearing this was quite amusing: "Of all things, you told none other than Treasure to make it more difficult?"
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The Infant Keeper. After being spawned, the heroes take sympathy for killing its mother, the previous boss, so they spare it. It immediately kidnaps your partner, straps them to a pulley, and slowly lowers him or her into the lava.
  • You did kill its mom, but oh how you will want to gut the little bastard.
• One-Winged Angel: Isa and all the Nebulox crew in Stage 7.
• Only Six Faces
• Painting the Fourth Wall: You often have to avoid lasers by staying away from the spots they are striking the screen. Moving lasers can be seen being dragged across the screen.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Considering humans in general are treated like tools in this setting
• Playing Tennis With the Boss: Deflecting missiles, as in the original game. There's also a mandatory segment at the end of Stage 4's boss involving huge boulders which require you to time your melee combo perfectly on them or they just keep on coming.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Definitely steps above the original. And it's longer too.
• Sequel Hook: If the game is beaten on the "Isa & Kachi" mode, then we see Isa and Kachi discuss how their enemies will still inevitably come for them. Kachi's memory starts to return, and she remembers that she is in fact Achi.
  • Or that she was just faking her memory loss, and she knew who she was all along.
• Shapeshifter Baggage In Spades!
  • All beings from Outer Space have no set forms, and can freely shapeshift into any form. That would include humans, animals, rubble, and even entire planets as demonstrated by Achi in the previous game. The Nebulox are all capable of transforming into monster forms, including groups of creatures.
  • Isa inherited Achi's blood from his father, Saki. As such, he's capable of becoming a monstrous Ruffian, and the power could very well corrupt his soul like it once did to Saki.
• Shout-Out: Stage 7 invokes plenty, most of them from previous Treasure-developed games:
  • A battleship raid? Sounds awfully close to Radiant Silvergun's Stage 5 Evasion and Ikaruga's Stage 4 Reality
  • In the fight with Deko, the game briefly turns into a simplistic 2D fighting game, although you're bound to see some juggle combos when he hits you with dragon punches, flash kicks, and tiger knees.
  • The Five-Bad Band watching Isa take down the ship via a large monitor, with each subsequent member leaving to face him? Looks too much like Gunstar Heroes, perhaps?
• Star-Crossed Lovers: The story begins with the two heroes escaping, already inexplicably crazy about each other.
• Strange Bedfellows: The Keepers, whom you've been fighting with for pretty much 90% of the game, start attacking the Nebulox alongside Isa at the end of the game. They are supposed to be the defenders of the planet, after all...
• Stuff Blowing Up: Constantly. EVERYTHING blows up, even the corpses of fallen enemies.
• Traintop Battle: Played more-or-less straight in Stage 6, where you run along a train shooting down tons of foes, except you have to detach the train carriages as you go along so that the boss behind you runs into them.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: A real monster of a switch at the end of Stage 6; it turns into a 2D fighting game in which you have only one combo and are handcuffed to the boss, which both serves to prevent you from rolling away too far and allows the boss to yank you in at his leisure.
  • The first part of Stage 3 plays much like a Horizontal Scrolling Shooter, and one of the boss battles seems awfully like Senko no Ronde.
• Violation of Common Sense: The first boss of stage 6 is the main cannon of the battleship the player has been taking on from afar. You see this cannon come out of the ship while at a reasonably safe angle and distance. So what does the game have you do? Why, fly in front of the cannon to do battle with it, of course!
• Wake Up Call Boss: Orion Tsang, the Stage 1 penultimate boss, serves as a warning that the Nebulox are not going to go down so easily.