Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo



Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo is the upgraded commercial version of the freeware doujin game Mecha Ritz developed by HEY. Like its original freeware version, Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo has a heavy emphasis on rank and encourages the player to raise it as high as they can possibly handle it, while also providing the player with tons of resources to ensure they survive the ever increasing difficulty. As a result, this creates a highly dynamic game where each playthrough differs from the last.

Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo also introduces new stages, music, story, mechanics and more.

The game can be purchased on Steam, DRM-free on the official site and on the Nintendo Switch.

Gameplay Overview
Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo is a simple two button game (with some additional function buttons) with 12 playable mechas (4 are available from the start, 2 new mechas are unlockable and 6 extra variants are also unlockable).

New to Steel Rondo are branching stages, where after each stage's cutscene (as long as the time requirement is met and the player has already cleared the game), the player is presented with two choices. The top choice will lead the player to stages from the original Mecha Ritz while the bottom choice will bring the player to new and harder stages (with more scoring potential).

From now on, top choice stages will be referred to as A variant and bottom choice stages as B variant.

Controls

 * Z (Tap): Fires the mecha's standard shot.
 * Z (Hold): Fires the mecha's focused shot.
 * X: Activates the mecha's bomb.
 * C: Skips cutscenes/Switches weapon type when playing CBP training
 * Z+X+C (Hold): Self-destructs your mecha and instantly game over (Can be used to restart the game).
 * V: Pauses the game (NOTE: You cannot self-destruct while the game is paused).
 * Esc: Exits the game.

HUD



 * Left: Current amount of lives. Increases by shooting 1up items. Decreases when hit without a shield. Maxes out at 10 lives.
 * Bomb: Current amount of bombs in stock. Increases by shooting bomb or double items. You can use a bomb by pressing X. Maxes out at 10 bombs.
 * Shields: Current amount of shields in stock. Increases by shooting shield or double items. A shield will protect your mecha from losing a life when hit. Upon respawning after losing a life, the amount replenished will match the amount of Heat. Maxes out at 5 shields.
 * Heat: Determines your mecha's shot power and the amount of shields you will respawn with. Maxes out at 5.
 * Time: Amount of time left to reach Veloce and stage branches. Increases after killing bosses and at the end of every stage. Decreases gradually over the course of the game. Locks player into A variant stages and fake TLB if it reaches 0.
 * Rank: Current game difficulty. Represented by a number from 0 to 500. The higher the number, the higher the diffculty. See the Rank section for more info.

Unlockables


Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo has a numerous amount of unlockables.

Stage branches must be unlocked by beating the game's TLB, Veloce once. Veloce can only be reached if the player can reach the final stage without having the time drop to 0. If the time ever drops to 0, the game will lock the player into A variant stages and the last stage will have a fake TLB which kills off the player's mecha upon death, giving the player a bad ending. Players can hop between A and B route until they're out of Time and locked to be on Route A

When unlocked, the stage branches will allow players to pick stage variants in whatever order they prefer as long as they still have time left in the timer. B variant Veloce can still be accessed even if the player decided to go all A variants until then.

Other unlockables include the different mecha types, higher starting ranks as well as bullet/explosion colors. These unlock over time until the player reaches 10 hours of play (Which have to be played either on CBP Training or Standard)

Mechas
Mecha Ritz Steel Rondo has 6 "Side-A" Mechas and then 6 more mechas of the "Side-B" the names of the Mechas are just their order of choice and behave differently from the Side-A Mechas.

Items
There are three types of items that can be dropped by an item carrier. The type of item a carrier will drop is indicated by the color of the ship as well as how close the player is to the carrier when destroyed (doesn't apply to white carriers). You can collect an item by shooting at it until it becomes "broken". If you do not collect the item fast enough, it will start switching between whichever items are within that type.




 * White carriers will always drop a 1up regardless of distance.
 * Green carriers will drop bonus items.
 * Purple carriers will drop resource items.

Bonus items
 * 8000/5000/2500 pts. items: Gives you extra points and increases rank.

Resource items
 * Bomb: Grants the player an additional bomb
 * Shield: Grants the player an additional shield
 * Double: Gives the player both a bomb and a shield. Only dropped if the player is very close to the carrier upon destruction.

Rank
Rank plays a huge role within this game. You can always check what rank you are currently at by checking it in the HUD. Upon starting the game up, you can select your starting rank from 0 to 500. Rank affects bullet speed, bullet density as well enemy types. Rank affects the game significantly with every hundred it increases by. Starting from rank 150, all enemies will start shooting out suicide bullets upon death. Rank increases gradually and by performing certain actions and decreases every time the player gets hit or loses a life.

Scoring
There are multiple aspects to scoring in Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo, with the most the prominent one being speed killing. When an enemy is destroyed, a bit of text will appear which determines the multiplier applied on the enemy's point value. The possible values from highest to lowest are: Grande (Flashing), Grande, Tall and Short. In order to get the highest multiplier, you must destroy the enemy before the timer (usually located at the bottom right of the enemy) expires.

Also throughout the stages, are green item carriers. Upon destroying one, it will drop a Bonus item, which will give 8000, 5000 or 2000 points depending on how close you are when destroying the carrier.

Emptying a boss' healthbar before the timer runs out will give you a time bonus of 10,000 points (100,000 points for the TLB).

Located on different parts of each boss, are circles that increases in size the closer you are to them. They will flash white upon damaging them and destroying them will give you a destruction bonus which varies from 1000-5000 points each.

At the end of each stage, you will be rewarded with an end stage bonus which gives you more points depending on your resources. The formula used is:

Left = (current amount of lives + 1) * 50 Bomb = current amount of bombs x 10 Shield = current amount of shields x 20 Basis Point = Left + Bomb + Shield Multiplier = current Rank value + current Time left Clear Bonus = Basis Point x Multiplier

The B variant TLB's final attack on 1.53 has orbiting circles that cancel bullets around when shot and also give a ton of points when activated. This pattern can be milked by remaining on either the left or right side of the screen and shooting the circles while avoiding the boss. The circles give a ton of points and can be milked for ~ 5 million points if done right.

Strategy
TBA

Story
'Taken from the game description on Steam and Switch'

Set in a mechanized world, the story begins with a world-renowned young scientist named Veloce. One day she invented "Mecha" and eradicated humankind with her creation, recreating a metallic world filled with Mechas. Pilot humanity's last hope, a Mecha imbued with human will, through the onslaught of enemy waves. Yet as the tides of battles turn and the world reveals itself, perhaps there's more than what meets the eye.

Version 2.0 and Switch Release
Mecha Ritz Steel Rondo will have a 2.0 release, releasing on November 3rd. The release also means the publication of the game on the Nintendo Switch and will act as an upgrade for the people that already own Mecha Ritz Steel Rondo on PC. The arrange of new features are:


 * Formal title screen
 * Two new ships (Gray01 and Gray02) making a total of 14 ships
 * HUD update
 * Banner presentations for all Stages including Boss Rushes
 * Changes on patterns (Now bosses don't show patterns if your Rank is below certain threshold, affecting directly scoring and survival in considerable manner)
 * Gallery of illustrations and entries of the lore
 * Borderless full screen and border art.
 * 360 degrees rotation option.
 * Button mapping and native controller compatibility (Xbox360, Xbox One and Xbox Series X; Nintendo Switch JoyCons and Pro Controller; and arcade stick)
 * Entirely remaded 4-B and 5-C stages with new BGM
 * Change on extends by score (Now they're given at 1000000, 3000000, 6000000, 10000000 and 15000000)
 * Visible hitbox while shooting
 * Balancing changes on some ships and effect change on ships
 * Bomb Cancel to clean screen of bullets at costs of invincibility (Hold bomb button while bomb is active)
 * New 12000 points item on green carrier (Obtainable when the player is at close quarters to the Score Item Carrier. These items provide a small bullet cancel and a speed-up on the scroll)
 * Changes on reaching alternative route stages (Now they're based on Rank thresholds that lower on consecutive plays)

New scoring bonuses
Sweet Spot Bonus is a bonus given to breaking vulnerable spots on bosses and enviroments, and big regular enemies. Starts at 100 points and goes up to 25600 points each Sweet Spot. Heat is bound to limit score on Sweet Spot (Heat 3 has a limit of 16k, Heat 4 has limit of 20,8k and one can get the 25,6k bonus with Heat 5) If all Sweet Spots have been destroyed on a boss, the player gets 100k points as Perfect Sweets Bonus. A hit decreases the Sweet Spot Bonus by two steps and dying resets it completely, Sweet Spot Bonus on the ladder of bonus and this bonus resets every stage. Sweet Spots can be find on the stage on certain spots of the stage.
 * Sweet Spot Bonus


 * Remaining Boss Time Bonus

Now Boss Time Bonus scales according to remaining time in a t*10000 where t is the remaining time in the clock up to 100000 points if the remaining time is equal or higher than 10 seconds. So speed on destroying the Sweet Spots and playing flawlessly gets you the highest scoring. Now Veloce has a special bonus if you beat her with remaining time with the formula shown here


 * Performance Bonus

Doing a NoMiss will yield 10k on bosses, so does performing a NoBomb. Achieving NoMiss and NoBomb gives 100k score. Also an AllClear Bonus has been implemented which can weight more than 50% of the total score of a run as shown here.

Mechas on 2.0
On 2.0 the total of Mechas has changed from 12 to 14 as Gray1 and Gray2 have been added. Blue01 is a default Mecha now.

Trivia

 * Due to an error made in the latest patch, the boss info screens are always in Chinese no matter what language you choose. (Bug fixed on Version 2.0)
 * It is advised that due a mismanagement error, one doesn't play replays of Training Mode or the game will crash (Bug exclusive to Version 2.0)
 * Users that already had Mecha Ritz Steel Rondo on Steam get the 2.0 update free of charge on release.
 * Users can also play version 1.53 on Steam with their own separated save files so you will need to play more to unlock it all on both versions.
 * CBP Training mode doesn't give score-related extends on both 1.53 and 2.0 versions and can't change starting resources
 * Despite mentioning 15 stages, there's no Route C and it refers to the 5 Boss Rushes available on CBP Training
 * Players can skip Rank requirements if they skip the story segments on Version 2.0
 * All bosses excluding main bosses, Veloce and CBP are named after products one can get on cafeterias.

References & Contributors

 * This template page was assembled by CHA-STG and Plasmo
 * Primary info contributed by NElectron256
 * Version 2.0 info contributed by APGBlazeBurn