There is something about games made by Treasure that makes them utterly unique. They’re usually brutal, old-school, tough-as-nails shooters that give no quarter or respite. Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Skies is no different. The control system is unique, but the sense of overwhelming odds followed by joy at overcoming them is the same as in other Treasure games.

The original Sin & Punishment appeared on the Nintendo 64, and it didn’t get released in Europe until it finally made an appearance on the Wii Virtual Console as an import title. Fortunately for Wii owners looking for a bit of punishingly tough dodging and shooting, this time it has made it to Europe.

On-rails, but not

Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Skies is almost an on-rails shooter like Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles or House of the Dead, but not quite. What makes it different to those, and sets it apart as quite unique, is the appearance of the player’s character on the screen. The camera still moves “on rails” (meaning you have no control over it) but you do control your character, moving Isa (or Kachi) around on the screen in a 2D plane. This means you have to do more than just aim with your Wii Remote and shoot using B; you also have to move Isa to dodge the huge amount of bullets, lasers, fireballs and other projectiles coming at you.

The plot has something to do with saving Japan and the world from yourself. It’s not entirely clear to me just what is going on in the plot and who the different enemies are, and, to be honest, it’s not important. Basically, every now and then someone says something strange and then you have to kill them. What is clear is that everyone wants to kill you, so all the violence is done in the name of self-defense which makes it ok. You can play as Isa, a male character, or Kachi, a female character. I’m not sure if either are human. Maybe playing the first game would help with understanding the intricacies of the plot Treasure have constructed, but I highly doubt it. The feel of the controls is slightly different between the characters, but your choice of character doesn’t seem to make a material impact on the plot. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to the on-screen character as Isa.

The dash is the secret to not dying, or dying less quickly

Isa is moved around using the analog stick on the nunchuk, and you can make him dash by pressing the Z button on the nunchuk. This dash move allows you to evade all attacks for a very short time, similar to the dash move in Treasure’s Astroboy for the GBA. The dash move is absolutely essential to master because the boss attacks are usually not possible to dodge. In fact, the bosses are mostly of the dead-in-10-seconds-flat variety, and only through retrying a number of times are you able to learn their patterns of fire and slowly improve your technique enough to overcome them. This means figuring out where to stand (or hover) for each attack, when to dash, where to shoot and when to use your melee attack.

One of the hallmarks of Treasure games in my experience is that while many bosses might seem cheap with their full-screen attacks, they’re also very possible to beat without ever being hit – it’s all a question of how well you know their attacks and moves. Usually when you first meet a boss you will be destroyed quickly, but with each retry you will learn something – some weak spot or some safe spot in a certain attack or a certain pattern of attack or some effective move, and with each retry you will knock the enemy’s health down that little bit more, until you’re able to destroy it without it destroying you. Only twice in the game did I feel that I wasn’t making progress against a boss, and both times it was only after I tried something new that I figured out I wasn’t making progress because I was doing the wrong thing. While the bosses seem insurmountable, they can always be overcome and never fall into the cheap-trick category.

A few other weapons are at your disposal, and each different enemy requires a different combination of attacks to defeat. There’s the standard point and fire, which shoots a stream of bullets as you hold down B from where Isa is on screen to where you are pointing at with your Wii Remote. There’s also a melee attack which you perform by pressing B quickly. You can perform three slashes in a combination by pressing the B button three times, but if you do a full 3-slash combo there is a recovery time afterwards during which you can’t attack. There is a recovery time for a single melee attack too, but it’s much shorter. Finally, there is a charged attack which is performed by pressing and holding A and then letting go once the attack is charged.

When playing as Isa you need to charge to the full before releasing, but when playing as Kachi you can release a less powerful shot by charging up for a shorter time. Once you’ve fired the charged attack you have to wait a while before it’s available again, which makes relying completely on it impossible. Some bosses can only be damaged with the charged shot, while others require melee attacks. Most require a combination of everything at your disposal interspersed with constant dashing to avoid the wall of bullets raining down on you (or, across at you, I should say).

Short but highly replayable

The game is divided up into seven stages which start off very easy and quickly ramp up to extremely tough. It took me eight hours to complete the game on normal, playing as Isa, but playing it through a second time would only take three or four because I now know the bosses. After you complete each stage in the story mode you unlock it for single-stage play, which lets you replay your favourite stages or go for a high score. There are multiple difficulty levels – easy, normal and hard, and you can upload your scores to a national, regional and worldwide scoreboard for each stage, level and character. You can also play the game in co-op mode where both players shoot at enemies on screen (although only one character is on screen, same as the single player). These features make Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Skies last much longer than the few hours of a single play-through on easy.

Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Skies is a short, focused game that shouldn’t simply be finished once and moved on from, although that would still be fun. Rather, it’s a game about trying to complete levels without dying, then trying to complete them while minimizing getting hit so as to ensure your multiplier is high, then trying to complete them while shooting more enemies and collecting the special medals. It’s a game that’s going to appeal to those who like a challenge, who are willing to fight the same boss over and over again until you take him/her/it down, who are excited by the idea of high-score runs and learning the stages and bosses to the point of never being hit. Basically, it’s a Treasure game.

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