YMMV / Raptor: Call of the Shadows

• Anti-Climax Boss: The Final Boss in the last level of the first episode named Bravo Sector. You've slugged your way through waves of Goddamned Bats and a few Demonic Spiders, only for this eggshell-shaped boss to simply fire missile salvos and a few aimed flak balls at you, and the white guns that what appear to be its plasma cannons don't even fire (presumably due to either a bug or being Dummied Out to not work). The Final Boss of Outer Regions is also potentially disappointing if you have the Auto-Tracking Mini Gun, as there are obvious safe spaces on the sides where only five sets of aimed flak ball shooters can hit you (many of which you may already have destroyed before they activated); once you learn which turrets to destroy first and have the timing down to dodge the remaining aiming turrets, it becomes easy.
• Best Boss Ever: The Final Boss in the last level of the second episode named Tango Sector. Unlike the other two Final Bosses, this one is a wedge-shaped capital ship that moves around unleashing a deadly storm of lasers, missiles, and flak balls (aimed and regular) at you to make things difficult. As if that weren't enough, it is also accompanied by two mini-ships that break out from its aft section and flying around at the opposite edges of the screen continuously spewing out a single laser beam at you, making this boss fight very interesting. And after you've defeated all three ships, you're treated to a short cutscene where the boss in its flaming death throes comes crashing down to the forest in a spectacular, almost meteoric explosion.
• Better Off Sold: Weapon pickups obtained during a level, especially during a first playthrough, can really prove their salt against enemy targets on the same level. However, once the player has their own preferred weapon loadout, these weapon pickups often serve no purpose beyond being sold for credits in the supply room after completing a level.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Anything that uses Wave Motion Guns or plasma cannons on you. Laser weapons will tear off around half of a healthbar if they so much as to graze you, while plasma still deals far more damage (about 1/5 of a healthbar, which is a good amount) than normal shots or missiles.
  • The tanks with dual plasma cannons in the later levels of the Outer Regions. Their high fire rate and small size make them nearly impossible to destroy if you don't kill them before they start firing.
• Fandom Rivalry: Fans of this game, along with other early or similar Western shmups such as Tyrian and Jets'n'Guns, have a bit of grudge with fans of more arcade-style Japanese-developed shooters. The latter dismisses "euroshmups" as a mess of bad game design and awkward controls, while the former feels that the latter don't really give such games a chance and that arcade shooters are too unforgiving, especially when concerning Bullet Hell shmups, which is a source of major contention among shmup fans. Both camps are very defensive of their opinions.
• Game-Breaker: The initial release of Raptor allowed the player to carry over any equipment they've bought in Training Mode into Rookie difficulty. Across all versions and releases, the player retains any weapons or shield boosts they pick up from a level even if they abort mission mid-way, hence allowing the player to repeatedly sell off these weapons to get enough money to purchase a more powerful weapon that would otherwise take them a much longer time to obtain.
  • Pressing Backspace will net you a free Deathray, at the expense of losing all your money. This can be done at anytime you play a level, including even the very first level in the first episode. This exploit is quite useful for first time players and especially in the first episode since the Deathray shreds just about everything until you get the even more powerful Twin Laser, and the Deathray can be sold for a truckload of money. Though this is only available in the DOS version.
  • The Laser Turret, which, with some smart selling choices, you can get about halfway through Tango Sector by normal means. It locks on to all airborne targets and can annihilate almost every one that appears on screen.
  • Similarly, the Auto-Track Mini Gun, which has all the advantages of the Laser Turret (save for lower accuracy and damage output), but is cheaper and targets ground enemies. This allows you to evade attacks more easily, and destroy more buildings, resulting in you taking less damage and racking up more money. This weapon will come in handy when dealing with the stationary end-of-level bosses in the Outer Regions episode, especially the Final Boss.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Anything that fires aimed flak balls at you, since they avert Denial of Diagonal Attack while almost all your weapons and other types of enemy weapons are Fixed Forward Facing Weapons. Later on, these are shot out in clusters stacked on top of each other, meaning that they'll actually hurt for a great bit of damage.
  • Air Mine-laying ships leave behind exploding mines in the air that detonate for good damage on you if you contact them. Worse still, unless you use a Megabomb, the mines can't be destroyed, meaning that you have to destroy the enemy quickly before they fill the screen with air mines.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The sound of lasers firing in this game is the best ever heard in any media. It averts the usual pew-pew FX in exchange for an intimidating and roaring FX.
• Porting Disaster: The Windows port by Mountain King Studios, which DotEmu picked up and rereleased as Raptor: Call of the Shadows 2010 Edition, is this. The two game-breaking bugs that are listed on the main page exist in this version only. The only music available in the port is tinny Ad Lib, while the original game had various options up to rich Roland MT-32 music.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The cluster bomb. It fires slowly, travels slowly, and is only really effective at destroying buildings because of its 'spread effect'. While it can destroy ground turrets, the effect becomes negated when used against single grounded targets and doesn't come as useful. Also, since it is a Selectable weapon instead of being Always Equipped (the plasma cannon, micro-missiles, and your default machine guns fall under the latter category), it's a waste of a weapon slot.
  • The Power Disruptor. Yes, it does what you think it can do, but it only affects Airborne Mooks, not all Mooks can be affected, and the disabling effect lasts only a couple of seconds. Plus, it is ridiculously expensive and it is not worth buying when you have three profoundly better weapons that render it obsolete: the Laser Turret, the Deathray, and the Twin Laser.
  • Your own Plasma Cannon available only at the Emporium. While it has the advantage of being Always Equipped, the weapon only affects Airborne Mooks, both the firing rate and traveling velocity are slow, and your version does inferior damage compared to the Mooks'. The only reason to get it is not only because of the aforementioned ability to be Always Equipped, but to add additional firepower to your plane.
  • The Deathray, due to being Overshadowed by Awesome by the Twin Laser. It's better to save up money to buy the Twin Laser without buying the Deathray at all, as only one can be equipped as a current weapon.
• That One Attack: Plasma cannons and lasers. The most common attacks (missiles and flak balls) used by enemies don't hurt very much, only taking off 3-5 damage from you (where one health bar is 100 points of damage). Certain enemies and bosses however utilize plasma cannons, each of which take off a hefty 20 damage, and the few enemies and bosses that use lasers can destroy an entire healthbar in just two shots.
• That One Boss:
  • The boss of Bravo Sector, Wave 5 is, unlike the bosses preceding it, a ground-based turret that mainly uses aimed flak balls, thus making it difficult to avoid. It also doesn't help that since it's on the ground, your air to air weaponry is useless. Here's hoping you picked up the Air to Ground Missiles in this level.
  • The boss(es) of Tango Sector, Wave 5 are a pair of stationary gun batteries buried in the ground. Each one has two forward-facing missile launchers and a laser cannon that will kill you in seconds, plus aimed flak balls that are difficult to avoid with the missiles and lasers on the left and right sides. The fight gets significantly easier if you have the Auto-Track Mini Gun and manage to destroy one of the two guns quickly, but this is probably the most difficult boss in Tango Sector.
• That One Level: The final level of the last episode named Outer Regions. It takes place on a cool space station that has Demonic Spiders and Goddamned Bats runneth all over the place. The level is hard even on the easiest difficulty setting, and on Elite difficulty, it is mercilessly hard. And the very Final Boss at the end may seem like another Cores-and-Turrets Boss, except that its weaponry is a deadly amalgamation of aimed flak balls, missiles, plasma, and lasers ready to incinerate your craft. While the latter three can be avoided by staying at the far left or right edge of the screen, those aimed flak balls will give you major trouble as they are hard to avoid (and deal more damage than normal thanks to actually being multiple stacked/clustered together). At this point, you may have already lost a real good number of your Phase Shields, and if you don't have the best weaponry available, you're debris. The Twin Laser and the Auto-Tracking Minigun are highly recommended to be brought in this level because you need to have every edge that you can muster before you can start, and especially since the latter weapon is going to prove very useful in dealing with the Final Boss.