The skies are alive once again with the spark of war.
In a sea of planes and machinery, mankind revisits the dizzying heights of where eagles dare. With pilots in their cockpits, only a brave few soar to fight for a brighter and more peaceful tomorrow. This has happened in the original Strikers 1945, but since the fires of war have been rekindled, it’s time to save the world one more time from total destruction. This is Strikers 1945: RE.
Long-time mobile games publisher Com2Us, famous for titles like Summoners War and the Inotia RPG series, unleashes the re-living of a classic and beloved shooter title now streamlined and polished to introduce it to a new generation of gamers. Strikers 1945: RE brings back the frantic and fast-paced action of the original but with a new spin to its charm.
Players now take control of modern aircraft and they’re introduced to a mechanic wherein they can choose what powerups their aircraft receives. The planes in this version also come with a life bar as opposed to crashing with just one hit from an enemy bullet.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here—have you just gotten your hands on this shooter? Are you new to this type of game? Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to ease you in. Read our comprehensive guide for Strikers 1945: RE below and prepare to fly like an ace!
Shoot ‘Em Ups and Strikers 1945
Shoot ‘em Ups (or “shmups” for short) are widely known in the gaming landscape.
Regardless whether they scroll vertically or horizontally, shmups have been known to have the player in control of a spaceship or a fighter plane wherein they tackle fleets of enemy spacecraft or aircraft, essentially making them a kind of one-man army in the sky. As impressive as this may seem, shmups often required a lot of skill and memorization in order to finish levels properly. Classic shmup titles that you’ve possibly heard of before are Gradius, R-Type, Raiden, RayStorm, and Strikers 1945.
Strikers 1945 talks about the rise of a mysterious organization known as CANY at the tail end of World War II. CANY, with its large numbers and funding, began an attempt to take over the world. This forced both Allied and Axis forces to team up in order to stop CANY from plunging the world further into destruction and allow it to heal from the wounds of the war.
However, RE no longer takes place in 1945. Instead, the game simply uses the 1945 in the title as a means for licensing purposes as the aircraft flown in this iteration of the game are all quite modern, just like in Strikers 1945 III.
Strikers 1945: RE, not to be confused with the original Strikers 1945, is a mobile game reviving the classic atmosphere of its predecessors with a slightly modern touch to its gameplay mechanics. The starter planes in RE have been brought back from Strikers 1945 III which was initially released in 1999 but re-released as a mobile game for Android in recent times.
Some famous planes making their appearances in this game are: the F/A-18 Super Hornet, the F-117 Stealth Fighter (more famously known as the Nighthawk), the F-22 Raptor, the AV-8 Harrier, and the F-4 Phantom II. Formerly, the F/A-18 Super Hornet was the only starter plane and the other ones needed to be unlocked. However, in RE, you’ll be able to choose any of these as your starter and unlock the rest later.
For all intents and purposes of this guide, we have selected the AV-8 Harrier as our starter plane. The game features an interesting blend of challenging levels as well as skill building, making each plane highly customizable. It has borrowed a similar mechanic from certain mobile titles such as Archero, Soul Knight, and Angel Saga.
Granted that it has similarities from some games that are regarded as difficult, crashing your plane early on is a very common occurrence. Your fuselage will be filled with holes, your wings will be set ablaze, and you’ll be hitting that ejection seat button a little too much. The skies will be filled with your smoke, and you’ll always find yourself in a mountainside somewhere far from the base. All the while, you’ll see the boss’ aircraft soaring high above you with its pilot (or pilots) most certainly laughing at your failure.
Don’t fret, though—this is why you’re here! Keep reading and you’ll be able to beat even the biggest boss eventually!
Strikers 1945: RE Tips and Tricks
This section of the guide serves as the part where you learn a variety of different strategies to aid you in your various sorties. Take full command of your aircraft and take to the skies. Let’s go!
1. Weave Through Enemy Gunfire
Granted that the Strikers title is famed for being a shmup, bullets will most certainly be everywhere.
While probably not as frightening as the likes of Touhou, 1945 Air Force, Gemini Strike, or Kinja Run wherein the bullet density is so high that you’ll wish you were a leaf in the wind, Strikers always offers a healthy challenge of where the player will most certainly need to avoid enemy gunfire as much as possible. Bullets come in different colors and different patterns.
Typically, these bullets will range in the red and orange shades, warning you immediately to avoid them. If it weren’t obvious by now, getting hit by any of these bullets is a bad thing, however, unlike older shooter titles, getting hit saves you through a life bar as opposed to having multiple extra lives. Strikers initially did have an extra life system, as per most shmups back then, but RE opted to adapt the life bar system instead.
Take note that taking a bullet to any part of your aircraft will result in full damage. This means that even bullets just grazing the wing of your aircraft will fully damage it and bring you possibly closer to failing the level. We’ll talk about ways you can increase your aircraft’s defense later on. Let’s imagine, for now, that your aircraft is verily lacking in the defensive department and the only way you can survive is to dodge bullets coming from the enemy fleet.
One of the best and easiest ways to get through the enemy’s hail of bullets is through observing the patterns of their trajectories. In most cases, especially if the bullets have been fired by a boss, the bullets would often fan out in a wider pattern with gaps large enough for your plane to simply fly through (as pictured above).
Just be careful that bullets fired by bosses would often deal more damage than those fired by insignificant aircraft. If you keep getting hit by the bullets or you just aren’t that confident in avoiding the bullets, keep repeating the level and try to study the bullet patterns. Memorization plays a big part here as well.
If there’s another thing that can help keep your plane airborne through your mission, it’s by picking up Power-Ups, and investing in the Shield skill. This will allow your plane to have an outer covering that will absorb any incoming bullets. However, it will only behave like a smaller, extra life bar. If it runs out, it will need some time to recharge before it can absorb more bullets. This should minimize the damage you receive from most bullets, but it won’t make your plane invincible, so do try to make the effort to still dodge.
Sure, picking up all these Power-Ups is difficult, but it needs to be done since it will make your plane jump in strength mid-mission.
2. Pick Skills that Complement Each Other
In the case of many older shmups, a Power-Up normally means making your gun bigger.
It will shoot more bullets, cause more damage, and maybe even hit more enemies. Ultimately, a Power-Up means a general upgrade to your plane’s overall firepower. Sometimes they could also come in the form of a Speed Up wherein the plane’s speed will drastically increase (though, this is an integrated feature in some shmups like Einhander wherein the player can change the ship’s speed at will). This isn’t the case in 1945: RE.
Power-Ups, also called skills in-game, which are represented by a rotating bullet icon with a glowing P on it, can be picked up to drastically increase your aircraft’s stats on the fly. It can vastly improve your plane’s firepower, give them special weapons like lasers or missiles, or increase their durability (much like the Shield skill we mentioned earlier).
Though, this does require the player to make a choice among 3 different skills that they receive at once. This may become a problem, especially if the player hasn’t an idea of how they should build their plane in a mission.
There are two types of Power-Ups in Strikers 1945: RE—Parts and Boost. Parts (yellow Power-Ups) affect the armaments and external behavior of the aircraft whereas Boost (blue Power-Ups) affects its passive skills and stats. Both types go hand-in-hand since without Parts, your aircraft won’t be able to destroy enemies effectively and without Boost, your aircraft will become structurally frail. Mixing and matching both is the key, but it’s also good to focus on one Power-Up at a time.
For instance, if you are able to max out a Power-Up, it will become incredibly strong. This will grant your aircraft a significant advantage throughout the level. However, these can be made even stronger by picking Power-Ups that have the Breakthrough Combo marker beneath them, especially if you have a Power-Up with you that’s required for the combo.
To give a specific example, the Harrier Bullet can reach 5 stars. If you happen to have chosen or already equipped the Fuselage Up, the Harrier Bullet will be able to reach one final star wherein it receives a massive power boost. This can be done for many other Power-Ups, so keep a lookout for those that can be broken through.
This isn’t to say that Power-Ups without Breakthrough Combos are completely useless, however. For instance, picking the Salary Up skill will allow you to receive more coins than usual, ending the mission with a considerable haul (especially if you complete it!). However, do note that this will take up a slot and no other Power-Ups can be received if all of your slots are full. That said, regardless of which Power-Ups you have, it’d be best to max them out as best as you can.
Alongside Power-Ups, another item tends to show itself up whenever you shoot certain enemies down. Let’s talk about that next!
3. Save Your Special Bombs for Bosses
You shoot down more red planes and lo and behold—they drop something but it isn’t a Power-Up! Chances are, what you’re about to pick up is actually a Special Bomb.
Special Bombs exist in most shmups. Sometimes called Smartbombs, Special Bombs are a means for your aircraft to perform a secret maneuver that should easily wipe the screen of enemies or even destroy all their bullets, keeping you safe for a short period of time.
Should anything survive this at all, the integrity of which should be severely crippled. Seeing as this game is riddled with fleets of enemies wanting to destroy you at every move you make, the Special Bomb is ideal for making short work in cutting the enemy down to size. On paper, this sounds like a wonderful idea to consider at every turn, but we’d strongly recommend the opposite.
The Special Bombs come at a charge—you have to wait for your aircraft to charge it up before being able to unleash it. The Special Bomb pickups you get instantly fill that charge and certain parts that you can equip on your aircraft can reduce the charge time significantly (more on this soon). However, what the game is subtly trying to hint at is that Special Bombs shouldn’t be used all willy-nilly. They should be reserved for moments wherein the conflict is more realistically apt.
Our suggestion would be to save your Special Bombs for whenever you encounter a boss. This is because bosses often fire more bullets than the usual enemy squadron and they may have more destructible components compared to most enemies, especially for the endboss of each chapter. Upon reducing the number of the boss’ armaments, or the life bars of which, your tussle with the boss could end much sooner when it should after you’ve used a Special Bomb.
While pressing the bomb button on the side of the screen works nicely, you may also quickly tap the screen itself twice in succession to use one right away. If you wish to not accidentally use this feature, you may turn off the Quick Bomb option in the pause menu.
Let’s go back to that one point we mentioned earlier about equipment pieces that can reduce the bomb’s charge up time. This is where things get really interesting.
4. Upgrade Your Loadout
Apart from being a shoot ‘em up, RE has somewhat of an RPG element as well.
What we mean to say here is that your skill alone won’t save you completely. You can dodge all the bullets you want, but there will always be this one attack performed by a boss that will be extremely difficult to avoid despite your reaction time. The bullets will fly out at a speed so quick that you’d almost always be caught off-guard. This is where your loadout comes in to save you.
Equipping and outfitting your aircraft with certain things is nothing new—it’s done in real life as well. While it would sound cursed for a Raptor to have the body of a Nighthawk, this is completely possible in-game (thankfully without the sprite of the plane changing to reflect the horrific imagery). Your aircraft comes with parts and it’s each of these parts that work together to create one strong entity.
This means that no singular part is powerful on its own since each of which also bears its own set of stats. These can be individually upgraded, however, and it’s through upgrading that you’ll be able to make your aircraft powerful enough to complete stages you previously couldn’t. A tiny change in power can make a huge difference in progress.
Your loadout is classified into the following parts:
- Aircraft — Your aircraft of choice. This dictates the type of bullets fired, what it does when it uses its Special Bomb, and its overall ATK and HP.
- Fuselage — This part of your loadout affects your HP. This is also the body of your aircraft.
- Weapon — Your aircraft’s main armaments. These directly affect your aircraft’s ATK.
- Wing — This part aids in the aircraft’s maneuverability. Stat-wise, it also affects your aircraft’s HP, much like the fuselage.
- Engine — The inner workings of the aircraft. This affects ATK and HP.
- Chipset — The sophisticated targeting module of your aircraft’s computer. This greatly affects the aircraft’s ATK.
You get new parts from the shop by opening boxes using keys. Keys are rewarded through events and sign-in progression (which we will talk about soon) and depending on the key, you’ll be able to open different qualities of boxes. The higher the quality, the better chance of you receiving better gear.
Upon gaining duplicates, you can use these for Fusion wherein you’ll be able to upgrade the rarity of a equipment, thus giving them better stats and new perks. These rarity-related perks add bonus abilities to your aircraft such as extra damage for subweapons or being able to start with missiles.
You’ll notice sooner or later that each of the parts have names of specific aircraft in them. For instance, you might notice that they have words like Raptor or Harrier in them (e.g. Raptor Fuselage, Phantom II Missile, etc.). If you happen to match these and equip 4 of these together, you will receive a bonus to your aircraft’s stats. Naturally, this is only a small bonus, so the sum of the other parts’ bonuses should be the ones to carry you.
Each item has a color which denotes their rarity: white, green, blue, purple, yellow, and red. White is the lowest-quality rarity and red is the highest. Having a better color means better numbers and stats added to your plane overall.
What really makes an item shine is its set of rarity perks. You can see this by tapping any item and viewing it—it will have a list of colored squares indicating what it will offer the aircraft once it reaches that specific rarity. If you don’t have matching aircraft parts but they’re of higher rarity, equip them and keep playing until you have aircraft parts that align with your current plane of choice!
That said, it always pays to play through the campaign of the game. This is where the fun should be!
5. Play Through the Main Campaign
Every shoot ‘em up should have a series of stages.
You will go through waves upon waves of enemies, many of which may fly towards you kamikaze-style. In some cases, bigger, badder aircraft (or spacecraft, in some cases) will show up and attempt to give you a harder time. The same case goes for 1945: RE wherein you will be put through a gauntlet of small aircraft and large aircraft that are ready to shoot you down from the skies.
Each level features 3 segments with a boss at the end of each one. The first 2 segments feature minibosses wherein the final segment has an endboss much larger than the 2 other bosses you’ve fought prior. The endboss is usually quite challenging as it may change its attacks and patterns, making it difficult for many players initially. The endboss itself is quite the hurdle as many players may struggle in defeating each one. Despite all this, besting a level certainly helps a player in more ways than one.
For instance, you will get rewarded as you progress through the campaign. In the main menu screen, you should see a list of goals just above the Play button which you can claim upon completing a certain segment of a level. In fact, clearing all of them would reward you with gems—premium currency which can be used in various things in-game. Additionally, you may earn some extra gear from the levels themselves since some enemies drop equipment you can use on your aircraft.
On top of all these wonderful things, you will also unlock more features that the game has to offer. Getting as far as you can in every mission should be your top priority since unlocking the features of the game will give you even more avenues in making your aircraft stronger—and it just doesn’t stop at earning extra parts.
That said, if the main campaign’s giving you a hard time, how about trying the extra missions of the game?
6. Attempt the Daily Missions
Are you stuck in the main campaign? Do you want something else to do? How about attempting the Daily Mission?
Daily Missions are special stages that you can enter which change every day. These aren’t your regular stages which have 3 levels. Instead, they usually contain just 1 theme that the player has to focus on. For this guide, the two examples we will cite are the boss battle and the gold rush.
Gold is essential in upgrading many things in-game. As you’ve already figured out, gold is used in upgrading your aircraft and its parts. Granted that there are plenty of things to upgrade at once, your gold reserves can run out very quickly. You’ll be scrounging about for these shiny little coins before long. But thankfully, there is a Daily Mission in which you can earn more coins than usual.
This type of Daily Mission, the Coin Rush, will test your piloting skills by putting you through an obstacle course filled with coins in patterns. You will need to weave through the obstacles whilst collecting any or all the coins in your path. However, the speed of the level is quite deceptive, thus it’s imperative to not get greedy since doing so will cause you to crash the plane into the obstacles. If you’ve collected enough coins, don’t go back for the others.
The other type of Daily Mission that we will tackle in this guide is the Boss Battle where you will fight a boss you previously fought in the campaign. While this boss will only have significant changes to its health and damage, it also has a difficulty slider wherein you may fight it with its stats raised so you can earn better rewards. Of course, this means that the boss will be more difficult to defeat, so be prepared!
Once you’ve chosen your difficulty, you will need to pick 10 skills in succession. Alongside this, you’ll be given 2 Special Bombs to use for the fight. If you aren’t sure of which skills to choose, refer to our previous bullet (number 2 of this guide) for a solid idea.
Daily Missions, unfortunately, are finite. They can only be repeated a set number of times before their attempts expire completely and you will have to wait for the timer to reset—namely, the next day. That said, you will want to give it your all if you want to get all the rewards in time.
If you feel like you’d like more practice for your piloting skills in general, how about repeating levels as challenge levels?
7. Try Out the Challenge Levels
Memorization plays an important role in this game.
While you can do this by repeating levels after completing them. In memorizing and flawlessly completing a level, you’ll be given more rewards than you previously did. However, this isn’t always the case if you want to give challenge levels a shot.
Challenge levels are just repeats of cleared levels albeit with a slightly raised difficulty. As a mode that will put your memorization skills to the test, the rewards here are even greater since at the very end of each challenge, you will be rewarded with gems. Note that at even higher difficulties, you’ll be given more gems upon completion, but this will require some grinding and skill on your part.
Subconsciously, you will also be training your reaction time as well as your memorization of various bullet patterns. This will certainly come in handy for future levels since some enemies that show up every now and then tend to be repeats of older enemies that you’ve shot down before.
After a long day of fighting and training yourself, wouldn’t you want to know what you’re fighting for?
8. Complete Your Tasks for Prizes
Fighting the forces of CANY isn’t an aimless mission.
True, maybe lore-wise, there’s logistics and intel gathering to be performed, but since this is simply a mobile game, you need a reason to keep playing. If the rewards weren’t enough for you, there’s also the sense of accomplishment you can gain from completing tasks.
Tasks can be accessed by tapping the bullseye icon on the right side of the main menu. This will open up a small tab that shows you which tasks you need to complete. Such tasks can be challenging as they are rewarding while others are menial in nature such as simply logging into the game. These will build up a small meter above that will allow you to unlock boxes.
Such boxes give you keys with which you can unlock equipment boxes, currency, and other neat prizes that may help you on your journey. These also refresh each day and each week, allowing you to complete a seemingly never-ending set of tasks that will reward you every time.
Alongside all these are special tasks called Achievements which are more or less long-term goals that you can accomplish throughout your stay in the game. Achievements could range from shooting down a large number of aircraft to collecting a huge amount of gold. Regardless, these take more time to accomplish than just tasks themselves. Just like tasks, however, they also reward you.
And yet there are still some ways you can get rewarded! Read on to find out!
9. Login Every Day and Check Your Mail
Logging in each day will feel like a different session.
Like many other mobile games these days, Strikers 1945: RE offers you a slew of rewards that you can gain from logging in each day. This is to help ensure player activity as well as reward those who want to keep getting stronger.
Each time you start the game up, you’ll be greeted by a screen that gives you some login rewards. These may vary from gems to currency, as well as from keys to special loot. Therefore, logging in each time the server resets (be sure to check your local time for this) will also propel your progress forward. The very last reward, usually, is bigger than the others, so aim for this one!
But logging in isn’t just the only interesting bit about this, you should also check your mailbox. Inside, you will occasionally get gifts from the developers as well as receive time rewards which are given to you after playing the game for a certain amount of time. When it peaks, you could get keys for purple equipment boxes in the shop. Don’t forget to open these since they often contain high-end gear that could increase the power of your aircraft.
In case you don’t know, find the shop tab (which is on the lower left corner of the main menu) and scroll down. You should see two boxes: one gray and the other purple. If you have enough keys, open them up and get some new duds on your aircraft. If you can’t open them with keys, you may open them once for free by watching an ad!
Speaking of watching ads…
10. Watch Ads for Extra Rewards
Advertisements—love them or hate them, they’ve always been around to sell us something… or try to.
They’ve become quite the staple in media. You’d see them in between your favorite shows, sometimes interrupting your favorite YouTube videos, anything you hear in Spotify that isn’t part of the music, and many other various places.
Many times, they’re quite the nuisance since they’re completely unavoidable, but other times, they can be very entertaining since many of them tend to be creative. In mobile games, ads have been perceived as disruptive and sometimes rather annoying to watch. But some mobile games have the option to give the viewers of their ads rewards if they watch these all the way through.
Strikers 1945: RE is no exception in being a part of the latter. The ads that appear in this game have been a complaint by many in that they are almost everywhere. They’re there when you (as mentioned earlier) want to open a box, when you die in battle, want to quadruple your rewards, or even open a lootbox you found in a mission. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they’re purely optional to watch. However, we’re here to tell you that watching these ads is actually a good thing.
Think of ads as a means for you to recollect your thoughts and try to breathe after being shot down by the boss. You’ll have a moment to assess what took you down and how to finish the stage better if you ultimately fail.
If you happen to have picked up a lootbox that requires an ad to be watched in order to open it, watching 10 of these will give you the super ad box which has a chance to contain something really rare. Otherwise, quadrupling your rewards after a mission is always a plus since you’ll be needing all the gold you can get. Don’t shun the ads—watch them if you want to become strong!
Otherwise, there is the option of sending the devs some coin for a no-ads package. This is something that they occasionally give out for free, so as we’ve mentioned in an earlier bullet, check your mailbox every now and then. Either way, each time you watch an advertisement, you are indirectly supporting the developer. This means that you can still play this game if you really like it and send the developers some love without having to spend anything.
Very early on, Strikers 1945: RE can be a difficult game to play since the bullets appear in droves and anyone new to the shoot ‘em up genre could be caught off-guard. The density of such attacks may cause players to fail early on, but it’s a matter of not giving up as well as constantly trying in order to progress and learn. That said, if you happen to be among these newbies who find the game difficult, don’t forget what you’ve learned from reading this guide:
- Dodge any and all oncoming bullets. Your plane has a health bar, but it won’t be able to withstand all attacks!
- Get skills that go well with each other. Sometimes, some skills are needed in order to give others a Breakthrough Combo, which in-turn, makes them even more powerful.
- Using Special Bombs can make or break the chapter. If you use them too early and not on the boss, you may fail. The key to using Special Bombs is timing—save them for the boss!
- Your aircraft can be upgraded. If you change its parts or use parts of it that match, you’ll be able to make it even more powerful. Don’t forget to fuse identical parts to increase their ranking and rarity!
- The main campaign is where you’ll get most of your loot and experience. Play through it and try to go as far as you can.
- Challenge levels will help you with your reflex time as well as bullet dodging by having you play older levels. If you complete these, you’ll be rewarded with gems!
- Complete tasks to earn bonus rewards. Your sessions don’t have to be aimless.
- Don’t miss a day and login each time. You’ll get a bonus every day. Don’t forget to check your mail, too, since time rewards would often give you keys to open special loot crates.
- Ads are your friends—don’t ignore them. They’ll help you get extra loot and finish stages!
This concludes our guide for Strikers 1945: RE. Keep the skies safe and fight for a brighter tomorrow. Strap yourself in and fly out!
Have you flown farther than any other pilot you know? Do you have other tips that we might have missed on this list? Are you an ace pilot that knows their plane from end to end? Leave your thoughts in the comment section down below!