Top down shooty rouge-like with shoot em up and legend of zelda elements means that we're comparing this to Isaac right? Yeah.
Well for the first 29.3 hours spent over years of playing this on and off whenever I remember that it exists, this game feels like it has an answer to every problem Isaac's design had accumulated through its decade of development. Backtracking to the shop a bit of a pain? Once you find it you can just teleport there and back with the greatest of ease. Tired of enemies spawning on top of you and getting hit by the enemies death bullets cuz you forgot every enemy explodes on death in Isaac these days? Enter the Gungeon telegraphs both of those things. Your run lagging behind on power because you didn't get enough Devil/Angel deals (aka where the fuck did all the soul hearts go Edmund)? Enter the Gungeon rewards a health container upon clearing a boss after taking no damage, still encouraging doing particularly well in early sections of the game while not being the end of the world if you didn't get it either. Tired of getting a bunch of bullets and enemies trapping your big chonky hit box that sometimes just wonder how you're supposed to get out of the way? Besides sporting a much smaller hitbox-to-rest-of-the-screen ratio, there is also a dodge roll to get your still not quite touhou sized hitbox through some less than predicted scenarios, while also having enough commitment and recovery that you're not just dodge rolling every second of a fight and calling it a day. And for every other sticky scenario, you're also packing a couple blanks a floor for clearing a room of bullets, ala Touhou bombs but without the shit ton of damage or the ability to press the button a few frames after the fact.
Obviously there are good items to get for a god run, wouldn't be that interesting of a rougelike otherwise, but I feel like it doesn't happen that often, I can't quite prove it but I feel like the power level of runs are pretty decent, as opposed to Isaac where you have items that can truly just be terrible. I suppose the weird part is that each item/gun tends to be it's own thing and do it's own thing while having a few hard coded upgrades for having certain thematically similar items in your inventory and sometimes you come across the occasional bullet upgrade, while in Isaac every item is being stacked on top of whatever it is you are doing, but it still works I think. The guns each have their own unique shots and quirks, with a little text blurb in the game's little in universe encylopedia, the "Ammonomicon", explaining what it do along with bits of flavor text to maybe hopefully cut down on searching shit up on the wikia (the wikia still has a lot of info not mentioned so it unfortunately still remains a bit of a necessity for getting through these kinds of games).
I could keep making direct comparisons with Isaac for how one game handles one thing and the other handles it differently but I think I made my point in how Enter the Gungeon is generally the less frustrating more level headed approach in comparison to Isaac's "Give you the powers of god one second and then beat you over the head with a rock the next" shenanigans, not that those don't have it's own appeal of course.
One might get the idea that I'm making this review because I'm mad cuz bad with Isaac and this game just gives a bunch of shit to make things easier. And yeah, I'll admit that I only really decided to try and beat this game after getting an Isaac tick with the drop of repentance and then subsequently getting really frustrated with it... after 7 or so wins. Those 29.3 hours I put into gungeon only translated into a single victory, this game does not care if you suck at it. and yet I feel like it's because of all of those bells and whistles I mentioned that makes each loss, while sometimes heartbreaking, a lot less frustrating than how Isaac can be a lot of time.
And that's why this game seems like a nice little thing you pick up for a hour or two, dodge some bullets, test a bit of your luck, and then move on and continue wondering why I'm not good enough to play against my friends in fighting games... you know, whatever it is you do. As decent as this game is it doesn't exactly have Isaac's dozen of final bosses and dozens more of normal bosses on top of that, so I can't make much of a recommendation beyond what I've said if you can deal with what is ultimately, a still pretty random, still mechanically simple, and still ultimately endless rougelike shoot em up.
... this game can actually just shut up with some of the references tho. Like ok, the music is ok if I don't feel like putting on some playlist, the in-game art looks fine, pretty neat, but this game really needs to shut up sometimes. wow, a box, a cardboard box, no one will see you in this thing, do you get it? Oh yeah I get it, real laugh and a half, now where's my real A rank item I spent my last key on you cheeky fuck?
Well for the first 29.3 hours spent over years of playing this on and off whenever I remember that it exists, this game feels like it has an answer to every problem Isaac's design had accumulated through its decade of development. Backtracking to the shop a bit of a pain? Once you find it you can just teleport there and back with the greatest of ease. Tired of enemies spawning on top of you and getting hit by the enemies death bullets cuz you forgot every enemy explodes on death in Isaac these days? Enter the Gungeon telegraphs both of those things. Your run lagging behind on power because you didn't get enough Devil/Angel deals (aka where the fuck did all the soul hearts go Edmund)? Enter the Gungeon rewards a health container upon clearing a boss after taking no damage, still encouraging doing particularly well in early sections of the game while not being the end of the world if you didn't get it either. Tired of getting a bunch of bullets and enemies trapping your big chonky hit box that sometimes just wonder how you're supposed to get out of the way? Besides sporting a much smaller hitbox-to-rest-of-the-screen ratio, there is also a dodge roll to get your still not quite touhou sized hitbox through some less than predicted scenarios, while also having enough commitment and recovery that you're not just dodge rolling every second of a fight and calling it a day. And for every other sticky scenario, you're also packing a couple blanks a floor for clearing a room of bullets, ala Touhou bombs but without the shit ton of damage or the ability to press the button a few frames after the fact.
Obviously there are good items to get for a god run, wouldn't be that interesting of a rougelike otherwise, but I feel like it doesn't happen that often, I can't quite prove it but I feel like the power level of runs are pretty decent, as opposed to Isaac where you have items that can truly just be terrible. I suppose the weird part is that each item/gun tends to be it's own thing and do it's own thing while having a few hard coded upgrades for having certain thematically similar items in your inventory and sometimes you come across the occasional bullet upgrade, while in Isaac every item is being stacked on top of whatever it is you are doing, but it still works I think. The guns each have their own unique shots and quirks, with a little text blurb in the game's little in universe encylopedia, the "Ammonomicon", explaining what it do along with bits of flavor text to maybe hopefully cut down on searching shit up on the wikia (the wikia still has a lot of info not mentioned so it unfortunately still remains a bit of a necessity for getting through these kinds of games).
I could keep making direct comparisons with Isaac for how one game handles one thing and the other handles it differently but I think I made my point in how Enter the Gungeon is generally the less frustrating more level headed approach in comparison to Isaac's "Give you the powers of god one second and then beat you over the head with a rock the next" shenanigans, not that those don't have it's own appeal of course.
One might get the idea that I'm making this review because I'm mad cuz bad with Isaac and this game just gives a bunch of shit to make things easier. And yeah, I'll admit that I only really decided to try and beat this game after getting an Isaac tick with the drop of repentance and then subsequently getting really frustrated with it... after 7 or so wins. Those 29.3 hours I put into gungeon only translated into a single victory, this game does not care if you suck at it. and yet I feel like it's because of all of those bells and whistles I mentioned that makes each loss, while sometimes heartbreaking, a lot less frustrating than how Isaac can be a lot of time.
And that's why this game seems like a nice little thing you pick up for a hour or two, dodge some bullets, test a bit of your luck, and then move on and continue wondering why I'm not good enough to play against my friends in fighting games... you know, whatever it is you do. As decent as this game is it doesn't exactly have Isaac's dozen of final bosses and dozens more of normal bosses on top of that, so I can't make much of a recommendation beyond what I've said if you can deal with what is ultimately, a still pretty random, still mechanically simple, and still ultimately endless rougelike shoot em up.
... this game can actually just shut up with some of the references tho. Like ok, the music is ok if I don't feel like putting on some playlist, the in-game art looks fine, pretty neat, but this game really needs to shut up sometimes. wow, a box, a cardboard box, no one will see you in this thing, do you get it? Oh yeah I get it, real laugh and a half, now where's my real A rank item I spent my last key on you cheeky fuck?