To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Balan Kino. The symbolism is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the story will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Balan's creepy outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of this game, to realise that its not just simple- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Balan truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Balan's existential catchphrase "Emoclew!" which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Yuji Naka's genius wit unfolds itself on their monitors What fools.. how I pity them.

with all this taken into consideration i can safely say that this is the worst video game i have ever played and you should stay as far away from it as humanly possible

When it comes to my experience with the shoot-em-up genre, a lot of it consists of me playing one of these kinds of games when I came across them in an arcade or as a minigame in something much larger rather than going out of my way to play anything specific. Most of my familiarity with the genre involves classics from the late 1970s and 1980s like Space Invaders, Galaga, or Gradius, as well as a few 90s gems like Pop'n TwinBee or Space Harrier, and while I had my fun with them, they never had me playing for very long. The first one of these games that I actually wanted to play from the beginning to the end, though, would be Ikaruga, as its basic gimmick and supposed high difficulty were enough to pique my interest, and thanks to my familiarity with its developer Treasure through Gunstar Heroes and Sin and Punishment, I became even more excited to check it out. My time with the game was quite short, but it was able to leave a huge impression on me, and while I still consider Sin and Punishment to be Treasure's best game, Ikaruga is a very close second.

Ikaruga is easy to understand, difficult to do well in, and even harder to master, but because the game took full advantage of its core mechanics, it ends up being an entirely rewarding experience rather than something rage-inducing. In this game, your ship can switch its polarity to not only do more damage to enemies of the opposite color, but also to absorb the attacks of those with the same polarity as you in order to fill up your energy meter and fire homing shots, as well as to simply not get killed instantly. While the game does still feature the knee-jerk reactions and fast pace that the genre is known for, this one mechanic adds a puzzle-like layer to its gameplay, as having the screen get coated head-to-toe in bullets and enemies of different polarities makes it so that you're less concerned with killing everything on the screen and more about knowing when to shift colors, where to go in order to fill up your energy meter as quickly as possible, and when to shoot out your homing attacks. The deceptive simplicity of Ikaruga meshes perfectly with the tough-as-nails level design, because the chapters and setpieces not only get harder as you go, but they also get more demanding of you and your skills, and having everything click as you figure out what moves to make in order to survive through a combination of memorizing enemy firing patterns and muscle memory is one of the most satisfying feelings I've ever felt in a video game. Despite how hard it can be, Ikaruga never resorted to cheap deaths or unfair tactics and instead made every single death feel like it was my own fault rather than that of the game, and that sense of refinement in both the game's mechanics and its level design made actually getting past that one hurdle and moving on to see what other crazy obstacle the game had in store for me made me immediately want to try again as soon as I ran out of continues rather than getting angry with the game and quitting for the day.

In all three of the games from Treasure that I've played so far, there's been at least one moment where the game fully leans in on the spectacle of its action and allows you to do something really impressive, and what's great about Ikaruga is that practically every moment of its five chapters has the potential for you to achieve that, and pulling one of these moments off rewards you with both a higher score and an unmatched sense of accomplishment. Since the game's central gimmick puts a strong emphasis on its visuals, it would only make sense for Ikaruga to be as stunning to look at as it is fun to play, as the gorgeous artstyle and effective compositions made the bullet hell moments and enemy formations into visual marvels. This especially applies to the game's hectic and immensely creative boss fights, with the battle against Tageri being my favorite moment in the whole game thanks to both how cool it looked and how satisfying it was. Ikaruga also features some amazing music from the game's director, Hiroshi Iuchi, and I especially loved how it was directly tied into the pace of each level. Ikaruga was an absolutely masterful game that not only became one of my favorite efforts from Treasure, but also my favorite shoot-em-up by far, and I really hope that I can check out the game that this served as the spiritual successor to, Radiant Silvergun, at some point.

Although I have seen people talk about the Sega Genesis in terms of its intense competition against the Super Nintendo during the 90s, I rarely saw anyone bring up its actual games. Sure, the original Sonic the Hedgehog games were (and still are) some of the most wildly popular games of that era, and the console also found some popularity with the beat-'em-up crowd with the Streets of Rage series, but whenever I would try to think of must-have exclusives for the Sega Genesis, no other games would come to mind. When I found out about Gunstar Heroes, though, it looked interesting enough for me to want to give it a shot, and I'm glad that I did, because this game honestly surprised me with how good it was.

On the surface, the run-&-gun gameplay of Gunstar Heroes seems simple, but it did quite a lot to make the core gameplay loop feel more deep and rewarding to get a grasp of. For starters, I really liked how the game incorporated its four shot types, as they not only each had their own strengths and weaknesses, but the ability to combine them meant that I was constantly experimenting to see what strategies worked and felt the best. The action in Gunstar Heroes is fast-paced and chaotic, as every moment of each level is spent shooting or dodging enemies that continuously appear on screen, and using the movement abilities and melee attacks made the combat feel even more frantic and engaging. Despite how this game is only made up of seven levels, each one feels distinct and brimming with new ideas, as Gunstar Heroes constantly changes up level structure, control schemes, and boss encounters in ways that feel well thought out and exciting rather than gimmicky. I'd also say that Gunstar Heroes is one of the most visually impressive games of the fourth console generation, as it not only had some excellent sprite work and a vibrant color palette, but the more visually complex boss battles such as Seven Force and the Core Guard System were very impressive to look at while also having a unique sense of depth.

Generally, I had a great time with Gunstar Heroes, but I did have some gripes with it, and most of these had to do with the game's difficulty. For the most part, Gunstar Heroes is a challenging, but reasonable run-&-gun game, but its random difficulty spikes soured my mood at times, as dealing with seven phase boss fights or occasional bullet hell moments felt more like pure frustration rather than a fair challenge. This issue worsens the game's already inconsistent checkpoint system, with some of the harder levels not having them at all. Although I did praise the game's commitment to constantly switching up its level design, the weapon controls for the spaceship in the level "Empire's Space Craft" were very finicky, and it was especially annoying to try and dodge enemy fire and meteorites when I couldn't even aim my vehicle's weapon in the direction that I wanted it to. These issues felt minor in comparison to what Gunstar Heroes did well, though, and I not only really enjoyed this game, but it also made me excited to check out what is arguably Treasure's most famous game, Ikaruga.

This game is an utter work of art in my eyes. I knew that i'd fall head over heels for it from the "Anti-RPG" tagline toted around alone but I didnt think id be so into it that id 100% the damn thing (which may not matter to whoever's reading but Ive never done this before especially with an RPG)

But to the actual points of the game,
This game has aged incredibly fucking well and still holds up all these years later because its way of "meta" and messages about love, morality, and video games as a whole are still so potent to this day. Every character in Moon feels less like youre trying to "Save" them and more like youre crafting your own story about making connections with other people and understanding the different passions felt by the characters, though youre also reminded semi-often that these Are still video game characters.
I think everything about this game is satisfying from its art direction of putting together clay figures,sprites, pre-rendered environments its all so fucking good and mouthwatering its genuinely three favorites of mine all rolled into one. This is was simultaneously such a tender as fuck game but also one that still has that separated degree of wanting you to Not stay super attached

Even if getting everything with no ingame checklist(i used notes app to keep tabs on shit) would probably be next to impossible (for me anyways), I had so much fun seeing each and every little thing the game had to offer and seeing each event play out. I think if i were to pick out any negatives with the game itd be how the action meter Does kinda just stop mattering after a bit but that in it of itself kind of removes the tension from The Hero wandering around and you shift into this state of thinking where you realize this and thats Okay because you arent stressing over grinding before everything ends because youre on the inverse of his progression path.

Also i think the fishing in Moon is actually really cool, except for when im being timed, when im being timed it makes me wish the guy that designed the fishing had their nutsack hair cheesegrated off their body.. but that aside most of the minigames are cute and funny

Final thoughts: kind of all over the place on this because I dont want to talk spoilers and want people to just maybe see this and take a chance on one of the best games ive ever played and will ever play in my life, thank you love-de-lic for giving me a similar feeling that rekindled my love for series such as the MOTHER franchise yet also giving me a completely different kind of warmth that permeates the 4th wall so hard that it hits you like a bullet. Even when I needed help from a guide the payoff felt so good, hell most of the game I discovered by simply bumbling around and doing random shit & it was still a great time

so yeah

that unused ending gets a similar message across from the regular one but wow is it dark as hell

the clis song is kind of cute after you hear it 9 times

i spent like 53 hours playing this game and i checked on avg how long it takes ppl to beat it after and tht shit said "23-25" hours for 100% completion
so that means i spent atleast 10 extra hours on that stupid ass fishing tournament which is... hillarious

the best interactive dont be a shut-in + go touch grass PSA ever

poppas is a cunt

thts all i got, cya

i went into this scared shitless and came out of it with one of the most cerebral thrashing experiences ive ever had in a video game.

It's NOT an understatement when I say this game would be in my top 5 favorite games of all time if it personally hit the same merits to me as my actual top 5, but that is saying something because this game embodies everything that I love about the medium in its own way.

You know the usual with Killer7 if youre reading this, yeah each smith is really fun to play and they have their own unique weapon and weird little superpower going on but what really nails it all
what really brings this all together
is the SOUNDS
the sounds of heaven smiles laughing as they march towards you and you immediately start mashing your button trying to locate where they are
the sounds of the music being gradually sifted out when they approach closer and closer
some with panting breaths and others with weird little indicator noises

That feeling you get when you miss a shot, anxiety hitting you as it marches closer and closer flinching only as if the heaven smiles were stung by bees and not even taking a bullet to the head
their weakpoints sometimes not even being fully apparent and the sound of your reload and empty rounds dropping like marbles on the floor praying you can hit the weakpoint and recenter yourself to deliver that sweet blow
and THAT is what EVERY encounter feels like in this game, its a consistent mix of weird intrigue and unsettling adrenaline swirled together like peanut butter and chocolate bro
It's the palpable atmosphere you can taste thats followed by political critique galore, yet it never even fuckin dwells any particular take or statement for Too Long
Like the game itself was made full in the intention that some dialogue you just mull over, you get crumbs of information and if youre like me and you only played No More Heroes 1 or NONE of Suda51's games, i think youre in the perfect position to be knocked flat on your ass

Some say the story purely doesnt make sense & honestly i could totally see how someone could play start to finish and just be confused the whole time, but i was actively trying to piece things together through the remnant psyches, every cutscene in this damn game felt like a drop of fiji water in my mouth after dragging my tits through a mile of hot asphallt
I genuinely dont think ill ever be playing something this good or this interesting ever again in my entire life

(ErrRMM SO WHY NOT 5/5 STARS? IF U LIKE IT SO MUCH?? ERMMM?)
WELL
the nitty gritty of the gameplay Does have its flaws, like certain smith personalities' upgrades are totally left in the dark to you, and while thats just a given
sometimes that IS annoying,
because every boss in Killer7!! is actually pretty piss easy (in the default modes)
Like yeah youll die maybe once or twice on a couple later ones MAYBE??????? but.. I personally found some smile encounters harder since i prioritized weakpoint above all

And that segways into my other gripe
the map in this game kinda sucks mammoth cock im ngl, I think it Gets The Job Done but i doubt im asking for a lot when i say i wish there was atleast a little dot indicator or something to better display
I was especially wishing for this in the Alter Ego target more than any of the other missions really bc of the backtracking in that one LMAO

And my final gripe is just how turning your fucking head around to look around can't be adjusted, there's no sensitivity toggle for smthin like that and while most of the time its not a Major concern, theres times in the game where theres a smile that drops down..
im mashin scan
i look everywhere mashin scan
I still cant find the smile
and then i get blown tf up
this happened like atleast twice but again, it didnt happen all the time just kind of a pain in the dick. hell i got a game over like maybe three times at most while playing the game too, pants shitting aside i think its actually pretty easy on normal which is a good thing because that means the higher modes offer better skilled players which i am uh.... not sure i am but COOL

Overall uhhh ahah if u havent played this game and ur reading this u should absolutely try this game, ATLEAST do yourself the solid of playing the first mission in full because there is nothing like Killer7 in style, game vibe or anything in the way that it conveys
i am So glad my lil bro pointed me at this shit

Critical Review From a Fan of the Original Gungrave

In the lead up to Gungrave G.O.R.E I decided to go through the entire Gungrave media catalog and made a shocking discovery – the original Gungrave is genuinely fantastic. It’s an excellently designed arcade shooter with loads of early 2000s anime style to back it up. The extremely loose anime adaptation is just as fantastic, expanding greatly on the characters and turning them from cool but one note artbook designs to fleshed out, larger than life figures. The game sequel Overdose however fell pretty flat for me, with a significantly weaker presentation and much sloppier game design (it does have a character named Rocketbilly Redcadillac tho, so that’s a few points in its favor). I attempted to play the VR game but it was so utterly forgettable and clearly a tech demo for an early version of GORE that barely resembles the final game that it’s barely worth bothering with.

With all that preamble I had my expectations pretty much set for G.O.R.E – I expected it to be decently fun, but not as good as the original game. For the most part my expectations were met, but there's a lot that as a big fan of the original game just doesn't hold up. I have no doubt G.O.R.E will reach some new fans and will probably become a cult classic in a decade, and if you have Game Pass it's worth trying out. But for now I want to go over why it just didn't really work for me.

The biggest change out of the gate in G.O.R.E are the controls. Gone are the semi-tank controls, replaced with a more “modern” dual stick set up with a very generous auto aim reticle. I’m generally of the mindset that unconventional control schemes should be embraced in the face of an ever-homogenized gaming landscape, but this change is ultimately pretty harmless. Not without drawbacks though – moving from the right thumbstick to the face buttons can feel cumbersome sometimes. The dodge maneuver gets the worst of it, it no longer feels silky smooth to pull off dodge shots when instead of simply bringing your thumb down without stopping shooting you have to move it across the controller and stop aiming for a second. Dodging can also feel pretty unresponsive at times, sometimes not coming out despite feeling like it should have or getting scraped by an attack while dodging that it really feels like you should have avoided.

Melee combat in the original game consisted of one attack, basically a get-off-me move you could also use to be hot shit and get style points. It fit with the game’s design but was pretty limited. This was expanded somewhat in Overdose to add a three hit combo, but this was generally unresponsive and not very good. This is one area where G.O.R.E greatly improves on the previous games. There are unlockable combos that serve different purposes like crowd control, pushing through enemies, or laying on thick damage to single targets and they all feel great. It definitely isn’t Devil May Cry and shooting should still remain your main choice of attack but melee combat as a whole is much more useful. There is one downgrade to melee however – in Overdose, the three hit combo could deflect rockets as well as the standing still “Death Tornado” move but in G.O.R.E only Death Tornado has any effect on them, with rockets phasing right through combo moves.

There are some upsides to how demolition shots work now but some odd decisions as well. In the original and Overdose you gained demolition shots by your performance at the end of stages, graded via skull points. The amount of demolition shots you could hold was also consistent across the whole game. In G.O.R.E, you start off with only one demolition shot gauge slot and have to purchase more and new demolition shot types in the new upgrade menu. I’m mixed on the addition of the upgrade menu – it definitely feels like a concession made to G.O.R.E being a modern game and some upgrades just feel like point dumps, i.e. your base shot power is absolutely pitiful and should be upgraded a few times right away. Upgrades like “10% more of X stat” feel a bit antithetical to Gungrave’s mission statement as a whole. On the flip side, I don’t mind buying the demolition shots and gauge slots. It’s a take on the previous system of gaining them based on your performance while offering additional freedom to tailor your demolition shot loadout to your liking. Being able to reset your upgrades at no penalty is also very welcome to experimentation and finding what works best for you. Actually firing demolition shots feels like an improvement too, with them being selected from a face button shortcut while holding the left trigger as opposed to having to navigate through a menu to select one.

Stage and enemy design is one of the things that makes the original Gungrave such an infinitely replayable game in my opinion – it’s an all killer no filler approach, impeccably designed with the player’s abilities in mind and kept short enough you can reasonably memorize layouts and patterns for repeat playthroughs. G.O.R.E takes a quantity over quality approach, being by far the longest game in the series with the longest stages but as a result the individual stage design suffers a fair bit. Each of the areas is fairly memorable but with rare exceptions the 4-6 individual stages contained within each tend to blur together and the game ends up feeling padded out as a result. It’s not helped that instead of the short and sweet ten minute stages of the original, G.O.R.E’s can go on for fifteen, even upwards of twenty minutes with most stages well wearing out their welcome by the time they’re over. The design within also feels very inconsistent. Which props can be destroyed to keep up a beat count seems to vary from each individual prop – sometimes you can blow up barrels and cars, sometimes you can’t. This inconsistency compared to the original game’s ability to blow up virtually everything to keep a beat count going makes going for long beat counts discouraging in G.O.R.E. Another big knock on G.O.R.E’s stage design and replayability is the large amount of instant deaths in some stages. In the original game there were no instant deaths pits, you would just have to climb your way back up. One early stage in G.O.R.E however is memorable for the wrong reasons, where you are stuck on a train with shotgun enemies that can easily knock you off and barely any time to make it to the end before being cut off by a tunnel. The last area’s levels are particularly poor, featuring long corridors filled with dozens of the tankiest enemies in the game.

Enemy design is a mixed bag overall. Enemy AI is very dumb and very aggressive, tending to make a beeline straight for you. While diving out of harm’s way and pushing forward was the name of the game in the original in G.O.R.E it’s all about circle strafing around groups chasing you and moving backwards. The new controls at least facilitate this reasonably well, though there are many instances where enemies can lock you into a corner and cook you. The already kind of iffy burst mode maneuver – where you stay still while shooting to start stylishly firing while being able to rotate – is particularly useless in G.O.R.E since enemies will just run up to sucker punch you, though there is a new take on it where at 50 beats you can tap Y/triangle to do a particularly fast version that still leaves you vulnerable but can rack up huge beat counts and demolition gauge gains on close groups of enemies.

There are a handful of particularly annoying enemy types – the laser soldiers are the worst, with the timing on dodging their lasers never feeling consistent leading to either popping a demolition shot to get rid of them asap or resorting to some very un-Gungrave-like bitch strats of moving in and out of cover. The homing rocket soldiers are also very annoying as they’re relentless in their attacks and can’t be as easily dodged as normal rockets. The shotgunners aren’t too bad in most stages, but levels with pits turn them into a nightmare. Some enemies also toss gas that disables the auto aim reticlewhich isn’t particularly hard to work around but can still be quite an annoyance. Boss design ranges from kind of bad to pretty decent – the big end bosses of each area can be pretty tough, but are satisfying to learn and eventually overcome. The midbosses on the other hand tend to just be annoying exercises in circle strafing and questionable hitboxes.

Your shield, which protects your health bar from attacks and can regenerate after not getting hit for a bit Halo-style, seems particularly low in G.O.R.E. In the original game you ideally would never run out of your shield to get a max HP score at the end of the stage but this seems like it would be impossible with how stronger enemies in G.O.R.E can wipe your shield out in one or two hits. In theory this should be counteracted with the new glory kill-esque “R.I.P” attack that regains shield but enemies don’t consistently go into a staggered state near low health, often just dying before staggering so you can’t really count on R.I.P to save your hide. You can R.I.P from a distance with a hookshot/devil grab-esque move that I’m only mentioning now because it’s pretty useless. You can grab an enemy from afar to use as a shield but while it helps in a pinch this doesn’t get much use since it only works on the weakest tier of enemies and most later game encounters involve huge waves of stronger types.

That pretty much wraps up my criticisms on the gameplay, so let’s talk about the presentation. The original Gungrave is easily the coolest game you could make in 2002 - original concept and character designs by Yasuhiro Nightow (mangaka of Trigun), mechanical designs by Kosuke Fujishima (mangaka of Ah! My Goddess and character designer for Sakura Wars), prerendered cinematics by Romanov Higa (creator of Urda: The Third Reich), and music by Tsuneo Imahori (composer for the Trigun TV anime and guitarist for The Seatbelts). This pool of talent culminated in an incredibly stylish and memorable presentation that, combined with Sega's decision in localization to keep the stacked Japanese voice cast, nailed the feeling of being a playable piece of cutting edge turn of the millennium Japanese art. The sequel Overdose, while keeping much of the same creative staff, felt a bit more stretched out in its budget and didn't quite keep up the same energy despite some great new character designs like Rocketbilly Redcadillac. The original's simple but effective story also gave way to a confusing mess of a plot in Overdose, now told mostly through static dialogue scenes. The extremely loose anime adaptation of the first game fared much better, nailing a more grounded tone thanks to Madhouse's direction and an excellent English dub with Tsuneo Imahori returning to do the soundtrack.

So with that in mind, how does G.O.R.E's presentation fare? If I had to describe G.O.R.E's presentation in one word it would be "rough". There's some good here - Yasuhiro Nightow worked more broadly as the "image director", overseeing the designs and naming some of the new elements. Ikumi Nakamura, known for The Evil Within and Ghostwire Tokyo, joined developer IGGYMOB during development and contributed character designs. So generally speaking, the new character designs are pleasant. They do have a bit of genericness to them - Quartz and the Raven Clan bosses in particular - but aren't bad. The updated older designs are good if slightly let down by the more realistic direction - Grave and Bunji look fantastic, but Mika looks pretty off. Tsuneo Imahori sadly didn't return to do the music but the new soundtrack from Tetsuya Shibata and Yoshino Aoki, former Capcom composers who also worked on FFXV, does keep up the energy with a more buttrock-y vibe that fits the style of the game.

The game's artistic direction as a whole unfortunately feels kind of generic, looking very much like a low budget Unreal Engine 4 game. While the small handful of prerendered cinematics from Digic Pictures look great, the in-engine cutscenes are extremely rough with stilted animation and a heavy overuse of depth of field. Enemy designs are nothing to write home about, being an assortment of generic thugs and soldiers that don't have the same pizzazz the designs in the original game had. The redesigned Orgmen look particularly bad, being very top-heavy and much goofier looking.

While the Japanese cast returned along with a new Korean cast, the English dub is unfortunately pretty bad. Only Quartz's VA is a regular professional voice actor with the rest of the cast seeming to be an assortment of English-speaking actors who live in South Korea with the result being a very unprofessional sounding and miscast English voice track. Special note to Zell, played by Akio Otsuka in Japanese and Steve Blum in the dub for Overdose, who in G.O.R.E sounds very much not like a hardened military commander. When XSeed localized the VR game they brought back the voice actors from the excellent English dub of the anime for the few bits of dialogue that game had and it's unfortunate the localization of the bigger game could not do the same. The English localization as a whole is very amateurish, with loads of grammar mistakes and typos. It's especially poor in the story recap which does an overall very poor job explaining the plots of the previous games.

The story in G.O.R.E is unfortunately a nonsensical mess, feeling pretty detached from the events of previous games. There are a few attempts at fanservice in bringing some characters back but they fall pretty flat. Grave and Mika in particular feel like they have no real characterization in G.O.R.E with Grave basically just being dropped into areas to shoot stuff and Mika spending most of the game in a plot coma. My problem with the storytelling in G.O.R.E is similar to my problem with Overdose's, where they wanted to have more story than the simple but effective first game but didn't expand the depth of the story like the anime did so you end up with a lot of Proper Nouns said over and over and a plot that spins its wheels. It doesn't even really move the story of the franchise forward, with Mika being infected with SEED like in Overdose again and having to be saved again. The game tries to drop a moment at the end with Grave saying "My name is Brandon Heat." that feels wholly unearned and not set up at all by the story. The Raven Clan bosses feel like a poor attempt at recapturing what made the Millennion gang work and the main villain of the game feels like it comes out of nowhere. When it comes to story with Gungrave the best approaches are to either embrace a less is more mentality like the original game or really dig into Grave's character like the anime. With G.O.R.E it just ends up feeling bloated.

And that's pretty much my tl;dr review of Gungrave G.O.R.E - it's overbloated and bit off more than it could chew for what it's trying to do, with the occasional good qualities being overshadowed by how rough so much of it from being stretched so thin. IGGYMOB has announced a patch to retool the difficulty spikes and add a full auto option, and I hope they continue to support the game post-launch. There's almost a good game here and with some tweaking maybe one day it could reach it.