Ganryu 2 is like Sonic the Hedgehog but with swords.
There that's my box quote. I have never played Ganryu 1, apparently it was a neo geo arcade game. I was randomly watching a youtube video when someone started talking about this game. I never heard of it myself but man I was wondering why I didn't when i saw how stunning the game looked. Really captured my interest. Great looking game thats all about speed and action in an arcade style pacing. Sounds fun.
The premise is your a samurai guy who killed some dude in the first game and he is back from the dead and wants vengence. That's it and that's all you get. No story here. The game kinda feels like shinobi at first becuase your only forms of attack are shurikens and sword slashes. You also can build up magic meter to do a magic attack, that is usually about a once per stage thing based on how fast you can accumulate it. Game plays like this, every stage has two parts to it with a boss at the end of each section. Most enemies die in a single hit outside of bosses and a select few enemies. When I described it like sonic, I say it because I feel like you can play it two different ways. On one hand you can speed through the stages as fast as you can slashing and dashing through as many obsticles as you can, minimazing the time you let enemies set themselves up. Or you play cautiously and take your time and explore to find secrets and items and take more precaution in your approach, but the flip side is that enemies have more time to react to you and spawn in. I really like the balance of player choice when it comes how you want to approach obsticles.
Ganryu 2 is an arcade game through and through though. It's pretty short and tough. It's level design and enemy placement is pretty great and thought out. You will be dying a lot your first time through. On the upside though the game does give you infinite continues and a fair amount of check points and saves after each of the 5 stages. However I feel like this game is designed to be able to 1CC, in fact there are even advantages in doing so. Normaly you have five hit points per life but each stage has a Max HP+1 upgrade hidden inside. Usually they are not too hard to find but if you die your Max HP resets back to square one. This gives incentive to try to learn the game and memorize the obsticles because you will have more hit points than normal making sections of the game you might die on a lot become easier because you have a bigger pool of health. Very risk reward style of play. Truly arcade style. Not to say the game is impossible to play regularly, I just feel like the devs really encouraged that style of play and a lot of the acheivments encourage it.
Ganryu 2 does have a few issues though. Like I said earlier it's a budget game clearly. Glitches are aplenty even after updates. Sporaditcly you can get stuck in walls if you go to fast, wall jumps failing to initiate, graphical effects and animations lingering too long (stage 4 is ridiculous with the leg animations staying on screen) and sadly times where you character landing from a jump prevents you from jumping again until you get unstuck from a dash. It sounds really bad but more than anything it's just annoying especially the jump stuff. When the game requires speedy inputs and jumps it can be a real problem. Thankfully instant deaths are rare (mainly stage 1-2 and 4-1). The games difficulty is pretty fair and not too tough but ramps up considerbly on stage 4. Stage 4 and 5 are as long as 1-3. Also the game doesn't have any features or options so to speak of outside volume control with nothing really to do outside of one playthrough. If your not a score attack or arcade style fan the asking price might be a bit much right now, although I snagged it on sale on PSN for a good price.
Overall though even though Ganryu 2 doesn't really do anything new and is just a pure action sidecroller I thought it was a really great, gorgeous and fun action game. It's really easy to get lost in the speed and sword slashing as you try to speed through the stages. Honestly I think this one is criminally under appreciated and no one is or was talking about it online. It came and went with no fanfare at all I feel. In fact my review is the first here. It's a shame I feel it's quality should garner a bit more of a following that what it has.
Platinum #165
There that's my box quote. I have never played Ganryu 1, apparently it was a neo geo arcade game. I was randomly watching a youtube video when someone started talking about this game. I never heard of it myself but man I was wondering why I didn't when i saw how stunning the game looked. Really captured my interest. Great looking game thats all about speed and action in an arcade style pacing. Sounds fun.
The premise is your a samurai guy who killed some dude in the first game and he is back from the dead and wants vengence. That's it and that's all you get. No story here. The game kinda feels like shinobi at first becuase your only forms of attack are shurikens and sword slashes. You also can build up magic meter to do a magic attack, that is usually about a once per stage thing based on how fast you can accumulate it. Game plays like this, every stage has two parts to it with a boss at the end of each section. Most enemies die in a single hit outside of bosses and a select few enemies. When I described it like sonic, I say it because I feel like you can play it two different ways. On one hand you can speed through the stages as fast as you can slashing and dashing through as many obsticles as you can, minimazing the time you let enemies set themselves up. Or you play cautiously and take your time and explore to find secrets and items and take more precaution in your approach, but the flip side is that enemies have more time to react to you and spawn in. I really like the balance of player choice when it comes how you want to approach obsticles.
Ganryu 2 is an arcade game through and through though. It's pretty short and tough. It's level design and enemy placement is pretty great and thought out. You will be dying a lot your first time through. On the upside though the game does give you infinite continues and a fair amount of check points and saves after each of the 5 stages. However I feel like this game is designed to be able to 1CC, in fact there are even advantages in doing so. Normaly you have five hit points per life but each stage has a Max HP+1 upgrade hidden inside. Usually they are not too hard to find but if you die your Max HP resets back to square one. This gives incentive to try to learn the game and memorize the obsticles because you will have more hit points than normal making sections of the game you might die on a lot become easier because you have a bigger pool of health. Very risk reward style of play. Truly arcade style. Not to say the game is impossible to play regularly, I just feel like the devs really encouraged that style of play and a lot of the acheivments encourage it.
Ganryu 2 does have a few issues though. Like I said earlier it's a budget game clearly. Glitches are aplenty even after updates. Sporaditcly you can get stuck in walls if you go to fast, wall jumps failing to initiate, graphical effects and animations lingering too long (stage 4 is ridiculous with the leg animations staying on screen) and sadly times where you character landing from a jump prevents you from jumping again until you get unstuck from a dash. It sounds really bad but more than anything it's just annoying especially the jump stuff. When the game requires speedy inputs and jumps it can be a real problem. Thankfully instant deaths are rare (mainly stage 1-2 and 4-1). The games difficulty is pretty fair and not too tough but ramps up considerbly on stage 4. Stage 4 and 5 are as long as 1-3. Also the game doesn't have any features or options so to speak of outside volume control with nothing really to do outside of one playthrough. If your not a score attack or arcade style fan the asking price might be a bit much right now, although I snagged it on sale on PSN for a good price.
Overall though even though Ganryu 2 doesn't really do anything new and is just a pure action sidecroller I thought it was a really great, gorgeous and fun action game. It's really easy to get lost in the speed and sword slashing as you try to speed through the stages. Honestly I think this one is criminally under appreciated and no one is or was talking about it online. It came and went with no fanfare at all I feel. In fact my review is the first here. It's a shame I feel it's quality should garner a bit more of a following that what it has.
Platinum #165