Oh my god
why
WHY HAS THE TUTORIAL FROM THE FIRST GAME BEEN COPY AND PASTED FOR A THIRD TIME WHY
WHHHHHYYYYYYY
AAAGHH


OKAY ON A POSITIVE NOTE
i'm not sure if this is something I missed in the previous two games or if this is a new addition, but the lock-on feature has been vastly imrpoved, allowing you to quickly target multiple enemies before firing, then shooting them all down at rapid speed, as long as your blue meter is high enough. Idk if I missed this originally but I really like it

After the tutorial is over with your at Section 2 and booooomm, Pia invades! Out for vengance and armed with a grenade launcher! I can't understand a word she's saying, but the delivery in her voice is amazing, she's lost everyhing and is clearly dead set on blowing your brains out, and she's loving every second of Henrietta painfully limping through the corridors, hopelessley fighting and searching for a way out of danger.

After all that, Pia calls out a bloody tank, now for that boss battle

Side note, I'm realising each game feels like an anime episode, they have just enough plot and just enough happening to fit the format of singular anime episodes, so maybe that's what they were going for with this.

Anyway pretty easy boss battle, was a fun one though.
Onto the next stage! The final battle, stage 10, Henrietta vs Pia
Will this long awaited ending make this whole experience worth playing through or are they gonna fumbleee.
WELLLL
First you have a shootout between the two of you, eventually the helicopter comes over and you both kinda sorta have to work together to take it out, at this point Pia seems to have turned on her own, if you play close attention she'll also fire at other enemies throughout the stage while you're fighting her.

After fighting off waves of enemies, it's time for the final fight
I did find tis pretty difficult, took me around 2 hours alone just to beat Pia after dying haruhi knows how many times...
After beating Pia, in attempt to kill you she blows up the surrounding area, resulting in her death. Henrietta lives, and apparently so does Pia's handler, somehow he survived what happened at the train station. After beating him he talks to you, seemingly he's not so bad after all, he crawls to pia in an attempt to put his hand on her hand. He dies moments before he gets a chance to but Jose appears last minute and seemingly made it happen.

The scene begins to ends as it shows one last shot of pia and her handler holding hands, while Henrietta and Jose walk away side by side in the distance.

I gotta say firstly the music in this whole game but especially her was fantastic, I've already downloaded the OST I'm putting it on my MP3 player for sure I adore this.

Overall feelingsss..

I really enjoyed playing this to my surprise, I didn't think I'd make it past the first games tutorial but here I am, completed all three games and I'm really happy I did, that ending stage and its closure made it all worth it. Not a perfect game, far from it, but if you can get into the gameplay I'd reccomend sticking through it. The lowest point IMO are the tutorials but that can be said about a lot of games from this era so I can forgive it for that. Everything else was good, sometimes even pretty amazing, don't regret spending time on this at all.

All three games combined are around 9.1 hours.

Anywaaay onto the manga :3

Okay I have to start this by saying; what's with the cover art???? I thought they'd switch things up and throw Triela and Claes into the mix and make them the main characters, maybe have us swap between them during stages since they're quite literally on the box art. But it was just Henrietta again, they didn't appear once, nor were they mentioned.
Anyway that aside...
As for the game, in terms of gameplay it's identical, same enemies same visuals, gameplay so I'm gonna treat this trilogy as if they're all one entity.

First it opens up with the training level from the first game, yup that's right, the same stage that was the weakest part of volume one!The second and third training level are completely new though, they're both way shorter and much more enjoyable, the third teaches you how to fight a new enemy type which is this on wheels machine gun typa thingy.

Now the first real legit level switches things up right from the start! Henrietta's on a boat! It was real fun at first and made shooting the enemies much harder, close to impossible even! Which is why I got frustrated after I made the mistake here thinking that you had to kill every enemy you see before you could progress, the boat loops around and every time it does all the enemies respawn. But because I was so fixated on killing them I missed the arrows to move on the d-pad, you don't have to complete all the enemies in that section at all, it's relatively fun for a bit and you can hop off it whenever you get tired of it.
This stage is in Venice and Henrietta does some silly little bounces in the cutscene shortly after she gets on land and finds Pia, after finding Pia you chase her throughout the city, get on the boat a couple times to chase her down. Gosh slightly off topic but it's so satisfying after using the special attack that auto targets everyone on screen, plays that awesome cutscene of Henrietta just firing her pistol at rapid speed with that blank uncaring and cold stare on her face, and seeing all enemies simultaneously collapse.
It started to drag on a bit, 35 minutes but the boat showdown at the end made it all worth it, getting to fight Pia and eventually the meatheads on the artillery gun in a high speed boat chase was insanely fun.

Things in the next stage start to pick up intensely, Henrietta fails to assassinate Pia's handler, as a result a huge shootout happens with more enemies than we've seen so far, and now getting to use the Uzi too it makes things all the more intense, and gosh the GM in this stage is beautifully intense as well. AND GOD SPEAKING OF BGM THE MUSIC WHEN YOU HAVE THE SHOOTOUT IN THE TRAIN AAHHHHHH
I love this stage, this is the most fun I've had in this game, this isn't the best game in the world but god the fun moments are SOOOOO FUN.

This might just be a case of "ooo baby's first on rails how cute!" but I'll have you know I've played Gal Gun hmmph

AND IF THE STAGE COULDN'T GET ANY BETTER THEY JUST BROUGHT OUT DUDES IN SUNGLASSES ON MOTORBIKES AND NOW I'VE GOTTA SHOOT THEM TOO??
AANNNDDD scratch that, the motorbike bit dragged on paiiiiinhfully, they move way too fast and they're bullet sponges but I finally managed to beat it! Pia's handler dies and Pia freaks out and tries to kill Henrietta. She escapes and things close off with the clicking trigger of Pia's empty gun, then it cuts to black as you hear her blood curdling scream, pretty intense ending, I assume she'll be back in part 3 for revenge.

oVERALL FEELIIINGGSSS

I think at this point the formula is kinda dragging for me a little, and those moving machine guns I mentioned earlier that had a whole tutorial stage dedicated to them? Never appeared again. Yup. Why'd they waste my time making me play the original tutorial AND that too.

Anyway negatives aside I did enjoy playing this again, as much as that motorbike section kinda soured things for me.
Again as I said in the last review, I can't see anyone enjoying this if they're not already a GSG fan. It's fun though, just verrryyy dissapointed by the lack of Triela and Claes, gonna assume it'll be the same next time too but it's whatever, just feels very baity with those cover arts.
I'm bordering on giving this 2.5 for that motorbike section but with how fun the train shootout was I'll give it a 3.