Gungrave G.O.R.E

Not much of a story, saves itself often so you can play a little and come back for more. You're a real badass in this game. Great for a game you don't have to think much about, just kill everything. Perfect for my ADHD. Great job by the folks who made it. Some would call it a time waster but I love these kind of games. Anime, which I don't usually like, but I like this game. If you can get it on sale, grab it

A fun Gungrave game that sadly has an uninteresting premise and less stylized visuals than its PS2 predecessors. However, if taken in short bursts, it can be a fun distraction and refresher in between video games. This version has all the patches so you wont find anything technicality and I personally bought the complete version which includes the DLC characters of Rocket Billy Red Cadillac and Harry McDowell so I'll go over them briefly. Rocket is a ghost that possesses a guitar and is a returning character from Gungrave Overdose. He plays very very similar to that game with his guitar shooting bolts and stream of lightning. He does need to be leveled up seperate from Grave which encourages a new game plus approach. Fun and stylish, he gets its own suite of Demolition Shots (Limit Breaks) but does not get an expanded moveset like Grave (though you might not really notice. I sure did not). My only gripe with Rocket is the reuse of voice lines. Harry, in the other hand, is a much more deadlier character. He share the stats of Grave so it can be interchangable with the Main Character. He hits harder than Grave and is able to break through shielded enemies with the shots alone. I'm personally happy with my purchase for I have experienced the previous Gungrave games though I think the previous PS2 games felt more inspired than this one. Still happy another Gungrave exits and hopefully we can get another that moves the series forward mechanically. However.

My memory of the original game has gotten foggy over the years but as far as I can tell from the stages I've played through, G.O.R.E is functionally identical to the originals: you run through hallways cluttered with destructible debris and equally destructible enemy hordes, and smash the attack buttons until you get thumb blisters or there's nothing left in the stage to blow up. There's even an option to apply a cel-shading filter to mimic the look of the first two games on PS2 (though it doesn't apply to cutscenes). The story drops you in like it's the latest season of an ongoing show and just assumes you've watched the previous episodes - there's a very rudimentary explanation of what's going on, but it's set up with the idea that you've played the original games or at least watched the anime, so if you like your shooter/brawlers to have a good cinematic narrative that's easy to follow, this will be a letdown. Additionally, the elaborate designs of characters returning from the original games - made by the creator of Trigun, Yasuhiro Nightow - clash pretty hard with the more grounded, almost Saints Row 2 aesthetic they're using here, but you spend most of the game staring at Grave's ridiculously huge shoulders anyway. The game runs soundly, if not smooth. I have had difficulty navigating Grave around certain areas since he's about as agile as a lead brick in a black hole and struggles with getting caught on walls or boxes and thus cornered by swarms of enemies, but you get access to a special skill that staggers and breaks enemy shields, AND restores your health, so as long as you manage your energy resources well you can just bazooka your way out of most problems. It's repetitive, but weirdly satisfying. Overall, this likely won't appeal to younger generations of players who grew up with higher quality action games like DMC5, but for the early 2000s anime crowd this is basically one long, silly flashback.

The game is simple, and with autoshoot mode it is too casual. However, it is fun and very good for relaxing after a hard working day. Simple, a bit unpolished, a little bit mindless, but very relaxing and entertaining.