Gungrave Overdose

In preparation for Gungrave G.O.R.E. coming at the 22nd, I am playing the first two games. I've already beaten the first one a few months back. They are Arcade-styled TPS. It's a good sequel but I have a few nitpicks with it so far. I'm only in a few stages so far.

Both are in my backlog, look like very cool arcadey games. How is the first one?

The first one is pretty good. A solid but a bit broken title.

Now that I think about it, this is weirdly reminding me of the Hotline Miami games.

Well, when I say weird, I mean that the first one had better levels. It's unfair to say that considering I have only beaten a few levels so far in Overdose. I should play the first one again to make better comparisons but here are a few good and personally bad things. I don't have any manuals for the Gungrave games so I somewhat suck at this. Hear me out though.

Charging your shots: Hold the square button to power up your normal shots. It can only go up to four shots. Perfect for the bigger goons.

Lock on: Perfect for reaching mooks who are on higher ground. Further playing is required because I can't switch to another enemy even though there is button for it.

Grave: He seems faster now and he still has the turn button. Admittedly, I must have never saw it or I must have forgotten it in the tutorial because I played the first two stages without that button. Actually, he seems to be faster and slower at the same time.

Casket shield: I forgot the name of it but you can shield yourself from rockets. Further playing is required since I would just hit the rockets back at them.

Pose: You hold the R2 button to pose. I think what it is supposed to do is the longer you hold R2, the more damage you do. Further playing is required.

Regen Shield: It's to protect your health bar. You have to wait for some seconds so it can fill back up. It will work as long as you don't attack and if any enemy can't hurt you.

Demolition Shots: So far it's the same except they removed the health restore and a Shot that lets you slow down time. It's also able to restore your shield but the effectiveness depends on the number of the enemy. It's limited to four shots.

Regular enemies: There is a good variety of them. Small Melee, Small Gun, Small Rocket, Big Melee, Big Gun, and Big Rocket. There is a lot of them to the point where it feels like it goes on forever and it sometimes does unless you move forward. There are some threats exclusive to the stage(I don't know if I will be wrong.). They can either be aggressive or do nothing depending on your distance.

Bosses: I genuinely believe that the games are mostly for the regular enemies. The Bosses are just pretty okay for the most part. They have a pattern you can adapt too. For me it is either
tough or pretty easy. The last bosses I fought were two bulldozers and a large group. I was told to attack the sides because that was the weak point. I tried to do that, but I kept dying due to being too slow and the camera won't help me. When I tried again, the bulldozers kept attacking me until I got into a corner. After that, the bulldozers not only blocked most of the other enemies, but they could no longer touch me. I won afterwards.

Levels: I think they work best when it is a small level. They have some big levels here and there that might work against you. I got blasted by a rocket and I got sent to next area and I couldn't go back.

I'm a fan of the series, recently replaying the series also, got my PS2 and PS3(Got OD on PS3) setup. I've got the Art book Gungrave Archives too, which extensively includes interviews and original sketches from Yasuhiro Nightow (creator of Trigun). I've preorder GORE, something I've not done since The Evil Within in 2014. I partially did it just for the Ronin dlc costume, they keep removing his hat for some reason, that hat is AT LEAST 20% of the outfit. The cowboy costume better be unlockable like OD.

Definitely prefer the 1st game overall for the presentation, succinct length, better bosses and more kinesthetically pleasing gameplay.

OD is better and worse in a number of ways:
-Cons: Graphics look more like an upscaled PS1 game and the frame rate is 30fps with the worst ghost frames I've seen. Worse bosses aside from Bunji, Fangoram and Zell(who's returning in GORE). Unnecessary amount of enemy gauntlets that bloat the length.

-Pros: More combat options(charge shot and increased melee moveset with rocket deflects) and 3 distinct characters(Rocketbilly Redcadillac being a GuiltyGear worthy character).

In ways the series seems to get worse with every entry, but GORE looks to be better than Gungrave VR at least.


Some reviews: