Gungrave G.O.R.E Review

Gungrave G.O.R.E is not the greatest game in the world, while I do think the game gets overly lambasted from what I have seen from some places, I also don't think it's an amazing game either, it's a game that is mediocre overall. I'll start with the bad and there is a number of issues I have with the game.

The story in this game especially coming from someone who enjoyed the stories of the first game, Overdose, and the anime is terrible. The game really suffers from that Thief 2014 problem of it being unable to decide if wants to be a reboot of a sequel. It had elements of a sequel due to the fact that it has characters from the previous games like Grave, Mika, and Bunji and expects you to know who they are and there is no backstory on any of them, it also expects you to know what SEED is too. It also throws in throaway boss fights with Bear Walken and Ballard Bird Lee too implying Grave has fought them before. But at the same time, it has elements of a reboot where they rarely if ever mention the events of Gungrave Overdose and it's aliens plot point that it had. It never mentions the events or characters from that game like Juji Kanbane for example so as a result, as a Gungrave fan, I am just wondering who on earth is this game's story is supposed to appeal to since fans and newcomers will both be confused. And it's not like the story on it's own is very good either. There is barely any kind of actual plot here and there is rarely any twists and turns and most of the story is just saving Mika and that's it, no plot development, changes, twists or the story being anything outside of saving Mika. What also doesn't help is that the voice acting and cutscenes are terrible. The cutscenes look like those weird CGI anime movies that are stiff and awkwardly animated. The voice acting outside of Quartz is also really terrible and the actors seems like they had no proper direction or they didn't understand the direction they were given. Okay story out of the way, the gameplay is alright but has a number of issues.

The guns and shooting feels decent enough all though Grave's pistols don't sound as good as previous games. You are given a ton of options that the game doesn't do a good job at making the player want to do. Storm Barrage isn't nearly as effective Burst Mode because Storm Barrage requires you to be close and need 50 beats to do and your beat count runs out fast when not actively hitting things. Plus Burst Mode is more accurate. The RPG skill tree feels out of place in a game like this since you will be upgrade base stats than buying new moves and the grab feature hardly ever worked for me. Some good additions is that you can do special executions to get some shield energy back and Demoliation Shots revive health, so despite late game shoving in lots of rocket enemies, snipers, orgmen and a ton of enemies in general, on easy the game feels decent enough fun to play and generally a dumb fun time, minus the terrible train level where most people will quit the game there.

Overall, Gungrave G.O.R.E is a mediocre if fun romp that never rises above being that. It's a game that I question it's existence overall due to the above mentioned issues.