I played Gungrave Gore at around the time of release and it was on the letdown side, it wasn't terrible but I also struggled to say it was a mediocre game and even on easy, it really tested my patience. There was a similar game called Evil West that released around the same time as Gore and I found the former to be much better. Fast forward 3 years to 2025 and randomly browsing Gore's TV tropes page, I heard it went through massive changes and overhauls, a redemption arc of sorts, a quiet one but one nonetheless. There were apparently over 100 changes with things like the terrible platforming gone and even an overhaul to that much derided and infamous train level.
As a whole, while the issues that haunted the original release like the awkward and stiled cutscenes and english voice and terrible story are still there. The gameplay is fixed and the game runs stable enough that it's worth playing now. If Gungrave Gore launched like THIS while it no doubt wouldn't have lit the world on fire, but it would've been a competent and enjoyable action game that would've been a throwback to the linear stage based beat and shoot em ups of yester year.I will mention thing I appreciate more now. The music is great stuff. The ambient tracks does a good job at selling you on the future cyberpunkish setting the game is going for.
The big additions that made the original release such a nightmare which were the platforming and train level are either gone or are overhauled to the point where they are no longer the obvious difficulty spike roadblocks they once were. If you hated the train level in that original release, I can assure you, it's much better and more tolerable now. It's actually doable without being rage inducing.
This now leads to the next point. The game is much easier now to the point where normal mode can feel doable and feels like an actual middle difficulty where easy in the original release can feel too cheap due to how easy it is to get a game over due to the sheer number of enemies.
With all the updates to the game now, the design the original release tried to have feels much more realized. I love that doing executions replishes parts of your shield encouraging you to use it. I never appreciated this because the execution command never worked properly half the time back when it came out. Demolition shots replishes health blocks, stuns enemies with it's area of effect and gives you a good few seconds for your shield to recharge. The icing on top of the cake is that the enemy count is high enough and your shield will get depleted so fast with enough enemy gunfire and melee strikes that the above mentioned tactics are even more encouraged. It's not a game where I can just get by just holding down the right trigger and kill everything with burst mode.
It's a really fun ballet of shooting enemies, kill them with an execution, use melee to attack upclose and reflect rockets with your coffin, get a high enough beat count, then use demoliation shot to get health back as well a few seconds from the attack pause to get shield back. Use fury mode to thin out tougher and stronger hordes. It also feels tense because the enemy count plus the hitscanners always kept me on edge and it never feels like I'm sleepwalking through an encounter. The enemy count plus snipers later in the game will made me more on edge.
There are issues that are still there like the pistol rate of fire being noticeably shorter when using human shields, storm barrage being an annoying situational attack since you need a beat count above 50 to do, it was easier to use when chaining into a melee attacks. Charge shot being too hard for me to consistently pull off in the heat of the moment since you need to tap it twice than hold the shoot button.
Enemies can stuck at times too.
The Upgrade system also isn't that great since it's often easier to buy stat upgrades than new moves and demoliation shots even when consistently getting B ranks and above. It's best to buy few demoliation shots and buy stats and some melee upgrades.
Bosses are a minor roadblock, some are okay but they will go down fast enough when spamming fury mode while strafing and dodging out of the way.
Gore is a good game when you are playing it. I already knew about the awkward CGI cutscenes, weird stitled english voice acting with the exception of Quartz and the plot being on auto pilot when Mika gets shot. The villains being one note bad guys with their over the top designs giving them more character than their actions. Characters like Bunji Kugshira randomly popping in and out.
What I notice now is how a lot of the cutscenes both that play during levels and at the end are a bunch of pointless are a bunch pf establishing shots that add nothing to the story and adds no sense of location or geography for the level. They are abrupt as the transitions used when going into them.
Overall, as far as redemption arcs go, this was a solid one. It's actually a fun game now.
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