This game is like a late 90's rule of cool Anime OVA with that sick aesthetic by the creator of Trigun and that badass jazzy music.

However it comes with a price, also just like a late 90's OVA, it is very underwhelming in its short duration and can't manage to explore its themes and story of two criminal partners who had a dream to reach the highest position in the criminal world, and the protagonist being like a reanimated corpse who is only made to kill everyone in his way to have revenge. I feel there's some commentary about corrupted ambitions but instead, the game indulges in bizarre boss encounters that feel out of place when they could have had more personal battles (like the one near the end with the protagonist's previous apprentice).

I hope the 2003 anime TV series can fully explore the themes

"Is there a point in which a game that, on an objective level, is about as 7/10 as it gets, could be considered a 10/10 relative to the fact it knows what it wants to do and executes it amazingly?"

This is a question that sat in my mind throughout my entire playthrough of Gungrave, fresh from the brainchild of Trigun, Yasuhiro Nightow. A game that, on its face, is as simple as an arcade-like shooter can get, but oozes that cool 2000s style that made people fall in love with other titles of the era from its every pore, with its cel-shading and ability to blast background elements to keep your combo meter up and running. Add on a comfy runtime of about 2 hours, so that it never feels like it's overstaying its welcome, and a soundtrack that, when not drowned out by the hails of gunfire, is a treat to the ears. A short, simple and sweet blast that I loved from start to finish.

Solid asffffffffffff, I think the gameplay is top notch and i guess i see what some ppl mean when they say this game is kind of slow or clunky but i just thought it added to the scale of this fuckin Dude you control, brendan/grave is a beast and everything about his kit and the shit u use in his arsenal in this exemplifies this. I think my biggest issues with this are just that it's so S H O R T like oh my god i was so surprised at how quick i beat it even though i was pumpin through these levels back to back to back to back!

I think the funniest thing about my playthrough is that somehow I didnt realize there was a run button until the last stage(i just dodgerolled everywhere.,,.,,aha...er..hm) AND i didnt realize till mid-game that you can actually self heal and switch up bullets and junk
which is so gnarly
I think the bosses can be really easy in this game once you got a grip on usin the different bullets and specialty vials

As for the story im sorry to say but ive.. actually never Watched or Read anything relating to Gungrave

So i cant exactly remark on anything with the story since whats here is interesting enough to get someone like me Into the show but i feel to judge it as anything higher or lower than kind of neat would be unfair bc of my lack of familiarity with the source material
but hohhhhhhhhhhh how this game sounds, the visual style, its all pretty satisfyingg

final thoughts: gungrave is a delightful little game with some sweet designs and god does it leave you scratching and wanting more as if you were going through withdraw
THIS SHIT ALSO HAS LITTLE FIGURINES YOU CAN LOOK AT IN TOY BOXES, WHAT A MARVELOUS IDEA FOR A MODEL VIEWERRRRRR UGH! i love that so much.. i just might snag tht idea for the future hyeheheheheheheh

Kick-ass arcade-style action with controls similar to Resident Evil. Don't get it twisted, Gungrave plays unlike anything I have before, but its design sensibilities harken back to a more experimental - and flat-out more fun - game design found within the middle-shelf market at the time.

It's a lie to say "we don't get games like these, anymore" seeing a new Gungrave released last year, but we could use a re-invention of the 3rd-person-shooter and Gungrave has some neat ideas up its sleeve I havent seen much of anywhere else.

Just make sure if you're booting this up today that you have either a controller with dedicated turbo support or run this in an emulator, because it isn't worth breaking your hand over a game that's damn cool besides the carpel tunnel infliction.

Something really interesting about video games seems to be just how unoriginal they can be as a medium of storytelling. While recently, it seems like every game is trying to be like a movie with their realistic graphics and long cutscenes, but there was one game that decided to take that approach to game design in a much different way. Gungrave is pretty much just an anime movie where all the action scenes are playable. It's got some amazing visuals both in game and the cutscenes, the gameplay is cinematic enough that even if its a little basic, its always a blast to look at, and even just the general look of the ui and the music is incredible. But sadly, while Gungrave as a game is pretty good, It's a pretty shitty movie that leaves the player wanting something more from it, and that's not even due to the length.

The phrase "style OVER substance" gets thrown around a lot in terms of media discourse and a somewhat common response to that is "style IS substance". While I mostly agree with the idea that style can be substance, I don't think it always can just be some kind of magical tape that fixes any sort of crack. While I never took my eyes off the cutscenes due to how cool they were, I can't tell you a single thing about the story of this game. I had no time to get attached to the world or characters. Everything in this game just moved way too fast. Typically, I love short games, but I wish their story would actually fit their shorter scale like what you would see in a Resident Evil game. Every boss fight held no emotional value or intensity. Every character death had no impact on me. Graves goals did not motivate me to show interest. The worst part about that is probably that I would've cared if the game just put a little effort into developing things.

Enough shit talking because I genuinely really love this game. In fact, the only reason I have these complaints is because of how much I loved this game. Everything about this game is just what I love. Like I mentioned, the style is really what carries this game. Everything from the ui, the graphics, the music, and the character designs is all just perfect. The character designs coming from the trigun character designer really help push the whole idea of this game feeling like a playable anime movie. Hearing the screeching saxophones as Grave jumped around the beautiful cell shaded urban city was such a treat.

Playing games with unique gameplay is always fun. While it's quick to draw comparisons to Max Payne, there's enough that makes this game stand out. The auto-aim mechanics along with the nice animations really help give it that cinematic feel. For the most part, the set pieces were really good. My biggest issue with the actual gameplay would probably be the bosses, and even then none of them were ever bad but instead missed the potential to flesh them out both in terms of gameplay and story. Due to the story feeling so rushed, it can cause the gameplay to feel disconnected, and for the boss battles to carry no weight.

Gungrave really is one of those ThorHighHeels 7/10 masterpiece games you can only find on the ps2 that you always hear people talk about. It really is a unique game that has elements seen in other games, but executes it all with its own charm to give it a special identity. I was really hoping that this would become a new favorite of mine after playing the first level, and it definitely has, just not as much as I was expecting. I will definitely be returning to this game in the future and checking out its sequels!