Gunbird 2 is perhaps the definitive Psikyo Shooter. It's not my personal favourite, but it does contain everything you would expect from Psikyo, and I mean that in the best way imaginable. Sure enough, some people don't enjoy their style of shooting. It's simple, fast paced and to the point. Psikyo games are often considered to rely on more memorization than most other shooters, which some people say is unfair. Don't take this for a hard fact. While I wouldn't deny that Psikyo's style is quite memory reliant, at the same time, It's usually quite easy to learn and remember what to do in their games when you're starting out. Gunbird 2 is only 15 minutes per loop with short stages that won't take long to memorize. Make no mistake though, the game is quite brutal. Don't let the wacky content fool you, this is one of the hardest STGs out there at least on a surface level.
So let's go over some of the Psikyo trademarks all present in Gunbird 2. Well first of all we have the wonderful cast. 6 (1 secret) characters to choose from which all play the game completely differently. They have unique options, bombs, charge attacks and melee attacks. Next we have the crisp visuals which prioritize functionality. Gunbird 2 is a quite nice looking game, but the pretty backgrounds does not come at any cost like in some other STGs, it's extremely easy to make out all the bullets and enemies, all the while marveling at the colorful visuals in general. We have FAST bullets, and some nice pretty looking patterns as well. See the 2nd loop for some lightning speed. Awesome! We have out-of-nowhere lasers. Get killed once, man up, dodge them next attempt. We have awesome seamless boss transformations. SERIOUSLY. These bosses are so fucking radical. My favourite is the 5th boss, especially in the 2nd loop that boss is soooooo cool. Finally we have that simple-yet-fun item chaining mechanic. In GB2 you can uncover coins on the ground which spin around. If you collect them while they're flashing white, that increases your chain, keep doing this and the value of the coins goes up. I really prefer these coins, or the medals in Strikers 1999, to the gold bars in Strikers 1945 II, since those don't have spinning animations. We also have this very friendly mechanic where you don't die if you collide with enemies, but rather, they eat up one shot power level.
It can't be understated how perfect the character variety is. This is something Psikyo really understood how to do in general, though. I think my favourite character is Aine, who is very melee oriented. Speaking of melee, that's an important part of Gunbird 2. All characters have a charge gauge that they build up over time by shooting stuff, and you can spend your charge either on a charge attack, which can be used from a distance, or a melee attack. Most characters have more powerful melee attacks, but sometimes you may prefer to attack from afar. You should often rely on your melee to take out enemies before they start to flood the screen, that's how you need to play Gunbird 2 in general. Like, bosses and big enemies usually have patterns that you'll never get to see because you should be killing them before they can even use them. The character balance is just really good in general. Valpiro is slow and difficult to maneuver through the game, but to account for this he has incredible charge and melee attacks. Aine is fast and has a strong melee, but a very weak and narrow shot and charge attack. Tavia is overall well balanced, and her melee can actually cancel bullets in a small area right in front of her. Their bombs function differently as well, so there's all kinds of things to consider when choosing who to play as. No character is perfect, and you will need to change your strategies depending on who you play cause they're all so different. The game balance, accounting for all its aspects, is overall very clean and professional. Also, there's a character that's unique to the Dreamcast port called Morrigan, she looks awesome but I've only played the original arcade game...
One thing I don't like much is how stingy GB2 is with lives. This is every Psikyo game ever, BTW. You get ONE extend. That's it. Sure, you can rack up a bunch of bombs, but if you want to score high you're supposed to save as many bombs as you can and no-miss the game anyway... I dunno, I prefer playing STGs where there's a lot of room to take risks but at the same time making a single error doesn't necessarily trash your entire run. Basically, GB2 is a very survival-y game where the scoring, outside of coin chaining, kind of sucks. Going over some of it, there's this really tedious high level milking technique which really bogs down the game, but is obviously necessary if you want to compete with the records. There's also hidden gemheads that you shoot to collect gems... If I'm not mistaken, there are a lot of times where you want to get lucky to collect as many of these as the game allows without sacrificing score elsewhere. Finally, I simply don't like survival-reliance to score. NMNBing the game gives you most of your score, and dying a single time sends your run in the trash. You get 100K points, which is a lot in this game, by collecting a bomb once you have a max bomb stock. Then, you get another 100k points for every bomb you have when you beat the whole game (both loops). This is like almost ~2 mil just from collecting bombs and the max score is just a bit over 5 mil. Coin chaining or other forms of scoring don't actually give you a whole lot. All things considered this isn't really my type of game to go all out in...
If you want a real hardcore challenge, then you could attempt to learn the second loop. The second loop in most Psikyo shooters are designed to bully the player. These loops mean business. Basically, every stage is 10x harder than any stage in the previous loop, and enemies fire nasty suicide bullets. The clear bonus comes after you've completed the 2nd loop IE the whole game, so yeah, have fun. No seriously, Gunbird 2, as hard as it is, is really fucking fun. The atmosphere is also about fun, I mean just look at those silly endings. All characters have 2 unique endings, and all character pair combinations during co-op have their own endings. Several of these endings can be, well... inappropriate, let's put it that way.
Ha, Ha, Ha... Nothing beats being fat!
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