I’ve never played the first Gungrave game. Gungrave is a weird sort of property that came into existence as a video game first before getting adapted into a video game. Little did people know that it was actually based on a video game first and foremost before it was adapted into the strange anime that we see. Gungrave is a very smart and well made game about a man named Beyond the Grave who is brought back from the dead to exact revenge on his once best friend who betrayed him and took over the mafia with the help of aliens and works alongside an anime girl. But in Overdose, he works alongside anime girl, a young boy, a blindfolded samurai and a ghost with an electric guitar… Did I mention this game was super smart and not stupid as fuck. But hey, the game’s got a slick style to it and has this appeal to it that bounces back and becomes cool. I can appreciate a dumb premise if it revels in it’s own stupidity and has fun with it. So let us talk about Gungrave Overdose and see if it outclasses its predecessor. Or not… Again, I never played the first game.
As stated before, you play as the previous main character, Beyond the Grave, as he is sent on missions to deal with the spread of Seed, an alien lifeform that turns people into monsters that are sold all over the world through underground criminal organizations including the mafia. The game wastes no time with how dumb the story telling of this game is, but that’s to be expected when the creator’s previous work was Trigun, another great piece of story telling but still a laughably dumb one. Also, this creator really likes putting guns in his title, because guns are cool. Anyway, political comments aside, the gameplay starts out with some insane combat. You start out firing an army’s amount of bullets at gangsters from your two guns. Just keep hammering away at the square button and watch those guys go flying. You do have other attacks, like a close range melee attack that knocks over guys blocking and clears the area near you and if you have enough energy, you can use a heavy attack that does huge damage to anyone in the way of your gun. The further you go in the game, the more special moves you can unlock. The enemies come in swarms, but they are just weak enough for you to kill them in droves and move to the next target. It really does give you a great feeling of mowing down thugs. Of course, you aren’t immune to everything. You have a shield that covers you from health. When you aren’t attacking or getting attacked, the shield regenerates. Run out of shield and you will start taking damage to your health. Run out of health and it’s game over. What happens after, I don’t know. I never got a game over, but to be fair, I was playing on easy because I already beat the game once before and I just wanted to get some footnotes for the review. And let me say, playing on easy is the preferred method for a newcomer, because I played the game on normal and it had some serious problems with enemies coming at you relentlessly and bosses were just as tough. Those bulldozer and sentry robots duo bosses? Yeah, fuck those bosses. They were terrible. But on easy, it’s manageable. Yes, I am cowarding out, but I beat the game on normal for the first time. I deserve to be a bitch.
One thing I love about the game is the sheer amount of destruction you can find in the environments. Everything before you can get destroyed. Sure, it’s nothing too crazy, but for PS2, destroying an entire grocery store or hotel lobby in a blaze of gunfire is so much fun. Honestly, if Gungrave had the level of destruction you see in games today, this shit would be so therapeutic. You can even leave bullet holes in the walls all around you, a feature that was in a game over fifteen years old and yet Fallout 76 couldn’t do that. The enemy variety is a nice change of pace too. From mafia to ninjas to tanks and helicopters to giant abominations that I can’t even comprehend. They all have a nice variety to them. That said, my one complaint is the style you fight itself. I was asked by my friend, one pLaStIcSUNDAE why a game like Devil May Cry got so much love while Gungrave fell into obscurity… Seriously? I mean, I love Gungrave, but there’s a reason why. Devil May Cry had polish. Still does. The camera sucks a dick, but the game has all sorts of moves, weapons to swap out, how you balance guns with swordplay and tuants, juggles, so much. Gungrave is just mashing the Square button and pressing the occasional Triangle and Circle, maybe X if you are getting so swarmed you need to dodge. It’s not an absolute deal breaker for me, but late game enemies will wear out your thumbs so fast. And I had to play Drakengard at the same time, another game that demands you smash the Square button. I swear, my poor Square button can’t take this much work. I worry that it’s going to file for divorce with how much I’m abusing it. Maybe have more physical attacks or different gun varieties. Give more chances to use dodges and reward good dodging with more chances at firing. Have rapid fire be limited to mashing the button but have a base firing by holding it down. Anything but constant mashing. This game will put even the most hardcore of gamer’s thumbs to the ultimate test.
But where I got a real problem is with the games writing. There are so many pacing issues in this game and weird shifts in tone that it’s honestly kinda laughable. But to get into that
(SPOILERS FOR GUNGRAVE: OVERDOSE)
Some examples are from Juji, after telling Mika that she’s only using Grave so she doesn’t have to kill anyone, immediately goes on with the mission like normal, like nothing ever happened. Or when Spike admits to being a clone of the main villain and tells everyone that he can’t stand them. Just out of nowhere. But everyone’s really cool with it. I get why, but man, the tonal shifts are just a mess for me. But I think the undisputed champ of bad writing goes to Mika herself simply because I can’t stand the words that come out of her mouth. Her voice actress sounds very uninterested and how she describes the name Juji Kabane. It just upsets me, but it’s hard to describe in words. It’s like… she adds more syllables onto the name than it needs and it just irritates me so much. And her voice actress, Renee Raudman, isn’t a terrible voice actress. She’s voiced Nastasha in the Metal Gear Solid games. She also hasn’t done any voice work since 2008. I wonder what happened to her? But anyway, I can’t excuse her dialogue, like how she calls Spike her brother or how she says, “Killing is wrong”. I get it, it’s a very Japanese thing for a character to be this caring and stuff, but man, it just gets under my skin. It’s a crime ridden hellscape, kid, it’s not a time to be making pals and all that shit. But I did say the game was more style over it’s writing, and that is true. The writing is the weakest part…. Wait, no, that’s not true, because the final boss exists
The final boss is terrible. Yeah, a common trope with these obscure PS2 titles is that they love to save the worst part for last. A trope that was as common in this day and age, from the great final boss of RPGs of old to even modern day. The final boss has this annoying slow down attack. You can’t attack fast enough to land your hits and you are always getting knocked on your ass. And the slow down lasts so long that it will be a miracle if you can hit him. Honestly, I wouldn’t have much issues if it wasn’t for the damn slow down. If not that, the fight would just be whatever. Thankfully, you are gaining energy slowly rather than having to attack the boss, because otherwise, we’d be getting nowhere with this fight. Fuck this boss. And after beating him, my copy of the game froze in the last cutscene and I couldn’t get it to work. I had to reset and fight the final boss again… So I said fuck that, took out an old memory card with my normal game save and just loaded that to see what the unlockables were. And wow, the unlockables are amazing. You get to play as the other two characters, Juji Kabane, the samurai and Rocketbilly Redcadillac (Yes, that is his name), the guitar wielding ghost. And wow, I love playing as Grave, but these guys are so much more fun. I honestly wanted to play the game again twice over just to play as these two they are so much fun. It makes all the weird parts and the terrible final boss all worth it getting to play as much superior characters. If you can, just play through the game or let someone do it for you and play through with these guys. It also may explain the part where they just disappear with a heartfelt goodbye with everyone going, “Don’t let their sacrifice be in vain” and then come by in the next level like nothing happened. I don’t know if it does because I haven’t completed their stories as of the time of writing this, but… Even if they don’t, it’s Gungrave Overdose. I should just accept it by now.
Gungrave Overdose is fucking stupid, janky trash that is on the PS2 with a dumb story and weird gameplay and I fucking love it. It’s dumb in all the right ways and manages to have a slick style, which is to be expected from the creator of Trigun. And for once, a game that isn’t absolutely dead. SMT is debatably not getting much progress made since Sega only wants Atlus to work on Persona, and Yanya Caballista… ha ha ha, of course that’s dead. But there’s actually a Gungrave resurrection, with not one new game released on modern consoles, but a second one coming out soon. Yeah, Gungrave VR was absolute trash, but Gungrave G.O.R.E. looks like a promising game. Needless to say, I’m excited to see where things go from here. As for my award for Gungrave Overdose, I’m giving it the Dumb Fun award for obvious reasons. Maybe I’ll play the first game some day. Who knows?
As stated before, you play as the previous main character, Beyond the Grave, as he is sent on missions to deal with the spread of Seed, an alien lifeform that turns people into monsters that are sold all over the world through underground criminal organizations including the mafia. The game wastes no time with how dumb the story telling of this game is, but that’s to be expected when the creator’s previous work was Trigun, another great piece of story telling but still a laughably dumb one. Also, this creator really likes putting guns in his title, because guns are cool. Anyway, political comments aside, the gameplay starts out with some insane combat. You start out firing an army’s amount of bullets at gangsters from your two guns. Just keep hammering away at the square button and watch those guys go flying. You do have other attacks, like a close range melee attack that knocks over guys blocking and clears the area near you and if you have enough energy, you can use a heavy attack that does huge damage to anyone in the way of your gun. The further you go in the game, the more special moves you can unlock. The enemies come in swarms, but they are just weak enough for you to kill them in droves and move to the next target. It really does give you a great feeling of mowing down thugs. Of course, you aren’t immune to everything. You have a shield that covers you from health. When you aren’t attacking or getting attacked, the shield regenerates. Run out of shield and you will start taking damage to your health. Run out of health and it’s game over. What happens after, I don’t know. I never got a game over, but to be fair, I was playing on easy because I already beat the game once before and I just wanted to get some footnotes for the review. And let me say, playing on easy is the preferred method for a newcomer, because I played the game on normal and it had some serious problems with enemies coming at you relentlessly and bosses were just as tough. Those bulldozer and sentry robots duo bosses? Yeah, fuck those bosses. They were terrible. But on easy, it’s manageable. Yes, I am cowarding out, but I beat the game on normal for the first time. I deserve to be a bitch.
One thing I love about the game is the sheer amount of destruction you can find in the environments. Everything before you can get destroyed. Sure, it’s nothing too crazy, but for PS2, destroying an entire grocery store or hotel lobby in a blaze of gunfire is so much fun. Honestly, if Gungrave had the level of destruction you see in games today, this shit would be so therapeutic. You can even leave bullet holes in the walls all around you, a feature that was in a game over fifteen years old and yet Fallout 76 couldn’t do that. The enemy variety is a nice change of pace too. From mafia to ninjas to tanks and helicopters to giant abominations that I can’t even comprehend. They all have a nice variety to them. That said, my one complaint is the style you fight itself. I was asked by my friend, one pLaStIcSUNDAE why a game like Devil May Cry got so much love while Gungrave fell into obscurity… Seriously? I mean, I love Gungrave, but there’s a reason why. Devil May Cry had polish. Still does. The camera sucks a dick, but the game has all sorts of moves, weapons to swap out, how you balance guns with swordplay and tuants, juggles, so much. Gungrave is just mashing the Square button and pressing the occasional Triangle and Circle, maybe X if you are getting so swarmed you need to dodge. It’s not an absolute deal breaker for me, but late game enemies will wear out your thumbs so fast. And I had to play Drakengard at the same time, another game that demands you smash the Square button. I swear, my poor Square button can’t take this much work. I worry that it’s going to file for divorce with how much I’m abusing it. Maybe have more physical attacks or different gun varieties. Give more chances to use dodges and reward good dodging with more chances at firing. Have rapid fire be limited to mashing the button but have a base firing by holding it down. Anything but constant mashing. This game will put even the most hardcore of gamer’s thumbs to the ultimate test.
But where I got a real problem is with the games writing. There are so many pacing issues in this game and weird shifts in tone that it’s honestly kinda laughable. But to get into that
(SPOILERS FOR GUNGRAVE: OVERDOSE)
Some examples are from Juji, after telling Mika that she’s only using Grave so she doesn’t have to kill anyone, immediately goes on with the mission like normal, like nothing ever happened. Or when Spike admits to being a clone of the main villain and tells everyone that he can’t stand them. Just out of nowhere. But everyone’s really cool with it. I get why, but man, the tonal shifts are just a mess for me. But I think the undisputed champ of bad writing goes to Mika herself simply because I can’t stand the words that come out of her mouth. Her voice actress sounds very uninterested and how she describes the name Juji Kabane. It just upsets me, but it’s hard to describe in words. It’s like… she adds more syllables onto the name than it needs and it just irritates me so much. And her voice actress, Renee Raudman, isn’t a terrible voice actress. She’s voiced Nastasha in the Metal Gear Solid games. She also hasn’t done any voice work since 2008. I wonder what happened to her? But anyway, I can’t excuse her dialogue, like how she calls Spike her brother or how she says, “Killing is wrong”. I get it, it’s a very Japanese thing for a character to be this caring and stuff, but man, it just gets under my skin. It’s a crime ridden hellscape, kid, it’s not a time to be making pals and all that shit. But I did say the game was more style over it’s writing, and that is true. The writing is the weakest part…. Wait, no, that’s not true, because the final boss exists
The final boss is terrible. Yeah, a common trope with these obscure PS2 titles is that they love to save the worst part for last. A trope that was as common in this day and age, from the great final boss of RPGs of old to even modern day. The final boss has this annoying slow down attack. You can’t attack fast enough to land your hits and you are always getting knocked on your ass. And the slow down lasts so long that it will be a miracle if you can hit him. Honestly, I wouldn’t have much issues if it wasn’t for the damn slow down. If not that, the fight would just be whatever. Thankfully, you are gaining energy slowly rather than having to attack the boss, because otherwise, we’d be getting nowhere with this fight. Fuck this boss. And after beating him, my copy of the game froze in the last cutscene and I couldn’t get it to work. I had to reset and fight the final boss again… So I said fuck that, took out an old memory card with my normal game save and just loaded that to see what the unlockables were. And wow, the unlockables are amazing. You get to play as the other two characters, Juji Kabane, the samurai and Rocketbilly Redcadillac (Yes, that is his name), the guitar wielding ghost. And wow, I love playing as Grave, but these guys are so much more fun. I honestly wanted to play the game again twice over just to play as these two they are so much fun. It makes all the weird parts and the terrible final boss all worth it getting to play as much superior characters. If you can, just play through the game or let someone do it for you and play through with these guys. It also may explain the part where they just disappear with a heartfelt goodbye with everyone going, “Don’t let their sacrifice be in vain” and then come by in the next level like nothing happened. I don’t know if it does because I haven’t completed their stories as of the time of writing this, but… Even if they don’t, it’s Gungrave Overdose. I should just accept it by now.
Gungrave Overdose is fucking stupid, janky trash that is on the PS2 with a dumb story and weird gameplay and I fucking love it. It’s dumb in all the right ways and manages to have a slick style, which is to be expected from the creator of Trigun. And for once, a game that isn’t absolutely dead. SMT is debatably not getting much progress made since Sega only wants Atlus to work on Persona, and Yanya Caballista… ha ha ha, of course that’s dead. But there’s actually a Gungrave resurrection, with not one new game released on modern consoles, but a second one coming out soon. Yeah, Gungrave VR was absolute trash, but Gungrave G.O.R.E. looks like a promising game. Needless to say, I’m excited to see where things go from here. As for my award for Gungrave Overdose, I’m giving it the Dumb Fun award for obvious reasons. Maybe I’ll play the first game some day. Who knows?
Nothing Personal, Kid
