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Thursday, September 28, 2023 3:05:36 PM

Gunbrella Review (TabbyAbby)


Spoiler Free Review!

(Will update as game gets updated)
There's a lot to love here in Gunbrella, and although I cannot say that it's a perfect game, perhaps even far from it, it's absolutely an exceptional one that I do believe is worth your time. Instead of writing a super lengthy review, I'd much rather just write the pros and cons for this one. I should note that I have only finished the normal difficulty of the game. I am on my way to finishing the hard difficulty, but I'm nowhere near done quite yet!
Pros:
Presentation - I believe that everything from the visuals, to the music, to the sound effects, to the designs have ALL been nothing short of fantastic. The different regions are memorable and beautiful, the music is fitting and fun, and the sound effects are chunky and crisp.
Narrative - I do not think the narrative was perfect, but it was still far more interesting and engaging than several games I have played in a very long while. I was hooked, and the writing, for the most part, is either entertaining, or captivating. Narrative direction aside, even the characters were always fun and interesting to talk to! I don't believe every part of the narrative made sense, and sometimes there could have been better dialogue in some parts, but overall, I had an EXCELLENT time with this game's story and characters.
The Gunbrella - The Gunbrella feels amazing to use. The platforming, the shooting, ooooh boy, it's amazing! It DOES take some getting used to though. Although I wish the game utilized the Gunbrella more with harder combat segments and more platforming ones, I was still very much satisfied with this marvel of a tool.
Cons:
Ammo System - The Gunbrella's default shotgun is a blast to use. It has infinite ammo, and is always reliable through and through... The other ammo types however... fall into several issues.
1) They're in short supply. They're kiiind of expensive to buy, especially for the small amount that you get from purchasing them, and some of the ammo types are a little rarer to find naturally, either through enemy drops or through chests.
2) You can only keep so little of them. This leads to a problem where you're always hording them because it almost never feels worth wasting them on enemies.
3) Imbalance. Some SHRED and TRIVIALIZE bosses and some aren't even worth your inventory space.
4) Swapping between weapons on controller... feels awful. More options please.
Healing - Ehhh... Similar to Hollow Knight, when the player wishes to heal, they have to hold down the heal button to eat/use a consumable from their inventory. For some reason though, even after they fully complete the little gauge, some healing items have an animation afterwards that leaves you completely vulnerable??? I already finished the gauge, why is there a healing animation afterwards??? Makes it soooo easy for bosses to punish you and makes the healing feel god awful and awkward on some healing items.
Bugs / Sometimes bad polish - These are currently being addressed, but they DO exist.
Mids
Enemies - Enemies can kind of be dumb sometimes. It's really easy to enter a room and pick enemies off one at a time. Even in combat encounter rooms, for some reason? I feel like enemies were underutilized too sometimes. Would have been cool to fight off multiple enemies at a time, with some mixing and matching of different enemies. Despite these flaws, their actually not all that bad! In Hard mode, they're actually sometimes pretty menacing and although I wish enemy AI was better, and more was done with them, I actually still had a pretty fun time fighting them, especially, again, in hard mode where they're at their absolute best, and it can be tough to fight 'em!
Bosses - There are a TON of bosses. I think because of this, there's a quantity over quality approach to them, where there's lots of them, but a ton of them can be cheesed or demolished. I enjoyed mostly every boss in the game but I truly feel like had some ammo types been more balanced, boss health was raised a bit more, and some bosses got a bit more time or polish, they ALL could have been AMAZING. There's tons of potential with these bosses, but none of them, not one boss in the game, has reached their utmost potential. Despite this, they're still fun, but they live a liiiittle bit to be desired.
No cutscene and dialogue skips - Now, as I mentioned before, I actually love the characters, story, and cutscenes, but upon starting my SECOND play-through, I realized that they could not be skipped. That can be a deal breaker for some, and it makes replaying the game sooooo much more of a hassle.
Conclusion
There's a lot to love here, there really is, but this game feels like it came out a little bit too early. A few more months, a bit more care, and I think we would have received one of the very best metroidvanias to date. What's here is great, and what's here is worth playing, but it isn't as good as it COULD'VE been and that leaves a sour taste in your mouth. If this game is to receive any updates that work on any of the aforementioned things, I'll be sure to edit this review. Until then, I would still highly recommend this game, but not to everyone.

Overall Rating 8.8/10