i've heard it said before that gungrave is the best arcade game to never be playable in arcades and this rings so true to me, it's short, simple, stylsh, beautiful and a blast to play. gungrave is proof positive to me that games don't need to even have really any kind of depth to be near flawless experiances, it's okay for a game to just be cool and stylish and fun and it can stick with you for life, the style, as some have said, can be the substance it needs. the game itself was released in 2002 for the ps2 and was a collaborative effort between red entertainment, known for things like sakurai taisen, bujingai and tengai makyo, and the mangaka yasuhiro nightow and it plays like a very interesting take on the shooter concept, you don't really aim up or down, grave will aim for you as long as an enemy is on screen and within range and you really just have to be concerned with movement and occasionally cover, you have a few extra moves like a jump that you can use as a dive with a very fast ROF, a melee attack and a run as well as a special attack that uses a meter that you recover by getting big combos of kills and environmental destruction, there is also the ROF being higher and having a cooler animation if you stand still which ads a little more strategy to it. it's simple and very easy to pick up and learn as you don't really need to do much, anyone could pick this up as their first shooter and clear it fairly easily, which is great! it doesn't need depth to be fun as the cool animations, destructable environments and fun moves make for a better time than ive had in almost any other shooter, you just feel cool and it looks cool. the short length helps greatly too, you have 6 stages and an extra intermission for a boss fight with little hideout bits inbetween them to save and talk to your little band of friends, it's paced really well and the levels are distinct enough, from a bar, the city rooftops, streets, train stations,churches, sewers and even a big angelic tower and thats not even everything, it has a lot of variety in its 2 hour runtime and it makes it feel like a fun ride, from cool, beautiful place to place, like a nice train ride (and there is also a train in here and it's my favourite level alongside the chinatown level with all its neon lights and jazzy ost). there's even a steady stream of unlocks, the better you do in levels with timing, kills and even style the more skulls you earn, these give you more specials and all of the specials are super cool, they tank the frame rate and it's just cathartic as hell. there's even boss fights to liven things up, from rivals and rando more powerful guys to big aliens and mechs, every level has at least one and they're always a fun break up that gives them a fun, appropriate climax. The game plays great and does as much as it needs to and it does it all perfectly, there isnt much that plays like it in part because it was from an era when third person shooters, japanese ones especially hadn't quite settled on a formula, so you had games like it and 10,000 bullets really doing cool and experimental things that you just don't see much of beyond this era and it makes these games just stand out so much more because of it.

the game also looks amazing,it has a style that is very reminiciant of what later 3D arc system works games look like, think xrd or dnf duel and it looks very modern, a friend even said she wasn't sure what gen it could have been just from the intro and it's got style for days. it's very edgy in an early 2000's way, dirge of cerberus'y but also with a lot of trigun/bebop scifi western jazzy vibes and it's so just, beautiful in every way it exists in, it radiates that kind of toonami energy and i love it. the characters are super well designed, grave has a cowboy undertaker vibe which fits him perfectly, he carries around a cool overdesigned coffins and his hellsing style guns are just the coolest and i love all the skulls and crosses everywhere, even including in the UI which opens every level with a screen telling you to KICK THEIR ASSES, it's like a charming kind of overly designed, genuinely cool edge that i adore, it's positive edge in the same way as dirge is, dark and edgy without ever doing anything upsetting or too dark,like shadow the hedgehog or edgy myspaceposting, you can't hate it and i won't ever dislike it. the levels too are very cool, varied like i said but also very high detail, cute posters for in-world idols and lots of details that bring the place alive to me especially with how much of it you do end up visiting. the style combined with the music and the story really give it the feeling of a playable toonami era anime, like trigun or bebop that i mentioned, while an era appropriate dub like the anime and sequel had would have made it feel outright perfect it still really feels that way, the smokey noir western vibes, the designs and the art style make it feel like it could very well be a licenced game for one of these types of shows, and the anime *was* one of those shows, going so far as to even be a full on prequel mafia story about harry and brandon. the cutscenes also feel very much of this vibe, well shot with cool action and animations and it even does some cool mechanical stuff during them with a *spoiler* later cutscene expecting you to pull the trigger during it in order to finish off the games villain which is just the perfect way for the game to end, if you like anime of this time then the game is a must play 100%.

the music also is well worth going into because it's all amazing, every single track is memorable and just oozing with personality and style and a ton of them have made their way into my playlists. upbeat jazz during shootouts, sad vocal themes playing in your base between levels, the rival fight has a very cool western theme with harmonica and there's even some jungle thrown in there to really give the game just the perfect vibes, it's all so ps2 in a way thats hard to describe for anyone that hasn't played a lot of japanese ps2 games but when i think of, especially japanese ps2 shooters of the time, this is very much what i think of, smokey bar noir vibes. the music was actually worked on by one tsueno imahori who helped provide tracks for many anime from the time period of the games release, including the aformentioned cowboy bebop as well as stuff like wolfsrain and even trigun which farther cements just how much this game fits in with that era of anime. every single trak fits perfectly and it's well worth a listen even outside the game, a personal favourite OST. there's a story too and it's not bad, i think it hits harder if you've seen the anime, the games ending moment even made me tear up a little on my second playthrough after i saw the anime but even without it's a cool story and it's well told with cool cutscenes and a sense of style that really helps elivate it, even if it is a little basic.

it was worked on by a bunch of really cool people to,two studios were at the forefront, the aformentioned red entertainment who did the bulk of the development but also ikusabane inc. who would go on to develop the games sequel and play a large part in the future of the series going foreward. it was directed primarily by tsukasa shindo, who also worked on games dating back to even jj and jeff for the turbografix, games like bujingai and even thousand arms, also involved was kousuke fuhishima who did many of the mechanical designs for the game, he's well knownmostly for anime but he worked on things like sakura wars, some tales stuff, you're under arrest! and dark rose valkyrie, some really cool stuff. the game has had a long lasting legacy too, thankfully, there was a sequel in 2004 in the form of gungrave overdose, a prequel anime i mentioned, two VR games, a third person and a first person one both released on the psVR in 2018 and a full blown new game released just last year which just warms my heart to see, we need more games like this, silly dumb fun that has a vision and executes on all the things it really cares about above all else.