Status Chovus May 10, 2026
Beat in slow motion. This was a massive improvement over the original Gradius and had much more in common with 3 on the SNES. There were 4 different weapon setups to choose from at the beginning. I chose the default that had the Gradius 1 weapons; 45 degree double shot and ground crawling missile. It would have been better if …
Beat in slow motion. This was a massive improvement over the original Gradius and had much more in common with 3 on the SNES. There were 4 different weapon setups to choose from at the beginning. I chose the default that had the Gradius 1 weapons; 45 degree double shot and ground crawling missile. It would have been better if there were options for every category and a way to mix and match, but any amount of variation was a huge step up in replayability compared to the 1st game. It took longer to max out my ship because there were extra upgrades to make some of the categories a little better, like faster fire rate for double and up to 4 option probes compared to only 2 in the previous game. On top of that the option power could be selected again after maxed to temporarily cause the probes to rotate around the ship instead of trail behind. This was an offensive boost and gave something else to do with power ups other than hold on for a replacement shield. Again I did not use the laser because of angles. There was a lot of slow down, sprite flicker, and audio not playing, which sometimes led to me not hearing when I hit a boss weak spot. I found it overall a little easier than Gradius 1 but there were some notable spikes. The volcanoes were noticeably toned down and far enough in that they were trivial. Instead early on were the damn solar flares that were too fast to react to, though I have seen this before. You really had to already know what to do from previous deaths. 1 rotating boss during the boss gauntlet was brutal for me because of how difficult it was to avoid its missiles, and this time the final boss was preceded by 2 cheap doors that were death unless you rushed through them. The final boss could kinda fight back but it was still lame and easy. Other than that there were a variety of different bosses that I have definitely fought before in other games, and some more advanced platforming. I generally dislike flying in tight spaces and avoiding hazards but I have played worse. The repeat boss from the 1st game came back once and this time actually had the mechanic of needing to shoot the core through a narrow opening, instead of Gradius 1's anything goes approach. Other bosses had much better mechanics too. This game was much better than 1 though tough to compare it with 3 since it was so long ago I last played.
8.0/10