A Breakdown on Gunfire Reborn

Overview

Gunfire Reborn is a first person rogue like game in which you travel through dungeons fighting off enemies to attempt to complete the run. Through the game you would unlock new guns and upgrades in which help you progress.

The game is very fun as you get to uncover many different combos of elements as well as make many different types of builds whether they be completely different or slightly changed. The game additionally lets you play with up to 3 other friends but with each additional player, the level of the game increases.

Though I started playing this game in 2023, it had still become one of my favorite games on the PC that I have revisited time and time again. Though comparing to playing it solo or with others, I feel playing along side others brings a much greater experience especially if you want to get someone else to get into the game.

Game Play

When the player first loads into the run they are in an open area in which lies a treasure chest which will give you an option of 3 guns to choose from in which you start the run with. The more guns that are unlocked the larger the pool of guns you will have a chance to start out with will become.

As the player travels through the dungeon there are a mix of units that begin to spawn throughout which mainly consist of melee dealers and distance dealers. Some enemies in the game having a type of shield similar to like how the player starts with which makes each some of the enemies harder to kill. The further into the game the player progresses, the more diverse and creative the enemies become, such as sharks that pull you toward them with an anchor, or enemies with flamethrowers that deal massive damage if within range.

Before the end of each stage of the run, the player must defeat the boss of the dungeon which has a choice of being one of two for the run.

Longling Tomb

Lu Wu

This is a monkey like fire Ape that is very aggressive and jumps at the players around the map focusing often on AOE attacks around itself. Due to its movements it is hard to hit him all the time but because since its movements are predictable with the games help it takes only little effort to take Lu Wu down.

Golem

Unlike Lu Wu, the Golem is much bigger in size so it does not move from its initial position. Its main attacks are are lasers that shoot toward the players as well as rock projectiles. I think the developers did very well as they used the environment to give the player(s) barricades to hide behind through the bosses power. Though all its attacks almost one hit your character if it makes contact, because it stays in place it is much easier to shoot it down without missing.

Between both bosses, the Golem fight in my opinion was much easier because its life will drain fast due to almost never missing. As a developer myself who really enjoys environmental mechanics, I think it was much more intriguing how much it mixed in environmental elements to make the fight way more memorable and exciting.

Anxi Desert

Ichthyosaurus Offspring

This boss it like a armored worm like creature that enjoys shooting its lasers at the player while moving around in the ground. One of the big things that makes this boss difficult was the amount of defense it has, the little amount of weak spots it has, and the amount of enemies it likes to spawn in battle. Though its defense made it harder to take damage, you were still able to hit it whether it was under the sand or not which made it easy to defeat.

Wind God

The Wind God unlike unlike the other boss is almost always moving around the map making it difficult to hit. In my experience I found the tornados it creates to be the most annoying. This is mainly due to when paying attention to shooting the god you sometimes are randomly hit by them and start to pay attention to way more things to just the boss and its monsters unlike the other boss. Lastly due to the players build power at the time, it usually is detrimental when taking a hit unless you get lucky and unlocked one of the tanky scrolls that I talk about later in this article. Overall I though it was much harder than the other boss and very annoying to deal with. As this boss was quite a hurtle to me, when I beat him it felt really good similar to the times I would beat a hard boss in Dark Souls 3.

DingHai Bay

Yoruhime-Maru

This is the first final boss of this area, however I think the digital image is very different than how the boss actually looks through his 2 stages. IN the first stage he is a big ship that shoots out different projectiles in and summons enemies. As the fight progresses he activates a cloud shield that gives him invincibility until you find and use a cannon ball to break it open which I believe was a fun design as it makes the player have to hold on as well as give more interaction to the boss battle. I think the ship is a much harder part of the battle as there is so much greater amounts of swarming and projectiles around the map/ When Maru reaches lower health his ship breaks and he changes to a giant cannon which fires large blasts while you shoot him back. I think this part of the battle is much easier and doesn't require as much skill to beat.

Abyssal Serpent

This is the alternate boss you can encounter after facing the main boss. He starts of fairly easy diving forward toward the player as you avoid it. While they can be easy to avoid, if hit by them it tends to obliterate through almost all your health which makes it difficult to beat it. Due to this hurdle, when the bosses health gets low the speed and aggression that the abyssal snake shows increases. Though the impact I feel gets somewhat slower, the amount of time it takes for one of the snake heads to hit makes it a lot harder. I think this is the easier fight between the two boss fights however I think it makes you focus much more then the Yoruhime-Maru fight.

Jade Summit

Pole Monarch

I think the Pole Monarch has the coolest intro of the entire game. The player arrives at the peak in which is not a very big arena which the Monarch is waiting at the top with the wind blowing his cape and when he sees you his eyes glow blue and he swings his sword showing his power of ice. Through the fight his two main attacks is a slash attack and a melee slash attack. When he uses his melee attack he covers his body in ice and dash attacks you and with his Slash Attack he swings his sword as it shoots and energy blade toward the player. I think the animaters and artists of this fight did a great job making this fight intriguing and suspenseful. While all the bosses were well make, I think this one game me lots of enjoyment from simply the looks of this fight. So out of all the bosses I think he is my favorite one.

Gluttony

Gluttony is a large giant and the alternate final boss in this area. I find that his moves are much simpler then the pole monarch but the gameplay that the developers established helped it stay really engaging. Most of the fight the arena is separated into quadrants in which the player can move between at certain parts of the game. Most of the fight however consisted of just shooting at the boss which was not hard as like the golem he was a very large target while being very tanky.

If I were to pick between the two bosses, I would always prefer having the battle with the pole monarch.

Character Selection

In Gunfire Reborn there is a selection of up to 10 heroes that have to be unlocked wither it be in-game currency or purchasing DLC content. My preferred three are:

Crown Prince Ao Bai Li

My main joy that I enjoy on the crown prince and Ao Bai is that they both can be turned into really good Tank builds which are often fun to play because I enjoy play styles that go really overboard in terms of combat and negating damage not having to worry much of the consequences of jumping into battle. I also really enjoy Li and Ao by for there explosion builds and fire builds but many of Li's abilities I enjoy not just mechanically but aesthetically as the grenades are fireballs and your special ability is to shoot a large fireball that increase fire damage while dealing a lot as well. While these are my main picks each of the characters have a unique play style that I feel is well built in for a variety of different players.

Vaults

Throughout the dungeons you will encounter different types of vaults which initially look like cracks on the walls until shot with a projectile from a weapon. From my experience, I find that the vaults are one of the most helpful features to a run as the value you get for completing them greatly help throughout the runs and are what get you very far. There are 3 different types of Vaults you could run into, Boss Vault, Battle Vault, or Course Vault.

Boss Vault

The boss vault consists of a few enemies that once defeated would summon a boss enemy which you would have to deal with as more enemies spawn making the fight harder and harder. Though when the boss is defeated, the others surrounding enemies die and you unlock the golden chest that contains at minimum 1 occult scroll.

Challenge Vault

This vault acts like one of the rooms in a dungeon but usually consists of some special challenge to go along with it such as killing some enemies will summon lesser enemies. These are usually the easiest of Vaults due to its mainly consist of a normal encounter

Course Vault

The Course Vault consists of a difficult obstacle course that the player must travel through. Some obstacles may consist if boulders rolling down for you to avoid, or balls of fire that are shooting out that you all need to time or may get punished hard for it. Why it may sound easy its not the same in practice. The payoff of the difficulty is that it usually consist of 2 treasure chests instead of one.

Weapons

There are many weapons in Gunfire Reborn such as elemental machine guns and bazookas to even absurd weapons like spears of ice or hand held dragons that blast fire. Though with the many weapons and abilities in the game come elements to add to them. Those elements are decay, Fire, and lighting which when combined with each other tend to cause more damage to enemies. The different types of weapons consist of Rifles, Launchers, Pistols, Snipers, Injectors, shotguns, and submachine guns. I found the weapons I enjoyed was a specific launcher called Justice and a few of the weapons under the pistol category called Icy Spear and Cloud Weaver.

Cloud Weaver Icy Spear Justice

I enjoyed the Cloud Weaver as it was a weapon that I often would see in many of the manhua or martial arts shows I saw and thought were really cool. Its a cool weapon that you control with your fingers to attack enemies from a distance. The Icy spear was really cool to me as it was an elemental weapon that I could throw at my enemies and had a high chance to pierce enemies at times, What made it even better was when you right clicked all the spears that you threw would come back to you at full speed allowing you to damage those who are in the crossfire. Finally one of my favorite weapons in the game was justice for two specific reasons. One was my love for how i can make explosions that looked really fun in game and fit one of my playstyles, the other reason was how unique of a weapon in game. In the whole game, I have only seen two creatures that were weapons in game, Justice being a lizard that shot out explosives, and another being a tiny dragon that was used as a flamethrower. I think many of the creators got very creative with this game as a few of the weapons were not any I have seen in any other games which is part of why this game intrigued me so much.

Upgrades

The two main ways to build a build in Gunfire Reborn is through the Golden Goblets and Occult scrolls. They both give your character special upgrades to improve your build whether it be through dealing damage, crowd control, or taking a hit.

Golden Goblet

The Golden Goblet is a upgrade system that usually upgrades your hero ability, your grenades, or your special mechanic tied to your character. These upgrades are often found through Bosses or at the end of each stage. While they have a increase on your base abilities I believe it doesn't compare to how much Occult Scrolls have over them.

Occult Scrolls

Similar to Golden Goblets, Occult scrolls are the other way to improve your build exponentially. There are two types of scrolls that a player can acquire regular scrolls and cursed scrolls. All the lucky scrolls have a different rarity that give special benefits to the player while cursed scrolls are those that cant be discarded and can hurt the player in ways such as taking more damage and such. Out of many of the occult scrolls I found the three I really enjoy was:

Spirit Feline Paranormality Flesh and Bones

Spirit Feline is very fun to me as it makes you take a minimum of 14% damage but cuts your defense in half. This means you can really take a hit by building up your defense or attempt to find life gain types scrolls to negate the negative side effects of Spirit Feline. The other two are really fun because paranormality turns almost all your health to 1 but converts the rest of the health to your shield allowing you to increase your shield through upgrades. Lastly Flesh and Bones does the opposite of Paranormality turning all your shield into health, but it becomes crazy when you get upgrades like veteran that give your more health the more enemies you kill.

Skill Tree Upgrades

In this game I believe the skill tree is the least important part of the game as most of the time it doesn't do much for your character. the skill trees that you un lock for beginning the run lets you start out with slightly more health or upgrade the background abilities of your characters like crit chance or more grenades but in the long run it doesn't effect you nearly enough to help your gameplay.

Unlike other games I find the skill tree doesn't help your builds in many ways if the developers were to make some future changes to the game, this would be one of the big improvements as there are other features I would rather use my in game currency on.

Conclusion & Suggestions

Overall I really enjoy this game and it has a great amount of replay ability. Although I believe that the developers made many good decision I believe there are some changes that they could improve the game on. One of these is obviously the skill tree but a few others include some of the visuals as well as the inscriptions on most of the weapons. One of the cool parts of the game is how the different elements combine with each other to have greater effect. When you attempt these combinations I believe they could ad more visual effects rather then just show the symbols near there health bar as the player will not notice most of the time due to the large amount of enemies and elements they need to pay attention to. Some examples could include the corrosion and fire causing an explosion or the lighting and corrosion shocking the enemies.

The inscriptions of the game are a cool concept that they wanted to add, though as I played the game over and over I never noticed the inscriptions make much of a difference compared to everything else I would gain. While the concept is cool and all, I believe it needs many more improvements. Some ideas could include duel elemental damage such as corrosion to cut through both armor and health faster or cause the weapons to deal combined elemental damage instead of its normal status effect.