2 years ago

Strangely, Gradius 2 didn’t get a US release but they renamed it Vulcan Venture for PAL regions. I don’t know why they didn’t use the Gradius name in the west.
This game is a massive upgrade over the original. More customisable weapon choices, lots of levels, better graphics, and lots of variation in bosses.
I actually thought I was playing Gradius 3 as I was sure I had played this game before, but I hadn’t. The later games are very similar to this. But also, I realised that the boss rush at the end of this game is all bosses from Life Force Salamander, which was a spin-off of Gradius. So, these games are very easy to merge in memory because they reuse a lot of bosses in this series.
The game is very good but the difficulty is truly insane. I mean for even for an arcade game. I wasn’t sure if I was going to complete it with save states.
The boss rush at the end would be impossible with one life, but then I got to what I thought was the last boss and the laser fire is so fast that you need the reflexes of a god and don’t have any space to press the button to save the state. It’s that manic. I did manage to save it at one point but I didn’t realise I had got hit so I was forced to start again from the checkpoint with no power ups. I thought my run was over at this point because the checkpoint starts you at a point in the level where asteroids home in on you and you are too slow to move out of the way. It’s almost instant and it rinses lives because I think it’s impossible to escape. Fortunately, if I loaded from the save state, the first death allows you to use the speed power up once so I just had enough speed to find a way through the asteroids.
If I didn’t have the luxury of save states, the run would be over. So basically, you cannot die on this boss in any legit run.
I don’t think anyone could possibly get that far anyway. The whole thing is insanely hard and I had to save constantly.
It’s a great game but they didn’t have to punish the player for wanting to play it.

Rating 8/10
Difficulty - 10/10

Played on Konami Arcade Collection on Switch
Save states used
No cheats used
Deaths Cut out (except for one at the end)

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