When you first play Gradius, you are limited to 4 predefined weapon loadouts. Don’t screw around, when you start this game, go into the options and set everything you can to make things as easy as possible.ĭon’t just wander into Gradius V thinking you can beat it on Normal, give yourself the best fighting chance you can when you’re starting out.īefore the game starts, you get to configure your ship, Vic Viper. Treasure actually had the courage to take an honest look at the Gradius formula and fix the longstanding problems and design flaws that Konami refused to remedy, and what resulted is a Gradius game so much better than the others that you’ll have a difficult time tolerating previous installments ever again.īe warned, Gradius V is a very difficult game. And, the most extraordinary part of this process was the stuff they cut out.
Treasure was very diligent in making sure most of the classic elements of Gradius were accounted for, while also making sure you can tell it’s a Treasure shooter. Gradius V feels exactly like a proper entry in the Gradius series, but also feels like a spiritual sequel to Ikaruga, which had come out a couple years prior. It just seems like a great idea to me to hand off a franchise to a qualified development house and see what a fresh pair of eyes and different creative sensibilities can come up with. Studio crossovers like this rarely happen, and it seems to be the case that it usually turns out well, like what WayForward was able to do with Contra or the incredible Metroid Prime games made by Retro Studios. I’m sure you’ve fantasized what it would be like to see your favorite game franchise be taken over by another studio to see what their approach would be. Gradius changed everything when it hit the scene, and most of its mechanics were so good they were left unchanged throughout the franchise. The original Gradius arcade was way ahead of its time, but still feels like a classic Golden Age arcade cabinet. Gradius quickly established its own identity with many unique ideas, such as the Weapon Bar powerup system that still make Gradius stand out from all the rest. Most games beforehand involved flying through empty space shooting endlessly spawning waves of enemies, but games like Gradius pushed the genre forward into a level-based format with environments to fight through and many large boss battles. Gradius started out as a followup to the 1981 arcade shooter Scramble, and was an instrumental game in defining the space shooter genre. There was probably no development studio at the time that could have made Gradius V better than what Treasure was able to come up with. Instead of being developed by Konami, this sequel was outsourced to Treasure (the studio behind shooter classics such as Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, and Ikaruga), and a lot of Treasure’s design sensibilities, visual flair and audio flavor is very present in this title. Released for the Playstation 2 in 2004, Gradius V was a gigantic leap for the franchise over the lackluster 4th installment. The Gradius franchise has been dead for about a decade now, but Gradius V certainly wasn’t what killed it.
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