Bullet Heaven 2 was from a franchise I am familiar off Kongregate, you can play it for free on the site here. The steam release comes with various improvements and allows you to run it at higher resolutions outside of a web browser.

Turning up as a steam coupon, I ummed on it until the last few days the coupon was active before deciding to use it to purchase a copy.

Bullet Hell games I'm mixed on. I do like the genre, even though I'm honestly not good at them. A lot of it is my own skill, but with Bullet Heaven 2 I did have issues with responsiveness.

Characters have their own movement speed and it felt just that little bit floaty to me to pull off the precision required to do perfect runs on it.

It was something I got better with the more I played, but my main complaint on this game is that it is not as easy to grasp how the movement works as others. That said, bullet patterns make sense and can be memorised easy enough, it didn't take any cheap shots at flooding the screen with impossible to avoid sequences.

The art style is a bit mixed. Average anime OCs make up the cast and monsters are not that inspiring outside of the bosses (and even then not so much). But I understand the charm and audience it has, Kupo Games has spent a few years with them and I can see why people would follow it.

So, not awful, but could be better. I will say that all monsters & bullets are clearly defined and it would be hard to be confused by what is what. There are a few special abilities that take up the screen for just that little too long even though they mostly clear the screen when you activate them.

Music is rather generic though does the job. It is neither memorable or irritating. The various tracks all have their own theme and my copy came with the OST which I did add into FooBar2K on random shuffle to break things up a bit.

However: It is not something I'd listen to on its own.

So, the game itself? Select a level and shoot things.

That's pretty much it. You can set it to auto shoot, or shoot on LMB, while the RMB is the special attack, bomb. Coins drop when you make kills, and a limited number of diamonds can be shot out per level.

These do allow you to use a Shop feature with a good number of unlocks. Different characters can be found and each has a number of separate attack styles you can map on to them. You only get enough for one or two per level which encourages you to replay completed levels for extra points when you have upgraded to help grab a S+ ranking.

Along with this you can unlock Cheats and Disadvantages. Cheats make grabbing a high rank more difficult to achieve, but will allow you to bypass the level with ease. You can completely overpower your character, but will likely end up with a F ranking. Disadvantages work the other way, harder levels but easier to achieve S+ rankings.

To help break it all up each level start has various bits of banter from the selectable player base.

Okay. I chuckled at a few lines.

Unless you are familiar with the cast most of it is a bit cringy, but it did take me back to late night insanity over IRC with the various nerdy communities. I was not really invested in the characters, but some of the oddball conversations did really amuse me.

Bullet Heaven 2 is a hard one to recommend outright. Best thing to do would be to try a few levels of the Kongregate version. Did you enjoy that? Want to see more? Then grab the full version, there's enough content and polish in it and the Steam achievements to keep you playing.

If you had your fill with the flash original, then there's really no point other than to chuck the devs a few $$$ for the time it entertained you.

Game Acquisition: Purchased with coupon (Steam)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Thread: 1 - 28 March 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

Processor: 2 Ghz Dual Core or better
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Anything that's not ancient
Storage: 200 MB available space
Additional Notes: Can be played with Mouse, Keyboard, or Xbox/PS4 Controllers