Gungrave

Notes about Route to keep in mind

Route : This route can be used for any difficulty for the most part. The most important part is making it to the end of the game as quick as you can and pretty much killing only the few enemies that are required to progress (I'll explain this part further on)

To run this game, you really should carefully read everything I have posted. If you still have questions or would like to contribute something (it will be tested extensively first then the page will be updated) please PM me on SDA and i'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Pre-Game

Turn off Blood and Vibration. You don't need to up the Disc Speed personally, but it is an option. Make sure that Infinite Demolition Shot and Slow-Mo are off because Infinite Demo Shot disables all Life Recovery outside of beating stages and Slow-Mo makes the game lag harder than it already does. (These are located in the EXTRA Menu)

What You Should Know

D-Pad is COMPLETELY Useless in this game! You cannot use it for anything, not even menu navigation. You are FORCED to use the Left Thumb Stick for movement and ALL menu navigation!

Learn the menu between stages! This game does not start your menu at "Next Stage" you have to keep mashing left until you reach 'Next Stage' (personally I think this is an awful design choice) If you just mash X you'll speak to Mika who is super slow and you might as well reset.

The difficulty doesn't determine anything but how much damage you take from literally everything. On Kick-Ass mode if anyone with an automatic or flamethrower hits you for a few seconds, you're beyond dead. On Easy Mode you can literally shrug off everything including flamethrowers somewhat (and they do the most damage in general)

I highly recommend first beating the game so you can unlock the stage select to drill out IL practice.

Learn who you have to kill! This game requires certain enemies to make other enemies spawn or to allow you to move to another area.

This game does have mashing so be warned, you'll be mashing Circle a lot for cutscene skips and square to shoot at people. (Outside of diving while shooting)

Explosives SUCK. End of Story, if they knock you down, you will lose time and if you get knocked back and splat on the wall then you'll lose more time and be in a terrible position. (As some of the time rockets will be coming at you already as you're getting up.)

Manage your Demolition Shots, you'll be using them at key points in the game, you need at least 1 to perform the "Raging Demon Strat" on bosses and you use it a few times in the game and if you REALLY need to, its the only way you can heal outside of beating a stage. (I'll explain in detail further down)

The Coffin has some use when you're surrounded by enemies or if Bunji (Mini Boss of the final stage) is standing too close for comfort. Always know that in a pinch R1 is your friend.

Bullets have strange tracking when you're not locking on to something and doing dive shots or Riot Dance. You'll see this happen a lot as you will dive shot almost 90% of the game.

This game does have infinite continues so if you need the IL practice and die, no need to worry and just keep going.

Techniques

Riot Dance (Mash Square without moving) This sends Grave into a frenzy of shooting bullets in front of him. While mashing you cannot walk around but only turn yourself left or right. You can also quick turn from this stance faster than any other way. The faster you mash the faster Grave shoots (though the bullet speed and amount fired caps off after awhile). This technique is suited for small enemies since they flinch a bit when they get shot, while the big enemies and bosses tend to shrug off the damage. (Unless it kills them)

Dive Shot (Up/Down/Left/Right + X, then Square) This is your main form of movement and attacking. Grave dives in whatever direction you input and fires a burst of shots in whatever direction he's facing or whatever he happens to be locked on to. He will continue to fire bullets until he touches the ground after the leap. Its possible to chain Dives if you dive again the moment Grave lands back on his feet. (Be sure to hold the direction you want Grave to go in so he doesn't neutral jump!)

Neutral Jump (Stand Still and press X) Self Explanatory but this does have some slight use. you can move yourself while neutral jumping if you hold a direction after you start the jump animation. If you hold O while doing so, you can move a bit further and faster. Pressing Square causes Grave to fire 2 single shots forward.

Recover Life NOW: (Pause, go to Demolition Shot, Scroll to the bottom, Press X) This is the only other way to recover life besides beating a stage. (Kick-Ass Mode and enabling Infinite Demolition Shot remove this from that menu). This not only recovers life but instantly restores your shield. At times you can be with a completely empty life bar and if you're fast enough to pause you can save yourself and thus, saving your run. This requires 1 demolition shot to use.

Coffin (R1 while on the ground) This is your only Melee Attack. No really this is all you get. You swing your coffin all the way around you and it knocks big enemies away and small enemies flying (and kills most of the small enemies) it also sends 1 specific boss flying without killing him (Bunji). Its pretty slow and you're not really invulnerable when you use it so use it sparingly.

Running (Hold Circle while moving) You move a good bit faster than normal walking BUT you cannot shoot until you let go of circle.

Locking on (Hold L1) locks on to the nearest enemy to you and all bullets will fly to said target. if you mash lock on while doing dive shots, bullets tend to just track the previous target and the current target and probably kills them both in some cases. This is mainly important to use for bosses only.

Quick Turn (L2 while on the ground) causes you to turn around. tends to be unresponsive some times if you are shooting (unless you Riot Dance)

Taunt (Select) At Random Grave will face the camera and either Flex, or do 1 of 2 poses with his gun, kinda slow, and sadly you can't do it if you Raging Demon a Boss.

Demolition Shot and "Beats" (in Detail)

(Triangle) Fires your equipped Demolition Shot. This is also the same button you use to perform a Boss Execution or Raging Demon Strat. There are 5 of these (Including Recover Health Now) and note that these cause quite a bit of lag. Another thing to note is that you only start with 2 (Death Blow and Recover Life NOW) and the rest are unlocked via skulls (will be explained when I go into stage ranks)

-Death Blow (Starting Demolition Shot): Fires a Single Missile. (Note that the missile itself kills enemies too along with the explosion)

-Bullet Dance: Fires Explosive Bullets in 360 degrees. If an enemy is standing behind an object, they are immune for the most part (very few exceptions to this rule such as the stage 2 boss)

-Hellhound Roar (Fires 3 missiles: 1 straight and 2 angled to the left and right. Same as before, the missiles themselves do damage along with the explosions)

-Raging Inferno (Bullet Dance but you fire in 360 degrees once on the ground then once in the air. causes significant amounts of lag from all the explosions)

NOTE: After completeing Stage 2 you can perform an execution on a boss by lowering his HP low enough so that the skull on the upper left hand corner will start flashing blue and have lightning surrounding it. If you have a demolition shot in stock, simply pressing triangle will end the boss fight with a cinematic execution. (I recommend seeing each one at least once as they're pretty awesome).

"Raging Demon" Strat - A trick I discovered by accident. Initiate a boss execution and start mashing circle, if done correctly and fast enough the game will warp you directly in front of the now dead boss in the center of the arena. This saves a ton of time as you just skipped a long cutscene of you killing the boss. This is extremely helpful for the final boss as he has the longest execution in the game (a combination of every other execution in the game all at once). The name came from Akuma's 'Shungokusatsu' (you don't see what is actually happening then it shows akuma standing over the new defeated enemy). This is kind of the same as you initiate the execution, don't see anything, and now you're standing over a dead boss.

Now you're probably wondering. How do I get Demolition Shot usage? The game starts you with 1 in reserve (Your reserve is the number in the very upper left hand corner above the skull) but in order to get more you just get "Beats". What are Beats you say? Think of it like a combo meter the more bullets you fire that hit someone or an object you can destroy or damage your Beat Counter will go up. After X amount of hits in a combo you will gain meter (to the right of the skull icon on the upper left hand corner). It goes up by a fixed amount when your combo reaches: 20, 35, 50, 65, 75, 85, 95, 100, 115, 195, 200, 202, 204, 206 and the patten continues all the way up to 998 (999 does nothing and your beat counter won't go any higher). When you stop shooting you have only a few seconds to shoot something again or your combo is dropped (reset back to 0). The time you have left is indicated by the blue flame behind your beat combo number and also depends on your difficulty:

Easy 120s Normal 90s Hard 90s Kick Ass a lot less than 90s (I could't time it that well because when I tried I was pretty much back to 0, will update after proper testing)

Rank and Skulls: What do they do for me?

So rank is actually somewhat important to do well with as the better your rank the more Skulls you get and with more skulls you unlock your better demolition shots faster. Its very possible (but slow) to get all the demolition shots by the end of stage 2. But in a speed run setting you want then all unlocked by the end of stage 3. Each category (depending on your performance) can give you between 1-5 skulls so a "perfect" score would be 25 skulls. Rank is divided into the following categories:

Beat Count - The highest Beat Count you got in the stage Kill Rate - The ratio of enemies killed compared to who is on screen/spawned in the stage. Clear Time - Time needed to clear stage Remaining Life - how much HP you have (Red Bar on right hand side) Shield does not count towards this since it always regenerates (Blue meter under HP)

HP % Chart 100% = 5 99%-90% = 4 89%-75% = 3 74%-50% = 2 49%-20% = 1 Below 20% is also 1

Also regarding HP, as I mentioned earlier that the difficulty only changes how much damage you take from enemies (on Easy and Kick Ass it also changes how long it takes before your Beat Combos reset back to 0) To show the differences here is an Enemy Damage Chart. As you'll soon see below that Kick Ass mode requires lots of caution and to avoid as many explosives as you can.

Easy - 0.7 Normal - 1.0 Hard - 1.5 Kick-Ass - 2.3

Artistic Point - What techniques were used to kill the enemies, So in a sense you can call this the "Swag" portion of your total score. Examples of things to raise artistic points: Taunting after killing someone (Boss or enemy), using the coffin, Dive shots, Demolition Shots, Killing enemies from point blank range or just overall being close. Now on that note you can also LOSE points by not doing anything, being knocked down and killing from a really far distance.

with a certain amount of skulls you unlock demolition shots (If you are using unlimited demolition shot then you get them all from the start). Here are the totals required:

Death Blow - 0 (You get this one free) Bullet Dance - 15+ Hellhound Roar - 30+ Raging Inferno - 45+ Recover Life NOW - 0 (also free and not technically a demolition shot but still takes one from your stock to use)

Title (Unlocking Extras)

This section is for those who want to unlock the goodies as there are a few extras to get. Now your final rank/title is based on how well you did on each stage (How many skulls you got) and that will factor into a letter rank in the following categories:

Beat Count Kill Rate Game Time: Total Completion time (I think its just a total of each individual level and the timer stops inbetween each stage) Remaining Lives (basically, how many times did you die? In THIS case the lower you get the better) Artistic Bonus Score (not really a factor as far as I can tell but i'll list it anyways)

Now depending on how many skulls you have in each seperate category per stage. you get a rank and that rank gives you points that add to your title at the end

S - 4 A - 3 B - 2 C - 1 D - 0

Once you beat the game it will tally up the points you get and give you your final title. and rank Titles you can get are as follows (from worst to best):

The Coward- 0 to 1 The Dunce- 2 to 4 The Savage- 5 to 6 The Marauder- 7 to 8 The Rash- 9 to 10 The Steel- 11 to 12 The Brave- 13 to 14 Beyond The- Grave -15-20

(Note: Typically in a speed run you'll probably always end up with 'The Steel' 'The Brave' is if your run is really good, BtG requires you to die to re-spawn enemies or just literally destroy everything possible and kill everything without stopping and that's time consuming anyways). To try and sort out the confusion here's an example. Lets say you beat the game and these are your totals.

Beat Count (20 Skulls) B = 2 points Kill Rate (20 Skulls) B = 2 points Clear Time (21 Skulls) A = 3 points Remaining Lives (3) = D 0 points Artistic Bonus (18 Skulls) B = 2 points

With this final score your total points would be 9 meaning your title is 'The Rash' so you would unlock every reward from "The Rash" down. Here are the Rank Rewards:

The Coward - Stage Select (Found in EXTRA Menu) The Dunce - Slow Mo (Hold R2 during Gameplay to slow everything down, kills framerate and makes things have even more lag than needed) Found in the EXTRA Menu The Savage - Infinite Demolition Shot Unlocked (look in EXTRA menu) The Marauder - View Character Models from stage 1 and 2 The Rash - View Character Models from stage 3 and 4 The Steel - View Character Models from stage 5 and 6 The Brave - View Character Models of the Final Boss and Grave Beyond The Grave - All Cutscenes can be viewed from the EXTRA Menu

If you get a title you unlock that bonus as well as the bonuses from the lower rank, if you don't want to deal with rank then beating the game once on Kick Ass will unlock everything at once.