Gunfire Reborn Review

Gunfire Reborn is a looter shooter, level-based RPG and roguelite adventure game developed and published by Duoyi Games, where you play as anthropomorphic gunslingers either alone or with up to four players in co-op: traveling through stages, each one having their own themes and enemies.

Starting with an ordinary nine-shooter revolver, weapons ranging from pistols and rocket-launchers, to swords and bows, combat-assisting scrolls can be found and unlocked via chance pickups from slain enemies and completing tasks, helping you scooch a little closer to finishing each stage. Perks called Golden Goblets can be found in chests that give you the choice of three options allowing you to improve your hero’s health, damage, or skills.

There isn’t a conventional story in Gunfire Reborn, rather placing the player into a well-instructed tutorial that perfectly explains the controls, how guns and specific skills work, as well as how to fight enemies and exploit their weaknesses. The tutorial ends once you leave the first stage, called Longling Tomb, traveling to other stages until you die and get introduced to the reincarnation system and skill tree.

After the tutorial, yourself or a team can re-enter the first stage and see how far you can get before wiping out.

The art style and majority of Gunfire Reborn’s visuals take inspiration from south-east Asian motifs and themes as the team, Duoyi Games, are from Hong Kong, China and obviously have first-hand experience with Asian artworks and movements.

You’d be amiss to think the game was a part of the new Taiwanese indie gaming scene due to its illustration-like graphics, character models and textures. Games like The Legend of Tian-ding and Behind the Frame both inspired by Asian art styles, mainly manga that shares the same line and colour work as Gunfire Reborn.

However, the first look at the low-poly graphics of interiors and exteriors shows lack of design and thought. Thou stylish and in season for quickly made 3D Unity games like The Walking Zombie 2, it seems lazy and not fleshed out to look like realistic scenery; only textured minimally.

Where it makes up for it is in the gameplay; or should I say ‘gunplay’.

The game controls are almost expertly implemented, reacting seamlessly to all actions and inputs with no delays or hiccups when moving around. Damage and fire rate of the array of weapons at your disposal are balanced as well as only giving the player two slots for said weapons besides the default revolver.

For example, the low firing but hard-hitting sniper rifles are the only weapons with a zoomed-in scope; decreasing the chance for players to hide in a corner and snipe off enemies as they close in quite quickly on your spot, eliminating any ability of camping. Overall, keeping the action going without having to stop and reassess your surroundings.

You unlock multiplayer when you’ve leveled up to 10, letting you start or join matchmaking lobbies. Multiplayer is the best way – by far – to play Gunfire Reborn. Alone, it becomes a slog after a few hours of facing the same enemy types and bosses. Together, the game becomes a turkey shoot in relation to the increase of monsters and their combat buffs.

If you’re with a good team, you can get past troublesome areas, however, the majority of my teams would quit immediately after being downed; progressively making it harder on others who would do the same in the next stage. Waiting times for people to join tends to be moderately the same length; around three minutes so either wait or invite friends and people you know play it regularly.

There are a few things to mention for new players that makes Gunfire Reborn slightly hard to play in the beginning.

If you’re reloading and you get too close for comfort with a swarm of beetles or the odd swordsman, you can’t melee (you only learn that mistake once) so keep your distance. Some enemies will fire straight or do a special attack in a particular direction, while one opponent fires what is essentially the needler from Halo. The Longbowman are the first you encounter and can easily be countered by dodging their shot with a quick boost to the side. Then you run into the Bandit Retainer in the desert stages that can bend their shots and phase past yours.

Those ‘Bandits’ were the bane of my progression until I got my hands on the gatling-gun rifle and discovered; they can dodge a few rounds but not eighty consecutively.

Gunfire Reborn is available on Xbox One & Series X|S (at the time of writing it was on Xbox Game Pass), Windows, iOS and Android.