Gunfire Reborn was the debut title for Duoyi Games with the game originally launching back in November of 2021 exclusively on PC. The roguelike RPG quickly attracted a lot of positive attention from those that gave this indie game a try, as seen in its glowing reviews on Steam. This made it less surprising, though no less exciting, when back in June during Xbox’s press conference it was announced that Gunfire Reborn would be coming to Xbox and PlayStation with Xbox receiving it first and offering it to Game Pass owners starting October 27, 2022. No official date has been announced at this time for the PlayStation release, but we do know that it will be sometime before the end of 2022.
After living in the world that they have created, I can see why it received the praise it did and why people were excited to see it coming to consoles. Don’t get me wrong, the game is not perfect, but for $19.99, it has a lot of the mechanics and gameplay that you want in a $59.99 (or $69.99…still a little mad at the price jump PlayStation) AAA game.
Gunfire Reborn is not a game for those who are looking for a compelling story. In the beginning, you learn that you are playing as a vault hunter looking for treasure. At first, this had me excited, considering how big of a Borderlands fan I am, but after a short time playing I knew that the story would not be the aspect of the game that shined through. Overall, you only get a few brief moments of dialogue that don’t really ever lead anywhere, which is unfortunate, but the gameplay is so well done that this honestly wasn’t a huge negative for me.
Going back to the thought of Gunfire Reborn being similar to Borderlands, it surprisingly has a few more aspects that are very similar, other than playing as a vault hunter. To start, the game can be enjoyed by yourself or with up to four players and you have six different characters that you can unlock through leveling up to a certain level or by purchasing them with the in-game currency, Soul Essence. Each of these characters have different attributes and skills that change how one may approach their playthrough. This is of course very similar to the multiple vault hunters that you can choose from in Borderlands, but the comparisons don’t end there as both of these cell-shaded first-person shooters also pride themselves on the number of unique weapons that they have created for their respective worlds.
To answer your question, no this is not going to be a comparison to Borderlands article. I just wanted to show you that what I said before about this game having a lot of things that people look for in a AAA title, was true. The actual gameplay of this game is drastically different than Borderlands. In Gunfire Reborn, you only have one life to get through all four acts of the campaign. If you die, the game is over and your progress will be reset completely. The only thing that the player keeps when they die is their Soul Essence that they picked up, which can be used not only to purchase characters but also to purchase talent tree upgrades for your characters. There is a resting location at the start of every Act that the player can activate to save their progress if they would like to return to the main menu to spend their Soul Essence, or if they need to log off of the game, but it is important to note that this does mean you will revert back to that spot upon death. Death still means that the player must start back from the beginning. This of course may be frustrating to some players as it creates a situation where you have gotten to the final boss and then you die and have to go back and do everything again. I can definitely agree that would be frustrating, but the great thing about this game is that two playthroughs never feel the same.
Every time the player resets their playthrough, they will be given a different layout of the maps, enemies will spawn in random spots, and the guns that the player finds will likely not be the same as what they encountered in their last playthrough. Although each playthrough is different, it is easy for the game to begin to feel repetitive. You are only given one character to use at the start of the game and you don’t unlock the next character until level 25, which in my experience took about two hours, and the next character doesn’t unlock until level 40. So there will certainly be times when players will begin to feel like they are just grinding to get new characters or to get enough Soul Essence to level their favorite character up fully.
To continue with the repetitive nature of this game, there’s not much in the way of enemy variety. Each act does have its own unique set of character designs, but they all function more or less the same, aside from maybe different elemental attacks. It definitely contributes to the feeling that I spoke of above where it just feels like all you’re doing is grinding. But overall, I would definitely recommend that every Game Pass subscriber check out Gunfire Reborn when it releases on Xbox on October 27. It is a great game that is good for mindless fun with friends or an even better game for those of you that enjoy grinding through games.
