Bullet Heaven 2

Do not let this game name deceive you, this game should be named Bullet Hell 2 instead. After completing all the stages on heavenly mode, all I see are flashes of bullets and explosions. Bullet Heaven 2 is suitable for all kinds of players, with 3 modes ranging from normal to heavenly. There are many characters and level customisations, you can also customise how you earn points as well. Although this is an old game, it is still a hidden gem and you can tell that the developer put his heart into this. Definitely recommended for bullet hell fans!

Grossly underrated bullet hell game. My second favorite right behind Jamestown. This really deserves more attention, great developer. I hope he makes a 3rd game some day!

I absolutely adore this game and cannot recommend it enough, especially for people new to these types of games. Even if it's not perfect. Now, let me tell you about Bullet Heaven 2.
Starting with the presentation:
- Characters look great, and the costumes actually change their outfits which I appreciate a lot.
- Backgrounds are gorgeous. I can easily imagine myself in this world.
- Incredible music, it's easily one of my favourite video game soundtracks of all time.
- The bullet patterns just tend to create a pretty sight.
- I dunno where to put this so I'll put it here: The story is sort of non-existent, which is perfectly fine for this kind of game. The dialogue can be fun but sometimes it does feel like it tries a bit too hard to be edgy in my opinion. If you like the dialogue in other EBF games then you will probably like it here.
Gameplay:
- The weapon and subweapon mechanics are quite interesting! You basically have 2 separate gauges, one for each of them. Having enough in the main weapon's gauge will change how it shoots, and the subweapon requires some gauge. It will be a bit of an adjustment if you are new to this game, but it feels great when you use it well and it is immensely satisfying to absolutely unload everything onto a group of enemies. Each character also has different weapons and subweapons to play around with too. One thing to keep in mind though is that using mouse + keyboard buttons to shoot can sometimes make the game lag a lot, I completely understand if that is a deal-breaker for you but playing with just mouse or just keyboard works perfectly fine.
- Shop exists. You can get stuff like more characters, costumes, subweapons etc. It doesn't really make the game better or worse by being there.
- In terms of bugs, it's mostly ok as far as I can tell. The only bug that I don't mention anywhere else is that on extended play sessions (multiple hours) the game can occasionally just completely glitch out. I've been told it is because of a memory leak, though I'm no expert with this kind of thing so I don't know if that's true.
- Plenty of options to adjust things to your liking, like separate volume sliders and high contrast bullets.
- I cannot judge how the local multiplayer is because my only friend that plays this is on the other side of the world, but it's not hard to get the needed achievements from it.
- Scoring is sort of where my expertise ends, it seems to be solid though. Getting diamonds from perfect waves is important here for the multiplier, and you want to graze as many bullets as possible. Definitely an interesting way to play. There's also cheats and handicaps which i will talk more about later, but for scoring they (mostly) add/reduce your score multiplier.
Levels:
- One thing to note is that this game goes level by level, with 13 waves each. Also note that the last 3 are optional bonus waves.
- Regular levels are a good time. The gameplay loop consists of mowing down half of a wave of enemies, collecting a diamond and then annihilating the next waves which often ends up being a rush to kill the last few enemies to cancel the bullets before a large wave of bullets reaches you. It's always super satisfying to pull off correctly. There are also sometimes gimmicks like ice blocks or shields to mix things up which are neat. Simply put, the normal levels work because the act of killing the enemies and avoiding the bullets is fun.
- The bosses are without a doubt the highlight of the levels here. They start off with a wave of normal enemies so that you can get a diamond, then it's you and the boss. While the normal levels tend to be mostly aimed bullets and just filling the screen with them, the bosses are often a bit more deliberate. There are many interesting and unique patterns that could make great wallpapers here, along with aimed and random bullets that are often combined too. One thing that is especially apparent with these levels is that because getting diamonds (or hearts will max your weapon gauges, it's important to get perfect waves to keep your momentum going.
- Survival levels are interesting. Instead of trying to survive to the end, it's all about getting as far as possible in randomized sets of enemies and getting the highest scores possible. Enemies and their bullets will get tougher and faster over time as well. It's a pretty fun time. They do get quite crazy when you get far enough, I recommend checking out some of the videos that get far into them.
Difficulty:
- For casual players: I know, from looking at the trailers this game looks completely ridiculous. I promise that it's a lot more playable than it might seem at first. Now why I believe this game is so perfect for beginners in comparison to other bullet hells is the mouse movement. A common issue with newer players (even I experienced this!) is trying to grasp how the game controls while also coping with the screen being positively filled with bullets. With the option for mouse controls, there is no need to fumble around with normal controls and instead you can easily just put your mouse exactly where you want to be at any time. Another addition is the death-bomb system! When you get hit you have a split second where you can use a bomb to negate the damage. It's quite nice when you are learning what time you should be using your reflexes to use a bomb. Before this section ends here is a quick tip for you! A common response to everything happening on screen is to panic and flail around like crazy. This is a bad idea because you are essentially making your hitbox cover a larger area. What I recommend doing at least while you are learning the game is the move around slowly, even sitting still can be effective when there are no aimed shots. I wish you luck, especially on heavenly difficulty. It will be quite the challenge for a casual player.
- For intermediate and above: Heavenly difficulty will likely end up being a bit too easy for you because of how forgiving it is. You can get hit at least 5 times and still survive perfectly fine. I recommend going for things like triple star ranks, handicapped runs, and high scores. For the skilled players, activating every handicap except pacifist mode will give you a score bonus of 2.20x, and will make the enemies and their patterns go from pretty to lethal, with little room for error. I dream of someday completing this challenge myself, it is one of my ultimate goals in gaming.
Cheats and handicaps:
- As for cheats I don't really have much to say, they give you advantages while reducing your score. Some of them do have value if you play for high scores, namely the shield and attack drops along with more items.
- Similar to cheats, the handicaps increase your score but make the game harder. I will be separating them into their own sections because I have a lot to say here.
- The speed handicaps are probably my favourites of the bunch. It's kind of like a difficulty above heavenly, though not as big of a jump up in comparison. What it does is it makes all bullets move faster, and makes enemies shoot faster. +5% is mostly negligible and +10% is still fairly manageable, but the max increase of +30% is enough to increase the difficulty of the game considerably. It makes everything super frantic and fast paced, and just generally makes everything even more fun that the game normally is.
- Damage handicaps are interesting. They're like the speed handicaps where they go from 5% less bullet damage down to 30%. While it might not seem that bad at first, that -30% makes a surprisingly huge difference. Everything just last so, so much longer. Often when you would rely on an attack in a boss ending, it just keeps going. At this point you may start to notice how all these handicaps combine together and make each effect worse and worse. This is why max handicaps is so much harder than just the normal game.
Hit review character limit, rest is posted in the comments below.

Ever since I played the first Bullet Heaven game on Kongregate, I knew I had to pick up the 2nd game on Steam.

I'm not someone who has played a bunch of shoot 'em ups before, but I can say that Bullet Heaven 2 is very accessible for beginners of the genre, such as myself. There's 3 difficulty settings to switch between, and a variety of unlockable characters, abilities, and cheats to experiment with.

The highlight for me is definitely the boss battles. Defeating them is quite satisfying and the great soundtrack adds a delightfully tense feel to it. Seeing your highscores and comparing them to your friends' is also fun.

I must however, admit that I am a sucker for cute stuff and this game definitely satisfies that, while also being very fun to play all the way through. The Cat and Slime Bunny achievements in particular are adorable, and I'll definitely be putting one of them on my profile at some point. :3

My only nitpick is that I couldn't get Remote Play to work when trying to play with a friend, as they weren't able to see the game window for some reason. I have had random problems with Remote Play before so maybe it works for others, I did only try this once after all. It didn't take away from my experience in any real way though. ^^

The Heavenly difficulty makes me go INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!

This game is funny.
You start out (about 20 seconds after you buy) by saying "ohhh this was a bad decision, i friggin goofed up."
After that you start playing and ALL those thoughts melt away.
The game has ADORABLE graphics, HILARIOUS characters, and really SO HARD WHY IS IT SO HARD AAAAAAH gameplay.
I would rate this game 9/10
music's fire... just btw

banger game. im too bad at it to play heaven, but normal is fine. much better than BH1, and that was already a fun game.