Gunfire Reborn is the new title developed by the Chinese studio Duoyi Network and published by 505 Games. A little roguelite, a little looter shooter, a little rpg, this first person shooter that can also be played in multiplayer up to a maximum of four users, finally arrives on Xbox and PC and on Xbox Game Pass, after won the hearts of more than two million players on Steam. A perfect mix of genres that, after almost twenty hours of play, continues to occupy our evenings.

Ready Set Go!

Once the game is started, we are immediately catapulted into the game as a pucciosa anthropomorphic fox (The Crown Prince). There is no story, no menu or presentation video. Gunfire Reborn does not explain anything to the player, all it asks him to do is shoot. After stumbling upon our first death, we wake up in an inn greeted by the owner who gives us a strange object and then invites us to throw ourselves back into the fray to explore a tomb, the first play area. Thus begins a long journey that will take us to cross too deserts, pirate bays and snowy landscapes.

Often in a shooter it can happen that it takes some time to get used to the shooting system, regardless of its quality. Well, that’s not the case with Gunfire Reborn. In the title of Duoyi Network you shoot incredibly well, the feeling with the more than forty available weapons is incredible and extremely precise aiming system. The result is frantic, adrenaline-pumping and extremely fast shooting. Of course the enemies, many and unique for each biome, will certainly not stand by and watch. The mobs that throw grenades, for example, will try in every way to flush us out to get us out of position while those who exploit the melee will charge us mercilessly.

Finally, the snipers, with their shots that also turn the corner of the column where we will try to hide, will soon climb the ranking of the worst cat to peel. It is therefore clear how Gunfire Reborn is a game that encourages you to come out of the covers, a favor an offensive rather than a defensive approach – you can’t even duck down to catch your breath during the game – protected by both the health bar and the shield bar. The latter will recharge over time if we do not suffer damage. It will happen several times to curse ourselves for not having looked at the small map in the upper left and not having noticed that the opponents were surrounding us.

On the other hand, being kidnapped by the shootings will become very easy, to the detriment of the urge to take care of the indicators on the screen. At each death, you will return to the inn, ready to restart the game, accepting defeat with sportsmanship. On the level design front, Gunfire Reborn is extremely linear and features the classic combination, procedurally generated, of corridors and arenas, both in the open and in the closed levels, up to the boss fight at the end of the world. Perhaps we would have appreciated a greater verticality of the maps: the jump will almost never be exploited in terms of gameplay since there are no platforms on which to climb to reach an elevated position compared to the enemies. This position would have ensured a more diversified approach based on the situation to be faced. The only way to avoid attacks is to dodge which however has a cooldown of three seconds and therefore remains to be used at the appropriate time.

The rooms, with the exception of some barrels to be blown up on time and some covers, are quite empty and poor in detail. However, we will often meet in our wanderings the treasure chambers, optional rooms where you can retrieve important upgrades for our character (the occult scrolls), which we will talk about shortly. Gunfire Reborn, in fact, presents several role-playing facets that make it much deeper than it might seem.

In search of the perfect build

Framing Gunfire Reborn as a linear roguelite FPS is extremely reductive. The work, which draws heavily from a sacred series like Borderlands (here our review of Borderlands 3), offers the player a remarkable RPG component and many weapons dropped by killed enemies, some of which are capable of inflicting elemental damage. But let’s go in order. In addition to the initial protagonist, we will have the opportunity to unlock other characters (six in all), each with their own strengths and weaknesses, unique abilities and special bombs.

Crown Prince, for example, can throw a sphere of energy that chains the boss on duty for a few moments, so as to riddle him with shots, while Ao Bai can hold two weapons at the same time for a short period of time. In the end, it will be inevitable to choose the one we feel most comfortable with and which, pad in hand, will bring out the best in Gunfire Reborn’s gunplay.

The only problem is the time required to try them all: some of these will unlock by continuing in the adventure, while others will require the expense of a large amount of souls that we will collect in the game, also essential to level up. Each hero can be strengthened through temporary power ups – which we will lose in case of death – and permanents, the talents, to be unlocked through the aforementioned souls in a generic skill tree that applies to all the protagonists (increased health, shield, weapon damage and much more).

In the first case, however, the upgrades are two: the occult scrolls, similar to the parasites of Returnal (if you missed it, here is our review of Returnal), which offer bonuses but also random malus and which are not mandatory to collect, and chalices, essential for increasing the damage of weapons, the number of consecutive uses of the specific skill of the hero or the impact area of ​​the grenades. The sense of progression is tangible thanks to the synergy between the richness of the tree of talents, the chalices and the occult scrolls. The success of the run will also depend heavily on the drop of the weapons. Having reiterated the importance of elemental damage, it will take some time to understand which are the strongest and the weakest ones, but above all the most effective ones to face a specific biome: the rifles that inflict electrical damage are very useful against most of the opponents who populate the desert areas of the second level while it Newsboy a kind of crossbow that fires an energetic bullet, is extremely versatile and can be used in all circumstances, especially when the loot has not been generous.

Then there are large guns that deal increased damage if the enemy is first damaged by corrosion. In general, it will be a study of the different guns in order to identify those closest to your style.

What magic to shoot in company

The almost total absence of a narrative could prove to be a sore point considering the roguelite nature of the product and having to repeat the same stages several times. However, this criticality inevitably takes a back seat when you decide to approach the cooperative campaign. The laughter, the moments of pure satisfaction for having eliminated a boss together with a friend and the desire to strengthen each other after a defeat, will write the pages of the history of Gunfire Reborn.

Once you reach the credits, it will then be possible to tackle the main mode again at higher difficulty: new challenges await the most daring teams! From the graphic point of view, the models of the protagonists, as well as those of the soldiers, are well-finished and with a fiercely cartoonish look and populate an adventure that has never suffered from performance drops, and indeed equipped with a frame rate always anchored at 60 fps. This is obviously a fundamental aspect to be able to fully enjoy this furious shooter developed by Duoyi Network.