Feel free to ask me any questions you have.Ĭlick to shrink.I would stick to standard settings and play one credit at a time. I recommend you to sit and try to play them regularly, half an hour each time and see how it goes. If you try to "see the end" or try to beat it in an evening, or credit feed, chances are it won't be fun. You are meant to learn, to try to tackle the game one section, one stage at a time. That is, you are not supposed to beat them in 30 minutes. The comedy setting and instant respawn might make it look more accessible than the main titles, but trust me, they are far harder.Īnyways, I think the best advice I can give you, however, is this one: Gradius games are 20-30 hours long. It has a completely different feeling and was made by a different team. It's faster, meaner and much less strict. It has a very different set of sensibilities from the other four numbered entries and has a marked bullet hell influence. It's not so much a Gradius game as a reimagined, futurized version of it. I would not recommend Gradius V as the starting point in the series. I would rather play I, II or Gaiden and then move to the real III. It's missing entire stages, it's zoomed in, it's uglier, it has less enemies, entire attack patterns are missing and it has even worse slowdown than the arcade version hard. While it's true that it's easy, it's hard for me to recommend it because, ultimately, it's a gimped port. Some people recommend Gradius III on the SNES as a starting point, but I disagree. It's a good entry point, though I would rather recommend I or II instead. It was made by a different team and has a different feel, but it still feels "classic". Gradius IV: Even more difficult than III.
The emulation on the PSP version is a bit rough.
This is considered one of the hardest shmups around, I wouldn't play it until you have beaten II. It has its share of brillance but it suffered from a troubled development and turned out incredibly punishing. It's perfectly fair, you can easily recover and it's hard to get killed without it being your fault. The difficulty is arcade standard, but it was the first shmup I truly played in a serious manner and I didn't feel it was inaccessible. It's a fantastic, corageous space adventure with fantastic level design. Gradius II: The best in the series, IMHO. It's pretty easy as long as you don't go overboard with options (Take just 2, it's enough). It's a good game, though surpassed by all of its sequels. The PSP Gradius Collection is indeed a great place to start.