Gradius V

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Gradius V (グラディウスV) is a horizontal-scrolling shoot-em-up developed by Treasure and G.Rev in 2004.

Gameplay Overview

Gradius V features 3 selectable modes:

  • Game Start: Uses the difficulty and lives/extends setting you selected under the options, allows for continues and multiplayer, score is saved to the Ranking screen. Every hour of playtime adds 1 credit to your starting stock of credits, until you reach 20 hours which unlocks Free Play mode.

Note that when playing multiplayer, you can only have a maximum of 4 Multiples between both players. You could split them up 2 and 2, but it's possible for one player to accidentally collect all 4 and leave the other with none, as least until they die or a Multiple thief appears.

  • Stage Select: Lets you play any stage on any loop you've accessed. Infinite continues, the game ends when you clear the stage. Unusually, you're forced to start with no powerups whatsoever, but you can pause and input the Konami code so you're not forced to start a late stage with no Multiples whatsoever. Pause, then input the following: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, (L1, R1) OR (L2, R2). Ending the code with L1, R1 gives you Laser, and ending the code with L2, R2 gives you Double.
  • Score Attack: Single player only, uses the default difficulty and lives/extends setting, and does not allow you to use continues. Unusually, scores obtained here do not save to the Ranking screen, and instead you're given a high score screen that includes a code you could input into the Gradius V website to submit your score online.

The menu can be controlled with either the controller in port 1 or port 2. The port you use determines which player side you're on, with P1 being blue and P2 being orange. Other than the colour and what side the score is displayed on, there's no functional difference between P1 side and P2 side.

Controls

At any time, you can soft reset the game by pressing all of these at the same time: L1 + L2 + R1 + R2 + Start + Select

Controls can be freely remapped in the options screen to any of the PS2 face buttons or shoulder buttons.

  • Power Up: Uses the currently selected upgrade to power up your ship. Collect orange pods repeatedly to change which upgrade is selected.
  • Rapid Shot: Rapidly fires the currently selected weapon. When a Laser weapon is equipped, it won't actually rapidly tap the button and instead holds the shot button to fire a continuous stream. This also applies to the E. Laser weapon which is a charge attack; to rapid fire weak shots with it you need to manually tap this button quickly.
  • Rapid Missile: Rapidly fires missiles as quickly as possible. You generally want Rapid Shot and Rapid Missile mapped to the same button for convenience's sake.
  • Multiple Control: Does various things when you hold the button depending on what Multiple type you're using. With Type 1: Freeze, holding this lets you lock your Multiples in place while moving around. With Type 2: Direction, hold the button then press the d-pad on analog stick in different directions to change what direction your Multiples are firing. With Type 3: Spacing, holding the button lets you spread out or tighten the gap between your Multiples. With Type 4: Rotation, hold this to cause your Multiples to spin around you.

There's also two other buttons that don't appear to be useful (they're non-rapid fire versions of the above controls):

  • Shot: Fires one bullet with no rapid fire (unless Laser is equipped), meaning you have to keep manually tapping this to shoot. Doesn't appear to be terribly useful, Rapid Fire already fires extremely fast when using the default weapon or Double.
  • Missile: Same as above, except for missiles.

Shot Type Selection

There are 4 preset weapon types that are selectable, with a 5th being unlockable called Weapon Edit.

  • Type 1: Speed Up / Missile / Double / Laser / Freeze Multiples / Force Field

Super versatile, and features by far the most powerful Multiple type available that can be used effectively in nearly any situation. You can spread your Multiples out for coverage, move them behind you for protection, focus them in front of you for damage, or really anything else you can think of. The versatility of Freeze Multiples is unmatched for creative players. Can be used to quickly kill bosses faster than any other Multiple type by jamming your Multiples directly in their cores. Unfortunately, Type 1 (and Type 3) both fire lasers that have periodic gaps in between them, unlike Type 2 and Type 4's lasers, and the missiles aren't spectacular, but those are about the only disadvantages.

  • Type 2: Speed Up / 2-Way Missile / Tail Gun / Laser / Direction Multiples / Force Field

Your Multiples fire their lasers in a continuous stream which is really useful, and 2-Way Missile is great for extra coverage. Being able to sweep your lasers around to destroy enemies anywhere is really useful, but you can't easy attack through walls or focus damage on small boss cores, so it's a shot type that's more intended to be useful on stages rather than bosses.

  • Type 3: Speed Up / Eagle Wind / Tail Gun / Laser / Spacing Multiples / Force Field

The least useful of all the default shot types. Spacing is relatively easy to handle as you can adjust your Multiples without needing to move, and you can tighten them up easily for bosses, but your Multiples trail behind you with a slight delay, and the default lasers fire with periodic gaps. Eagle Wind is pretty good, providing coverage on the top and bottom of the screen effectively, but it's not really worth it. Spacing your Multiples out too far really reduces your coverage and lets small enemies slip through your shots. Try Spacing Multiples instead with Weapon Edit, where you can use Ripple, Fire Blaster, or E-Laser which tend to work better with this.

  • Type 4: Speed Up / 2-Way Back / Double / Laser / Rotation Multiples / Force Field

A defensive shot type that spins your Multiples around while firing continuous beams of damage. Quite effective for protecting yourself, and you don't have to rotate them when you want to focus your damage for a boss, either by moving rapidly left and right to move your options together, or quickly tapping the Multiple Control button to suck them in to your ship. 2-Way Back isn't essential and loses some frontal damage, but does give you coverage behind you which can be helpful in several stages like the end of stage 6 or in any other section where enemies walk along the walls from behind to shoot at you like in stages 2 and 3. The downside is the relative simplicity and lack of versatility compared to Type 1 and Type 2.

This shot type really struggles on Stage 5 where at full power the lasers don't concentrate damage enough to really destroy the asteroids in a timely fashion. If you want to use Rotation Multiples, the unlockable Weapon Edit adds some interesting possibilities such as switching the missiles to something with more raw frontal damage like Spread Bomb, Flying Torpedo, 2-Way Missile, etc.

Weapon Edit

This special customization option essentially lets you make your own custom shot type to play with. The possibilities are incredibly powerful, far better than the 4 presets generally allow, and with a much greater variety of weapon types to choose from. To unlock Weapon Edit, simply beat the game using any number of continues (including in Free Play mode once you have it unlocked with 20 hours of play).

The following is an overview of all the upgrade options available:

Speed Up

The first icon is the only one that can't be customized. Unlike most Gradius games, when you collect your 5th Speed Up, the game will instead say "Max Speed" to signal your ship's at its fastest, and the Speed Up icon will then read "INIT. SPEED" as in Initial Speed, allowing you to reset your ship speed if you wish. So, if you accidentally make your ship faster than intended, or want to reset your speed after the high speed section in Stage 7, you simply need to keep collecting Speed Up upgrades.

Generally speaking, you want 2 or 3 Speed Ups depending on what you're comfortable with. 0 or 1 Speed Ups is too slow to safely avoid attacks. 4 or 5 Speed Ups is quite doable if you enjoy faster response speeds, and 4 is the minimum necessary to safely navigate Stage 7's high speed section, but keeping your speed that high throughout the game makes it trickier to safely get close to walls without crashing into them.

Note that when playing with an analog stick, pressing the stick lightly will allow you to move at a very slow speed, regardless of how many Speed Up upgrades you have. There's no slow / focus movement button, so this isn't possible with an arcade stick or a d-pad, but tap dodging to adjust your position can achieve the same thing and is more precise on those than with an analog stick.

Missile

The second upgrade icon that outfits your ship with a secondary attack. Spread Bomb is overwhelmingly the most popular and generally the strongest due to its area of effect and damage, making it great for stages with difficult environmental hazards such as 5 and 6, or for pointblank damage on bosses. However, many other useful missile types exist, most of them built to attack enemies on walls such as walking mechs and turrets.

Missile types generally can only fire 1 missile (or volley of missiles) onscreen at a time per Multiple. The missile types that travel along flat surfaces or slopes (Missile, Eagle Wind, Photon Torpedo) can only move forwards or down slopes and cannot go up slopes or vertical surfaces like they do in Salamander or Life Force.

  • Missile:

The standard missile type seen throughout the Gradius series and the one that typically represents the Vic Viper in the Parodius games. Fires a missile down at an angle that then travels along most flat surfaces and downward slopes until it strikes an enemy. It's not awful, but most of the other options Weapon Edit gives you are better.

  • 2-Way Missile:

Fires two missiles up and down that move slightly forward as they travel. Their coverage is good, making them effective at protecting you from threats above and below, but they explode the instant they touch anything rather than moving forward along surfaces. The sheer quantity they fire is useful.

  • Eagle Wind:

Identical to Missile in that it fires a missile at an angle that travels forward and down slopes until it hits something, except that it will fire the missile upwards if you or your multiples are on the upper half of the screen. If you spread your multiples out, it's possible to have missiles travelling along the upper and lower surfaces of a level, which can be quite helpful to clear turrets ahead of your ship.

  • 2-Way Back:

Same as 2-Way Missile, but fires to the left instead of to the right. It's not super useful except in some circumstances where having coverage that protects everything above and below behind your ship can be really helpful, but not necessarily essential. Rather useful with Spacing Multiples which has the worst rear coverage and otherwise has to switch to something like Tail Gun to easily hit enemies from behind.

  • Spread Bomb:

By far the most popular selection for the missile slot, and arguably the best missile slot weapon in the game. It's really strong, it fires relatively quickly, and the blast has an area of effect that hits multiple times, meaning you can damage or destroy several enemies at once. It's especially strong if you use it with Freeze Multiples and jam them inside of a boss core. Highly recommended for just about any setup, really.

The downsides are that it has a fairly short horizontal range, but this isn't a big deal if you use it with Freeze Multiples, and that the blasts have an aggressive bloom effect that can make it difficult to see the position of your ship, terrain you're about to hit, etc, so be aware of that when firing it in a tight space.

  • Photon Torpedo:

Missile, but better. Instead of descending slowly at an angle, Photon Torpedo drops at a high speed straight down, then travels along flat surfaces and downward slopes. It also pierces any weak enemies it touches, and appears to deal slightly more damage to heavier targets. The faster drop speed is useful for raw damage too, so in Weapon Edit there's generally no reason to use Missile over this.

  • Flying Torpedo:

Fires missiles straight forward. They don't have a particularly fast travel speed, you lose any kind of vertical coverage, and their damage isn't overly impressive, but it's potentially useful if you're using something like E-Laser and want to be able to have some shots going forward while you're charging up.

NEEDS TESTING: if you use the standard missile button rather than the rapid missile button, will holding it cause the missiles to move vertically until you release the button? It worked this way in Gradius IV.

Double

Without any weapon upgrades, your default shot fires up to 4 shots onscreen at a time. Double upgrades cause you to fire two shots at a time, in different directions, generally sacrificing frontal damage to provide extra coverage. They're decently strong (comparable to the standard thin Laser) if you manage to get a Multiple or two jammed into a boss core because they're firing two shots at once, but frontal damage drops off drastically if you're at any distance from the enemy. Because they're typically so much weaker than Laser weapons, and there's a lot of very durable enemies in the game, they're regarded as situational and aren't intended for general use.

Tail Gun or Vertical are probably the best of the options here as there are certain situational sections where having shots firing behind or upward constantly is helpful and you may want to temporarily switch.

  • Double:

Fires at a 45 degree upward angle and forward. Frontal damage is really important in this game, and you can get spread to cover enemies on ceilings above you with clever Multiple positioning or with certain missile types like 2-Way Missile or Eagle Wind. Not terribly useful.

  • Tail Gun:

Trades frontal damage in exchange for giving you a rear firing shot. Very useful at the end of stage 6 or the end of stage 7, but not essential by any means.

  • Vertical:

Fires forward and directly upwards. Can be helpful for attacking some enemies that appear directly above you that a missile might be too slow to effectively attack, but situations like this are rare and you can attack such enemies using a laser with clever Multiple placement.

  • Free Way:

The secondary shot aims based on how you move. The aim doesn't reset when you stop moving to you have to move forward if you want all your shots to go forward. An interesting but very difficult to use weapon. It's possible to use this decently on bosses with a bit of finesse, and it might be an option for use during stages if you're using something like E-Laser for bosses.

  • Spread Gun:

In exchange for losing all forward shots, you now fire shots at 45 degree angles up and down! It's possible to still attack enemies directly in front if you either jam your Multiples into them at close range with Freeze or Rotation. You get rather good spread with this, so you could potentially use this for stages if you're playing with E-Laser for bosses, but it's a bit unusual to handle. If the lack of frontal shots is a problem you could use something like Flying Torpedo to compensate, but Flying Torpedo isn't terribly fast or damaging, so it's likely better to learn to handle your positioning and your Multiples better. Note that it's not a terribly popular weapon, even among E-Laser players.

Laser

Upgrades your main shot to a more powerful attack. This is generally what you want to be using, especially against bosses. All the Lasers in this game are useful, but perform very differently, allowing for a variety of different playstyles to suit your tastes (once Weapon Edit is unlocked).

  • Laser:

The thin, standard laser all 4 of the preconfigured shot types use. Hold the shot button and it will fire a long, super thin beam that pierces weak enemies. There's a brief delay between shots as it fires, but if using Direction or Rotation Multiples, the ones fired from your Multiples actually fire as a solid, continuous beam, making them a bit more damaging and providing better coverage against small enemies trying to ram into you.

It's not terribly exciting or effective. The damage is decent, but it's so thin that it's really difficult to use. Arguably the worst of the laser choices, the other three that you can use with Weapon Edit are generally far more effective, especially with Freeze or Spacing Multiples that fire this laser with a gap in between shots.

  • Ripple:

Slightly weaker than the standard laser but vastly more effective due to much wider coverage, and multiple shots being able to easily overlap each other even when your Multiples are spread out at a distance. The difference in damage really isn't that significant as combined with Spread Bomb, you can still achieve very fast kills on bosses, and have way more spread to deal with small enemies than you would with the normal laser. The Ripple also becomes wide enough as it travels that it has some unusual piercing properties, where its shots can actually hit the core through enemy armor, making it just generally very useful for anything. Highly recommended and easy to use.

  • Fire Blaster:

An ultra powerful flamethrower with rather limited horizontal range, this laser option is a bit tricky to use if you're not comfortable with getting close to enemies, but is devastatingly effective if you take the time to practice with it. It's useful with nearly all Multiple types, though Freeze and Spacing are perhaps the most interesting to use it with. Get your Multiples in close, and watch as difficult enemies are ripped apart.

This is unquestionably the top tier weapon against the asteroids in stage 5 and the green goo balls in stage 6, arguably some of the most difficult obstacles in the game. It also instantly clears out the small green orbs in stage 4 that occasionally get fired at you. Seriously, this melts asteroids far quicker and easier than any other laser, so if you're having trouble there, this weapon is highly recommended and it's not too difficult to learn to use it despite its limited horizontal range.

  • E-Laser:

The charge shot of the game. Instead of rapid firing, holding the rapid shot button causes this to charge up. There's no distinct visual indication when it's fully charged except for the little glowing balls getting particularly close together, so it takes a bit of practice to learn to use, but releasing a fully charged shot with all 4 Multiples hitting will generally instantly kill most boss cores. The fully charged shot is also super wide and has some ability to pierce and hit cores even if your aim isn't perfect. This weapon is highly specialized for tearing through bosses and makes bosses hilariously easy, at the cost of stages being far more challenging.

For stages, you'll need to plan where to fire your charge shots, and what missiles you'll use as those will be your main source of damage while charging. Uncharged shots are quite weak and can't be rapidly fired, making it difficult to clear small enemies. Using this with Spread Bomb limits your coverage but gives you a lot of damage, using this with 2-Way Missile, Photon Torpedo, or Flying Torpedo reduces damage but makes it a bit easier to hit things while charging. A difficult laser type intended for experts, but that pays off massively by trivializing otherwise tricky boss fights.

Multiple

Lets you select from the 4 types of Multiples that the 4 preset shot configurations use. Freeze is overwhelmingly regarded as the best due to its versatility, but the other types are also useful.

  • Freeze Multiples:

Hold the Multiple Control button to lock them in place, allowing you move around and arrange your Multiples to give yourself vertical spread, close defensive coverage, concentrated damage on bosses, attacks on targets behind you... this Multiple is overwhelmingly popular because it can quite literally do just about anything.

Spread Bomb is particularly useful with this Multiple as it allows you to jam your Multiples in bosses and deliver concentrated damage to rip them apart.

The only downside is that it requires a bit of finesse and planning to use. It's very difficult to move around and reposition your options in a tight area such as the asteroids in stage 5, so learning how and where to position in advance helps a lot.

When using the thin Laser weapon with this Multiple, the lasers fire with a brief delay in between shots.

  • Direction Multiples:

Hold the Multiple Control button to lock your ship in place and allow you to freely aim your Multiples in any direction. You can sweep the screen of enemies and attack targets at awkward angles that would normally be tricky to hit, such as the Stage 3 boss when it's above you.

You need to manually wiggle your ship to focus your shot damage on bosses, as with classic Gradius games, but the benefit of being able to aim in any direction is very useful in many situations. Still, Direction Multiples are not nearly as popular as Freeze Multiples as Freeze lets your Multiples extended far past your ship to attack targets behind walls, something that's always incredibly useful.

When using the thin Laser weapon with this Multiple, the lasers from your Multiples fire in a continuous stream of damage. Your ship still fires normally with a brief delay between lasers.

  • Spacing Multiples:

Weapon Edit makes this a lot more useful than Type 3's setup is, with Ripple, Fire Blaster and E-Laser all proving useful with shots wide enough to cover the gaps the standard Laser has. It's still nowhere as helpful as Freeze or Rotation Multiples tend to be, trading raw power to gain easier usability, but if you're struggling to handle the quirks of the other Multiple types this one is pretty straightforward to use, and allows you to focus or spread out your Multiples without needing to move around at all. Consider using 2-Way Back Missiles with this to cover your rear, the main disadvantage this Multiple type has.

When using the thin Laser weapon with this Multiple, the lasers fire with a brief delay in between shots. Because you can't position the multiples on top of each other unless they're all focused together, it makes the thin Laser particularly bad at protecting you from small enemies trying to ram you; consider Ripple or Fire Blaster as better laser slot alternatives.

  • Rotation Multiples:

Holding the Multiple Control button causes your Multiples to spin around you. It's pretty easy to use, and the continuous beam you get with the standard Laser is pretty effective, but the tradeoff is that you don't get the possibilities for raw damage that Freeze Multiples offer. Like Spacing Multiples, it's easy to use, but Spacing tends to work better on bosses as it's easier to focus your shots. With this, if you want to focus your attacks you either have to wiggle your ship, or tap the Multiple Control button to suck your Multiples into your ship.

Weapon Edit gives you a few interesting options with this, such as substituting in Spread Bomb or Photon Torpedo which gives valuable damage or frontal coverage. E-Laser isn't recommended to use with this, but Fire Blaster is potentially a fun alternative to the standard Laser, especially since its damage is way higher and still gives you a constant ring of damage around your ship. Ripple also works decently as the extra wide shots mean you get mix of frontal damage and spreadfire all at once.

When using the thin Laser weapon with this Multiple, the lasers from your Multiples fire in a continuous stream of damage. Your ship still fires normally with a brief delay between lasers.

?

This final slot lets you pick from two defensive upgrades, or a fullscreen attack.

  • Force Field:

Grants your ship an aura that can absorb up to 3 hits before dissipating. Normally your hitbox is an extremely small rectangle around your cockpit, but the aura from Force Field greatly increases your hitbox, and it's possible for bullets that wouldn't have hit your cockpit to damage your Force Field. It'll also be damaged if you graze against solid structures like walls.

Note that it's possible to actually move through seemingly solid objects such as Stage 7's closing walls in the high speed section, or the high speed vertical energy beams, if you have a high speed and move through them quickly with a fresh Force Field. It appears getting hit while Force Field gives you a few frames (like 2 or 3 max) of invulnerability which allows for this (needs confirmation on how this works).

  • Shield:

Instead of the all around protection Force Field provides, this instead only covers the front with two circular orbs. The benefit is they absorb an insane number of hits, 15 each, giving you far more durable coverage and also serving as a powerful attack if you summon them while you're directly in front of an enemy core which will cause them to rapidly deal damage. Their size does shrink as they weaken and to refill them can be a bit of a nuisance compared to Force Field as you have to push up against a wall or some kind of enemy to break them, so they're trickier to use, but in the hands of a skilled player they're a powerful alternative to Force Field.

  • Mega Crush:

Instead of a defensive barrier, this allows you to clear the screen of enemies that die in 1 hit as will as clearing all bullets. This appears to have the same effect as the blue items that occasionally appear, except that it can be used freely at any time when your upgrade is on the ? icon. Losing access to a defensive shield isn't that big of a deal in a game where your hitbox is quite small, but Force Field and Shield are still typically a lot more popular. Potentially very useful, but Force Field is overwhelmingly more popular for soaking accidental hits.

Video Replay Index

For a comprehensive video overview demonstrating all the weapons, please see this video by KietTezend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axahD-_D2bE

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

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