Upon hearing something about a videogame revolving around little girls flying through the air shooting lots of baddies, most people familiar with the orient's top titles will immediately begin to conjure up images relating to the Touhou franchise. The remaining people who are less acquainted with Japanese gaming culture will likely look on in confusion. As of now, it would seem that the Touhou girls have some competition on the block, courtesy of Japanese indie developer Platine Dispositif and what still remains one their finest games to date, GundeadliGne.

As a direct sequel to Gundemonium, GundeadliGne picks up a decade after the conclusion of the last game. In the 18th century of an alternate universe where magic and machines are both equally common sights in everyday society, mankind discovers the Philosopher's Stones within the deepest depths of the realm of demons, otherwise known as Que Pholith. These magical artefacts enable the human race to advance its current technology far beyond its time. In doing so however, humans also release untold horrors from the demonic realm. It is soon determined that those who hold complete mastery over the Philosopher's Stones hold the key to thwarting the demons' invasion of Earth. These individuals are called 'Matrix Masters'. After successfully leading a counter attack into Que Pholith, Rosenkreuz Foundation agent Eryth Millfall returns to Earth to prepare for a second incursion into demon territory, with the goal of destroying the source of the Philosopher's Stones.

Unlike its predecessor, GundeadliGne presents the player with the choice of three playable characters, each with their own set of pre-defined abilities. Eryth is best suited to players who are comfortable with having to frequently re-position their character in order to make their shots connect, while Elixirel is likely to be favoured by those who would prefer to minimize their character's movement whilst still retaining the ability to attack large clusters of enemies at once. The third playable character; Nagi is for players who have adopted a high-risk, high-reward playstyle and don't mind running the risk of taking a bullet while trying to close the gap between themselves and the enemy in order to make use of her fast and powerful melee attack. Though it fails to deliver the same depth as the character customization system found in Gundemonium, this variety in characters still manages adds significant replay value to the game, and is an adequate stand-in for the aforementioned system.

Each character also has a means through which to slow down time, which can be used to give the player a breather, or simply time to contemplate their next move. Two of the three possess a magic attack, which is essentially GundeadliGne's equivalent to the 'bomb' found in most bullet hell games. These become particularly useful when playing on the higher difficulties when the action shifts from the player exchanging fire with the enemy, to the player frantically trying to navigate through a deadly labyrinth of bullets, energy beams and a ton of missile salvos.

One of the first things a player should notice about GundeadliGne is that it is significantly harder than the typical bullet hell shooter. This becomes evident right off the bat upon beginning the first stage as jack-o-lanterns and witches pepper the screen with fire from both sides of the screen, thus forcing the player to frequently change the direction they’re facing in order to keep up with the action. Even at its default level of difficulty the game can give experienced bullet hell players a run for their money. A major factor in determining just how difficult GundeadliGne is the phase level. As the player dispatches foes in rapid succession, the phase level meter fills. Upon reaching a certain threshold, the phase level increases, resulting in a sudden influx of enemies whilst simultaneously causing those already present to fight more aggressively, which in turn opens up new scoring opportunities for the player. Should the player collide with an enemy's attack, the phase level will decrease by one value. The extra incentive given to the player to avoid being hit stems from fact that maintaining a high phase level is paramount to attaining a high score, essentially encouraging players to attempt that ever-difficult 'no miss run' in order to end the game with the highest score possible and earn their place among the top players on the online leaderboards. This high level of difficulty is also what makes GundeadliGne feel so rewarding. It is impossible not to feel an overwhelming sense of satisfaction after clearing a hard section of a level, particularly so if the phase level hit a high value.

Beyond the main game lies Mission Mode, which is actually two modes labelled as one. The actual 'missions' themselves put the player under trying circumstances in particularly dangerous scenarios not encountered in the main game. These can include facing two Bosses at once, or fighting an upgraded version of an already capable opponent. These tend to be fiendishly difficult and are likely to be something that those who have mastered the main game will enjoy. The 'Tower of Babel' mode in comparison challenges the player to destroy coloured blocks in order to line up those with matching colours into columns. By comparison the ToB mode requires little skill or knowledge of the main game for the player to enjoy the mini-game.

There do appear to be a few control related issues that apply specifically to the Steam version of the game. First and foremost is that official wired Xbox 360 controllers seem to adopt a specific dead zone when used with GundeadliGne regardless of how they were calibrated. The size of the zone isn’t huge but it is bigger than what most players familiar with this sort of game are likely to feel comfortable with. Several Xbox 360 controllers were tested, calibrated and re-calibrated for the purposes of this review. All of them yielded the same result and made it difficult to consistently achieve precise movement when it was needed most, particularly when playing as Nagi – who moves noticeably faster than the other characters. It is also the case that while the d-pad remains fully functional at the main menu it becomes unusable beyond that, even at the character/difficulty select screen. Regardless of whether you’re using a gamepad or keyboard holding the ‘slow move’ key; which facilitates slower character movement without slowing down time; doesn’t get you instant results: it still takes about a full second for the game to actually apply a slower movement speed to your character. Having the ability to slow the movement speed of one’s character for clearing tight spaces is something that has since become standard across manic shooters, but there’s a potential problem here with the way things are set up. The default key binds are set up in such a way that the ‘fire’ key and ‘slow move’ key are one and the same, so it’s possible that this has been done on purpose to enable the player to repeatedly tap the ‘fire’ key when they want to shoot and move at the default speed whilst also enabling them to quickly switch to a slower movement speed by simply continuing to hold down the aforementioned button. However it would be nice to have the option to dedicate a specific key to both of the above functions, independent of each other.

Overall GundeadliGne is a fairly good title that; despite not being quite as flashy or unique as other games from the genre such as Radiant Silvergun and the Castle Shikigami series; should appeal to those looking for another bullet hell game to add to their collection.