Comparing other metroidvanias, it's a solid game and has the standard sort of abilities like sliding and double jump to give you ways to pass the "ability" gates and give the player more combat mobility and evasion options.
Interesting take to have Metal Slug style fighting but Metroidvania type backtracking and layouts.
Money used instead of experience points so that players can buy better equipment to increase their damage output.
It would have been nicer to add a few more equipment slots and balancing them out to give more variety in the play style.

Definitely recommend using a controller over the keyboard in this instance. All that pressing for the pistol really needs a turbo button to keep me from cramping a finger.

For completionists, it's a bit of a drag that the money doesn't flow quite as fast as it could for getting the higher tier items.

Alright. I have a lot of feelings about this game, some positive, some negative. Let's start with the good.

The core gameplay, the running and gunning, feels very good. It's satisfying to take down most enemies and shooting feels smooth. Movement has a good base speed and just the right weight to the jumps. The only issue I have with the basics is that you have to button mash to shoot, which is very hard on the hands and especially the right thumb. There's no charge attacks, so I can see no reason why there shouldn't be an option to just hold the fire button down.

Aesthetically, the game is pretty solid. Biomes are adequately varied, the pixel art is top-notch, feels very much like an expanded Metal Slug game. Music is very good, and have a surprising amount of variety. The story is... there. It's not deep, but it's fine. Doesn't get in the way of the gameplay, which is the real draw.

Exploration and progression for the first half to maybe two thirds of the game is excellent. You're regularly finding helpful upgrades and exploration feels pretty rewarding. The earlier movement upgrades are solid.

Now the bad. First, some minor gripes. Bosses are a bit too tanky. Not horrifically so, but you could probably cut 10-20% of their health and still have enough time to see all their attacks a few times and prove your mastery of them. As it is, they stick around just a bit too long. Not enough to ruin them, but enough to drag them down a bit. Second, melee is basically useless until you get the last few melee weapons. Before those, it's far too weak to bother with considering the added risk of being in melee range. Honestly not sure why it's even in the game.

With the minor stuff out of the way, here's the major issue: the latter half to one third of the game. It is MISERABLE. Finding the items you need to progress is a tremendous pain, and the endgame cleanup if you're going for 100% is one of the worst I've ever experienced in a metroidvania. This is not helped by the late game abilities, which honestly feel pretty awful to control. SPOILERS AHEAD FOR LATE GAME ABILITIES.

The trouble starts with the wall jump. For some reason, instead of having it bound to jump and just being context sensitive like, you know, every other game with a wall jump, it's bound to RB. It feels kind of awkward and unresponsive, and when you do a wall jump, you have very little air control after. The boot spikes, which let you bounce off enemies and breakable items is even worse. Still bound to LB, it feels like it fails to trigger about half the time, and it flings you in an arc forward from whatever direction you're facing when you bounce, and changing directions prior to that can be a nightmare to pull off.

There are items in the late game that require chaining these movement abilities, and every one of them was a pain in the ass to get. Doubly so when you have to do so after guiding an enemy rocket into place to bounce off of it. Once these abilities came into play, movement and exploration stopped being fun and became a chore, and that's basically the latter 1/3rd or so of the game.

Most of the stuff you get in the endgame cleanup is pretty underwhelming too. Lots of weapons, but honestly, outside of puzzles that needed specific secondary weapons, I only used a small handful of pistols, secondaries, and bombs throughout the game. There just didn't seem to be much point in swapping most of the time. Additionally, health and ammo upgrades just didn't feel terribly impactful in the late game.

I would recommend playing this game, but DO NOT 100% it. It is not worth it. If you feel like you have to, first look up how to get the two medallion halves to get into the final area. When you get to the last save point, you'll get an item that shows on your map any rooms that still have collectibles. That is the point where you should do the cleanup. Just expect it to be long and tedious.

If you like the run and gun gameplay of Contra, the explosion-heavy pixelated aesthetic of Metal Slug, and the ability-locked backtracking of a Metroidvania, you'll wanna pick up Guns of Fury.

This game features tons of secrets, many of which are very well hidden.

Bosses are full-screen monstrosities with multiple abilities that require strategy and timing to defeat. (If you're struggling against a particular fight, you can chow down on food items when low on health to offset your mistakes.)

One little complaint, it's sometimes difficult to tell, especially in the chaos of screen-shaking flames burning and bullets flying combat, what's solid ground, what's background art, what's destructible, and what will damage you for touching it.