YMMV / Enter the Gungeon

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Do rocket-powered bullets sound like another ridiculous Gungeonism? For a brief moment in the '60s, they were real.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Every single Past boss (with the arguable exception of the HS Absolution and the Sequential Boss gauntlet of Agunim and Cannon) is much easier than the High Dragun fought before it. All of them give you a lot more room to dodge than the Dragun does, and even then they have simplistic attack patterns which shouldn't be too difficult to dodge. Granted, you are stripped of every item/weapon you've collected throughout the game, but even then you'll still have enough hearts and blanks to have a good chance of surviving the fight. The fact that there's an achievement for dying to these bosses should give you an overall idea of how easy they are.
• Awesome Music:
  • The theme song, fittingly titled "ENTER THE GUNGEON". It's a Theme Tune Rap, and it's wonderful.
  • The Face Melter guitar solo is, in a word, epic. Many a players have wasted entire clips just to listen to it.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The R&G Depot. Enemies who are goofy redesigned versions of other enemies? Check. Agunim reappearing in a bomber plane and having voice acting? Check. No one mentioning how bizarre the whole thing is? BIG CHECK!
• Breather Boss:
  • Blobulord is an Optional Boss coming after a difficult extra floor, but he's easier than any of the bosses in the first chamber under most circumstances. He's a massive target in an expansive room, so it's easy to keep your distance, he's not good at cornering you, and his bullet patterns are more varied but less focused and dense. Any long-range weapon will take care of him without much trouble, though he won't drop a Master Round since he's on an extra floor.
  • The Kill Pillars and the Wallmonger, two of the possible bosses on chamber four, are remarkably simple compared to some previous bosses and upcoming ones, or even the third possible boss of chamber four. They telegraph their attacks, and they are usually easily sidestepped, and those that can't be can be rolled through or erased with a well-placed blank. They're not ridiculously easy by any means, but they're welcome fights and it's not super-hard to beat them without getting hit and get their mastery round.
  • The Gorgun in the second chamber, whose attacks are highly telegraphed, straightforward, and easily avoidable. The only noteworthy hindrance during the fight is the inability to use thrown items — which sink into the wet floor — but since the Gorgun has a pittance of health compared to almost every other boss and no methods of recovery, it's a moot point. Get her attack patterns down and you'll find that she's even easier than all the first chamber bosses, who at least make somewhat of an effort to lead their shots.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Lead Maidens are much more difficult to deal with the average enemy (especially those in the Gungeon Proper), due to their periodic invincibility, relatively large health pool, and the large number of projectiles they fire that stick into terrain before redirecting themselves at players, often allowing them to bypass cover and leave very little room to safely dodge roll through.
  • Chancebulons have a lot of health (almost as much as the aforementioned Lead Maiden) and can use the attacks of any of the Blobulon variants (including the boss variant) at complete random, making them highly unpredictable since most of their attacks use the same telegraph. Furthermore, most of these attacks have a tendency to fill a good chunk of the room, making them decently hard to avoid.
  • Veteran Shotgun Kin, whom both fire a spread of five bullets in an arc and, like other enemy types with the 'Veteran' moniker, lead their shots. Just those two attributes together leaves you with an enemy that, while merely troublesome on its own, can quickly turn into a nightmare with even a small amount of backup, especially when you're forced to dodge-roll, as the Veteran Shotgun Kin has a nasty tendency to fire where you'll land before the rolling animation is complete. It also detonates into a pseudo-random spray of bullets when killed, and you can potentially encounter four or more of the damn things in one room.
  • King Bullats are resilient Asteroids Monsters that shoot ricocheting projectiles in a circular arc, almost guaranteed to nail you in the back when you think you've dodged it, and when killed, it spawns multiple Bullats of all types, from explosive ones to spiritual ones that shoot multiple ghostly bullets after death.
  • Lore Gunjurers are different from their Squishy Wizard counterparts in that they can take an unreasonable amount of punishment and summon three different types of quick, unpredictable projectiles, all of which home in on you and take the form of one of the Fighter, Mage, Thief class types. The Fighter bullet mercilessly zooms towards the player at high speeds, the Mage bullet fires bullets of its own while slowly advancing towards the player (and charging at it once it runs out of shots), and the Thief bullet teleports behind you, causing you to roll opposite the direction you are anticipating. It doesn't help that Lore Gunjurers are often situated with their brethren, allowing them to pop off multiples of these attacks at once while you're distracted by all the other hazards.
  • Lead Cubes in the Forge and their fleshy counterparts in Bullet Hell, at least if you're not playing as The Bullet. They are Invincible Minor Minions that cannot be damaged until the room is cleared (upon where it becomes meaningless to attack them, as they make no effort to fight back and the room is essentially conquered at this point, unless you're that desperate for money), and they zip towards the player at high speed, causing Collision Damage. It wouldn't be so bad, except the rooms can be quite spacey, especially in the Forge and Bullet Hell, so you often won't see these things coming until they're suddenly charging after you, requiring split-second reflexes or just plain dumb luck to not get hit by one, especially with other distractions to worry about. The Flesh Cubes are even more insane in this regard — they leave behind a blazing fire trail when darting about the room, and release bullets when they collide with an obstacle or wall.
  • Shelletons, when spawned naturally and not through an Ammomancer. They soak up tons of damage, fire off the most confusing spread pattern of nearly all the enemies in the game, and have an irritating Eye Beam attack that tracks your movement. And you have to destroy the head once you blast away its body, otherwise it reassembles itself and regains all of its hit points.
  • Revolvenants, who appear in the Forge and Bullet Hell. They have two attacks: The first and more common one is to launch a string of bullets at you. Following that, each bullet shoots more bullets out to the side perpendicular to the main string for a few seconds. The second attack is to surround you in a circle of bullets that follows you. Two large bullets then move through the center, so you have to dodge roll over them. Finally, the remaining bullets all move through the center together.
  • In general, Bullet Hell is chock-full of these, but even among the others, the Shotgrub stands out in particular. It shoots several rounds of cluster bullets in a shotgun pattern, which split upon striking a wall and disperse in waving, erratic patterns. The combination of ricochets coming from multiple directions (often from offscreen), unpredictable bullet movement, and unlimited range make these particularly deadly in a chamber where you are already being swarmed by incoming bullets.
  • Spogres´ spore attack is bad enough on the surface, shooting a lingering bullet cloud that can easily corner you. However, a few bullets will be flinged at the start of the attack, traveling just a tad bit slower than a Sniper Shell shot. And these bullets are completely randomized. The Fungun shares these problems, but Spogres shoot on last cloud of bullets on death, including the speedy ones. And they are Tanky.
  • Wall Mimics. They're practically undetectable until they show themselves, and when they do show themselves, half of the bullets from their opening attack are Jammed shots. They frequently use their room-filling bulletstorm (mercifully sans Jammed Bullets), are quite bulletspongy, and always drop nothing on death.
  • Tarnishers. They're Like-Likes. Only they steal ammo, not armor, even from inactive guns. Nothing more needs to be said.
• Designated Monkey: The Cultist. Almost every NPC in the game berates and insults them simply on the grounds that they "aren't the protagonist." Co-op teams of genuine friends tend to find this un-amusing at best and insulting at worst.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The objective of the game is to obtain a gun that can "kill the past". That last part might remind someone of a certain Thematic Series from Goichi Suda, so it's oddly appropriate once the game got referenced via a collectible t-shirt in Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.
  • In the same update that changed the Ruby Bracelet, the Slinger was added, a gun whose main mechanic is being tossed whenever it has to reload. The Ruby Bracelet advertised throwing your gun, before it's revamped version bashed on the concept of throwing a gun. Made even better when you consider the Fridge Brilliance in it's description; upon being reforged by the Blacksmith, the Ruby Bracelet's Ammonomicon entry states that, while misguided scarcity made throwing a gun seem a viable strategy in older times, in modern times people have come to realize that throwing guns is awkward and pointless. Now, who starts with the Slinger?
• Magnificent Bastard: Though at first glance a raging brute, The Convict is much smarter than she lets on. In truth the cunning mob boss Laser Lily, she was arrested when her partner, the corrupt politician Blackstache, framed and arrested her. Convincing the Hegemony of man to let her brave the Gungeon instead of facing life in prison, she feigns the desire to erase her crimes from time. Fighting through the gungeon and besting the massive High Dragun, she obtains both the Bullet and Gun that can kill the past, being one of the first to survive facing the entire labyrinth of bullets. Going back in time, she acts on her true intention to erase her being arrested. Using her second chance to gun down Blachstache and his police army, she ends the game a free woman relaxing on the beach.
• Memetic Mutation: Whenever Wallmonger is mentioned, some people say "THE WALL, THE WALL", a Shout-Out to an infamous meme from Dark Souls.
• Shocking Moments: Usually when someone first gets to the High Dragun, considering how massive it is compared to every other boss in the game.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Leaving your items behind (excluding keys and hearts) will always result in the Resourceful Rat attempting to steal them, and if he succeeds, he leaves behind a mocking note as salt to the wound. This effectively brings resource management to a complete halt, as you're forced to either take the item where it stands or leave it to the Resourceful Rat's mercy. As a result, many players have a burning desire to somehow remove him from the game, if only temporarily.^note Originally there was a way to stop him, as he had a Dummied Out boss fight. As of Gungeons & Draguns, you can fight him, though he is a fairly brutal boss, and defeating him doesn't prevent him from stealing items on future runs.
  • The steps to begin co-op mode are not apparent — instead of pressing start on another input device or going to a menu to turn it on, you have to speak to a specific NPC to enable it. Even then, the second player can only play as the Cultist, which is limiting. Additionally, while it doesn't affect gameplay, you'd be hard pressed to find players who are amused by the game treating their friend like trash simply because they're a co-op partner.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Super Hot Watch, an S-tier item that slows down time to an almost complete standstill while you're not moving. While universally considered one of, if not the best item in the game, almost nobody picks it up after their first time. Sure, you could take all the time you never to complete every room without getting hit once, but that's just very boring, and completely ruins the frenetic pace of the game. And while it's beneficial 99% of the time, the need to constantly move for anything to happen can lead to situations where you take damage you wouldn't have otherwise.
  • The Ruby Bracelet was considered atrocious, even for a D-tier item. Its effect boosted the power of thrown guns by making them explode. Not only is throwing guns an inexact science (you can only do it once you empty the whole ammo reserve, and it's clunky at best), a meager 30 damage boost just wasn't worth it. A Farewell to Arms update since then reworked it into a whole new item that's much more usable on the whole.
• Spiritual Adaptation: It's basically Smash TV AS A ROGUELIKE!
• That One Boss:
  • All three possible bosses of the Keep of the Lead Lord manage to be tricky in different ways, largely because it's the first floor and you may not have any good items when you face them. It's telling that the boss of the first Bonus Dungeon floor is considerably easier than any of the Keep bosses.
    • Gatling Gull has his unpredictable bullets and missiles, continually moves forward to corner the player, and is fairly tanky. He's one of the few bosses with a random arena; he's easy to kill damageless if his room has plenty of solid barricades, but any layout with mostly open space makes him a nightmare.
    • Bullet King’s bullet patterns are a little more predictable, but many of them force the player to stay away from him. Unless the player managed to pick up a decent weapon, it will be very annoying trying to hit him accurately. He's also immune to goop effects, making him much more annoying if your only other weapon is something like the Shotgrub that relies on goop.
    • Trigger Twins may have less Bullet Hell patterns than the other Keep bosses, but as the name implies, you'll fight both of them at once. Both have different pattern alongside a charge attack and can spawn enemies. Killing one enrages the other and makes them attack faster, as well as upgrading their patterns. And if you think you can just weaken one and kill him once the other’s dead, he’ll heal up to half health once he gets enraged. However, it is entirely possible to avoid the remaining twin becoming enraged if you whittle them both down to a single hit left and kill them in quick succession. But this is a challenge all on its own as you're still fighting two bosses at once the whole time.
  • While just a miniboss, fighting Fuselier without any form of flight is an exercise in frustration. The arena resticts you to a narrow strip of floor to dodge his attacks atop of, and he has fairly oppressive patterns designed to further limit the precious amount of space you have, particularly the lines of fire and wind-up minions he unleashes, both of which can be spawned directly on top of you if you're unlucky. Combined with a surprising amount of health for a miniboss, the fact that miniboss loot will usually not make up for the effort and resource loss from fighting him, and his tendency to block off the path to the boss with his own boss room, Fuselier is an unwelcome surprise in any run.
  • Ammoconda. While the other Gungeon Proper bosses have fairly telegraphed attacks, the Ammoconda fires randomly in varying wide-area patterns (many of which involve bullets that curve or make sharp turns) and can heal by eating the turret enemies it spawns. Said healing also increases its speed and makes it longer, giving it more segments to rain hell on you with while making it easier for it to corner you. It's so hated that, like The Bloat from The Binding of Isaac, who's also hated for being That One Boss, it has its own subreddit.
  • Treadnaught is quickly growing to be the most hated boss in the game, even more so than the endgame bosses. Much like the Ammoconda, it has four turrets that fire in random patterns and a main cannon that fires either explosive shots or projectiles that split into more shots, letting it quickly fill the screen with bullets that make dodging a nightmare. Not only that, but it can even spawn enemies with rapid-firing guns that can quickly overwhelm you if left unchecked, and it will actively try to destroy your cover in the pillars around the room if you use it too much. Needless to say, it's the cause of many early deaths, and even if it doesn't kill you, you can probably say goodbye to that flawless health upgrade unless you have a stockpile of blanks and amazing dodging skills. Thankfully, a patch on April 11th nerfed him by making his bullets have less range, lowering the homing, and removing the ability of his adds to lead their shots.
  • The High Priest. While the other two bosses of the Hollow are large and straightforward targets, the High Priest, despite also rocking a stupidly-high health pool, is one of the slimmest bosses in the game. Furthermore, he uses Teleport Spam to constantly render himself invulnerable, blasts several complex volleys of projectiles at you with hardly any breaks in between, possesses two homing attacks (one of which he uses on top of another attack), and has one attack in particular where he disappears from the room, becoming invulnerable, and fires loads of bullet spreads from each corner of the room, all aimed at you, per second. The best way to avoid his attacks is to hug the walls... but you can't even do that without being very careful, as bullets are also shooting out of them at complete random. Bar Treadnaught, he's the most deadly boss in the entire game and can make mincemeat of even the most seasoned and decked-out Gungeoneers.
  • High Dragun. The Disk-One Final Boss of the game and the last obstacle before The Past Bosses or Bullet Hell certainly stands out as That One Boss. Its attacks are all kinds of Bullet Hell; not only that, but it can use several of these attacks in rapid succession. Oh, and let's not get into its absurdly high healthbar, or the second phase which has That One Attack in addition to a limited amount of time to shoot the weak spot before it closes. Bring your "A" game, since you'll need it.
    • Oh, and as of the Advanced Gungeons & Draguns update? Completing certain requirements leads to the Dragun faking you out and gaining a third phase, as well as refilling its health bar, turning gold, and using some brand new and extremely difficult attacks, all whilst you're still tired out from the first phase. Even before the new phase, you'll have to contend with the regular Dragun assisted by the serpent you brought to the fight, who will fire small spreads of bullets that have an annoying tendency to overlap with the Dragun's attacks for cheap damage.
  • The Resourceful Rat is possibly the hardest opponent of the game, close to The Lich. Phase 1 involves very, very fast knife projectiles that outspeed every other boss attack in the game, and are fired in extremely wide spreads. The rat also tends to throw the knives after his bigger, flashier attacks, catching players off guard. Phase 2 involves a giant mech suit that seems to fire storms of bullets in no real pattern, and summons massive swarms of Spent. Phase 3 completely flips the gameplay, becoming a glorified game of Punch-Out. Thankfully, he isn't very picky about how you can avoid his attacks, but his tailspin will wipe you out if you don't block it. Also, if you're playing multiplayer and think you have an extra person to fall back on if you're defeated during Phase 3, nope! The Rat captures the Cultist offscreen. And finally, the Resourceful Rat won't drop anything of real value if you don't use certain attacks at certain times during the Punch-Out phase. It makes for an aggravating boss, but oh so cathartic to finally defeat.
  • Many of the bosses from the characters' pasts are generally pushovers to compensate for the fact that you are likely worn out from adventuring all the way through the Gungeon and you cannot retry if you lose to them. The Pilot's past boss fight, the HMS Absolution, is pretty tough, but it's nothing in comparison to the Bullet's past bosses. Yep, there are two of them, and you have to fight through both using only a downgraded version of your starting sword that cannot shoot sword beams nor destroy bullets. You heard that right — these bosses are melee only in the style of A Link to the Past, in a game where literally no other bosses stick you with this rule.
    • To elaborate on the bosses themselves, Agunim and Cannon are fought in a very similar fashion to their non-Expy counterparts. The former is a copy of another boss, the Shadow Magician, that can be encountered in the actual Gungeon, with the main difference being he is a Tennis Boss who is otherwise invulnerable to all attacks except the one you reflect back at him. Fortunately, the Rule of Three is very much in effect with Agunim, so the fight doesn't last as long. Cannon, however, is a different story — he teleports around the room, encircles himself with bullets constantly which makes going in for melee attacks extremely unsafe and difficult, and parts of the floor begin to open up as the fight goes on, which you can fall into and be damaged by, but of course, he cannot. And no, you don't get a chance to heal up between fights — you have to do both in one go, and can only take up to a maximum of six hits before dying. Shout-outs can be cool and all, but this is just a tad much.
  • The Gunslinger's Past is nearly as tough as the Bullet's. You have to fight two Liches at the same time, one of which will have slightly more health and always fire Jammed bullets. Thankfully, they stay in phase 1 only, but the amount of bullets on-screen at any given time during the fight is ridiculous, especially if both decide to spawn their Tombstoners or use patterns that overlap in dangerous ways. Also, unlike all the other Pasts, the Gunslinger has to play through Bullet Hell before the battle, which will surely wear you out.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Unlocking the shortcut to each chamber. To elaborate, first you'll need to get a certain amount of a certain item (3 blanks, 3 armor, 4 junk, and 6 full heart containers for the second, third, fourth, and fifth chambers, respectively), a whole lot of coins and keys (3 keys and 120 coins, 4 keys and 180 coins, 5 keys and 240 coins, and 6 keys and 300 coins for the second, third, fourth, and fifth chambers, respectively), some Hegemony credits (10, 15, 20, and 25 for the second, third, fourth, and fifth chambers, respectively), and last but not least, the master round from the previous chamber. Needless to say, it can take a long time to get them all, especially if the game is stingy with item drops and you're not good at beating the bosses without taking a hit. While each type of items can be given between runs, you must have the required amount of each type on hand (e.g., 6 keys and 300 coins need to be given at once and cannot be stockpiled between runs).
    • Unlocking the elevator to the third chamber takes the cake here. Since armors takes damage before hearts, having 3 on hand encourages searching for them and doing a No-Damage Run. Playing as the Robot, who starts with 6 armor instead of health, does little to circumvent this since the required amount of armor is raised to 6.
  • Accessing Abbey of the True Gun. After finishing Oubliette, you need to carry a special piece of armor, which will always be consumed before the rest of the health bar, all the way to an altar in the next level. This means a No-Damage Run is mandatory.
  • Unlocking the final character, The Gunslinger. You have to complete Bullet Hell as the Paradox, then you're immediately thrown into playing the Gunslinger. From there, you have to reach Bullet Hell and defeat the Lich again, without dying, otherwise you'll have to go through Bullet Hell as the Paradox again. It can take between 30 minutes and an hour to play through the game normally, but doing it again is just extreme. Oh, and once you reach Bullet Hell as the Gunslinger, two Liches are there to greet you (see That One Boss above).
  • Completing all 15 of Frifle and the Grey Mauser's hunting challenges, and getting the achievement for doing so, is a chore to get through. While many of the enemies they task you with killing are pretty common, some are surprisingly rare once you actually try to look for them, especially Mimics and Shambling Rounds. You don't get the Mimic Tooth Necklace^note Which turns every chest in the game into a Mimic. until after the Mimic hunt is complete, while the Shambling Rounds can only appear in the Black Powder Mine and Bullet Hell, making them far rarer than other enemies. At least you only have to kill 3 Mimics, but they demand 20 Shambling Rounds from you.

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