Bullet Heaven 2/Synopsis
The synopsis of Bullet Heaven 2 (it's only a "story" in the loosest sense as possible).
World 1 (A Trek into the Forest)
The game begins in Greenwood Forest, sometime after the events of Epic Battle Fantasy 4; Anna decides to work on her garden, which only fueled Matt's apathy. Suddenly, the garden was trampled on by Cats and Slimes, prompting Anna and her friends to chase them (to Natalie's displeasure). They eventually decimate the cats and slimes, much to Natalie's distress; Matt claims it as self-defense, as the cats and slimes were shooting at them. Lance points out that the survivors are fleeing and suggests pursuing them.
As the party travels deeper into the forest, the light fades and the trees themselves begin attacking, forcing them to defend themselves once again (and prompting Lance to mentally note to napalm those trees once they return). After the battle, the cats' trail has gone cold; with even her tracking skills confounded, Anna declares them mutants, NoLegs's company excluded (Natalie calls her out on this rather ablest statement). Regardless, the party continues onward, clearing out a patch of bushes (who also shot at them), and avoiding swarms of Giant Insects at a blooming flower field before spotting a huge bush that they suspect to be the Kitten Kingdom's mobile HQ. To avenge Anna's garden, they engage it in battle; despite outputting a surprising amount of projectiles, it soon falls in defeat.
World 2 (Bash at the Beach)
Having earned a well-deserved break, the party decides to spend a day at Bubbleblue Beach; Natalie is painfully reminded that the last time she was at a beach (in Epic Battle Fantasy 3), a Giant Squid tried to rip off her swimsuit. Unfortunately, some Crabs and Turtles chose that moment to aggravate Natalie's entomophobia, driving her to lead the others in killing them; Lance irritably calls her out on her hypocrisy, forcing Natalie to apologize. The chaos attracts a flock of seagulls to be destroyed in turn; Matt expresses his hatred for the birds, explaining that one ate his cookie and pooped on him. Natalie recalls witnessing this and found it quite funny.
The party continues their journey by going underwater; Natalie points out the implausibility of this, but Matt points out that The Developer has apparently given them the ability to breathe underwater. When they emerge from the ocean, they find themselves at the edge of a frozen tundra (akin to the later area of Whitefall Glacier); deciding that they've gone a bit too far afield, they returned to the beach in search of the local boss: the Titanic Turtle, which just so happened to have stranded itself by accident. Fearing the dangers of a decomposing carcass of that magnitude, the party decides to put it out of its misery and dispose of its remains with the uttermost disrespect by using explosives, clearing out the beach by blasting it into a million pieces - Matt's only regret is that he loses the chance to eat it.
World 3 (Desert Destruction)
Upon arrival at Goldenbrick Resort. Lance and Matt decide to continue their reckless odyssey by using the native cacti as target practice; to their dismay, the cacti quickly start shooting back. Although the boys repelled the skirmish (to the disbelief of NoLegs and the girls), they discovered that the Mad Cactus infestation was only the beginning of a greater conspiracy; the resort is completely abandoned, with friendly NPCs replaced by deadly robotic Slingers.
Looking for answers, the party ventured out into the desert, only for Matt to be distracted by gem-encrusted statues, contemplating sinking to a new kind of low by pilfering their riches. Lance balks at the idea, claiming that they're not barbarians, but ends up retracting his statement when the statues prove to be both cursed and capable of attacking the party with energy bullets. After destroying the statues, Natalie wonders why everything they have encountered so far has been hostile and armed with projectile weapons, pondering on the abnormality.
Traversing the desert brings the party to the Temple of Godcat, where Natalie warns her friends that certain foes can protect their allies by generating shields and making them invulnerable unless the shield generators are destroyed. Conveniently, the party soon comes across such a foe: a Prehistoric Protector of the ancient cat civilization. After triumphing over the ancient war machine, Matt noted that a cactus was in fact controlling it; Lance hypothesizes that they can summon a giant boss by defeating numerous lesser foes. Anna ignores the theorizing in favor of being exhilarated after what just happened.
World 4 (A Cold Day in Hell) & 5 (Bumble in the Jungle)
Tired of the desert heat, the party crosses the ocean and properly enters the arctic environment of Whitefall Glacier. They are quickly ambushed by the vengeful survivors of the Kitten Kingdom and their Slime cohorts, but shot down their formations just as quickly. Even NoLegs was pleased at the outcome, his indifference somewhat disturbing Natalie. Beyond that, the party had to endure a blizzard full of Ice-based enemies; Natalie warned them to look out for dangerous flying Ice Block shards as they shatter. They took shelter in a nearby cavern, only to find it swarming with mystical foes; they managed to find an exit after fending off an Ice Golem and the even bigger Golem Gladiator. During this excursion, Lance reveals that his father died in a mining accident; all that was left of him was a shovel, a few blocks of wood, and a lump of coal...
Natalie's entomophobia and Lance's "allergy" to anything plant-based return in force as the party arrives in Jaderoot Jungle; despite this, Natalie is more than happy to soldier on as the party continues to investigate the sudden hostility of wildlife. She theorizes that there may be a disturbance between the balance of light and dark, although Lance is skeptical. After fighting through hordes of Slimes, butterflies, and bees, our heroes reach the heart of the jungle and inadvertently awaken a very large and angry wasp - Natalie wants to go home, but admits that they need to defeat it to progress; Matt assures her that he will protect her. After slaying the Whopping Wasp, Lance comments that she was no Hibachi (referencing a recurring boss from the DoDonPachi games); Matt laments that he wasn't even skilled enough to get near it.
Worlds 6 (Rings of Fire), 7 (Iron Fortress V1), & 8 (Call of the Haunted)
The jungle begins to burn as the party nears the scorching Redroast Volcano, but they're more concerned with the presence of Dry NoLegs. Fortunately, the boney feline is willing to work with them as they fight through the barren plains, full of Birds, Wraiths, Cosmic Monoliths, and other fiendish magma monsters. Eventually, they found and defeated the eldritch horror within the volcano, Ballos an Enormous Eyeball.
Our heroes' next destination is Irongray Armory; Lance feels at home in the nuclear-powered factory, but Anna objects to the toxic fumes and chemical waste. Unfortunately, the armory is full of killer robots and malfunctioning drones, forcing the party to perform some forced shut-downs (read: blowing them up). Despite the risk of radiation poisoning, Lance drags the party to the armory's Ultimate Central Energy Core, its excess electricity generating hordes of Thunder-based Slime Mice. Alerted by the presence of a Bombarding Behemoth, Anna vouches to destroy it for the sake of humanity - Lance is only interested in obtaining it, despite the overprice. After the tank's destruction, Lance laments on his failed expectations, claiming that he can build better tanks himself.
On the other side of the armory, the party emerges into a haunted forest, deciding to explore the nearby Browngrave Necropolis. Dry NoLegs blindly charges through the hordes of dark foes and possessed trees: the others follow suit, clearing the undead with extreme prejudice. The necropolis itself is crawling with spiders that seem to be emerging from a demonic portal; when the heroes investigate, they find a Wicked Weaver located deep in the underworld. They destroy the bone spider to stop the flow of monsters; unfortunately, they also have to defeat Dry NoLegs, who sided with the Wicked Weaver out of spite.
World 9 (Clearing the Sky) & 10 (The Final Frontier)
The protagonists defy all laws of gravity as they take their adventure to Silvermist Sky. Thanks to the information Lance found on his Banana xPhone, they weathered (pun intended) a heavy storm by dodging the raindrops (and also predicting the new Weather mechanic in Epic Battle Fantasy 5). The next obstacle was a fierce snowstorm that made Whitefall Glacier look tame; however, they gained a new ally in the form of a Slime Bunny that had been following them ever since Greenwood Forest. NoLegs was clearly displeased by the new adorable ally, but Anna considered Slime Bunny's presence to be a sign of good fortune. Beyond the storm lay another of Godcat's former temples, occupied with more shield-foes; during the battle, Matt asked NoLegs about Godcat's fate, and the latter revealed that she was maintaining contact with him, much to Matt's skeptical astonishment. At the end of a great rainbow, the party is confronted by the Divine Destroyer; they believe it to be the final boss, but there is one more frontier ahead.
Through Roszak's blessing of breathing anywhere, the heroes ascend beyond the reach of the Earth on their way to Darkvoid Galaxy, a world filled with stars, shooting stars, and "shooting stars shooting shooting stars made of smaller stars" (according to a star-struck Natalie). Running into an asteroid field, they alter their course (aided by Lance's 9001+ hours of MS Flight Simulator pilot training) and arrive at an alien moon. Blasting towards the center and avoiding spaghettification, they push past micro-black holes and enemy spaceships to find the source of all their troubles: their old foe, Akron! The fiendish demon had survived his defeat at the end of EBF3, regenerating his now grotesque body at the center of Darkvoid Galaxy; however, the heroes were more than happy to kill him properly this time.
With Akron destroyed and peace restored, the heroes congratulate themselves (and the player) for saving the world. However, there are some new bosses that have yet to come...
- Another golem (Matt and Anna discusses the ethicality of killing sentient rocks)
- A hovercraft (Lance wants another vehicle in his arsenals, with a conclusion foregone)
- Another tank (Natalie calls out Anna of an ablest statement again, accusing Anna of racism after she referred to a Flame Wraith as "Sand People")
- Another War Machine (it dropped a lot of diamonds, but Natalie tells Matt that due to an influx of mining, their value is bust)
- A winged spider (Natalie's worst nightmare plus the Jaderoot Jungle's greater power, the Whopping Wasp being just a patsy)
- A lava turtle (Lance references Cosmic Turtles after defeating it, having spawned from the ground)
- A literal drone (Lance wants to give consumer advice on the drone, but the party unsurprisingly destroys it)
- A "Treehouse of Horrors" (All the cats that got pwned in World 1 are now seeking vengeance, with predictable results)
- And another eye (the party can't stop making Eye jokes)