i know my head right now is a boiling pot of imbalanced humors but i just finished act 2 of ultrakill and ngl i felt as manic while fighting Gabriel and right afterwards as did he. the fight itself was not that hard, but it felt very good - i managed to parry way more often than during the first fight, but it happened SO naturally, it really felt like we were dancing. way more than it did during the fights with V2 for example

and despite me having already seen the post-fight cinematic it still hits like a train. i cannot disagree with the theory(?) that the game is actually more about Gabriel than V1, and i for one am glad to dish out as much lead character development as he needs in his direction. V1 themself is such an intriguing character. i haven't read all descriptions carefully so idk if i'm supposed to know this, but what happened to humanity? humanity is dead, hell is full, blood is fuel. as i remember, there was a promise of a war that bore V1 and V2, but then there was peace, and then humanity somehow got eradicated. were it the machines who destroyed humanity? why are they in hell now; are they simply continuing their extermination programming or are they in need of "fresh" sources of fuel? and it's so fascinating that this mindless carnage is what derails Gabriel, makes him realize that he regrets the bloodshed he's been ordered to carry out - and yet his solution is to decapitate heaven and show everyone that a sword is mightier than the word of god? whose sword is it going to be after he sets off to hell? how is he even planning to pay for his mistakes there aside from maybe stopping the tidal wave of the machines from eradicating the rest of the layers? (are we going to fight lucifer in act 3? would be cool)

that being said - act 3 should give us a proper melee weapon