This guide is writter for those, who are actually interested in playing the game, but can't quite grasp the basics. If you don't have any experience playing bullet-hell games, then: I'm sorry. Gun Bullet Children is extremely, brutally difficult game, even for those with a lot of background in this genre, probably the hardest game in the trilogy. And it's the oldest one, from the times, when it was still just an indie game, with no publisher, so it's also the roughest one. But for those, new to the genre I will explain specific terms, if they come up.

This game is old. And is pretty bad in terms of optimisation and such. So there are two majore problems you can encounter.
1. This old, old game runs like crap. FPS is low and the game even plays slow, because of it. This usually happens on newer machines, with modern graphyx card. Thankfully, user サクラタナ was so nice to make a cool indepth guide on how to fix that one. It's on the game's community centre http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=188843066
2. You're interested in the story, but the game is in Japanese. Ta-da: another guide from the community, from user hum79 called: How to play eXeed in english http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=187462763
Tell those guys thanks, while you're at it.

Long ago, a war broke out between God and Angels that had risen in rebellion against Him.

Mankind allied itself with God and fought valiantly, but countless lives were claimed by the deviant hordes led by the Fallen Angels. The war dragged on with the devastation and loss of lives reached even more appalling heights.

Then, at the darkest hour when all seemed lost, a single Angel descended to aid Mankind. Her name was Anhel.

Our Holy Lady Anhel eventually led Mankind to victory, but was gravely injured over the course of many battles. Anhel declared that she would enter a long sleep to heal her wounds, but that she would awaken if the Fallen Angels should arise once more and threaten our world.

To protect our Holy Lady while she slumbered, Mankind created a bastion and entrusted it to a newly-formed order of Knights.

Many years have passed since that time, but now once again Mankind finds itself in need of help from our Holy Lady Anhel.

(Completely stolen from exceedseries.com)

Basically, humaniny of this world, lead by The Holy Church, is at war with the Vampires, who come from Fallen Angels's bloodline and want to do many evil things, including taking controll over mentioned Anhel. Vampires all have white hair and red pupils and come packed with magical powers themselves and use so called "Killing Dolls" - magical familiars, like magic version of combat drones. To fight them off, The Holy Church has "Gun Bullet Children" - supersoldiers, created by magical experiments, able to fights huge battles by themselves, but repay for that power with 20-years long lifespan (hense the name Children). The game starts when three Gun Bullet Chindren are sent to battle a force of Vampires and Killing Dolls, that suddenly appeared and launched a raid. You will controll one of those Children.

While in the menu, you use the arrow keys to move around, Z to choose, X to cansel or go back. There is no mouse support in the game at all, neither (at least to my knowledge) does it support controllers. You can probably use something like Joy to Key to bind your keyboard buttons to the controller. Personaly, I like using keyboard in Bullet-hell games, but I'm weird like that.
There are two important and almost dangerous buttons, that you should remember. If you hit Escape ant any point, game will instantly shut down. And if you hit Ctrl while in gameplay, the game will reset to the main menu. Those two buttons you can't rebind, so beware.
The option's menu in the game is quite limited. You can't change resolution at all in this one. Key config changes controlls, but all of them one after another, and you can only use sertain buttons on the keyboard. I recommend to just use default keys, at least for now.
Game's options should be set to the most begginer friendly options this game has from the start, but you might wanna check that again. These options are Difficulty, Auto Bomb and Hit Poit.
Leave the difficulty on easy. It's usually a good idea in bullet-hell games to play it on the easy difficulty first, so you can get used to the controlls and gameplay. But in this case easy is already pretty brutal.
Hit Point should be actually called Hitbox, as that's what it is. In bullet-hell games you die in one hit, but your character model is not your actuall hitbox. Usually it's the center of your model or sprite. With this option on, your hitbox will be displayed to you as a shining spark on your character which is really helpfull.
Now about Auto Bomb. In bullet-hell games bomb are consumable items (or sometimes powers) that can help you get out of a sticky situation. They either do massive damage to enemies, or clear the screen of bullets, or both. What bomb actually does depends not only on the game, but also on the character you're playing. But almost always - you're invulnerable, while using a bomb. As said before, you die in one hit. But in some games (including this one), when you get hit you have a brief time window, just a couple of frames, between getting hit and duying, when you can use a bomd and save your live. If you have an Auto Bomb option on, the game will do it for you automaticly. So basically each bomb turns into a life. You can still use them on your own, but it gives you more room for error. Whether to leave Auto Bomb on or not is completely your desicion (as is everything really) but for the first time players, I would recommend leaving it on, so you don't get so brually murdered.
Back in main meny, if you want to read more on the weird story of the game, hit Prologue.
Practice is for (suprise) practising a level. You can choose any level you have already beaten and replay it, to get better at it.
To start the game you hit Mission. Then choose your character (about their differences later) and choose Story or Arcade (if you installed english patch you can choose English or Japanese text in the story). Arcade is the same as story, but without all the dialogue (characters will still say something during battles in background).

Fly around and shoot stuff. Now a bit more detailed.

1. This is your character. Notice the shining dot in the middle of the sprite - that your hitbox. It's that small. And you need to be hit in the dead center of it, for it to cound.
Controlls: You move with the arrow keys, Z is to shoot, X is focus - while you hold it down, your character moves slower, allowing for more persice maneuvering. Also your fire rate goes up a bit. C is to use your bomb. V is to bring up menu. And again, Esc and Ctrl will ruin your game, so don't press them. There's really no reason to move your hand much, you chance of suddenly pressing them is pretty low.

2. This shows hom many lifes and bombs you have in stock.

3. This is your attack power, here called Skill Level. When you kill enemies they will drop two kinds of gems. Blue one increase your score, while purple ones - your attack power. Collect a shown number of purple gems and your power will get to the next level giving somekind of upgrate, depending on your character.

4. Your score. The number in the bottom is your total score, while the number on the top shows how many points you need to get, in order to get a new life.

5. The Charge bar. Another mechanic in this game is the Charge attack. When the bar is full, you can use a special attack, by releasing (if you hold it down as you should) and pressing again the Fire button (Z by default). Type of Charge attack depends on the character you play. The charge bar is filled up by grazing. What is Grazing? It's another mechanic in bullet-hell games, when enemie's bullets move very close to your character without actually hitting your hitbox (they just graze you). Bonuses that grazing gives depends on the game, just points mostly. It's a reward for a risk of being close to the bullets. Laser and ray-like attacks are best one for grazing. One of those can charge your bar completely, so feel free to use it.

6. Enemy bullets. In this game, regardless of their shape, all enemy bullets are bright red and not hard to see.

Levels in the game are pretty difficult, but they are just the prelude to the real deal: the boss fights.

Bosses are hard. They will appear and after a short conversation attack you. Bosses have a lot of health and number of different phases. During one phase the boss uses one or two types of shots. Boss's healthbar (7) is shown on both top and bottom of the screen. Boss phases change, when his health drops to a certain level, and it's accompanied by boss'es portrait flashing on the screen and him saying something. There's a lot of chatting during boss battles.


Now to the most inevitable thing in the game - death. Even if you have Auto Bomb on you will run out of them and die. You can either get hit by a bullet, or by the ememy himself - you still die. As you die, you loose one life, but your bombs get reset. You also get a brief invulnerability time, which is shown by the timer (8). Use that to get back to your sences and go in again.

There are 3 playable Gun Bullet Childer that you can play as. They all have different shots, charge attacks and bombs. Story dialogue also changes depending on which character you play.
1. Chinatsu Kagaya.
The angry one of the party. She has an appearance of a vampire (white hair and red pupils), and probably has a complex about that. So she works out her angry and violent nature in combat. She wan't to kill every vampire and their allies.
Shots: Widespread attack. Chinatsu's attack covers a large portion of the screen, and amount of shots increase with new skill levels.
Charge attack: instatnly damages all enemies on the screen.
Bomb - Ingzeksu Gravehunt. For a short time constantly deals damage to all enemies on the screen.
Her attacks have wide range, so aiming isn't really a problem, but she has pretty low DPS.


2. Sowel Devosiana. The leader of the party. One person to actually volunteere for the Gun Bullet Children program to avenge her parents, who were killed by vampires. Has calm and rational attitude even during battles, so she was made a leader of the Gun Bullet Children. Tries to balance out the group.
Shots: Sovel shoot directly in front of her and has a Killing Doll companion. Killing Doll is invulnerable, has same attack as Sovel, but auto aims at enemies. New skill levels increase attack speed of Sovel and her Killing Doll.
Charge attack: Killing Doll sweeps the screen with 8 strains of bullets.
Bomb: Byte Kingdom - Saintly Spectre Silvestre: after a short delay, Killing Doll increases in side and charges throught the screen dealing massive damage to all enemies.
Due to her auto-aiming shots it probably the best one for starters.

3. Miyabi Housen. The Mikelangelo of the party. Has a childish and easy-going behavior (at least on the surface). She was raised by the Church as an oprhan, before being inducted into Gun Bullet Children program. Nothing else is known about her story. Has fire based powers.
Shots: A straight line of shots, like a ray. Has huge attack speed, but very narrow fireline.
Charge attack: Two orbs, that constantly fly around Miyabi fly further from her in a spiral manner, damaging everything they touch. Has big damage but short range.
Bomb: Oxide Baiser Melt Embrace - after charging for a moment, Miyabi shoots a giant wave of fire in front of her.
Her attack and bomb are really damaging, but her small range of attack makes it hard to hit enemies (especially bosses) while dodging huge walleys of bullets.

1. Look at yourself, not the enemy. Dodging enemy's fire is more important that kiliing him, and you don't need to constantly look at the enemy. Pay most of your attention to your hitbox and just check every now and then, are you doing damage to them. This is most true about the bosses.

2. Stay focuses. Devote all of your attention to the game. You get distracted - you probably die. This is true for most bullet-hell games. This is not the kind of games to casually play while talking to somebody. Try to clear your head and don't think about much else, that the enemy and his bullets.

3. Pixels. Thought they are one-hit kills, you don't need to run as far away as possible. If a valley of shots is aimed straight at you, you onlye need to move slightly to the side and they all miss. And you get charged from grazing.

4. Look for an opening. As impossible as it might seem, there's always a way to dodge enemy's attack.

5. Remember your first death. As you use bombs, extra lives and even continues, you can force your way further and further into the game, and some of the stuff later in might seem absolutely overwhelming and impossible for you to do. But usually, if you think about it, your first death on the game session (or your first auto-bomb) could be awoided. When you learn, how to deal with that attack, next part won't seem that impossible to you anymore.

6. Try again. These games are actually pretty short, it's all in the difficutly and learning curve. And learning takes time and tries. You can use Practice mode to get better at level you managed to beat, so you can in the future get throught it without much of a problem.

7. Take a break. If you do something over and over and over constantly, your skill will actually drop, because you'll get tired and frustrated. If you're devoted to beat something, just take a 15 minute break, drink some tea, walk around a bit. Take your mind off the game (also works good for Dark Souls)

8. Try something else. Seriously, this is pretty old and a very hard bullet-hell game. If it's your first one, you'll probably not have such a good time, and might not like the genre at all. If you bought the pack, play third one, it's more polished (with Capcom as publisher) and easier. On Steam there are also Jamestown and Gundermonioum Recollection games, Astebreed, Sine Mora and other bullet-hells. Hell, maybe you can get your hand on some of the Touhou games. They are all quite different, but if you get general feel for bullet-hell games, you'll look at this game with different eyes.

This is my first attampt at writting a manual to a game. I just want to help people get a good understanting of this game and how to play it. I play bullet-hell games for several years, and thought I'm not that good skill wise, I'm way beyond anything I thought I could achieve few years back. These games are all about suprassing yourself, and going something, you thought was impossible - and that's an amazing feeling. I thought to write this thing, when I wasn't able to find a lot of information on how to play this game anywhere I looked - something always was left outside. Probably I missed somethin too :-).
I hope this guide/manual can help someone, and get someone interested in a wonderfull world of Bullet-Hell games.
I'm not a native english speaker, so if you see some bad language feel free to point it out.