After the end of the great war in the first episode, humans began to live side by side with vampires. Meanwhile, a xenophobic faction opposed to the peaceful coexistence promoted by the Church seized power and ordered the Gun Bullet Children to initiate a worldwide extermination of vampires and their hybrid deviants.
The game tells Ria File, a half-vampire, half-human fighting on the side of the vampires as she helps to lay a siege on the Holy Land and struggle to survive the genocide.
eXceed 2nd - VAMPIRE is the 2nd game in the series and the direct sequel to eXceed – Gun Bullet Children. It was released at Comiket 70, on August 16, 2006 and later was remade by Tennen Sozai as eXceed 2nd - VAMPIRE REX in 2007. While both game are the same, the REX version offers re-arranged and additional soundtracks by Saitama Saisyu Heiki (also known as S.S.H.) whose works include in several popular franchise such Castlevania and Super Mario Bros. The music in REX version has fast paced and leans heavily on very excited synths and electronical rythms.
All character artworks also been improved with larger sprites. Some of the backgrounds in the game are ones from the previous game and some newer ones are present. In November 2011 the eXceed trilogy was localized by Nyu Media in a single bundle (or individually) which making improvements and expanding the lengths of the original games.
Similar to Gun Bullet Children, the game is divided into stages that have preliminary enemies until player meet the boss at the end of each stages. The dialogue throughout the game shows each character’s personality and the voice acting is one of the best among doujin games. All protagonists from the previous game are also returned as the boss in each stages.
eXceed 2nd - VAMPIRE featuring a polarity system in which allows player to absorb enemy bullets and inflict double damage on enemies hit by different polarity than the one they have. A revolutionary system in a shooting game that was adapted from Treasure’s Ikaruga. This gameplay mechanic requires quick reflexes to not get shot by any wrong bullets. The biggest challenge lies in trying to get chain bonuses for hitting enemies of reverse polarity gives incentive to start dodging instead of continually switching polarities to absorb bullets.
There are two polarities: vampire (purple) and human (white), where player can freely switch between the two to suit their needs. Each absorbed bullets will charges the bomb gauge which when full can be detonated to unleash a blast for massive destruction. This special attack also cancel all bullets of the opposite polarity and destroy enemies on screen.