A 2D action game featuring a young man with the power of lightning who stands for freedom against the evil ambitions of a massive organization. When lightning strikes, a new legend is born.
Also in series
Released on
Genres
Reviews View More
This games achieves a level of greatness by capturing the essence and charm that made you fall in love with Mega Man X and slapping its personality, style, and story on top. It radiates good platformer era vibes. It screams good movement and freedom. And for me, the most important thing, the OST is really good.
It does a really nice job differentiating itself enough to not be a copy, while making you feel right at home.
It does a really nice job differentiating itself enough to not be a copy, while making you feel right at home.
It's alright
starting over on the 3DS, and full on enjoying it all over again. Huge Mega Man vibes but the 3D animation is what makes it memorable. I really dig the depth on this so much!
Azure Striker Gunvolt is what I'd like to call "IntiCreates as fuck". Inti are a pretty solid dev team, capable of making pretty great Mega Man titles! The Zero series' worst entry is just okay and it gets better as it goes on, and I stand by Mega Man 9 and 10 being real good! Haven't played the ZX series yet, but I think that, when not being helmed by that Westaboo NFT grifting FUCK Keiji Inafune, IntiCreates can put out some great stuff! Gunvolt was essentially their attempt at spiritually succeeding the Zero series, in a much more successful way than Inafune's less than successful attempt at revitalising the classic series... and it's pretty good!
Okay, to start with the good stuff? Man, Gunvolt's got style. Slick pixel art that feels right at home with their other outings, and the anime aesthetic of the surprisingly wide cast are just the right kind of legally distinct Mega Man rejects that I can seriously dig the hell out of. There were points where I was thinking to myself, "Hey, that reminds me of [insert Mega Man character here!]", and I mean that in an endearing kind of way. PS1 X keyart is my peak aesthetic, and while Gunvolt's own key art doesn't hit quite that level... yeah, it looks pretty good! Sadly can't tell you much on the soundtrack though, nothing really stuck with me.
But in regards to gameplay, Gunvolt plays pretty well! It's standard Mega Man X/Zero fare; you go fast, you shoot dudes, jump up walls, the good shit. What sets Gunvolt apart is the flashfield mechanic, allowing you to create an AOE damage ball around Gunvolt as you see fit. You've also got the game's main gimmick of tagging enemies with shots to allow it homing properties onto anything you've tagged, which is really neat. It even factors it into a lot of the level design, with a stage featuring a blackout that you need to illuminate with Flashfield, and tag switches and then use the flashfield to activate them all at once. It can also tank a few hits for you in exchange for losing some meter, and while you have a cooldown meter to worry about, you can also immediately recharge it by coming to a stop and double-tapping down on the D-pad to mitigate it. It's a way more interesting gimmick than Mighty No 9's whole dashing into enemies mechanic turned out to be. Cool stuff, was kind of surprised it wasn't made more of a major focus in regards to the level design.
In fact, it probably would've helped some of the levels feel better to play. There's just kind of a lot of holding right and shooting here, with a few forced combat rooms complete with enemies that can suddenly spawn in on top of you for good measure. Some levels try and spice things up, like a brief switch puzzle section that even had an antigravity section and the aforementioned tagging switches, but they're pretty few and far between. Not much sets the stages apart in my mind aside from the odd memorable gimmick, but I'm sure many a different person could argue that about many a Mega Man level, so maybe it's just a me problem.
As an aside, I'm also kinda down with the idea of the game's small optional mission system. Before starting a stage, you can set up to 3 missions to tackle on your run, with nothing at all going to risk if you fail, and only rewards coming should you succeed. Most of them amount to "Beat the stage in under X minutes", or doing something related to a stage's unique gimmick, beating it with at least a B rank, stuff like that. It's a really neat way of encouraging players to push themselves, and to aid returning players should they want to get more out of the game. Especially if you're going for the game's brutal S and S+ ranks, that require a completely perfect run. Think the game's too easy? Well, put up or shut up, cause the ranking system'll kick your ego back down.
So we've got a good basis for a title here! But then Gunvolt starts doing stuff that gave me the vibes of Mega Man Zero 1... and that's not the Zero game you should be giving me vibes of. The game's got RPG elements, with a level up system, materials to acquire after every stage, and missions to complete as you play. These are ideas I'm okay with in concept, but Gunvolt's execution kind of falters. The level up system giving you skills and upping your HP is fine, even if they inherently make the game a bit grindier in the same vien as Zero 1 and 2, but it's the materials that made me really groan. In addition to getting drops from enemies, you can get a chance to basically play a goddamn lottery scratch card at the end of a level, with more tries depending on your rank. You can somewhat mitigate it by playing missions as you go, and you might even end up landing a few lucky pick-ups from getting lucky, but having a system like this be fairly RNG dependant is the kind of thing I kind of roll my eyes at in a Mega Man style title. The upgrades you can get are pretty neat, though, ranging from the usual air dash, double jump, damage reduction, and the dedicated skills varying from AOE attacks to on-demand healing, that's all great! I'm all for the player being able to find their own playstyles. The issue's more with the aquiring of materials, rather than them being there in the first place. Still, as long as I'm not grinding enemies for basic attack upgrades like in Zero 1, I'm at least a little happy.
It's some of Gunvolt's bosses that kind of bring the game down a bit for me, though. I genuinely couldn't tell if the game actually has the usual Mega Man weakness chain, despite the game giving your gun a few modifiers. I was mostly sticking with the basic rapid fire shot, so maybe I could've switched things up and made a few sections easier on myself. Either way, most of the bosses just kinda went in one ear and out the other, not too many of them being all that challenging. Elise can go die in a fire, though, and the true final boss actually went pretty hard.
So, what's the deal with Azure Striker Gunvolt? Well, it's a pretty good Mega Man-like! Not IntiCreates' best, and it's definitely rough around the edges, but I think the high points outweigh the lows. If you're hankering for more Mega Man in another drought era for the franchise, it's well worth a shot! It feels like a GBA-era Mega Man that got lost in time, and I dig a lot of what it does. Here's hoping the sequels pick up on what this one did and makes for an even better time!
Okay, to start with the good stuff? Man, Gunvolt's got style. Slick pixel art that feels right at home with their other outings, and the anime aesthetic of the surprisingly wide cast are just the right kind of legally distinct Mega Man rejects that I can seriously dig the hell out of. There were points where I was thinking to myself, "Hey, that reminds me of [insert Mega Man character here!]", and I mean that in an endearing kind of way. PS1 X keyart is my peak aesthetic, and while Gunvolt's own key art doesn't hit quite that level... yeah, it looks pretty good! Sadly can't tell you much on the soundtrack though, nothing really stuck with me.
But in regards to gameplay, Gunvolt plays pretty well! It's standard Mega Man X/Zero fare; you go fast, you shoot dudes, jump up walls, the good shit. What sets Gunvolt apart is the flashfield mechanic, allowing you to create an AOE damage ball around Gunvolt as you see fit. You've also got the game's main gimmick of tagging enemies with shots to allow it homing properties onto anything you've tagged, which is really neat. It even factors it into a lot of the level design, with a stage featuring a blackout that you need to illuminate with Flashfield, and tag switches and then use the flashfield to activate them all at once. It can also tank a few hits for you in exchange for losing some meter, and while you have a cooldown meter to worry about, you can also immediately recharge it by coming to a stop and double-tapping down on the D-pad to mitigate it. It's a way more interesting gimmick than Mighty No 9's whole dashing into enemies mechanic turned out to be. Cool stuff, was kind of surprised it wasn't made more of a major focus in regards to the level design.
In fact, it probably would've helped some of the levels feel better to play. There's just kind of a lot of holding right and shooting here, with a few forced combat rooms complete with enemies that can suddenly spawn in on top of you for good measure. Some levels try and spice things up, like a brief switch puzzle section that even had an antigravity section and the aforementioned tagging switches, but they're pretty few and far between. Not much sets the stages apart in my mind aside from the odd memorable gimmick, but I'm sure many a different person could argue that about many a Mega Man level, so maybe it's just a me problem.
As an aside, I'm also kinda down with the idea of the game's small optional mission system. Before starting a stage, you can set up to 3 missions to tackle on your run, with nothing at all going to risk if you fail, and only rewards coming should you succeed. Most of them amount to "Beat the stage in under X minutes", or doing something related to a stage's unique gimmick, beating it with at least a B rank, stuff like that. It's a really neat way of encouraging players to push themselves, and to aid returning players should they want to get more out of the game. Especially if you're going for the game's brutal S and S+ ranks, that require a completely perfect run. Think the game's too easy? Well, put up or shut up, cause the ranking system'll kick your ego back down.
So we've got a good basis for a title here! But then Gunvolt starts doing stuff that gave me the vibes of Mega Man Zero 1... and that's not the Zero game you should be giving me vibes of. The game's got RPG elements, with a level up system, materials to acquire after every stage, and missions to complete as you play. These are ideas I'm okay with in concept, but Gunvolt's execution kind of falters. The level up system giving you skills and upping your HP is fine, even if they inherently make the game a bit grindier in the same vien as Zero 1 and 2, but it's the materials that made me really groan. In addition to getting drops from enemies, you can get a chance to basically play a goddamn lottery scratch card at the end of a level, with more tries depending on your rank. You can somewhat mitigate it by playing missions as you go, and you might even end up landing a few lucky pick-ups from getting lucky, but having a system like this be fairly RNG dependant is the kind of thing I kind of roll my eyes at in a Mega Man style title. The upgrades you can get are pretty neat, though, ranging from the usual air dash, double jump, damage reduction, and the dedicated skills varying from AOE attacks to on-demand healing, that's all great! I'm all for the player being able to find their own playstyles. The issue's more with the aquiring of materials, rather than them being there in the first place. Still, as long as I'm not grinding enemies for basic attack upgrades like in Zero 1, I'm at least a little happy.
It's some of Gunvolt's bosses that kind of bring the game down a bit for me, though. I genuinely couldn't tell if the game actually has the usual Mega Man weakness chain, despite the game giving your gun a few modifiers. I was mostly sticking with the basic rapid fire shot, so maybe I could've switched things up and made a few sections easier on myself. Either way, most of the bosses just kinda went in one ear and out the other, not too many of them being all that challenging. Elise can go die in a fire, though, and the true final boss actually went pretty hard.
So, what's the deal with Azure Striker Gunvolt? Well, it's a pretty good Mega Man-like! Not IntiCreates' best, and it's definitely rough around the edges, but I think the high points outweigh the lows. If you're hankering for more Mega Man in another drought era for the franchise, it's well worth a shot! It feels like a GBA-era Mega Man that got lost in time, and I dig a lot of what it does. Here's hoping the sequels pick up on what this one did and makes for an even better time!
I gonna be honest, the way you approach this game really change your view with it.
In a more casual run, not minding too much about avoiding attacks and acquiring points. It's a pretty easy and somewhat boring game, most of the time you can just ignore the enemies for the whole level, and when you get to the final boss, it's like a piece of cake, mainly because of the resurrection system that make you almost busted on the fight. But then on the two Final Bosses, out of nowhere the game spikes on it's difficulty.
For me it's really clear that the game health and death system don't punish you enough to play the game properly, for a more a casual player. It's visible as well how the game is more action focused more than platforming focused.
But if you do a S+ Rank Run? Good Luck Pal, you gonna need it, you have to literally avoid everything, and to do "Don't Care + Didn't Ask + You Fell Off + Unfollowed Sadly + Ratio" on the bosses.
The story is kinda mid.
In a more casual run, not minding too much about avoiding attacks and acquiring points. It's a pretty easy and somewhat boring game, most of the time you can just ignore the enemies for the whole level, and when you get to the final boss, it's like a piece of cake, mainly because of the resurrection system that make you almost busted on the fight. But then on the two Final Bosses, out of nowhere the game spikes on it's difficulty.
For me it's really clear that the game health and death system don't punish you enough to play the game properly, for a more a casual player. It's visible as well how the game is more action focused more than platforming focused.
But if you do a S+ Rank Run? Good Luck Pal, you gonna need it, you have to literally avoid everything, and to do "Don't Care + Didn't Ask + You Fell Off + Unfollowed Sadly + Ratio" on the bosses.
The story is kinda mid.
Lightning is an S tier ability!!!!!!!!
Azure Striker Gunvolt introduces enjoyable levels that become an art of mastery when you replay them for specific challenge bonuses and an enticing second ending. This can be shown in aspects such as ambushes where you can end them with haste by destroying sirens or if you want to take a more slow approach you can take on the waves of enemies as they come.
The boss fights in the title are enjoyable, having their own unique movesets. This is great enough for this style of game to have some unique boss movesets but the game goes the extra mile by allowing Gunvolts ability to interact with certain aspects such as repelling drill-based attacks. However, the only problem I find with them lies in the reuse of these bosses throughout the game which can become quite stale when they don't bring anything new.
This is not all Gunvolt provides, it introduces very interesting mechanics such as a cheat death that links itself to lore in a manner that feels natural for it to be there and when it activates in dangerous situations you can't help but feel amped up to deal some serious damage.
Overall I enjoyed this title and I'm excited to jump into the second one.
Azure Striker Gunvolt introduces enjoyable levels that become an art of mastery when you replay them for specific challenge bonuses and an enticing second ending. This can be shown in aspects such as ambushes where you can end them with haste by destroying sirens or if you want to take a more slow approach you can take on the waves of enemies as they come.
The boss fights in the title are enjoyable, having their own unique movesets. This is great enough for this style of game to have some unique boss movesets but the game goes the extra mile by allowing Gunvolts ability to interact with certain aspects such as repelling drill-based attacks. However, the only problem I find with them lies in the reuse of these bosses throughout the game which can become quite stale when they don't bring anything new.
This is not all Gunvolt provides, it introduces very interesting mechanics such as a cheat death that links itself to lore in a manner that feels natural for it to be there and when it activates in dangerous situations you can't help but feel amped up to deal some serious damage.
Overall I enjoyed this title and I'm excited to jump into the second one.