I'm sure these series are not for me.
I still remember Azure Striker Gunvolt 1 being so much fun. But after playing ASG2 and this... I am now sure that I dislike this series.
The game is easy as a whole due to the challenge being getting high scores and kudos and everything, which is something I do not enjoy.
I know a lot of people do like tho.
The upgrades that you can buy are nice but you might as well just finish the game before getting the most important ones, as they are quite expensive and the game is really short.
Overrall, not for me.

So despite the fact I'm giving this a 4 I have some mixed feelings about this one. I actually finished the playthrough I'm using to review this a while ago but I wanted my thoughts to settle for a while before I reviewed it.

Storywise it works alright I guess until the last level which just sends the entire thing to hell in my opinion. like the ending plot twists just ruin it for me because of how stupid they are and all of them being dropped in literally the final stage (damn AU bullshit).

I'm not going to really complain about Copen's character change A. because I like absurdly down to earth and cynical Copen more then rageaholic Copen and B. because of meta reason of making him the protagonist making it make sense to change him as well as the story justifying his attitude adjustment to a degree with the reveals at the ending.

Now gameplay wise is where I'm truely conflicted. Because flying around and bouncing off enemies at lightning speed is a blast especially with speedruning and score attack runs of the levels. Like it's an absolue treat. But recently I made a walkthrough for a couple friends and the moment you slow down you quickly realize how awful the level design is.

Like the majority of them are just narrow hallways where you just bounce from enemy to enemy extremely easily and slowing down to explain everything really shows how little there is to them. The best stages are probably the Radio Tower and the Data Center from GV1 because they have more obstacles to avoid rather then just being there for you to just bounce off walls. With the Data Center having a section where you have to fly over a bottomless pit for a bit which really raised the stakes and the Radio tower having lots of spikes and other hazards on the walls that make you have to consider when to airdash. The rest are just boring and are only really interesting when Emblem hunting which can be fun but does have a couple stages that makes that really annoying due to a couple of weird placements.

So back to the good. They thankfully overhauled the upgrade system to not require random drops from the stages and only needing money to obtain

Alright back to the bad. The Special Weapon balance is absolutely atrocious with Orbital Edge and Anchor Nexus being the only ones you should ever use outside hitting boss weaknesses as they cost so little energy (or none in Anchor Nexus's case) that they make Darkness Trigger which is supposed to be the ride or die infinite energy super mode next to useless outside of some niche cases in boss fights. Like seriously Orbital Edge should cost like half a bar per use not like 1/12 becaue of how much damage it does and its range.

Also on to something neutral. Overdrive isn't handled the best on one hand thanks to Emblems it's not that hard to access. But on the other it doesn't do anything of value until you buy OD abilities which are extremely expensive.

Now don't get me wrong I really like this game. The core movement and gameplay are great. I'm giving it a 4 for that alone. But it just has some really glaring flaws that made me drop it from a 4.5.

I really wanted to rank this game higher than this but I honestly couldn't, the game is very good as far as being 2D platformer in the same vein as Mega Man X, the controls are smooth, the story is okay, it's nothing deep really and if you've played the past Gunvolt series games you'll see the same pattern of storytelling. The music is very much amazing just as the prior games were as well.

Where this game falls short at is...well...exactly that...this game is short, about 4 to 6 hours long, and for a 2D platformer that's not bad, but the story also doesn't do anything to help how short it feels, nothing is sat on very long and it's obvious there is to be a sequel, but to me it feels like the sequel is gonna be the other half of the game. To add to the game's lack of length, it's not difficult to say the least, boss patterns were easy to get after dying once and the only challenge came from the end.

All in all, if you love the Azure Gunvolt games or Mega Man X/Zero series then definitely play this, just make sure you get it on sale or for cheap, the game really feels shorter than it is.

Ok, I did like this game. Playing as Akira in a level design that was clearly made to play without touching the floor at all was amazing, I'm not good in action games or platforms, but man, just how many times did I reset the same level again and again just to finish it in a more "cool" way playing better and getting a higher rank I can't remember, it is really addictive.
However, apart from the ending, I didn't like the story at all. Akira was very silent, rarely making any shit talk about the Adepts, RoRo did the most dialogues in the game probably, and it is so strange to see a game that is supposed to be a spin-off about Akira putting him in a so "neutral" position. I mean, I did understand why he is like that in this game, but even with the context I just don't know why they should do that with him in his own game. Can't get what they were trying to do with the character.
Talking about the characters, man, just didn't like anyone besides the Blade at the end, they are just so empty, so fabricated, just some kids with the basic kids' personalities, and for the bosses, so forgetful, some voice acting and design was cool but anything besides that probably is one of the worst "villain" cast of the series... I mean, even the last boss was the worst empty version of himself.

Spoiler maybe:
Ok, but maybe, just maybe, one part of it was intentional and the rest was pure shit.
See this; a future, a world, a timeline that everything did go wrong, and those ghosts from the past (Akira and Asimov) are fighting still to force their ideologies, their 各号, in the world, on each other... But their time passed a long ago, but Asimov didn't even notice that and Akira appoints that probably he is defected, all this time we were fighting with a defective version of our villain. And for Akira, what can I say, he sacrificed his body to preserve his mind, but at what cost, he becomes just a moving adept hunter that doesn't even know anymore what he is doing that for.
But again, why
just why would they do that
I just wanted my disturbed Akira killing some adepts just for hate and see that character dissolving little by little, just how they were doing in the Gunvolt 2...

But, oh well, it was just something that I was liking too much at the end of the Gunvolt 2 and probably it affected hardly how I felt about this game story.