After getting this game’s sequel, Mighty Gunvolt Burst, before the 3DS eShop shuts down, and before getting into it, I’ve decided to replay this thing now after years since I originally played it.
Since I remembered practically nothing about it and because I sucked at games like these when I got into Mega Man games during my late teens, I figured it would be nice to give this another chance, since I recall not enjoying it that much at all back then.

Well, I can safely say now that it was surely not that bad. In fact, it was actually quite fun while it lasted.
Unlike its fully-fledged sequel, Mighty Gunvolt serves more as a “bonus” sort of thing, both as a homage to the classic Mega Man NES games and as an appetiser for the then upcoming release of Mighty No. 9 (just like what more recently Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon did for the bigger game, Ritual of the Night).

And I still think it’s bonkers how this super short game, that basically doesn’t take itself seriously at all, ended up being way more fun to play than that infamous monstrosity.

Mighty Gunvolt consists of a very small collection of stages, each containing its own boss with different attack patterns for you to learn to avoid and master defeating. For a game of its scale, the level design is quite fun, especially considering Gunvolt’s manoeuvrability with his double jump.
I gotta say, the first boss felt way more challenging than the rest of them, but I think the challenge is well balanced enough throughout the entire game, and it may even be a great entry point for people interested in this type of game, especially classic Mega Man, since the experience you’ll find here won’t be as robust as a “full” game, but straightforward enough for you to learn how they usually play and get used to what will be a much more difficult, but much nicer gameplay. For this aspect, I can totally dig this game’s simplicity.

For a veteran in Mega Man games, though, it probably won’t be anything special. Maybe a cute homage, ok, but nothing that special apart from that. For some, this can be disappointing, but as I said, you’ve got to know what this thing is about before getting into it, since you can’t expect it to be more than it actually is: just a side game, a bonus project.

Let’s talk DLC then. You’ll get to play some additional levels and, again, each with their respective boss at the end.
Overall, I’m not that crazy about these. I think the base game stages are much better designed and fun to play. The Factory and Gym stages are fine, but the Bio Lab has some very obnoxious enemy placements and the Highway, despite being arguably the best looking stage in the entire game, is simply an easy linear path. By the way, the boss at the end of it (Mighty No. whatever, the ninja guy) is by far my least favourite in the entire thing: his movement pool is small, but he’s quite fast and his pattern is completely random, forcing you to rely almost purely upon reflexes instead of learning a way to properly dodge him. I personally dislike this type of design, which is pretty much like Mega Man 3’s Shadow Man.

The real meat of the DLC, though, are the two new playable characters, that have completely different gameplay styles, which can be a nice factor for the game’s replayability aspect.
However, in my opinion, if you want to milk out everything you possibly can out of this game, the logic can be quite counter-intuitive: you must play as the extra characters first, if you don’t want to harm the overall flow of the thing.

The game was designed with Gunvolt in mind, so if you beat it with him first, it can be hard to adjust to the other characters right out of the bat, since they are much less nimble.
With that in mind, if you’re really willing to play this thing entirely, I believe Beck should be your first choice, since he’s the most limited one out of the bunch: basically Mega Man 3 with an air dash that you have to charge.
Next, play as Ekoro, since she’s the most unique out of the three, and the game itself progresses a bit differently with her.
And, just then, play as Gunvolt, since he’ll be the ideal character, and will be much much easier to adjust to how he plays than starting with him and trying to adjust to the others later.

…in my case, however, I just played through the entire thing with Gunvolt, as intended, and called it a day. And, if you’re not really into the extra characters, this may be the way to go. Despite some routes in the stages being made for Beck to go through with his slide, these are completely optional and won’t reward you with anything other than extra points (yeah, the game has a point system, go figure).
The game was made for Gunvolt, and it shows. So, it sits in this weird place: it feels better when played solely as him, and a bit weird if you don’t play as him last.

Aside from that, it’s everything I said: a fun, short little game, that tries to be 8-bit. The gameplay is far from something special, but it’s fun enough, and will be a nice diversion.

On a side note, I just wanted to be able to remap the button layout… the game forces you to jump with B and shoot with Y, and while this is perfectly fine on a proper controller, it can feel a bit uncomfortable on the 3DS’ smaller buttons, especially on boss fights. With my smaller handhelds, I always play these “Jump ‘n Shoot” kind of games with A for jumping and B for shooting (much like on the NES or Game Boy), since this layout is much more comfortable for me to reach both with the tip of my thumb.
But, well, if you’re playing on Steam or PS4, you won’t face this issue.

Mighty Gunvolt is sort of a spiritual successor to Mega Man 9 and 10 by the same developer, Inti Creates, released coinciding with Azure Striker Gunvolt. It's an okay action 2D platformer; nothing offensive but nothing remarkable. Gunvolt, Ekoro, and Beck are distinct and fun to use, but the stages are the same in their campaigns with little variation. If you're playing it casually, you can clear their campaigns in about an hour if you don't care about the extra levels. If you're a Mega Man fan, this ain't bad if you want something bite-sized, but other than that, nothing special.

fun cute little megaman clone with gunvolt stuff and also mighty no 9 and galgun? pretty basic and not too difficult outside of two of the dlc stages' boss fights. theres multiple playable characters here which all play pretty uniquely. also a very charming game with its pixel art and i like how they poke fun at old shitty english translations of nes game story dumps. in the way of 2d action platformers it doesnt do anything too crazy but its a decent little game to put on and play and beat in like an hour or so. now i just gotta check out the sequel and the real gunvolt games lol

Beat on a Nintendo 3DS; fully completed on a Windows PC. An 8-bit 2D platformer based on a phenomenal Mega Man Zero-inspired series, a mediocre Mega Man clone, and a porn game series?!?! What could possibly go wrong?!?!
It's... okay. It's pretty short but what's here is good enough for a coffee break. The levels are fun, I like most of the characters, and the soundtrack is really, really good. My main issue is the length and the bosses. You can 100% the game in 3 HOURS, which (at least in my opinion), is not enough for a $5 game. Hell, if you don't care about doing everything (a relatively simple process by modern game standards), you can beat the game in 30 MINUTES, which is absurd. And once again it's $5. Sure, it was originally bundled with a $15 eShop game (Azure Striker Gunvolt), but still! And while there's DLC (the warp zone), those will add about 30 minutes I'd say. Once I beat the game, I just wanted more. Oh, and before I forget, the bosses really suck. Most of them are button-mashing tests, and they can be brain-numbingly easy, or rage-inducing. Especially the DLC bosses.

Selling itself as a cool little crossover between Gunvolt, GalGun, which is the weird FPS thing where you shoot pheromones at girls, and the game that exposed Keiji Inafune as a hack, Mighty Gunvolt wraps itself in an 8-bit Mega Man style skin and comes out as an incredibly aggressively boring game.

Like, goddamn, this feels like it was started with the prospect of the crossover idea first and then the team collectively floundered the part where they make the game, and that's kind of a shame. Visually, it's really cool to see the cast rendered in the 8-bit Mega Man style, but there's just barely anything to the game beyond being a really dull rehash of Gunvolt and MN9's stages, with a little of original GalGun stuff thrown in too. At least, from what I could tell, I'm not enough of a degenerate to play GalGun. The levels are all pretty flat and uninteresting, as they were in their original games, and it doesn't have Gunvolt's signature style and flair. Hell, the core mechanic of the flashfield is toned down to a multi-hitting beam you need to be at a standstill to use, and there aren't even any alternate weapons or anything. But there IS a weird emphasis on score... in a game with no ranking system to speak of, which is really weird. Makes you think back to why the score counter was abandoned after Mega Man 1, but maybe there was a single guy at Inti Creates who fucking LOVED it.

Incredibly poetic that the Mighty No 9 content, from the levels, bosses and Beck himself, are the absolute low points; especially wanna focus on that last point, since Beck is absolute dog ass to play. MN9 had the dash mechanic at its core, both as a movement tool, and a really ill advised method of killing enemies, or even dealing damage to bosses. It sucked, and it's somehow even worse here, with it being tied to Beck's charge shot input, so not only is there a delay, but you're also dealing with hitboxes that are permanently active, leading to a really good chance of running into the enemies you're trying to kill. So you've basically got the Charge Kick from Mega Man 5, except it takes longer to activate on top of it. Fuck you, Beck, but I also hope whoever decided to bring back Elise's boss from Gunvolt 1 is given a stern kicking.

So yeah, not too much to say about Mighty Gunvolt. It's inoffensive, but it's also dull, cheap, and a really lackluster title on the whole, surprisingly weak as far as Inti Creates' offerings go. But I hear the sequel is a lot better, so here's hoping that'll blow my socks off!

The main game is pretty easy, but it's still decently fun. The reversal of having Acura fake-out into Zonda as the final boss is pretty funny. There's not much story, but what is there is very poorly translated. I'm sure the awful translation quality is supposed to be an intentional joke, but "haha, look, the translation is bad, just like an NES game! Please laugh" simply isn't a funny joke.

A few of the DLC levels bosses are actually a decent challenge, though the stages are still aggravatingly easy, so it's a bit of a slog if you run out of lives at the boss fight and have to replay the level (I'm looking at YOU Elise).

Out of the characters, Gunvolt is the best. I've seen Ekoro, Gunvolt, and Beck labelled as easy, medium, and hard respectively, but this isn't in the game itself, and I don't know where this labelling actually comes from. In fact, I would actually argue that Ekoro is the hardest, since she deals less damage per hit than the other characters.

Each character essentially has one unique movement option and one unique attack. Gunvolt can double jump, Ekoro can float, and Beck has a "dash" (which is really more like the classic Mega Man slide). Gunvolt's double jump is by far the most useful here. I always complain about MM9 and 10 removing the slide from it's MC, but Beck's slide just feels like complete ass here. Ekoro's floating is neat, but it's not nearly as useful as Gunvolt's double jump.
Attack wise, Gunvolt has a beam that can move up and down, Ekoro has a charge attack that can charm enemies to use as a sort of turret, and beck has a charge attack that dashes into the enemy. None of these attacks are all that great, but Gunvolt's attack is at least useful in a few select situations for picking off enemies, so Gunvolt wins here too. Ekoro's attack is kinda gimmicky and not all that useful, and Becks attack just sucks. It only kills SOME enemies, and if it doesn't kill them, you take damage, and in general its just really unsatisfying to use. It kind of reminds me of how Samus Returns fucked up the Screw Attack, but at least that was still somewhat usable.
Ekoro can also shoot four shots instead of 3 (I guess to make up for her lack of damage) and Beck's shots are ever so slightly lower than Gunvolt's. I don't know why they did this, but it sucks. There's a bunch of enemies that you can hit from the ground as Gunvolt, that are now literally like 1 pixel above your shot, so it just goes under them. Gunvolt's shots will also hit things on the edge of a platform while Beck's won't. It's just REALLY aggravating to play as Beck, and I don't even understand what the purpose of doing this was.
I guess calling Beck "hard mode" is at least somewhat accurate, as he's technically harder than the others, but only in ways that make him less fun to play. Beck being the worst character in literally every aspect certainly doesn't inspire hope in the then upcoming Mighty No. 9! I can't believe they thought this was a good game to tide over kickstarter backers from the game's delay.