Good game with a good story but the stages and enemies are very repetitive, the bosses are somewhat unfair and the story is very confusing.
History:5
Gameplay: 8
Levels: 6
Bosses: 5
Final: 3
Music:7
Rhythm: 8

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!

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 is an exceptional game, and I didn't realize that the first time I played it. I remember playing it for the first time a few years ago and really not being impressed by anything about the game, and it was really such a case that I remembered almost nothing about it. I decided to replay it since I played the Mega Man Zero titles this year and was left wanting more, and I think it's been one of the best things I've done, as I've just re-discovered a game that I now adore... but not completely.

First of all, Azure Striker Gunvolt manages to capture the essence of the Mega Man Zero games in a perfect way. That frenetic action that requires precision and rewards your skill is present, and what impresses me the most is that they managed to achieve this even though the gameplay is radically different from a Mega Man Zero game. Yes, now I understand where its title as "spiritual successor" of Mega Man Zero came from, however, I don't consider it a successor of Mega Man as a whole, only of the Zero series, because the only thing it inherits is that part of frenetic action with RPG elements, because the platforming and gameplay in this game have a very different approach to that of a traditional Mega Man game.

Let's start by talking about how this game is very polished unlike the Mega Man Zero games, where it was common to find unrefined elements, this is noticeable from the gameplay and each of the levels which are very well designed and each one has something unique and different to offer that makes them memorable. Gunvolt, the main character is an anomaly, as mechanically he has a "far fetched" design with a combination of concepts and mechanics that shouldn't work together, but they do. I love how the main weapon serves both to float in the air, as a force field, to interact with some elements of the levels and in turn also to attack enemies from 1 to several at once thanks to the targeting system, it sounds like it works in an overcomplicated and stilted way, but the truth is that everything is integrated in such a correct and polished way that makes it feel very natural, Inti Creates really was able to build an original character and that is very satisfying to use, which is extremely important in this type of game.

Like Mega Man Zero, this game has some elements of RPG games, we will have equipables that will serve to further customize our style of play, such as increasing our defense, get double jump or an air-dash, etc.. What I like here is that the Mega Man Zero 4 crafting system returns, but now it is more direct and does not require trial and error or guides. We can also equip 4 special abilities and it's a welcome addition, as it adds even more customization and can sometimes make things easier.

However, a lot of the good things about this game go to waste when you discover how absurdly easy the levels are. The approach to difficulty is very different, because while Mega Man Zero demands from the player a somewhat high skill to even pass the level, this game is quite accessible and easy in comparison, even the most novice person in video games can enjoy this title, which I see as a positive point, but here comes one of my biggest problems with this game.

Mega Man Zero 3 could be considered an easy game due to all the tools it gives you at your disposal to calibrate the difficulty to your liking, however, it also gave you the option to make things harder and increase the challenge if you aimed to get an A or S rank in all missions, which was rewarded by giving you an EX-Skill. Well, this game makes that challenge even more complicated, as the highest rank isn't S, it's S+, and the way your rank is calculated in a mission is determined by how long you take and how many points you get. The points are obtained by eliminating several enemies at the same time, it sounds simple, but in reality it requires a lot of precision and perseverance, because these points are lost when an enemy hits you or when you make contact with something that does damage, which resets your counter even if you had 2000 or 3000 points. It is a good risk-reward system, but it is incredibly poorly balanced and absurdly raises the difficulty of the game, and this for me creates a dissonance, as it is as if the game only offers two difficulties, which are "very easy" and "very hard", with no option for an intermediate difficulty.

The game offers several modes for the point system, but the S+ rank is only accessible through the "fearless" mode, even so, I recommend that you play the game in "gutless" mode, otherwise many of the mechanics will be meaningless, not to mention that it is 100% likely that in any other mode you will not get a high score. To make matters even worse completing a level with S+ rank will not grant you any valuable rewards.

And finally, let's talk about another thing I don't like about this game, which is the setting. The story has a generic plot, with generic anime characters, generic anime dialogues and a lot of other clichés. The funniest thing here is that they were so serious about basing the game on an anime that there is even a mechanic that when you lose you have the chance to revive, you know those anime where when the main character is about to lose the Opening theme plays and suddenly gains a lot of power thanks to the power of love and friendship, well, that's what happens here. By the way, the characters have conversations in the course of each level, it's a good idea, but given the type of game it is, this clearly results in something very annoying that doesn't work because the last thing you want to do in a 2D action game is to stop and read a mundane conversation, to disable it just press the Touchpad or the Select button several times.

Conclusion
Anyway, to my surprise replaying Azure Striker Gunvolt made me remember very cool things about this game, honestly the only thing I remembered about it was the awkward dialogues and the low difficulty, but playing it again I see that this game has depth in its gameplay and a very brilliant game design. It leaves me very unsatisfied that the way to get a higher difficulty is to make the game hellishly difficult, and to tell the truth, if it wasn't for that I could have rated this game as a 4.5/5 or more. But well...

I don't think it reaches the level of excellence of Mega Man Zero 3, but I think it's easily at the level of Zero 2 and 4, or even a bit higher, although the generic anime plot holds it back a bit. All in all, I was very pleased with it and I'll be looking forward to playing the sequels.

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.

Azure Striker Gunvolt as a series is one that I have fond memories with. It was one of the first games I ever bought, and I remember spending countless hours playing through the demo before I had boughten it. I’ve played, and beaten this game numerous times before, I replayed both it and Gunvolt 2 some time last year. I’ve had Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 in my library for quite some time now, but since it’s been so long I feel the need to refresh myself on what Gunvolt 1 and 2 were like. And I’ll say, I still really like Azure Striker Gunvolt.
Now, obviously with the game’s structure and how you proceed through the game, it’s hard not to immediately compare it to Mega Man. Inti Creates has worked on Mega Man titles before, specifically Mega Man Zero, so it makes sense that they would eventually create a series that is like Mega Man. But in the case of Gunvolt, I really love how it doesn’t feel like I’m playing as Mega Man, I feel like I’m playing more like a Robot Master. Gunvolt’s abilities (aside from his guns) are all tied to electricity, and how the game mechanically, both in combat and level design expertly shows it off. In one level, you have to use electricity to see in a dark environment, in a different level, it’s used to pull magnetized objects toward you. In practically every level, you can use electricity to either deflect or destroy projectiles. While there’s a lot to be said about each level, I really think the best aspect of the game’s level design is how well it incorporates Gunvolt’s mechanics into them.
And further onto Gunvolt’s mechanics, I already briefly discussed the electricity, but I swear, it’s super fun. There’s so many options using electricity, particularly the flashfield alone. It does all of the items I previously listed, but it damages enemies if they’re inside of it, and it can also be used to slow your fall, which is definitely useful in some later levels. Though it is good that Gunvolt can only use his electricity as long as he has a charge, it’s a really good way of balancing it out. If you deplete your charge fully, Gunvolt overheats, and is unable to use electricity until the charge reaches 100%. And though it only lasts for a brief moment, that moment is very tense which I love. Gunvolt also has specials he can use as long as a special meter is filled, and this can be really helpful too. There’s offensive ones, defensive ones, and the ones that I find the most important, the healing ones. While they’re nice to have of course, I really only found myself using the offensive ones for style points, and healing ones whenever needed. There’s other aspects of Gunvolt’s move set that feel really well to pull off as well! They’re sort of basic movement options, but Gunvolt’s dash and wall jumping feel great the execute. Gunvolt’s movement overall is extremely satisfying, and combined with level layout, makes Azure Striker Gunvolt just an absolute blast to play.
I’m not even done talking about Gunvolt as well. I briefly mentioned it earlier, but Gunvolt has an assortment of guns he can use. You get more as you complete each level, but I found myself using only the starting one, and one that you get near the end of the game. I’m uncertain if that’s a critique of the game or not though, it may just be my playstyle being the reason here. And guns get into one of the major mechanics of the game, being tagging. Depending on the gun you equip, you have a certain number of tags you can use. The starting gun gives you 3 tags, some give you 1, and one gives you 8 tags total. Whenever you shoot an enemy, they get tagged, and they can get tagged up to 3 times maximum. If you use the flashfield while around a tagged enemy, the flashfield will send a bolt of electricity to the enemy, dealing damage rapidly to the enemy. And of course, you can tag multiple enemies at the same time, which can take say, 3 enemies out at the same time. The more tagged an enemy is, the faster the damage, of course. Yet again, I must say, this all combined with everything I listed prior makes Gunvolt such a fun character to play as. While it may sound a bit too much, especially with how wordy I am with things, these mechanics really blend well with each other.
And I’m almost done talking about Gunvolt himself here. Almost. Particularly, when you’re not in a level, you’ll be in Gunvolt’s apartment where you can have some options to do before starting the next level. The one I’m talking about here is the crafting mode, where, with items you find after the end of each level, you can craft equipment to put on Gunvolt. I’ll be honest here, the crafting system is quite lacking, and you’ll barely have to use it. While you barely have to use it, you will still find yourself having to use it slightly in order to unlock the true ending (I’ll get to that later). While most of what the crafting system gives you isn’t that important, the most important stuff comes from the Jump and Traction Rings. Depending on the level of them you craft, it gives Gunvolt additional jumps, or air dashes, which are just extremely useful. While the levels of the game aren’t crafted with them in mind, some levels definitely become more manageable once you have a double jump or air dashes. I think part of why the crafting system isn’t as useful is because Gunvolt already has useful equipment as is. The Prevasion Ring you get at the start of the game is too busted, allowing you to dodge most attacks as long as you have charge. While it does make the game a lot easier, I just find it makes more sense to have it on than off.
Now alright, I’m finally done talking about mechanics that tie to Gunvolt himself. And moving forward, I think it bears repeating how well crafted I think the game’s level design is. That too goes for how replayable they are as well. While in isolation, you only really need to play through a level once, but after you beat the level for the first time, you unlock challenges for it. And of course, these are super fun to try and do, getting a better rank, better time, or doing specific tasks within a level. It makes it all really fun to try and improve your abilities in each level, as well as getting rewards for clearing challenges. This does come with one small caveat though, as you can only equip three challenges at a time, so even if you would’ve cleared a challenge, if you don’t have it equipped, it wouldn’t be cleared. While it’s not the worse issue to ever exist in a game, I do find the design of it a bit flawed.
On a separate note however, rank and the game’s scoring system is really addicting. Every attack you do to an enemy is added up into a combo overtime. The further the combo grows, the larger the score modifier becomes, and the better the score you get at the end of the stage. At 1000 combo or higher, the song in the level changes to a special vocal track which I believe changes based on the level. Though, depending on what you do the combo isn’t permanent. If you use an offensive skill, activate a checkpoint, take damage (though this may not happen depending on the style you’re on), or resurrect (a mechanic I’ll touch on later), your combo will go down to zero. And this aspect of the combo is so cool, as things that would make levels easier must be avoided in order to get a better score. It means that combo isn’t just skill centric, but risk centric as well, as if you die in a level you’ll go back to the start of the level. But at the end of each stage, your score is multiplied depending on how quickly you beat a level. All in all the scoring system makes the game that much more fun to play, as you try to get a better score each time.
And with stuff that I mentioned earlier, I think it’s really interesting how the game can help the player still either beat a difficult level, or keep a score chain going. If you die in a level, there’s a chance that you get resurrected with a power boost, where your charge won’t deplete, and you can infinitely double jump and air dash. Though this of course comes with the factor that you can’t form a combo after resurrection. As well, you can choose a style option that changes how taking damage effects combos, either taking damage doesn’t effect combos (though the score multiplier is lessened), it removes the combo after taking damage immediately, or taking damage three times. It’s a nice way to accommodate for players who may not be as good at certain levels, or getting high scores, but still pushing them to try and improve.
I also really love the boss fights in the game as well. Though without a doubt I have to say part of it is nostalgia. When the bosses are fun, they’re really fun, though I do think one boss particularly isn’t as fun as the others to fight. Though that’s just because that one constantly teleports around, and isn’t around when their attacks are. Either way, another aspect I really like is how each of the 7 main bosses are themed after the seven deadly sins in some way. Though some are more on the nose than others. Another aspect I really love about each major boss is that once they drop to their final segment of health, they use their own special moves. I love the presentation of them, and how you deal with this is really fun too. Sometimes you can attack a boss, sometimes you can’t and sometimes you can but should you? All of the bosses are really unique because of this, and they’re super fun to fight.
One thing I mentioned a lot earlier and now finally getting to is that true ending which I mentioned prior. In order to unlock the true ending, you have to find jewels in each of the 7 main levels, which is honestly a lot easier than it sounds. The only problem is that one jewel requires the use of the crafting system, and another requires a very specific order of actions to be done, which isn’t easy to figure out. Though I will say, that’s only the first requirement of the true ending, however. You also have to equip an item before starting the final stage of the game, and I wish the game was more specific on when you were supposed to equip it. With this all though, the true ending is worth doing, though if you’re like me and used the Prevasion Ring through the rest of the game, that final stage is easily the hardest part of the game. Though the true final boss of the game is a lot easier than I remember when I first played this game back on the 3DS. I’m uncertain if that’s because the boss is actually easy, or if I’ve just improved.
And I’ll say, the rating of this game is in part due to certain flaws I’ve mentioned prior, but as well, I just wish there was more game here. Either longer levels, more levels, etc, I’m left wanting more and there just sort of isn’t any more. The game is really short, and due to that I feel like the game ends a tad bit too soon, as I was able to beat this game easily under four hours. While a good short game is definitely fine, I’m still left just wanting more.
With that in mind though I still really enjoy Azure Striker Gunvolt. I know I like the sequel more, and I definitely can’t wait to play it, but I’m not going to jump into it immediately. Gunvolt plays amazingly well, and the levels and bosses both help to support that. While some mechanics could be better fleshed out such as crafting, and I still wish the game was maybe an hour or so longer, what’s given here is still a fun game. I know I’ll be replaying it again sometime in the future.

Gunvolt 1 has a lot of problems: clunky challenge and crafting systems, weird difficulty spike at the final boss and the lack of challenge for casual players make this game a bit of a weird one
But the scoring systems are unlike anything ever, my stupid monkey brain WANTS to go for perfect high score runs and those levels are pretty good (except Biochem Plant and Eridu, those suck) and the gameplay of tagging and zapping multiple enemies at a time is super unique and satisfying
If you went for S rank runs in the Mega Man Zero games this is definitely for you, if not the game is good tho not amazing, just disable prevasion

Inti creates has gone on record with megaman zero for starting out kinda weak with an initial entry in a new platformer series that they're developing so I've got high hopes that gunvolt 2 and luminous avenger ix will be much better than this. Otherwise it's kinda just boneless mmz, though that doesn't mean it's bad. I'd probably still play this over zero 1 if given the choice. What I loved about the zero series though was its kinetic movement and gameplay, rich, foreboding, oppressive atmosphere and its genuine heartfelt story that really made the most of the lore and foundations that the x series had already provided and gunvolt kinda fumbles on all of these fronts, for one reason or another.

Azure striker gunvolt tries something similar to zero series from a narrative perspective by having it set in a neon cyberpunk dystopia but it does more telling than showing. Aside from the prison level (which does actually do a good job at showing the kind of experiments on living people that were going on), we're told how the sumeragi company has control on both ordinary people and adepts through various means but very little of that is actually shown. We know of a resistance and that its gunvolt's found family, but there's no resistance base that you can actually roam around in. We know that adepts are persecuted, but aside from copen, who's evidently a massive zealot anyway, we don't see much of that either. Maybe more is elaborated on and directly shown in later entries but even mmz1 managed to actually show most of the stuff going on firsthand. The writing and world simply aren't as compelling and after how good the zero series was in just about every way relating to its writing, world and narrative, gunvolt is a big letdown. Maybe I should've seen that coming when your target in the intro stage is an idol that one of your operators refers to as "one of [their] waifus", though. Again, maybe the writing picks up in the next entry, I dunno yet.

Regarding gameplay, Gunvolt mostly does well when it comes to core movement, but actual combat, level design, and intended approach to playing these levels is where it diverges greatly from the zero series...and I'm also not a huge fan of how that's handled either. In the zero series, you were expected to replay levels maybe a couple times not just so you could get a good enough score to maintain (or earn assuming you weren't a high enough rank alreasy) an A or S rank to obtain bosses EX skills, but because they were inherently challenging. Gunvolt stages are basically the opposite, being ridiculously easy but expecting countless replays in order to complete arbitrary side objectives and challenges that are also arbitrarily difficult and demand way more investment than the zero games ever did. If you want those S+ ranks, you basically need to kill every enemy in a stage without taking damage to keep your kudos going. That's just too much for me, I'm sorry.

Also some bosses just. Oneshot you?? I get that they have big special moves and they're mostly either preventable by killing them with a special before they can activate their own or by simply dodging it, but the true final boss has a seriously egregious one that requires you to be seemingly pixel perfect, AND you can't stop from happening.

Despite all these complaints, I still had a good time with the game. It's just not as good as mmz or zx to me yet and as someone who has loved most inti creates' knows they can do even better.

Also there's no saber, like guys you can't make a mmz spiritual successor without saber combat cmon

Seems kind of like a beta at times, but as a sort of port of a 3DS eShop title I guess that makes sense. Also weirdly easy until the end when it’s expected Mega Man type difficulty. At least I thought it was weirdly easy, until halfway through playing the sequel I realized you're intended to treat its score system like how you treat Devil May Cry's. Getting high scores is meant to be a relevant part of its gameplay, and I just wasn't treating it as such. It's tough for me to care about that when there's not much to incentivize you for getting your numbers big and the "good" gameplay isn't particularly flashy or cool, not inherently rewarding on its own for me. But it makes for a frictionless experience at least. Getting the true ending requiring you to play the final stage again is stupid, but with the intention being you redo levels often to grind out a good score, I guess it's like, not meant to be as stupid? Just sort of on me for not really clicking with that part of the game. Also this guy’s a fucking middle schooler? What?