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!