Gunvolt Series Marathon, Part 4 of 5.
A pretty solid sequel with some cool innovations, good changes, and less good changes. The big change from 1 to 2 is the addition of a new playable character, Copen. He's fun to play, focused on stringing together long aerial combos. The side dialogue in his campaign does a great job humanizing him. I have two issues with his gameplay style. He's so free and loose in terms of movement that it's hard to make platforming around him, so he doesn't get much. Two, it's pretty hard for him to die. He can just dash around and not get hurt. He's fun to speedrun with but needed some limitation or harder obstacles. Gunvolt is as fun as ever, and a few stages have really great gimmicks. The cyberspace stage in particular has some great combat rooms and platforming challenges that goes beyond the best stuff in the first game. However, the last chunk of the game doesn't quite hit as hard as the first. There's suddenly much less platforming and just more combat, and it doesn't get much iteration, excluding one pretty good platforming segment for Copen. You also have to play the last set of stages several times over for both characters, and the method to get the true ending is much lamer this time. Music is about as solid as last time, and the visuals are even more bombastic and exaggerated. This is a good sequel that evolves the format while introducing some new stuff. I don't think it's as consistent as 1, but has higher highs and slightly lower lows. Probably about the same level of quality, I'd recommend it.
A pretty solid sequel with some cool innovations, good changes, and less good changes. The big change from 1 to 2 is the addition of a new playable character, Copen. He's fun to play, focused on stringing together long aerial combos. The side dialogue in his campaign does a great job humanizing him. I have two issues with his gameplay style. He's so free and loose in terms of movement that it's hard to make platforming around him, so he doesn't get much. Two, it's pretty hard for him to die. He can just dash around and not get hurt. He's fun to speedrun with but needed some limitation or harder obstacles. Gunvolt is as fun as ever, and a few stages have really great gimmicks. The cyberspace stage in particular has some great combat rooms and platforming challenges that goes beyond the best stuff in the first game. However, the last chunk of the game doesn't quite hit as hard as the first. There's suddenly much less platforming and just more combat, and it doesn't get much iteration, excluding one pretty good platforming segment for Copen. You also have to play the last set of stages several times over for both characters, and the method to get the true ending is much lamer this time. Music is about as solid as last time, and the visuals are even more bombastic and exaggerated. This is a good sequel that evolves the format while introducing some new stuff. I don't think it's as consistent as 1, but has higher highs and slightly lower lows. Probably about the same level of quality, I'd recommend it.