It might be extremely derivative but at least it chose great games to learn from. It plays almost identically to a Mega Man Zero/ZX game, and you can't go a level or boss without seeing a reference to an Inti Creates or Capcom game, but I'd be lying if I said it bothered me much. Level design was pretty strong; it consistently felt pretty purposeful and I hardly ever found myself just going through the motions. Your toolkit is fun to mess around with too, between the versatile EX skills and the powerful ultimate skills you get from bosses. Speaking of the bosses, they're great to fight too. Even the music is decent and the visuals are nice and easy on the eyes, as opposed to the likes of Gravity Circuit. But despite taking so many pages from MMZ, I really wish they took the "the saber is the best weapon in the game" page. It hits like a wet noodle and doesn't feel nearly as good to use. I found myself using the buster way more than I'd like.

Regardless, it's a great, and surprisingly polished game. Perhaps if Inti Creates-inspired games were a dime a dozen like roguelites and metroidvanias and boomer shooters, I'd be more critical of how unoriginal it is. But that's just not the current indie game climate, so I can't help but feel appreciation more than anything else.

This isn’t a joke. This isn’t a meme. This isn’t a copypasta or some stupid shit. This is a genuine cry for help. I can’t listen to anything but touhou music. At first I thought it was just video game music, or instrumental music, but no; even other game songs that I used to love are meaningless to me now. Songs from when I was a child, songs that previously had genuine emotional meaning and were attached to precious memories, are utterly worthless to me now – and I can’t enjoy any new music, either.

It’s not even that “mOdErN mUsIc iS bAd,” I mean I literally can’t reprogram my brain to pump out even the slightest amount of dopamine – or frankly any other chemical – at the sound and experience of music I’ve never heard before. Bands and musicians that are almost universally well-regarded for music that will be remembered throughout human history, and perhaps even afterwards, just sound like blank noise to me. I tried listening to Queen and had to stop because my stomach acids started boiling and I felt a migraine coming.

It’s not even just a matter of genre. I listen to remixes of touhou tracks of all kinds of genres, with and without lyrics, and I love every single solitary second of it. The sheer ecstasy that the climax of Starry Mountain of Tenma brings me is unrivaled by even my most tender and intimate memories.

My emotions are entirely controlled by what touhou song is currently playing, either out loud or in my head – and if I’m forced to hear any other kind of music in a public setting, like the playlist my bosses run at the restaurant I work at, my mental state gradually deteriorates until I’m forced to listen to fucking Cirno’s Perfect Math Class lest I suffer a complete mental breakdown in public. I was caught in my car after work singing Lyrica Live’s cover of Necrofantasia by the guy I have a crush on, and I nearly drove my car into the fucking ocean. I think he might’ve been recording me. It hasn’t been brought up by any of my coworkers but that doesn’t mean they don’t know.

My friends have desperately tried to pull me out, to introduce me to other genres, I even joined a fucking punk rock band for a little bit in the hopes that it’d recondition my brain, but I just found myself drumming the solos from Pristine Beat and Sailor of Time in every song we played. Nobody even noticed, they thought I came up with it on the fly, they called me a professional drummer in the making, but I knew I was just a hack.

I even hear touhou music in my fucking dreams. Literally, just last night I had a dream in which was hosting a fancy yacht party with all my friends and I could perfectly hear Jynx’s remaster of Plastic Mind blaring in the background, the ZUNpets pouring into the very ethereal essence of my soul as the dreamscape laid my inner desires bare.

I’m listening to 17.5’s version of Egoistic Flowers as I write this; I can feel Allah’s love coursing through me. Maybe he’ll take pity on me – for no other god seems to care.

The most underrated Crash game by a country mile. Buttery smooth 60fps, a pleasant aesthetic with fluid animations and some genuinely fun and creative level design (shout out to the safari jeep level). It was no small task taking over the mantle from Naughty Dog, and Traveller's Tales did an admirable job given the short dev time they had. I personally had a better time with this than Warped, and it's far better than the entries that came after. Unless you're playing the version with the ten hour long loading screens, I don't see why this game gets so much hate. The dark horse of the franchise.

ALL KILLER AND NO FILLER. IT'S MOEBIN' TIME BBY!!!

Inti finally went and finally made a successor to actual Gunvolt gameplay! I couldn't be happier! Sure our man is a DOG now and there's seemingly some gacha inspired loot shit, but LIGHTEN UP~ Give this one the same 10 or so years of marination and romanticizing the other games got, and I think folk will see things aren’t so different to how they’ve always been for our beloved anime rhythm game. FOR BETTER OR WORSE~

SO WE ARE BACK to the tagging multiple enemies and unleashing hell from a distance type gameplay that I've been missing from the series ever since they got us stuck in the spinoff hell playing as a non-platforming ass character whose whole thing was dealing with dudes one at a time real lame like with an overpowered air dash for half a decade now. I much prefer this! Considerately tagging and dancing between all the enemies you want to dust as you actually platform forward I've always felt was more engaging than whatever the hell vague flying shit Copen had going on.

All the bosses ROCK, there are ZERO unremarkable filler stages, you've got a big meaty perk system and extra as hell special attacks to get fiddling with for variety's sake, and even some hard mode modifiers for after ya beat the game too! Everything I'd want from a good ol' Gunvolt grind is accounted for and expanded! I loooove content!!! Kinda sucks the stages themselves are unaltered for those extra difficulties and the repeating content game is a biiiit excessive, buuuut I’m not really surprised about that kinda thing. JUST that classic Gunvolt experience, ya know??? A few good ideas and a couple steps forward and a couple steps back! What else is new from those guys at 'Interior Creators'??????

I thought I'd be way more irked having to witness Gunvolt seemingly take a backseat in plot importance yet again, but I did not! He is still very much at the center of most discussions, and the new main girl Kirin is super nice to see interact with him. The two of them got a real nice partner kind of relationship going on; it's pretty sweet! Really refreshing dynamic over the usual 'PROTECT CUTE GIRL' shit Gunvolt was always rocking in prior adventures. Recruiting a corny superhero club like it's the chad Mighty Number 9 and everyone eventually quipping together and busting GV's balls for being so old and overpowered now is just some hella cute found family kinda stuff; I love it. And having GV be SO STRONG that he becomes your go-to win button for the gameplay this time around ALSO weirdly feels just SO 'AZURE STRIKER GUNVOLT' and I'm totally okay with that as well.

Like the reaction time expected of you and enemy telegraphing has always been overtly suspicious in these games. TO SUCH A CONSISTENT DEGREE that I've come to assume the priorities of all this Gunvolt-ing have always been more about perfecting cool anime 'spectacle' over creating anything traditionally fair and action-game-like in the first place. I MEAN - Do 'REAL' action games go so hard out of their way to not just KILL you if their point is to grant satisfaction through overcoming difficulty? These games are ALLERGIC to killing you! And they've never been very tough to get through either! They've always elected to invent god-mode options and invincibility to keep this ANIME OVERSTIMULATION hype easy to lean into every installment!

So after being written in the story to be SO powerful, to have Geevs himself be made a resource and now like the epitome of this style over substance anime idea just... MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. They want you to bust him out now as this COOL secret weapon of yours whenever things expectantly get a little much and it’s time to UNLEASH THE AZURE STRIKER, MAN!!!!! I think it works! and it's pretty hype, dude... I enjoy nothing more than watching Geevs COMBO THE FUCK OUT!!!! I feel less guilty engaging with these 'easy modes' and can better appreciate the "LIGHT NOVEL 2D ACTION" VISION when these things are like definite meters and shit I'm working to build up over just the on/off switch versions of these ideas the older games had! REVEL in his POWER as you will! And combo-mad as stylishly and as cool as the characters are in the story along the way!!! THAT has always been 'GUNVOLT' to me. And even if we ain't playing as the guy normally, THE WILL OF THE AZURE STRIKER LIVES STRONG IN THIS ONE ALL THE SAME, DUDE~

The WORLD'S STRONGEST ADEPT is rightfully harder to get points with, but the scoring system and equips you can play around with ensure that you can still get high ranks with him by just ARC UNLEASH-ing smartly. It’s fiiiine!!! About as ‘STYLE OVER THE MAX POTENTIAL SUBSTANCE’-like as I’d expect from a real Gunvolt game anyway! The 'Special GV' Gunvolt only challenges are a really nice touch though; those are quite fun to engage with and optimize. A great bonus for anyone who still ONLY wanted to play as GV :)

I don't know what else to say! I had nothing but fear in my heart after iX2 came and pretended to be a 'normal action game' for a bit and sucked total shit balls, but we're here! We're finally here! A real GUNVOLT game again... With all the hype anime melodrama and simple yet satisfying FORWARD MOVEMENT-Y COMBO MAD SPECTACLE focused gameplay I'd ever wanted! It's even fully dubbed! English GV screaming and grunting is some GOOD FUCKIN FOOD for my ears, man. I loved ALL of it.

Your fate is sealed!!!