The moment to moment enemy tagging action is a lot of fun here, and the stages actually felt like they were a reasonable length in this entry of the series. Still easy as hell because I still couldn't really be bothered to go for high ranks. I think there's less of an intended emphasis on that this time around, though, or it's at least streamlined through Kirin's ability to teleport to tagged enemies. It seems much easier to string together combo streaks in this entry of the series because of the constant motion typical combat entails. General encounters are built really well with Kirin's slashing and dashing in mind, and so long as your eyes are open you can reach the end while chaining together your actions the most of the time. All 3 of the Azure Striker Gunvolt games have a special true ending, and the first two require you to replay the last stage to achieve them. It was a small irritant that I figured was brought on by the expectation that you'd be used to replaying stages in your grind for good ranks. But this time around you can get the true ending on your first attempt, if you're just smart about it. The longer stages also lend themselves toward this idea of a less rank focused balance of gameplay. What you get is more, quicker progress through the story and less of characters repeating slight variations of the same vague dialogue between your stage replays. It gives room for the conversations at your team's HQ to be longer, more specific. In Azure Striker Gunvolt 3, you'll see two of your recruits play a fighting game, and be shown that one is surprisingly really good at them. In the first two, you get lots of "Be careful out there, okay?"s. It really is entertaining seeing your teammates interact. A lot of the writing “quirks” from the first two are completely gone in this one too, and while its absence is clearly felt, it's surely for the best. If the same approach to localization was taken for this game there 100% would have been a “What the dog doin?” line somewhere, because Gunvolt was turned into a dog in this. Don't worry about that, though. Overall, the Azure Striker Gunvolt games have enough characterization and visual flair to keep me engaged even when the difficulty and rank grind don't. Before these games I was just a Mega Man Zero fan, but now I'm an IntiCreates fan.