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.

Game is noticeably better than the first, and playing as Copen is a lot of fun. I wasn’t planning on getting the Luminous Avenger iX games, but I think I might do that now. Getting the true endings requiring you to play the final stage again is stupid, but like with the first the idea is that you've already been primed for replaying stages while score grinding. And again like the first, I wasn't doing that. How this sequel differs though is in that its level design and enemy variety makes the less score-driven approach a lot more fun. It can be played more like the Mega Man X/Zero I keep unfairly expecting from this series. And while I know like maybe 5 Japanese words, I can tell just by listening that the localization went crazy off-script. I don’t mean to say that translations should always be as strict as possible, but it was obvious that the minor details of a lot of the dialogue were getting wildly altered. From beginning to end it comes off as much more meme-y, almost degenerate at times. What you get from this change though is a story with lots of really strong, excited personalities. So while wild, I found myself a lot more interested in the characters and even the world than I was expecting to. But there's no denying it, this game is made distinctly more horny than the first.

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?

Was able to spam bounce off the top of every single boss because none of them attack directly overhead. Completely trivialized the game but not my fault it was overlooked.. none of the bosses seemed to really be interacting with me, just attacking randomly. A little bit more polish (especially with the animations) could've gone a long way. Pulled up a guide a couple times because getting into one area required an unexpected extra step and unlocking a specific traversal method involved an unexpected element of randomness. It’s the type of stuff that I’m sure comes more naturally to people that have actually played Symphony of the Night, but I haven’t. Still, it left a decent impression and was fun enough when not stuck.

Came across this by watching some CrossCode speedrun world records and checking out what other games the record holder had run. Wasn’t vibing too hard with the aesthetics, but what got me to drop it was the time management system of the game. There’s a global timer slowly ticking down everyone’s lives, and I didn’t feel like dealing with that at the time. I think most people see systems like that and immediately assume it will cause stress, and it might be too hard because of it. I’m not immune to these thoughts, but I think the truth of these systems as a game’s core focus is that they’re going to be tested extensively and generously padded. It’s FOMO preventing people from wanting to experience it, even though the differences between playthroughs that come up from the system is its entire point. Surely it’s a type of game mechanic that through repeated exposure you can become accustomed to the idea. That said, I’ve had very little exposure to other countdown systems, and my own unshakeable bias towards them combined with the slight distaste I already had for UNSIGHTED’s aesthetics made me not really want to continue playing. I might return to this later, but for now it’s been refunded.