Azure Striker Gunvolt 3

Ever since I did that Mega Man essay a few weeks back I’ve been replaying these games for fun. Granted that’s what I was doing beforehand, but it’s not one of those cases where I replay a game because I hadn’t written about it yet. Nope, just playing these games for casual fun or to unload after a long day. The Mega Man games and Hades 2 are on my current rotation for games I play to simply kill time. No more or less, but there does come the thought that I can’t just play these games forever. That I must move on at some point and seek other games that have tried to follow up and improve on the formulas they’ve built. I’ve already played the Mega Man X series, so it sounded like a good idea to boot up Mega Man Zero. Did just that, and I was humbled in a way a majority of challenging games haven’t done to me before. What’s weird is that there are a ton of games I say are objectively harder than Mega Man Zero, but man I just suck at these games. That isn’t to say I dislike Mega Man Zero. I did enjoy it and started the 2nd entry right afterwards, but that one started whipping my ass even faster. So I’ve decided to take a break, and get back to the series when I have the right mindset for it. So much like any person out there who is despertae or has an addiction, I instead I decided to look towards the indie scene.

There’s not a lot of indie games out there like Mega Man. Most of the ones I know take influence from The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Dark Souls, Doom, and the list goes on. I always wondered why, because on paper Mega Man is not a very hard game to understand and recapture. However, when I did that essay it made me realize it actually is. Having to design levels so that information can be understood upon seeing it without there having to be a pop-up or explanation. Having to balance those starting levels well, because you make a multitude of them available from the start and you’re not sure which one the player will start with. The different weapons you acquire and wondering if any of them will break the balancing of the game. How you handle difficulty and making sure you don’t accidentally crank things to eleven. Game development is hard, and trying to understand what makes good design is even harder. It's made even worse if you’re trying to do a successor, because there’s gonna be high expectations for your work. That is not to say that no indie game has been inspired or influenced by Mega Man, because there’s been quite a bit. The Shovel Knight series, another one of my all time faves, is heavily inspired by Mega Man. With how it handles level design, teaching through interaction, and letting the player create their own difficulty through choice of what levels they want to tackle first. For the most part at least.

There was that game Gravity Circuit back in 2023. I really loved it. Looking back at my review I feel bad for criticizing the game for not copying Mega Man one on one. It’s the best Mega Man inspired indie game I’ve played, but there’s another one. A game that I’ve heard about a lot over the years, but never bothered checking due to its weird anime aesthetic. Younger me was a weird and stubborn person. The game I’m talking about of course is Azure Striker Gunvolt. A franchise that has existed since 2014 and is developed by Inti Creates. Fun fact, they formerly worked on the Mega Man Zero series as well as Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10. They worked for Capcom quite a bit before separating and now operating as an indie developer. Making a number of small scale titles and occasionally cooperating with other indie devs, like they did with Koji Igarashi to make Bloodstained: Curse of The Moon. Their catalogue of games is big, so big that I question if I should call them indie. However, their most noticeable series is Azure Striker Gunvolt and how it builds upon Mega Man and Mega Man X. Essentially being a supercharged power fantasy take on a well established formula. Now one reason I always dismissed this game was how it looked like it’s main goal was to be visually overstimulating, and I’m kind of right with that belief. 

An online friend gifted me the whole trilogy last year, and after getting frustrated with the second Mega Man Zero game it sounded like a good idea to cool off with another game. During this last weekend I played the first Azure Striker Gunvolt, and then I played the second game. Then I soon realize it’s only been three days and I beat the entire trilogy in one fell swoop. Basically my good friend gave me crack. Azure Striker Gunvolt is so much better than I was expecting. It feels great to play, jet through, and does enough to separate itself from its Mega Man influence. The first is awesome albeit the second half has a noticeable difficulty curve, and the second while more of the same adds enough quality of life features as well as a second character stapled on. Essentially being two games packed into one. Both titles are well renowned and often reference whenever discussion of Mega Man inspired games is brought up. Then you have the third one. The third & final entry to the Gunvolt series is not talked about at the same level the first two were. Having not sold as many copies, and coming out six years after the second when the second game only took two years to make. It’s also a divisive entry having made multiple mechanical changes since the last two games. Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 was different….. And it’s my favorite.

People need to realize that a lot has happened since Inti Creates made Gunvolt 2. They've made tons of other games, and from those games they learned to program and design different systems. I think it's fine for them to make something different, because if they had just made the same game again more criticism would've arisen for the 6 year development time.That is not to say Gunvolt 3 is a perfect game, or that it's immune from criticism. There are criticisms to be made on what it fails to fix from prior entries, but I had a blast playing this from start to finish. Today let’s talk about Gunvolt 3 and why it deserves your attention.

Story

The year is 200X….. Sorry, wrong game. Also I’m not exactly sure if that year works anymore, because we are far past the 2010s. It’s the distant future, technology has advanced, robots have been made to assist with day to day life, etc. What makes this future different is the discovery of superpowered individuals. ‘Adepts’ is what they’re referred to as and they are both feared and praised by humanity. Having the power to control the elements, manipulate reality, fly, teleport, and the list goes on. Adepts are a force to be reckoned with and corporations have done all they can to keep everything under control. Usually in the form of corruption, populace manipulation, lying, and trying to weaponize Adepts for personal self gain. Some Adepts cave in, utilize their power for evil, and side with the corporations. That or form their own terrorist group to take over the world. Other Adepts either try to live a normal life, or use their powers to do good. One such Adept is Gunvolt, a lightning wielding gunner who was taken in as a child and turned into a hero. In the first game he rescued a young girl named Joule, and from her he was given her muse. An artificial intelligence named Lumen who works alongside Gunvolt to protect the world. Several years passed and Gunvolt has saved the world multiple times. His powers grow everyday until he realizes he’s not like most Adepts. Something was different about Gunvolt. He stopped aging, his body started to change, and slowly lost his mind. The hero had lost control of himself, and from there onward sealed himself away. Isolation for safety.

Years pass and new Adepts have risen to either stir chaos or protect the world from the corrupt ones. One such Adept is Kirin, a young woman who wields a katana and superpowered talisman able to seal and contain Adept powers. She journeys to an underground storage to locate a special target. A creature referred to as a ‘Primal Dragon’ who wields powers similar and related to the many Adepts in the world. Kirin manages to defeat the dragon and using her power she turns the fiend back into what it once was. This secret bunker is where Gunvolt was stashed away, and he finally came back to his senses. Awakening back into the world he once knew and seeing all that has changed. A new organization is on the rise and they want to take over the world. Corrupting four adepts to terrorize the city as well as sending four other ones to retrieve Glaives. Those being relics th- I’ll be real with you right now the plot of these games are convoluted. What you want to focus on is that we have a badass swordswoman teaming up with a legendary hero. She will make unlikely allies, discover the truth, and find a way to restore our hero. Godspeed. 

Gameplay

The Gunvolt games are interesting. Rather than blast away enemies you instead latch projectiles onto them. These projectiles weaken the enemy, and when a second ability is used that being the protagonist’s adept abilities you quickly cut them down. An enemy that would’ve taken several button mashes to kill will die in seconds aside from boss fights. This a very neat system as it gets the player to switch up their skills and make quick decisions with the resources at hand. The first two games have you utilize a shield ability. The shield can fire lightning, but it can deal heavier damage if an enemy is within its radius. The third game having a whole new protagonist contains a bunch of new systems and skills to become accustomed to, but that doesn’t mean Gunvolt is now gone. Kirin has a sword and magical talismans. She can latch a talisman onto an enemy and when slashed it’ll do damage. She can deal damage normally via slashing, but it’s more to latch a bunch of these cards on so you can kill them in one hit. She can teleport in for the kill similar to how in Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment one of the tools allows you to zoom in on enemies. You can use this ability to cross gaps, tackle tricky platforming sections, and zoom through each level faster. Gunvolt even scores players based on how fast they finish stages.

Just because you have superpowers doesn’t mean you’re invincible. If you’re hit you lose a few of your talisman. Get hit without any on and you take damage. You can recharge talisman, but it requires you to double tap the down button when on the ground. Leaving you exposed to attacks, but we’ll get to that later. Aside from health you have energy, and this is charged from killing more enemies. If this bar is above one hundred you can swap Kirin out for Gunvolt. Maintaining his powers from prior games with one major change. Instead of having a lightning shield that’ll slowly shoot lightning you instead just fire a bunch of lightning rapidly. Gunvolt is designed to kill enemies and bosses quickly. A get out jail free card for when things go horribly wrong. The end of each level has a boss, and each boss has three phases. The first introduces you to its few attacks, the second throws in more, and third has the boss perform an ultimate attack that you want to be careful around. Fight fast, hard, and eventually you’ll knock the bastards down. At the end of each level a random set of rewards are given based on how fast you finished or how many collectibles you found. These come in the form of perks themed after past characters. Memories you can equip to grant special bonuses such as better health restoration, attack damage boosts, etc. Using them on future levels leads to evolutions, and if not you can spend acquired currency to upgrade their potency. Aside from that there’s not much else for me to say. Gunvolt 3 is what happens when you combine Mega Man X with Nine Sols, and I love it. Hold fast so you may slay the dragon. It's fire shall burn you no longer.

Thoughts

Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 is my favorite in the trilogy. It is different from the other two entries, but that is the reason why I enjoyed it so much. How it took a risky step forward & succeeded while not sacrificing everything that made those past two games amazing. The gameplay loop is still strong having players platform their way through levels and cutdown foes. There’s not as much platforming as Mega Man or Gravity Circuit, but one thing I’ve appreciated since the first game is how they mesh the protagonist’s ability with level mechanics. Such as platforms you can latch a talisman onto, so when the platform gets transformed somewhere else you can slash teleport to it. There’s a level later on featuring sandfalls. Bombs and platforms move down from them, and you can either take the platforms or using your talisman teleport slash your way up. It’s very fun and even if you do mess up by falling into a spike or bottomless pit the game doesn’t punish you in the worst way possible. Mega Man and games before kill the player instantly, but here it’s just a simple hit or getting respawned to the last piece of solid ground you stood on. The feeling of killing enemies in one hit is satisfying. I put this behind Nine Sols in the game category of, “Titles that make you feel like an anime swordsman.” When nothing happens, but then it's revealed the smallest cut was the deadliest. Then sad music plays or something or you get a flashback to when the protagonist was happier with their existence. You understand.

This game is an epic anime power fantasy, but this is where my first major criticism of Gunvolt 3 and all the Gunvolt games come together. Compared to the likes of Mega Man or Gravity Circuit these games are not hard. The first game has a sudden difficulty curve near the end, and the 2nd has a somewhat challenging final boss. As for everything else it’s not incredibly challenging. All your character abilities are designed to kill quickly, and if not you have special kills that can dish out damage easily while providing invincibility frames. To be fair these skills have a cooldown and require you building energy to use, but building energy isn’t that hard and some skills cost no energy at all. You don’t take that much damage from enemies or environmental hazards, and it’s easy to regain health unless it’s boss fights. Gunvolt 3 is the easiest amongst these three titles, and the only time I died was during the final boss. Part of it’s because your ultimate swaps you in for a second character with their own health bar, overpowered attacks, and when he’s out it gives Kirin back. Speaking of which, that final boss was the first time I died because it removed that ability from me. If the game isn’t challenging in level or combat design then how else does it go to challenge the player? Through its ranking system based on player speed and performance.

You get a higher grade based on how fast you beat a level, and how many points you earn. This is determined by how many enemies you kill without getting hit. This is a fun system and pushes players to replay levels for mastery. The caveat though is that a majority of players do not push themselves for high scores including me. It never worked for me in Devil May Cry, Hi-Fi Rush, and especially here. That and the bonuses you get for a high score aren’t particularly great. I will say that the way rewards work after levels is much better. The past games give you a few tokens to spend on fifteen items. All of which are hidden, so your rewards are randomized. These items are then spent on crafting perks and upgrades for Gunvolt at a shop. This system sucks as what you need isn’t fully known and you might get a bunch of materials you don’t need. Leading to me never acquiring any of these upgrades or perks for Gunvolt. The third game instead gives you perks based on how many collectibles you found in a level, or that’s what I assume. These perks are upgraded by utilizing them or spending currency, which I also never spent in the past two games. This is a better tradeoff as while perks aren’t needed to beat the game there’s motivation to utilize them. The past two games also had a problem with not explaining systems enough.

The base mechanics are shown really well, but it comes to bits like the crafting system, economy and equipable tools that’s where they fall short. I did not know I had different guns in the past 2 games until I opened my equipment menu. Neither did I feel pushed, because none of these guns were better than the starting one. Gunvolt 3 not only tells the player they unlock new skills after beating levels, but they also incorporate into Kirin’s arsenal well. Usually being a new skill or combo they can perform during combat. Yeah, they still aren’t needed to beat the game and I got through using basic slashes. It’s the incorporation, the attempt to refine bad explanations better and I respect it. Much like Mega Man you’re given choice on what levels you want to tackle in what order, and Gunvolt does this mostly well. The open choice on how players want to create their own difficulty. The high scale of replay value, but not every level is available from the start. You go through a tutorial and then you’re provided a few stages. Go through them, a midway section, and then get a few more stages for open selection. Then the final levels which are done in linear order. The first Gunvolt offers six stages after the tutorial with one placed midway after doing three. The second game has four, and finally the third game has eight but they’re divided. I’m not saying this is a downside or that it harms the experience. I’m just saying these games keep fluctuating on whether they want to offer choice in approach or be a linear adventure. I didn't mind it in the end. These levels are fun, well paced, go on for seven to ten minutes each, and the game as a whole doesn't overstay it's welcome.

The pixel art is great. Inti Creates have always done a great job replicating the look for games of specific eras. Same goes for music, but I do have a critique for audio. It applies for all three titles in that there’s too much going on. Explosions, sound effects, and especially character dialogue. I get the game wants to blend Mega Man with anime shonen-esque comic visuals, but my god the characters don’t shut the f*ck up. People complain that God of War: Ragnarok was annoying for telling players how to solve puzzles. Wait until those people see these when characters are both screaming and describing how to get through everything. Platforming sections, how to deal with enemies, provide banter, or shout how chaotic a boss fight is. I said earlier these games are quite visually overstimulating, but I have come to realize they are overstimulating in general. It’s bad if removing something from a game leads to nothing being lost. It’s worse if removing said thing actually makes the game better. Eventually my brain became numb to the amount of dialogue that went off. Some of it cut out previous lines as I progressed quickly through stages. For a good chunk of people I suggest muting it so playing the game isn’t this much of a clusterf*ck. Again, people cringe at JRPG dialogue. I want them to witness this now.

This finally brings us onto the story. I don’t know what’s going on. Partially because so much is going on during the gameplay. Another part of why is because there’s so much happening during the five or so hours these games run on each. Azure Striker Gunvolt has a fascinating universe & stories to tell. Intriguing characters, backgrounds, lore, and world building. Some of it's great and the rest of it just flies over your head. Gunvolt made me discover the difference between complex stories and convoluted stories. They are pretty much what their names suggest. An example of a good well told complex story for me is Metaphor ReFantazio. (I should play the other Persona games at some point.) A lot happens during the 50 hours it goes on for, but you can still understand what is going on. From how the game presents and unravels info. The main message and themes are never lost throughout, and adding everything together makes the story stronger. An example of a convoluted story is BioShock Infinite. A game that says a lot and says nothing at the same time. Mostly due to presentation and handling of the ideas on hand. It is an example of mixing complex with convoluted, because nothing adds up in the end nor do they stick. Azure Striker Gunvolt isn’t terribly convoluted the same way BioShock Infinite was, but it’s a story I kind of fail to come to grasp with. A damn shame as the writers put thought and care into creating these storylines. To have all these characters with intertwining narratives.

A lot of what I’ve been saying sounds negative, but trust me when I say I loved all these games. They were addicting from beginning to end, and part of that is thanks to a strong gameplay loop. These games are fun to play, feel good to control, have a high level of mastery, and understand what made Mega Man amazing to people like me. Doing enough to set themselves apart and be able to stand on their own two feet. I strongly recommend Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 and the rest of the Gunvolt games to anyone who loves fast-paced 2D action or the Mega Man franchise. Whelp, I ran out of Mega Man games and games like it to play. Time to crawl back into my little manhole and wonder when that childish spark will kick back in. Anways, I'm giving Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 a 9/10 for excellence at best.

9/10, Excellence