It’s a 2D shooter-platformer that has one eye on the past and the other on the present, coalescing to form a game that firmly takes the genre another step forward into the future.
Absolutely phenomenal game. It's made by Inti Creates, otherwise known as the minds behind other games like Mega Man Zero series, as well as the ZX series. Azure Striker Gunvolt was intended to be the spiritual successor to the Zero series, for obvious reasons why. However, as it stands on it's own, it's a fantastic game without the company's history considered. This was one of the few games that I do day one purchases on out of pure hype. The game itself is relatively simple. You play as a guy who jumps, shoots, and shocks people with electricity. You use your electricity by a gauge below your character that measures how much you have to be able to use before over heating. You can 'mark' enemies with your gun up to 3 times on a single target, and activating electricity will cause the marked enemies to be shocked by up to 3 bolts of electricity that lasts as long as you hold the button and the tag stands. It sounds easy, but the game is often designed to make the player feel more underpowered than anything. An enemy might have a shield to prevent you from marking them, for instance. Enemy placement might be in places that are risky to go to to attempt to mark the enemy to kill them. Even so, the game is relatively easy to learn for just about everyone. Mastering it, on the other hand, is the biggest challenge of the game. See, when you kill enemies or get special bonuses, you rack up a 'score' of sorts called 'kudos'. These kudos rise whenever you deal damage to an enemy with your gun or electricity. You can get additional bonus kudos through combat bonuses, such as double or triples (harder than it sounds), or air strikes, secret bonuses, etc. You are then ranked based on how many points you got at the end of the stage, and, depending on your time, the score is multiplied. C is the lowest rank you can get, and S+ is the highest. You'd think if you can get an S rank, an S+ rank is not too far off. But you couldn't be more wrong. The difference between an S and an S+ rank is not only simply not getting hit, but how efficient you are at slaying every enemy in the most efficient ways possible to rack up kudos combos. An example of this might be one stage that an S rank is required with 200k points, but an S+ is DOUBLE that amount. It's an insane challenge, but it's so incredibly satisfying when you work hard at it and finally get that S+ after memorizing stage patterns, paths, and where to execute doubles or triples to maximize your possible score. If there had to be one thing negative to say about Azure Striker Gunvolt, it's that it's tragically short, and casual players would beat it within a couple hours, but the replayability of this game is insane. Levels aren't tedious at all to repeat and go through over and over just to master it. It's not a chore at all, and you can accomplish some challenges to get some new parts for your character to do it again with upgrades to your character. And with the low, low price of $15 on the eShop, there is almost no excuse for any 3DS owner not to have this amazing game.
TL;DR: It's only fifteen bucks. You owe it to yourself to buy this game.
While the game's plot is mostly unnecessary and there could be a wider variety of enemies, the top notch production values and the game's overall fluidity are enough to seduce anyone who enjoys action gaming.
Azure Striker Gunvolt may just seem a nostalgic homage to the Mega Man games of the past, but speaking the truth it's an action game with a strong personality. Fast, furious and technical, it will be loved by the fans of the genre.
A well crafted 2D action game, Azure Striker: Gunvolt falls short only when it comes to fully develop some of its most interesting and original ideas. As it is, just hardcore fans of the genre will enjoy it.
Azure Striker Gunvolt looked like a second coming of Mega Man Zero. It's not, and that's no bad thing; it works on its own terms. However, between a lack of variety and some wild variances in difficulty, you get the impression that IntiCreates needed considerably more time and budget to invest in Gunvolt.
Azure Striker: Gunvolt manages to recreate all the fun of the old classic megaman games (AKA challenge) for players who want that challenge, while at the same time, giving slightly less challenge for people who don't want it. My only problems with the game are it's really quite bad character customization and its lack of enemy diversity. The story is also excellent, although it might be slightly confusing.
amazing take on plataformer action. the way its presented its both challenging and fun. the game's dificulty is given by how the player wants it to be in its own mechanics: a few items will either give you a shield or limit your max hp. you can refuse the checkpoints for more points in your score and the better your score, the better items you get. fast paced and its simple mechanics aply so well in the levels giving out enough variet of situations and enemies. the story is simple but that doesent mean its bad, its great and it comes in a great presentation.
i'll say its one of the must play for the 3ds
my only complain is what the translators did ... some of the dialogue was cut in the US version :P that kinda ****.
Um sucessor espiritual de Mega Man X feito pela Inti Creates
- Jogabilidade, mecânica excelente. Enredo interessante com plot twist e com final extra a pedido dos fãs se tornando o true ending do game.
- Legendas para várias localidades incluindo Brasil.
- Para acostumados com mega man o desafio será nulo mas tem o modo masoquista para vocês selecione ''other game modes'' e em seguida o ''hard mode'' assim você vai sofrer como se fosse um Mega Man X
A really bad case of style over substance...
before you even start the game throws at your face a lot of needlessly complicated plots and names, some of it will only start making snese about halfway through the game
the gameplay itself is needlessly complicated too, it could have been much more fun if they stayed true to megaman x, which they're clearly borrowing from.
gunvolt has to mark enemies with his gun and then press R to use his magnetic forcefield to hit them and/or float
a lot of areas in the game end up becoming harder than they should thanks to that gimmick.
the soundtrack is ok, most of it sounds like filler music from megaman x5
the level design is ok for a common game, but for inticreates it's pretty bad, they put out some of the best ds games ( in japan/europe ) and even their shinchan games had way better/ more enjoyable level design.
some of the levels will consist of trial and error, so youll be needing a bit of luck too.
most of the boss battles are frustrating and at times feel unfair, with the bosses leaving little to no room for maneuver,all boss battles try to be massive flashy set pieces, which would work better if at least one of them wasn't, it's unbalanced.
speaking of the bosses, each of them is a stereotype, some of them adopting the more modern anime stereotypes, but still being characters with absolutely no depth. as an example of a modern stereotype, there's a lazy teen who says something along the lines of "i could be watching cat videos instead of battling with you"
SO,
this is the equivalent of Inafune waving a flashy keychain with blinking lights and treating the player like a baby
the gameplay is very flawed, even for inticreates
the music is average, the level design is weak and slow paced with a lot of padding with gimmicky/puzzle segments to make levels seem longer than they really are
the american version is STILL censored despite people on the internet making an uproar about it before release and inticreates promising it wouldn't be censored here
this game is just Inafune tryign to go back to making games with Zero from Megaman X
just as mighty 9 is him getting megaman back, but he's missing on WHY people found Zero cool to begin with, so they spend all their tokens on style and none on making an actual good game or having a decent character development.
but instead of bringing back exciting new ideas he's showing why the series should remain dead, there's nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing of substance, it's just him trying to emulate what he thinks fans liked about the games.
and as a final insult, it graduated from the Shantae school of crappy endings
both the real and fake endings are not only short bad, but is also ends with "this is not the end, it's only the beginning"
which as the Super Mario Bros movie proved, it's a failproof way to beg people to ask for a sequel.
he's clearly trying to reproduce megaman X, trying to reboot the franchise, but even the first megaman had a nice satisfying ending that let you sit back and think "wow, this was quite a ride"
the ending to this made me close my 3ds and think "wow, what a waste of time"
even later installments like megaman 8 and x7 had a more satisfying ending
the only reason this game is not worse is because Inticreates had a solid base to work with for the gameplay, otherwise this would have been a much much bigger mess.
instead of playing this, get an emulator or a R4 cartridge and play their shinchan DS games, I mean it, they're far superior in pretty much every way.
which is surprising considering the "legendary" inafune is involved in this project and it turned out to be one of the worst from inticreates in years.
his flame of passion for games clearly was extinguished long ago
SummaryWhen lightning strikes, a new legend will be born. Azure Striker GUNVOLT is a 2D side-scrolling action game. The heroe's agility and control over lightning create a fresh approach to the genre that gives the player a unique feeling of speed and power.