User Review : Azure Striker: Gunvolt

Rise! Azure Striker!

Azure Striker: Gunvolt Review (No spoilers!)

Hey there Megaman fans! Are you in desperate need of a new Megaman game, but can’t wait for Might No.9 to drop? Look no further, because Azure Striker: Gunvolt will satisfy your Megaman needs!

That’s a pretty bold statement I’m making, but I stand by those words. At first glance, gamers may see just a blue guy dashing, jumping, and shooting robots with his gun, like Megaman. You do also go through various stages where you fight a mid-boss robot and then the end stage boss where you can get a new weapon. Also this game was made by Keiji Inafune and Inti Creates. That’s where many of the similarities end. Azure Striker: Gunvolt’s gameplay mechanics sets it apart from past Megaman games, giving it its own identity in the 2d side-scrolling action genre.

The main story is pretty basic. In the near future, an evil organization known as Sumeragi has had an iron hold on the world’s power supply for ages. When people with powers known as adepts started showing up, they decided to take them as prisoners and use their power to fortify their grip on the world. Gunvolt was one of the prisoners who was saved and recruited into Quill, a resistance force that’s been struggling to topple Sumeragi for years. The game opens up with Gunvolt going onto one of the Sumeragi buildings to kill an extremely important pop idol Adept Joule. He finds out that the Adept is a little girl and instead of killing her, he takes her under his wing. This forces him to leave Quill and try to live and protect her from Sumeragi. He still keeps in contact with Quill taking their contracts and getting involved in their problems.

Gunvolt’s main weapon for taking out enemies isn’t his gun, but his lightning powers. The gun he uses shoots needles to tag enemies. These shots alone don’t do much damage, but when paired with his flash field (the lightning power), he can shock enemies to death. You can tag a single enemy multiple times to cause more damage and also tag and shock multiple enemies. When used in the air, the flash field can slow down Gunvolt’s decent. His flash field can’t be used indefinitely as it uses up EP indicated by a bar that appears under the character. When you run out of EP, you’ll have to wait for a few seconds for it to recharge. You can recharge your EP before it runs out by tapping down twice on the D-pad. Without the Flash Field, Gunvolt is extremely mobile. You have a dash button, which allows Gunvolt to run faster. You can also wall jump, but cannot cling to a wall and slide down.

As you run through the stage destroying enemies, you build up combo points (called Kudos). When hit, you lose the combo. Thankfully, there isn’t a timer to the combo mechanic, so you don’t have to keep destroying enemies in succession. Stages do have check points where you can turn in your combo points and continue on. These are actually optional as you can jump over them and continue to build your combo. Reaching the 1000 point mark hypes the game by playing Japanese pop music. Losing the 1000+ combo stops the awesome music. At the end of the stage, you get a letter rank based on points and a couple of rewards depending on your score. These rewards are materials used to synthesize new items for Gunvolt to equip. These items can upgrade his defense, his recharge rate, and so on. Though most of the early upgrade have a few drawbacks like less money received or a capped points counter. These upgrades are not needed to actually beat the game, but it does make playing through stages and accomplishing challenges easier. You also receive gun upgrades after defeating a boss, though not all bosses give gun upgrades. The upgrades includes a spread shot, the ability to tag more enemies and charge your shots, and so on.

Challenges are a set of side missions that are unlocked after beating the stage once. These side missions range from beating the stage in under 5 minutes, getting a certain rank, or beating the stage without killing anyone but the boss. These challenges reward you with rare materials to build better gear and adds to the over-all replay value.

Graphically, Gunvolt looks like a Gameboy Advance or Super Nintendo game. It’s all detailed 2d sprite work. The art style used is very reminiscent of Megaman Zero, with its colorful futuristic backgrounds, detailed robots, and characters. Especially using the 3d function on the 3DS system really makes this game pop. I didn’t run into any graphical glitches either.

Speaking of pop, this game has Japanese pop music. The standard techno music found in the game is fantastic, but when the Japanese pop music starts paying as you rack up points, it really makes the player feel cool. In the story, it’s just Joule singing over his radio to make him more powerful, but you don’t actually gain any sort of power boost in the game. Many of the songs were catchy and fits in very well with the action.

This game is great for those itching to play a Megaman game. The style, gameplay, and challenge will put you back to those glorious days of the Blue Bomber. Even if you’ve never played a Megaman game, this 2d action side scrolling can get addicting. The game is short if you just play through all the stages to get to the final boss, which would take less than 2 hours. Its replay value comes from all its challenges and collectables.