Azure Striker Gunvolt (2014)

Azure Striker Gunvolt wants very badly to be a Mega Man Zero game. It does manage to add a layer of complexity on top of that, but the level design, story, and gameplay do feel a bit lacking.

During a point in the future where people have developed psychic powers to become "Adepts", a powerful adept (Gunvolt) fights against an evil corporation out to control all adepts. This, through its visuals, plot elements, characterization, and random pop idol music is painfully anime. Not just any kind, but the cheap and excessively cliched kind. There are all kinds of personalities present in here, but none of them are really all that interesting.

That said, it's the gameplay that shines with some interest. Gunvolt can shoot enemies to tag them - the more an enemy is tagged, Gunvolt can use an electric field to give them damage proportional to how much they've been tagged. It's cool to damage a whole bunch of enemies with well-placed tags, and an energy bar that slowly recharges with a quick charge move keeps players on their toes.

That said, the game's design can feel a bit repetitive and lacking, and some frustrating elements (skipping credits means no saving clear data! Bottomless pits! Having to craft and buy an object just to double jump!) keep this game from reaching something similar to the early Mega Man Zero games. However, it's short and sweet, has a bit of good taste, and only stays as long as the player beats their head against the wall (the leveling system ensures that).

“You do a lot for me, Joule. You give me the strength to keep going.” -Gunvolt

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Azure Striker Gunvolt. A bit of a mouthful, but a pretty cool title; I personally prefer it over the more accurate translation, ‘Armed Blue: Gunvolt’. Whichever may be your flavor, though, one thing was certain – I had utterly no idea where this game came from before I saw it. I carried a 3DS with me a lot that year of 2014, which made it even more surprising that I had never seen a promotion of it, with how much time I spent on the handheld busing back and forth the city. So when a friend sent me a proper trailer link and told me ‘It’s Mega Man’, I thought:

Ehhhm. And then he enunciated, ‘Well, Mega Man X-ish.’

I grew up with Mega Man. But I also grew up with Mega Man X, and although even mini-Dapper-Zaffre appreciated the former being ‘first’ to the latter, Mega Man X was just so much more up to my speed as a child. The NES classic was frustratingly unforgiving, while the SNES successor was by far flashier, easier, and actually had a story to it, which little-DZ loved. So click away I did, and discovered this modest little azure gem in the mines of Nintendo eShop.

Today’s subject is brought to us by Inti Creates, a company fashioned from ex-Capcom employees, who have worked on the Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX series (among other things), and even collaborated with Comcept on Mighty No. 9. If I recall correctly, at that time, Mighty No. 9 had still been but a Kickstarter and concept art, Maverick Hunter X fell through, and I needed my Capcom fix. What really caught my eye was that launch purchases of Azure Striker Gunvolt would come packaged with a cute little 8-bit platformer, Mighty Gunvolt, explained by Keiji Inafune himself in a video as being a fun little side game that featured both Gunvolt and Mighty as playable characters in a throwback to classic Mega Man. So I thought, ‘Hey, even if Azure Striker Gunvolt strikes out, at least I do get a cool little platformer out of it too.’

Yes, what drew me into the world of Gunvolt wasn’t even the main game, it was the idea of getting a bonus out of it too. I’m nothing if not a thrifty character! Yet, now that I type this it occurs to me that it’s one of the few video game purchases in past years that I certainly did not regret. Mayhap not the must-have top-page title of the summer, but a hardy little contender in its own right. So… what’s the electrifying draw of this three year-old title?

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.com/2017/08/19/azure-striker-gunvolt/