Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 (2016)

For fans of the original, Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 hits all the right places. More anime plot, with an English translation that seems almost a little too creative for the original Japanese dialogue, more characters, a different playable character, and the exact same game otherwise gives them more of what they love.

For the previous review, this comes off as a disappointment. Sure, there's more to play, but the design only comes off as cool as the quirks on each stage. The bosses are incrementally more interesting than their previous counterparts (save for the Resurrection boss, not much can top that), and all the previous systems from the first game remain unchanged, save for a nice add where challenges that give the player useful materials are reported automatically instead of the player having to manually report them.

The shining grace of this sequel, what makes it more of a 3.5/5 than a 3, is the addition of the new character, Copen. Originally an Adept-hating rival of Gunvolt, Copen has his own storyline involving his sick sister and an AI robot anime girl helper. The gameplay of Copen is interesting enough - he gains abilities Mega Man style from each boss he fights and can switch between them fairly easily, along with a strong attack skill and healing skill that recharge. When dashing into an enemy, Copen can lock on and cause extra damage. It's a little more frantic than Gunvolt's focused electric field but is a refreshing break from the gameplay of the first game.

Expect nothing but the frustrations of the first combined with increasing its strengths in the second, and you've got a game you better liked as much as the first one if you want to get your money's worth.

Can I make a confession? I never beat Gunvolt 1. I mean, I played through the story, but when you had to beat the end boss again without prevasion in order to even UNLOCK the final stage, I said "no". So I was the first to be glad when the difficulty was toned down in this game.

The best part of this game is being able to play as Copen/Acura. Though he never quite crosses the line into "anti-hero", and remains a villain the entire time, his gameplay was spot on. It was such a breath of fresh air from the tag-and-zap gameplay of Gunvolt, which never quite did it for me.

The worst part of this game remains the bafflingly obtuse item crafting system. Why this system would be deemed good enough to make it into the sequel is beyond me. At the end of my full story playthrough, I had crafted 3 items for Gunvolt and 2 for Copen, of dozens available. Of the 5 I crafted, I only ever equipped 3 of them, because the other 2 were useless. The main problem with this is that it relies on random drops at the end of a stage. I played through the intro stage 5 times trying to get a "Graym Culture", and finally gave up and said, "I'll just beat the game without it." I know that you can get items by completing the challenges, but it bugged me that the challenges have to be unlocked. This item crafting is so frustratingly bad that it takes a full star off of my review. Without it, this game would be a 4, contending for 5.

What finally saved the game for me was, ironically, the Shovel Knight amiibo. This thing is the gift that keeps on giving. With the amiibo, you can unlock a special boss battle with Shovel Knight, which is the most fun battle in the game, relying on reflexes rather than power-leveling. When you beat Shovel Knight, you get items for the character you beat him with. Copen's item is situationally good, but Gunvolt's item turns his gameplay into what it should have been all along, allowing him 1 air dash and 1 double jump for no EP. This gives him the same mobility Copen has, and makes him, for the first time, a joy to play.

The story, predictably, makes no sense. But what did you expect from a Japanese Shounen action game? As mentioned above, Copen is thoroughly unlikable from beginning to end. Gunvolt is your typical hero, but he never gets too grating about it. Zonda was just a weird main villain. I have no idea why they chose to connect the little girl Zonda with the boss from the previous game. Zonda's GV1 form is a great boss in and of itself. Zonda-the-little-girl is not threatening, compelling, or fun.

All in all, Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 was very nearly a great game. Inticreates clearly has "it", but they just need a better director to make overall design decisions. This game invites comparison to the various Megaman series. I can't rightly compare it to Megaman Classic, because they're just too different. For the others, I'd rank it above Megaman X5-X8 and all of the Megaman Zero games, but still not quite on par with Megaman X1-3 and the Megaman ZX series. Would I pick up GV3 if it were made? Probably. They're competent action games. I wouldn't be waiting in line to pre-order though.