After all the high expectations fans have given me and underneath all the tight controls and flashy lights and banger music this game was really disappointing.
The biggest problem is just how at odds with each other the design and Gunvolt's abilities are, on one hand the level and boss design is clearly meant to be challenging (and not really that good) but on the other the dash and energy mechanics make it nearly impossible to ever die to them no matter how hard you're getting hit, and even if you do you usually just come back with infinite energy anyway. This contrast makes it feel like I'm just cheesing my way through encounters and not earning any victories, and it really feels like the devs should have committed harder into either a tough-as-nails experience or a full anime power fantasy because I don't really feel either and it just ends up as the worst of both.
The later sections of the game are also extremely underwhelming, featuring just a hallway with enemies, a boss rush, recycling the same miniboss 4 times within under 10 minutes, and a final boss that's one part kinda unfair and one part a total pushover. It also does that really really fun thing I really love that every game ever should do where you don't get a real ending if you didn't collect every little thing along the way so just for that alone this game deserves to be banished to the shadow realm.