So despite the fact I'm giving this a 4 I have some mixed feelings about this one. I actually finished the playthrough I'm using to review this a while ago but I wanted my thoughts to settle for a while before I reviewed it.

Storywise it works alright I guess until the last level which just sends the entire thing to hell in my opinion. like the ending plot twists just ruin it for me because of how stupid they are and all of them being dropped in literally the final stage (damn AU bullshit).

I'm not going to really complain about Copen's character change A. because I like absurdly down to earth and cynical Copen more then rageaholic Copen and B. because of meta reason of making him the protagonist making it make sense to change him as well as the story justifying his attitude adjustment to a degree with the reveals at the ending.

Now gameplay wise is where I'm truely conflicted. Because flying around and bouncing off enemies at lightning speed is a blast especially with speedruning and score attack runs of the levels. Like it's an absolue treat. But recently I made a walkthrough for a couple friends and the moment you slow down you quickly realize how awful the level design is.

Like the majority of them are just narrow hallways where you just bounce from enemy to enemy extremely easily and slowing down to explain everything really shows how little there is to them. The best stages are probably the Radio Tower and the Data Center from GV1 because they have more obstacles to avoid rather then just being there for you to just bounce off walls. With the Data Center having a section where you have to fly over a bottomless pit for a bit which really raised the stakes and the Radio tower having lots of spikes and other hazards on the walls that make you have to consider when to airdash. The rest are just boring and are only really interesting when Emblem hunting which can be fun but does have a couple stages that makes that really annoying due to a couple of weird placements.

So back to the good. They thankfully overhauled the upgrade system to not require random drops from the stages and only needing money to obtain

Alright back to the bad. The Special Weapon balance is absolutely atrocious with Orbital Edge and Anchor Nexus being the only ones you should ever use outside hitting boss weaknesses as they cost so little energy (or none in Anchor Nexus's case) that they make Darkness Trigger which is supposed to be the ride or die infinite energy super mode next to useless outside of some niche cases in boss fights. Like seriously Orbital Edge should cost like half a bar per use not like 1/12 becaue of how much damage it does and its range.

Also on to something neutral. Overdrive isn't handled the best on one hand thanks to Emblems it's not that hard to access. But on the other it doesn't do anything of value until you buy OD abilities which are extremely expensive.

Now don't get me wrong I really like this game. The core movement and gameplay are great. I'm giving it a 4 for that alone. But it just has some really glaring flaws that made me drop it from a 4.5.

Ok, I did like this game. Playing as Akira in a level design that was clearly made to play without touching the floor at all was amazing, I'm not good in action games or platforms, but man, just how many times did I reset the same level again and again just to finish it in a more "cool" way playing better and getting a higher rank I can't remember, it is really addictive.
However, apart from the ending, I didn't like the story at all. Akira was very silent, rarely making any shit talk about the Adepts, RoRo did the most dialogues in the game probably, and it is so strange to see a game that is supposed to be a spin-off about Akira putting him in a so "neutral" position. I mean, I did understand why he is like that in this game, but even with the context I just don't know why they should do that with him in his own game. Can't get what they were trying to do with the character.
Talking about the characters, man, just didn't like anyone besides the Blade at the end, they are just so empty, so fabricated, just some kids with the basic kids' personalities, and for the bosses, so forgetful, some voice acting and design was cool but anything besides that probably is one of the worst "villain" cast of the series... I mean, even the last boss was the worst empty version of himself.

Spoiler maybe:
Ok, but maybe, just maybe, one part of it was intentional and the rest was pure shit.
See this; a future, a world, a timeline that everything did go wrong, and those ghosts from the past (Akira and Asimov) are fighting still to force their ideologies, their 各号, in the world, on each other... But their time passed a long ago, but Asimov didn't even notice that and Akira appoints that probably he is defected, all this time we were fighting with a defective version of our villain. And for Akira, what can I say, he sacrificed his body to preserve his mind, but at what cost, he becomes just a moving adept hunter that doesn't even know anymore what he is doing that for.
But again, why
just why would they do that
I just wanted my disturbed Akira killing some adepts just for hate and see that character dissolving little by little, just how they were doing in the Gunvolt 2...

But, oh well, it was just something that I was liking too much at the end of the Gunvolt 2 and probably it affected hardly how I felt about this game story.

I really wanted to rank this game higher than this but I honestly couldn't, the game is very good as far as being 2D platformer in the same vein as Mega Man X, the controls are smooth, the story is okay, it's nothing deep really and if you've played the past Gunvolt series games you'll see the same pattern of storytelling. The music is very much amazing just as the prior games were as well.

Where this game falls short at is...well...exactly that...this game is short, about 4 to 6 hours long, and for a 2D platformer that's not bad, but the story also doesn't do anything to help how short it feels, nothing is sat on very long and it's obvious there is to be a sequel, but to me it feels like the sequel is gonna be the other half of the game. To add to the game's lack of length, it's not difficult to say the least, boss patterns were easy to get after dying once and the only challenge came from the end.

All in all, if you love the Azure Gunvolt games or Mega Man X/Zero series then definitely play this, just make sure you get it on sale or for cheap, the game really feels shorter than it is.

Probably has the blandest level design out of the games in the series that I've played so far - which is really saying something - but if you're playing "properly" and constantly pinballing off enemies and making the bare minimum acquaintance with the floor you'll probably be having too much fun to really notice. Movement feels great!
Glad that they streamlined what they did - the crafting system in the previous games felt pretty superfluous, and this game having you simply buy upgrades works a lot better. Also mid-play dialogue boxes no longer obscure half the screen and what EX weapon is what is clearly labelled in the menu, so well done Inti!
It's short and sweet. The idea of a spinoff from a previous game's Bad Ending is an interesting one even if I couldn't give much of a toss for the actual story in these. Also I feel like I'm risking prison any time I look at 99% of the female characters in the series - wish they'd rein that in a bit, maybe stop it entirely. But yeah it's pretty fun!

I didn't like this one, either. While literally a competent game as it pertains to graphics and sound, the level design in this game is even worse to me than it was in Gunvolt 2 at times. I was expected more closed off levels based around Copen's ability to pinball and that did not happen anywhere close as much to as much I wanted. The special weapons are generally lacking from 2 too, feeling even more situational somehow. I don't even want to talk about the story at all, because it sucks. It's just bad. I don't hate the game-- there's definitely some good sections and setpieces (the radio tower comes to mind) but it's lacking. Maybe one day I'll return to the series to score attack some of the levels, but this is the one I want to do it with the least. Unfortunate.

Eu zerei o jogo em praticamente um dia mas o final boss é um desgraçado, e isso me fez voltar nele depois de um dia.

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX

Baita nome grandinho hein, infelizmente o jogo não é tão grande assim mas não é algo que vai afetar sua experiência.
Avenger iX (pra não ficar falando o nome todo) é o tipo de jogo que tu pega quando tu não quer jogar algo super longo ou coisa do tipo e só quer se divertir, é um jogo rápido e divertido mas como estamos falando da inti creates você deve saber o nível de dificuldade não é mesmo? pode se preparar muito bem porque chefes são difíceis, welp ao menos se você estiver jogando sem usar a fraqueza deles.

Historia

Sobre a historia de Avenger iX é algo meio Difícil de explicar já que a serie Chronicles é um universo alternativo que se passa depois do Gunvolt 1, Copen e Lola estão a procura da fonte do "efeito borboleta" e se deparam com soldados atacando civis, Copen decide ir ajuda e você toma controle sobre ele. Você mata uns soldados e robôs e um robô maior até se encontrar com um grupo de crianças e aceita proteger elas se ele fizesse o esconderijo delas de base, e dai você pode escolher entre 3 missões pra ir.

Copen não é mais racista

So it being a Mega Man-inspired game, i finished Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX a day after it's release. The game can very easily be described as "short but sweet". I mean, it is a Gunvolt game so it wasn't really long to begin with but for the first time in the series, this game only has one ending. The gameplay is very quick and satisfying. While the Gunvolt series takes more inspiration from the Mega Man Zero games, Luminous Avenger is more reminiscent of the Mega Man X games. The main character, Copen, acquires EX Weapons by defeating each boss and each boss is weak to a certain EX Weapon. In terms of difficulty, while the main challenge of the series comes from trying to get the highest rank, on a base difficulty, i'd say this game is the hardest in the series because, especially early on, Copen doesn't have a lot of health. You can Prevade through attacks (Prevasion is an ability in every game where if you have enough EP (as Gunvolt) or Bullits (as Copen), you can nullify attacks. You can refill these meters at any time so you can really just Prevade through everything though you can't move if you do) but given that dashing into enemies to lock onto them uses up Bullits and you only have three (can be increased to five) and Prevasion uses up two......yeah, you might find yourself taking a bit of damage. The final boss also kicked my ass a few times. There are difficulty settings as well:

Fearless basically makes it so you lose all your points if you take a hit
Cautious gives you three hits before taking away all your points
Casual(?, i forgot the actual name) basically makes it so no matter how many hits you take, you'll keep your points

as well as optional equipment you can buy to make the game harder for you, like All or Nothing, which removes checkpoints or another part where your HP is always 100. You can even disable Prevasion if you want.

On the music front, the OST is decent with the vocal songs being bangers, as is the case for the series. There are three catagories for songs. Overdrive Songs, an Anthem Song and a Darkness song (i'll talk about those two later). Overdrive songs are triggered when you get 1000 points (and because you can lose these points if you aren't careful, you can also lose the song).

The game also has a story and it's nothing to write home about. It's mainly there to move the game along but it and the characters are nice to have around. Talking to the characters increases the chance of Lola's Anthem triggering, which basically revives you and gives you unlimited EX energy. You can still die and you won't gain any points but it's nice. Lola also has a Darkness form, activated by the EX Weapon Darkness Trigger. This also gives you unlimited EX energy and increases the power of everything but if you aren't locked onto enemies, you'll slowly take damage. The only way to deactivate the mode is to use an SP skill (by which i mean the only one) or trigger an event. The ending does leave me intrigued, though. Speaking of the story, the game does not take place in the same universe as the first two Gunvolt games so you could start here but i still wouldn't recommend it. Which brings us to....

The few flaws this game has. For starters, this game is definitely geared more towards the veterans of the series. Not only is it the hardest game in the series but the game doesn't really teach you anything. There is a manual (which i didn't look at because i've played this series before) but even aside from that, i actually don't know what most of the EX Weapons do and i just have to make assumptions based on what i see visually because there are no descriptions apart from names. The only EX Weapon that has any sort of description is Darkness Trigger. And speaking of EX Weapons, this game has the Mega Man 2 problem where one of the weapons is objectively the best one. Unless you're fighting a boss where a different weapon is more ideal for more damage, if you aren't using Orbital Edge, you're playing the game wrong.

So where does the latest entry in the Gunvolt series compare to with the rest of the series? Well, it's a great game but i don't think it's as good as Azure Striker Gunvolt 2. That game had a better story (not that this series is played for story) but also the best gameplay. You can either play as Gunvolt or as Copen and while i personally prefer the former, the latter has a more balanced selection of EX Weapons. So my ranking would be: Gunvolt 2 > Luminous Avenger > Gunvolt 1. While i wouldn't recommend starting with this game, for series veterans, it's an absolutely worthy addition to the series and Inti Creates' library.