Insane movement combined with gratifying melee combat compliments the Mega Man formula perfectly. Did take a while to adjust, and even after one playthrough I still don't feel completely in control with the grappling hook; but past that it hardly lets up on the high-speed action while rewarding exploration with upgrades and money. You can customize Kai with some fairly impactful equipment that can completely alter how you play. Some are better for survivability, others give platforming benefits, some enhance combat, the usual. Less usual are the burst mechanics where one can equip multitude of special attacks. These attacks come in a wide variety of utility or powers, though I never did remove the piledriver. That was just too satisfying. But you can buy other abilities like a weak healing, a temporary mobility buff, a giant laser, a literal shoryuken, summoning a platform beneath your feet, creating shadow clones, among many others.
Everything else is damn solid. The art, the music, the level design and... most of the bosses. Majority of bosses are the size of your player character, and I did find a few attack wind-ups or tells to be a little too subtle in this high-intensity game. Nothing one can't adjust too, or preemptively prepare for, it just took a few more deaths then I thought were fair. Of course this issue is something that lessens on repeat playthroughs; something this game heavily encourages with speedrunning, and experimenting with different chips and burst actions.

Not much more to add. You like Mega Man? And fast-paced 2D action games? Then play Mega Man X... then play Gravity Circuit.

Reviewed on Jul 29, 2023


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