this is easily the weirdest of the gunvolt games, the gameplay's changed up significantly from copen's appearances in GV2 and iX, and i don't think i can outright say if it was for the better or for worse. while it's still fun and allows for a few platforming challenges, i don't really like how copen's old gameplay is locked behind getting 1000 kudos which means you're pretty much stuck without it on hard mode

speaking of hard mode, this is the first game to have one since GV1, and they actually locked plot elements behind it. as someone who plays these games pretty hardcore anyway, i didn't mind, but the final boss is extremely tedious on hard while being able to kill you easily, which i dislike

the plot itself is probably the weirdest part of the game, there's a lot of implications from the end that this could actually be the main gunvolt timeline or some similar timeline far into the future. this is due to multiple factors, particularly mother phase 1 using EX weapons from GV2 such as hailstorm blade and broad circuit, and of course the blatant fact that mother and her creator are alternate versions of lola and copen. outside of that, though, the story doesn't have as much impact as any of the other entries, which is a bit disappointing

overall i think it's actually a bit worse than gunvolt 1, but as one of the weirdos who ranks it at a solid 9/10 that doesn't mean iX2 is bad