Inti creates has gone on record with megaman zero for starting out kinda weak with an initial entry in a new platformer series that they're developing so I've got high hopes that gunvolt 2 and luminous avenger ix will be much better than this. Otherwise it's kinda just boneless mmz, though that doesn't mean it's bad. I'd probably still play this over zero 1 if given the choice. What I loved about the zero series though was its kinetic movement and gameplay, rich, foreboding, oppressive atmosphere and its genuine heartfelt story that really made the most of the lore and foundations that the x series had already provided and gunvolt kinda fumbles on all of these fronts, for one reason or another.
Azure striker gunvolt tries something similar to zero series from a narrative perspective by having it set in a neon cyberpunk dystopia but it does more telling than showing. Aside from the prison level (which does actually do a good job at showing the kind of experiments on living people that were going on), we're told how the sumeragi company has control on both ordinary people and adepts through various means but very little of that is actually shown. We know of a resistance and that its gunvolt's found family, but there's no resistance base that you can actually roam around in. We know that adepts are persecuted, but aside from copen, who's evidently a massive zealot anyway, we don't see much of that either. Maybe more is elaborated on and directly shown in later entries but even mmz1 managed to actually show most of the stuff going on firsthand. The writing and world simply aren't as compelling and after how good the zero series was in just about every way relating to its writing, world and narrative, gunvolt is a big letdown. Maybe I should've seen that coming when your target in the intro stage is an idol that one of your operators refers to as "one of [their] waifus", though. Again, maybe the writing picks up in the next entry, I dunno yet.
Regarding gameplay, Gunvolt mostly does well when it comes to core movement, but actual combat, level design, and intended approach to playing these levels is where it diverges greatly from the zero series...and I'm also not a huge fan of how that's handled either. In the zero series, you were expected to replay levels maybe a couple times not just so you could get a good enough score to maintain (or earn assuming you weren't a high enough rank alreasy) an A or S rank to obtain bosses EX skills, but because they were inherently challenging. Gunvolt stages are basically the opposite, being ridiculously easy but expecting countless replays in order to complete arbitrary side objectives and challenges that are also arbitrarily difficult and demand way more investment than the zero games ever did. If you want those S+ ranks, you basically need to kill every enemy in a stage without taking damage to keep your kudos going. That's just too much for me, I'm sorry.
Also some bosses just. Oneshot you?? I get that they have big special moves and they're mostly either preventable by killing them with a special before they can activate their own or by simply dodging it, but the true final boss has a seriously egregious one that requires you to be seemingly pixel perfect, AND you can't stop from happening.
Despite all these complaints, I still had a good time with the game. It's just not as good as mmz or zx to me yet and as someone who has loved most inti creates' knows they can do even better.
Also there's no saber, like guys you can't make a mmz spiritual successor without saber combat cmon
Azure striker gunvolt tries something similar to zero series from a narrative perspective by having it set in a neon cyberpunk dystopia but it does more telling than showing. Aside from the prison level (which does actually do a good job at showing the kind of experiments on living people that were going on), we're told how the sumeragi company has control on both ordinary people and adepts through various means but very little of that is actually shown. We know of a resistance and that its gunvolt's found family, but there's no resistance base that you can actually roam around in. We know that adepts are persecuted, but aside from copen, who's evidently a massive zealot anyway, we don't see much of that either. Maybe more is elaborated on and directly shown in later entries but even mmz1 managed to actually show most of the stuff going on firsthand. The writing and world simply aren't as compelling and after how good the zero series was in just about every way relating to its writing, world and narrative, gunvolt is a big letdown. Maybe I should've seen that coming when your target in the intro stage is an idol that one of your operators refers to as "one of [their] waifus", though. Again, maybe the writing picks up in the next entry, I dunno yet.
Regarding gameplay, Gunvolt mostly does well when it comes to core movement, but actual combat, level design, and intended approach to playing these levels is where it diverges greatly from the zero series...and I'm also not a huge fan of how that's handled either. In the zero series, you were expected to replay levels maybe a couple times not just so you could get a good enough score to maintain (or earn assuming you weren't a high enough rank alreasy) an A or S rank to obtain bosses EX skills, but because they were inherently challenging. Gunvolt stages are basically the opposite, being ridiculously easy but expecting countless replays in order to complete arbitrary side objectives and challenges that are also arbitrarily difficult and demand way more investment than the zero games ever did. If you want those S+ ranks, you basically need to kill every enemy in a stage without taking damage to keep your kudos going. That's just too much for me, I'm sorry.
Also some bosses just. Oneshot you?? I get that they have big special moves and they're mostly either preventable by killing them with a special before they can activate their own or by simply dodging it, but the true final boss has a seriously egregious one that requires you to be seemingly pixel perfect, AND you can't stop from happening.
Despite all these complaints, I still had a good time with the game. It's just not as good as mmz or zx to me yet and as someone who has loved most inti creates' knows they can do even better.
Also there's no saber, like guys you can't make a mmz spiritual successor without saber combat cmon