I am a huge Mega man X fan. To say that I love the series would be an understatement to what Mega man means to me and the impact it has had in my life. I remember very vividly the first time I have played each mayor evolution of the series. I remember when I played Mega man X as a kid. I remembered the time my uncle bought Mega man X 4 and let us play it before taking it to his game store. I remember when my neighbor first let me borrow his copy of Mega man Zero, only to later receive it as a christmas present after asking for Zero 2 (my aunt thought the Z in the background was a 2, kind of funny though). I also remember coming back from work early to open the 3DS eshop and purchase the original release of Azure Striker Gunvolt. The fact that I remember it alongside my Mega man memories speaks volumes to how much Mega man DNA is contained within the game, and I do mean this in the best of ways.
WARNING: EXCEEDING AMOUNTS OF LOVE TOWARDS THE GAME AHEAD
Developer: Inti creates
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release date: August 31st
Price: $39.99
Azure Striker Gunvolt (ASG) was originally a 3DS game launched somewhere in August 2014 (remember the part about me remembering when I first played the game?). The sequel, Azure Striker Gunvolt 2, was also released on the 3DS. ASG was re-released on Steam, and both game were then re-released as the Striker pack on the 3DS as a physical bundle. The same striker pack was re-released on the Nintendo Switch featuring numerous upgrades. Among these upgrades are high-res graphics (for the cutscenes), a UI optimized for a single screen and 60 FPS framerate and all the DLC previously available making it the definitive version.
All of this raises a big question: Should I purchase this game even if I previously own another version? The answer is a huge YES! The upgrades make for a pretty amazing definitive version, the game looks absolutely stunning on the big screen and even on handheld mode the UI looks very crisp. But the biggest improvement is the fact that it runs at 60 FPS. The low framerate of the 3DS versions always felt odd, so going upwards to 60 FPS makes the action incredibly fluid and completely deserving of a game that is on the caliber of Mega man Zero. The Striker pack on the Switch is THE version you can look up to play when you feel like you need a dose of gunvolt.
Lightning strikes from EVERYWHERE
For those who are unfamiliar with how the game plays let me give you a quick overview. You control Gunvolt, an adept whose power is the electricity. You possess the ability to create a flashfield around yourself. The flashfield by itself does little damage to enemies, thankfully in classic Mega man fashion you are also armed with a gun. The gun is your primary way of damaging enemies. By hitting an enemy with your gun, you can “tag” them, when tagged, lightning will burst straight from your flashfield directly into the enemy dealing considerable damage. This changes the dynamics of combat a lot, you are not shooting to kill anymore but rather tagging multiple enemies to kill them with a devastating charge of your flashfield. The flashfield isn’t free though, accompanying it is an energy gauge or EN and depleting it will cause you overheat, which disables your flashfield until it recharges. You can instantly recharge your energy by pressing down twice which is nice.
(flashfield pic)
Of course, a run ‘n gun game can’t be called that without running! Movement is a huge part of ASG like with any good Mega man Zero game. Your movement options are similar: you can walk or dash in a direction, you can jump and wall climb, you can also glide through the air by activating your flashfield while in the air. Combining all the previously mentioned techniques makes up for a game that is as flashy as it is fun, and skillful weaving through the levels feels incredibly rewarding.
The level themselves are your typical Mega man affair. Each stage has its own theme and possesses its own gimmick which spices things up. Stratos’s level is a plant level and it has a plague that chases you and vegetation which is immediately destroyed when in contact with the flashfield. Gauri’s stage in ASG2 is a highway chase with a autoscroller motorcycle segment. Each theme plays to a bosses’s unique adept ability and no two levels ever feel the same.
Tag along
What makes ASG unique is the way this combines with the flashfield and tags and leads up to a completely new type of combat. Rather than being in a straight line from the enemy shooting them, ASG lets you run in between enemies, tag a land-bound robot while you jump and tag 2 flying enemies, all of this so that you can flashfield and kill the 3 enemies at once. The game feels more like you are the badass that arrives when the protagonists are in trouble and wipes all the enemies at once, except you are also the protagonist and the wiping is the game! But more than that, it also lets players tackle the situation with their own style and gives it more of a “I AM Gunvolt”.
(pic de combo de kudos)
All of this hard work and styling doesn’t go unrewarded though! Doing feats like killing 3 enemies at the same time or killing at enemy with full power will award you kudos. Kudos are a risk/reward system that can award you a huge score bonus or leave you worse than when you started. By accumulating kudos you increase your score multiplier, so more kudos equals more points! If you ever feel like cashing out on your huge score, then you can do so in various ways. The easiest one is to reach a checkpoint or finish the level (Ok, so maybe reaching the end of the level without using your kudos isn’t easy at all), both of these will take your kudos and multiplier and turn it into points. You can also perform one of your finisher skills like Astrasphere and your kudos will be converted to points too. But don’t hold on to your kudos too long! Taking damage damage will take away your kudos… and your honor.
Side note: You can adjust the kudos losses with 3 different modes, one where your kudos are taken after a single hit, another one where it takes 3 hits to take your kudos and finally one where you won’t lose them for taking damage at all. The score multiplier is much less if you play the latter.
S Class hunter
Getting a huge score in this game is more than just getting bragging rights. At the end of each level your points are tallied along with an extra score based on the time it took you to clear the stage, and the result will be used to give you a grade on your performance. I’m not sure which is the lowest rank, but I believe I’ve gotten a C as my worst rank and S+ as my best one. At the end of a level you are presented with a grid that contains various materials hidden behind boxes. Earning higher ranks lets you open more boxes, thus earning more loot. You can also collect medals which give you additional chances of opening the boxes. As you can imagine, being a better player will allow you to craft powerful gear later on.
Crafting in this game is pretty hard though. Material for gear have various rarities, so unless you are able to open huge amount of boxes after each stage, then chances are you won’t be crafting that much. To be perfectly honest, I consider myself a good player but I was unable to craft anything other than 1 boost band on my first play through, in part because I never replayed any level, so I missed out on very specific materials necessary to craft some things. Although the gear offers some benefits, it isn’t anything that is game breaking so there is no need to grind materials in order to craft gear. Equipment will make you stronger, but in some cases also weaker in some places like increasing your flash field damage but also increasing the energy expenditure. The feeling I get is that most gear is designed to be post-game content to make you breeze through earlier levels and aim for higher scores.
This isn’t even my final form!
You know how sometimes while playing a game you get this feeling that you are unstoppable? Or how sometimes you feel like you are not done yet and have yet to reveal your true power? Azure Striker Gunvolt captures both feelings perfectly! Kudos are a testament to your skilled play, and upon reaching 1000 kudos you will be treated with one of the songs from the Muse (Or lola). These melodies take over the BGM and their energetic vibes strongly accent this feeling that you are performing extremely well. But be careful, if you lose the 1000 kudos, then the music will gradually fade and return to the stage’s BGM. Feels like a bucket of cold water after a losing streak, but that’s kind of how you are supposed to feel after messing up right? However, if you are messing up really bad and die, then you have this random chance of being revived in full power mode! While in this powered up mode your flash field never runs out of energy, you can air dash and even jump in mid-air, and the best part is that this god-like state doesn’t run our unless you manage to die or finish the level. You are also treated with the idol songs which further helps to give you this feeling of being unstoppable.
Another side note: I’ve never been a fan of Japanese idols, but the music feels really great in the context of the game and I gotta admit that I found myself humming the songs in my daily life (emphasis in humming because I can’t speak Japanese or understand the lyrics).
(Pic de indigo destiny)
The version of Azure Striker Gunvolt 1 that is included is a huge upgrade from its original release. One of the initial complaints about the US release was that conversations were missing. For those unfamiliar, most of the story is told through cutscenes and dialogues with the bosses before the fight, however the Japanese release included conversations that occurred mid-stage and even mid-fight with the bosses, or rather, the US version removed them. This conversations were not absolutely critical to the plot, but they do revealed many interesting tidbits about the bosses and sometimes a background into the locations. As I said, it isn’t absolutely necessary to know that Viper was in love with the muse, but it is still amusing nonetheless. Another upgrade to the base version is the inclusion of the speed modes. This was later updated on the 3DS version and steam release, but it still is nice to know that we are getting the ultimate version.
For the achievement hunters out there, the game offers certain challenges that will task you with performing numerous objectives. The challenges range from getting a certain rank on a level, to beating the stage numerous times or even clearing it with constraints such as never using your flashfield or not falling into any of the stage’s gimmicks. I am not a big fan of the way this was implemented in ASG1, in which you had to pick up to 3 challenges before a mission, which made it frustrating if you were going for a challenge such as killing multiple enemies with a skill but accidentally did a speedrun clear and didn’t get the reward because it wasn’t picked. Thankfully ASG2 improved upon this and made each challenge cleared as soon as you met the condition without having to pick it. The rewards are materials, which is also pretty nice to help with your crafting woes.
Two games, two gems
Up to this point I have made very few distinctions between ASG1 and ASG2, and this is because they share the same skeleton, but an inclusion from ASG2 that makes the sequel incredibly superior is the addition of Copen. In ASG1 Copen was just the mid-progression boss, and also a character which wasn’t fully developed in my opinion. In ASG2 however, Copen is fully playable and brings a completely new style of gameplay to the game. Copen also helps to tell a story that rather than being a linear affair, is more like following 2 paths constantly spiraling. Each of them will play unique levels, with both of them pursuing different bosses in the search for the fragments of the muse. The variety makes it so that you have to play both sides to fully understand the story, instead of just being a matter of picking the character you think is the coolest. Perhaps the best part about this intertwining paths is seeing how they truly are in hot pursuit of the same target. For example, you can see in Tenjian’s level how Copen was first in the action deploying the anti-slippery devices, only to find GV in his storyline will go through a level where these devices were already deployed and left there. These guys are not allies or even rivals, they are enemies and this feeling of accomplishing your goal before the other guy you totally despise and most likely want to kill spices things up considerably.
On the gameplay side, Copen is a completely different beast from GV. Oddly enough it also has many nods to the classic weapon acquisition system from mega man. Unlike GV, Copen doesn’t have a flashfield and his gun doesn’t tag enemies. The best way to describe how Copen plays is to say he empowers foes with aggressive mobilty. Copen can dash in mid-aid and even dash in diagonal direction. Colliding into a wall will cause him to reverse his direction and keep going. This mechanic is expertly explained in the opening elevator section with Copen using this mechanics to ascend an elevator shaft with just a single dash that keeps on going. If you collide with an enemy instead, then the enemy will be locked-on and you will be able to shooting homing shots for some time. The way this plays out in practice, is that you are constantly dashing and constantly moving in a level, with occasional crash with an enemy to take them out while retaking the skies and keeping on moving. It is kind of hard to put in words just how awesome optimal, so I will let this video from youtube user “Hellbane_Azure” do the talking.
Beating a boss awards Copen with the enemies’s EX weapon, a lot like in classic mega man games. Copen also starts with the EX weapon of GV, which is kind of cool considering that Copen already fought GV in the past.
Speaking of bonus content, ASG1 includes the extra challenge levels that were later included, even the boss rush which was bugged for the longest time on the 3DS version. ASG2 is no slouch and contains the entirety of the DLC which contains stages with bosses from the original ASG, as well as some challenge levels which are ultra hard beasts on their own.
In a world of heroes…
The setting of the game is a world in which certain persons possess unique abilities called septimas. These user became known as adepts, and these adepts and regular people are only living in peace because an organization known as Sumeragi keeps things in place. Of course, we know that an organization such as this is bound to be shady and a civil war is inminent. It is kind of hard to talk about the story of 2 games, because the second game will undoubtedly spoil the first game, so I will let you guys experience it by yourselves. The setting isn’t groundbreaking by any means, but it does tie nicely the struggle between humans and adepts and most importantly, it gives a reason for super powerful people to find for peace or justice (which ironically are opposite sides).
Oh yeah, I was missing a very important point about the story! Without spoiling anything, the final boss of the first game bears a lot of similarities with the final boss of Mega Man Zero, and the final boss of ASG2 bear a lot of similarities with the final boss of Mega Man Zero 2, so fingers crossed for inti to announce the sequel, because the final fights of MMZ3 and MMZ4 were amazing beyond belief to the point that they are probably my favorite fights in the entire Mega man saga (competing for the top spot with the legendary X vs Zero fight).
Overall I loved this game as you can tell by the review, it reminded me of why I love the Mega man saga to the point that I would consider this the spiritual successor to my favorite arc which was the Mega man Zero saga. In this pack you are getting 2 extremely good games with improved features and gameplay, which in itself is already a steal! If you love action side-scrolling games, then look no further, this game is what you need in your life. It also has something in it for every type of gamer, whether you are a casual player, a completionist or even a speed runner, this game has everything to become a staple in your Nintendo Switch library. This is one of those gems that I can already see myself repurchasing 3 generations down the road on the virtual console as one of those games I MUST have in every platform I own.
