Azure Striker Gunvolt

Terrible port. Graphics are muddy and not touched up at all, game won't run without an internet connection, despite being a fully single player game with no online aspects.

Game itself has a serious "jumpscare enemy" problem as well. Focus seems to be on speedrunning and perfect play, but there's a ton of enemy ambushes that are fully hidden until the perfect moment to hit you and ruin your multiplier.

Some bosses also have lame ambushes that you can only figure out by fighting them once or twice beforehand, you just won't figure out what to do in the moment because it's telegraphed poorly. Once you know it's coming, it's very doable, but the first time it's going to hit you. Memorize instead of analyze.

Pretty good game besides this, but the terribleness of this port is an easy "stay away" rating.

the game is great the only problem i have with it is that you need to change the game to English (japanese voice) to get the whole tutorial and a bit of extra dialog

The worst platformer ive tried out in a very long time. the "unique" combat system is so slow, you wish you could just use your gun. even when you get the hang of it and get into a flow, you're still, at the end of the day, standing still or jumping. you like spikes and pitfalls? those PLAGUE this game like it was made to be bad. screen crunch does nothing for anyones favor, the lack of boss identity goes away from the style of the game ig, but theyre still bad bosses. 90% of them you cant dodge, so its a tank match to see who wins. again, all youre doing is standing and jumping. and if you dont level up properly by the 3rd boss, you get hard locked on fake proto man because nobody told you, you needed to go back and do WAY better at these levels for the reward to mean anything, the challenges SUCK to do, but are obligotory if you even wanna remotley finish the game. its the worst parts of zx advent, mized with the bull shit jank of the last few x games. it tries so hard to be unique, but just ends up as a relly bad ad for a jpop idol.

First in the Gunvolt series, and it's a pretty good game. A game, which I disliked a lot when I first tried it. I'm glad I gave it another chance, and as I write this review I completed it twice already.

In this game you play the master of electricity. Your main way of attacking is "tagging" enemies with your gun, and then zapping them with electric field. The more times you tag the enemy the quicker you'll kill them. Once you're good at it you'll be killing the enemies very quickly and making sick combos.

Another tool at your disposal is "prevasion". Basically, as long as you're not attacking, you're invincible. Nearly no attack can hit you while prevasion is active. You can move trough the game at your own pace, slowly, and you'll get trough the stage just fine. The difficulty of this game is pretty low because of that... Oh, and if you die you have a decent chance of getting revived and buffed into superman mode, which makes the game even easier.

That is, until you get the bad ending. Because to get the true ending you have to actually get good at the game, and figure out how to play it without prevasion. But only for the final stage. I found this to be pretty bad design, since at the moment the game demands you to be good you can be very bad - and there's HUGE learning curve to go trough.

The game has some carrot on the stick systems for you to try to actually play it decent. You get scored based on your performance, and if you do well you get more item drops for finishing the stage. You're scored by your speed, and kudos you've collected. Kudos are basically your score, and you can get more by killing multiple enemies at once, killing while airborne, or fully tagging enemies. But get hit, and your kudos are lost, like a combo in Tony Hawk, when you trip. You can "save" your kudos by touching checkpoints or using a finisher attack. This requires you to play at a decent level... Well, unless you choose a different way to collect Kudos, where you can be hit up to 3 times, or where being hit doesn't deplete Kudos. Those come with lower multipliers, but allow you to actually get decent scores when you're not that good.

Also, the game encourages you to get good scores by providing a different song when you get over certain kudo threshold.

This is all good, but I don't like the random drops system. With better score you get more drops, but getting the drops you need means you have to farm for them. The game is only 5 hours long or so, but if you wanted to farm items it would be much much longer. I barely could craft anything while finishing each stage only once or twice. I don't think the grinding mechanics are necessary in this kind of game. You can also grind for level, which I think increases your damage output a bit. But even without grinding I could get trough the story, both bad and true ending, just fine.

This version of the game also includes an easy mode that allows prevasion even when you're attacking, and a hard mode, which limits some systems.

The story of this game is... fine. I feel like they could have told the same story better, if they presented it better. This game also has an issue with characters talking while you play, which is pretty distracting. Although this can be disabled. But at that point you're not getting to know the characters. I wish there was some base like in Megaman Zero, where we could interact with NPCs between missions to get to know them. This would make emotional sections at the end better, in my opinion.

I don't think this is as good as Zero series, but it's entertaining. I really like that you can decide how far you want to push yourself. You can go trough the game casually or try to be hardcore master of the game. Both gamestyles are (mostly) supported. The only thing that is unnecessary is the grind.

This game is a classic, and I'm sad it doesn't get the respect and recognition it deserves. Some people think it's the least solid game in the Gunvolt trilogy, due to it being the first, but I think that sentiment is far from true. This game is great, the plot, the badass ending, the characters, it's all baked up into this beautiful combination of textures that turn it into one beautiful Neapolitan pizza type-game extravaganza that will hold your attention throughout the entire game. 10/10.

I really just hate this game. I can't rightly call it bad but the combat as a whole is just not fun at all.
Tagging enemies and then being able to damage slows combat down to a crawl especially with no melee options

Just play Zero 1-4 and ZX/A Instead

"OVERSURGE! AZURE STRIKER!"

This game was a bit of a wild ride. I got the game on PC, which was my first mistake. No matter what you do, you're better off paying the extra money for the Switch version. This port has a plethora of issues that pile up, like the game always assuming that you're playing with a controller or the default control scheme being confusing (why isn't [C] the dash button??).

The gameplay is rather unique, but sometimes to its own detriment. Unlike Mega Man, where you can just shoot the enemy and kill it immediately, you need "tag" an enemy with your bullets and use the flashfield to sap their life energy away. With this skill, you can kill multiple enemies at the same time and get higher amounts of Kudos (points) which contributes to the rank you get at the end of the stage. However, this causes the game to fall into the trap of focusing so much on the score-game that the level design can suffer.

Almost every stage uses the same 5 enemies. The method to defeating them is the same almost every time: you just tag it and it dies in 2 seconds. Enemies are placed in a way where you need to jump past the enemy to see if there are more behind it, and it starts to feel old after a while. A mechanic called "prevasion" makes it so that you need to take 3 hits before actually taking damage, and a mechanic known as "Anthem" makes it so that you can get revived upon death. This, coupled with the fact that learnable EX skills break the score-game in half, can make the game feel easier than intended.

Thankfully, the bosses are pretty well-made. They all have random patterns, but they're crafted in a way where you can learn what's coming naturally instead of relying on luck. Very similar to MMZ. There's only one exception to this, and that's the true final boss. If you ever make it to him, just know that all of his attacks disable the flashfield (which you need to damage him), do ridiculous amounts of damage and that he has a near unavoidable screen-wipe attack that kills you in one hit and requires ridiculous skill to dodge without Anthem.

So yeah, the game has its issues, but there's more good than bad to be found here. Everything seen here is done better in the sequels, but this is a great first attempt. If you ever want to play this game, ignore this port and do it on Switch or PS4 with the Striker Pack version. You'll get extra dialogue and a better control scheme.

S tier game
better on the 3ds

i love this series. bought it on steam even though I beat it 3x+ on switch (switch version is better because it has MUCH more dialogue. Not sure if similar versions exist on other platforms)

mega man but a big number goes up when i do good

Classic case of Inti PC Port. You'll get a better experience just pirating the Switch Port on PC. Controller settings menu doesn't let you save without specific Keyboard inputs, character portraits are still the native 3DS resolution and unnecessary pixelated, all menus use the Nintendo style AKA B=Confirm A=Back...

Just many unnecessary things that turn a good game meh

Azure Striker Gunvolt 1 is the beginning of a masterpiece of a series. However this version is not the same as the striker pack and lacks the resolution increases that the striker pack has. If you want to get into this series this game does the job but i don't come back to this one even close to as often of its sequel.

Overall great game just not my favorite way to play it. 7/10

Before Gunvolt:
Hmm guess I'll check this game out, Reincarnation from the card game is great

After Gunvolt:
HOTOBASHIRE! ARMED BLUE!

Still one of the best action platformer's I have played, even when it launched on the 3ds.

eh, not for me.

A good first outing for Inti's own take on the megaman zero-esque platformer, the new gimmick isn't as polished in here, and the game encourages speed running so there's not a lot in the way of enemy variety (other games in the series do it better) but for the first game in the series? This does a really good job.

Play it if you like'd the megaman zero games with more of a focus on replayability

She azure on my striker til I Gunvolt

Reminds me of classic Megaman, very fun 2d scroller action game.

a solid run n gun platformer. nuff said

Given that my favorite Mega Man subseries also happens to involve a cool, pony-tailed hero, frenetic run-and-gun action and was made by Inti-Creates, I was already pre-disposed to like this game.

Now that I've played it through for the first time, I'm quite happy with my experience here!

- The world of Gunvolt is quite interesting; it has a bit of a slightly dystopic angle to the "what if humanity suddenly developed superpowers?" plot seen in shows like MHA.
- The pixel graphic artstyle here - which I'd describe as a hybrid between chibi and anime- is stylish, colorful and pleasing to the eyes.
- The gameplay is a blast! "Tagging" opponents before shocking them from a distance is interesting, and trying to achieve high scores is fun! Gives me a nice incentive to come back to this game and replay stages, as I'm not yet quite good enough to achieve the higher S ranks.

Now that said, there are some nitpicks I have here:

- The presentation of the story is weird. I like the Kid Icarus Uprising approach of having voiced dialogue play as you go through stages (which you can turn off) but given that it's in Japanese, I have to choose either to focus on my gameplay or reading the dialogue. I can't really do both at the same time.
- Having to get several items from stages and then have an accessory equipped before being able to see the true ending is not really conveyed to the player, which makes it very probable that you'll be like me and roll credits on the "bad" ending without realising there's more to play.
- I really wish there was audio balancing options here.

Overall though, despite my complaints, this is a really fun action platformer. And especially because this game frequently goes on sale, it's an easy recommend to anyone wanting a fun, Mega Man esque platformer to play through during an afternoon.

This is a fun and somewhat experimental Mega Man Zero-esque game. The graphical fidelity of the game could be better, and some of the systems are pretty annoying to deal with like the item crafting. I essentially ran through the game with the only upgrades equipped being the Naga and the healing skill. I would have liked to feel a bit more powerful and rewarded for my playthrough, especially since you don't get Mega Man-esque weakness weapons, but that was sadly not possible in this game. I highly recommend this game to fans of Mega Man, but caution that it is a little less polished with a more obviously localized script.

there is noway this was on a 3ds

Before I start with this review, let me give you some info. This game is a port of the original Azure Strike Gunvolt for 3DS.
This port doesn't work well with keyboards. And I could barely get a hold of the game with a controller.

Gameplay wise, it gets really confusing quickly. The main mechanic of this game is that you have to shoot an enemy and then slowly sap their life away by using your electricity, all the while you have to evade attacks. In itself, its not that bad of an idea.
Right up until you see what attacking looks like. You get a massive, flashing ring around the main character. This ring cover a good protion of the screen and often makes it hard to see an enemy attack while you do it.

Graphically, the game looks good. But it clearly wasn't made for a PC monitor, it was made for the tiny 3DS screen. There's a tons of flashing effects everywhere. On a 3DS, it would look fine, its a small screen and the flashy things help to focus on what's important. On PC it is blinding.
Add that that to the gameplay problem and you got a game that, despite having beautiful art in it, becomes visual noise.

If you're really interested in this game, play it on a 3DS. Or at least play it in a tiny window on PC