I’ve covered Azure Striker before. With how lost the Mega Man games have become, someone needs to take up the mantle. Azure Striker is the series that proves that Mega Man’s failure wasn’t the gameplay but the design. Azure Striker is not here to replace Mega Man, it is here to replace the more arcadey Mega Man X. X and Azure Striker have tons in common, from wall jumping to nutty power-ups and an over the top story the games are eerily similar.

While my last review was for the 3DS version, we are going to cover the PC port this time so we will be talking about gaps in the port as well. 

Story:

The Sumeragi group is facing a power vacuum until one of their adepts (a mutant/human with special abilities etc) Zonda takes control in a coup d’état. Zonda has formed a group with 7 other adepts who want to use the Muse’s (an adept with the ability to amplify another’s power through song) power to amplify themselves. From this point on there are two stories that take place, one that follows Gunvolt and the other that follows Copen.

Gunvolts path takes him on a quest against the seven to save the muse: Joule. Copen’s path has him going against the adepts to save his sister Mytyle.

Sound:

I bloody love the background music. Anyone who has watched old anime can relate to the music. It is upbeat and fun. I’ve found myself humming the background score even though I have no bloody clue what the lyrics mean. The music is amazing while managing to maintain the feel of the gameplay.

The voice-over work is exceptionally well done. I don’t speak Japanese so I’m dependent on the subtitles and the tones in the voice to tell the emotion that characters are expressing. There is no problem here at all you can get a sense of anger, sadness, happiness, guilt and sorrow all from the expressions. The tones in the voice acting deliver every emotion being felt.

Graphics:

The graphics look great. They are highly polished anime characters, which is what I would be saying if I was playing the 3DS version. On a PC with a full HD display, they are lacking. You can see the pixels in the characters, especially in the hair. The characters and the in-world elements are really low quality. They seem to have been directly copy-pasted from the 3DS version. They aren’t bad as a whole but they could have been so much better if someone took the effort to scale them up.

The cinematics have been upscaled well. Each character looks great. I have to point out that this isn’t hard to do since the cinematics are 2D characters with little blocks of text. If you managed to fuck this up, you should be drawn and quartered by your user base you cunt.

The special effects are good, or at least I think they are good because I can’t analyse the detail in them since they move so fast. There are times when they look low quality but at the same time, they are so hyperactive that it becomes unnoticeable what is wrong with them.

Gameplay:

The core of the gameplay hasn’t changed much since the last Azure Striker. The controls are still: left, right, dash, shoot, power attack and specials. What has changed since the last time is a new character to control in the form of Copen. 

Gunvolt still plays as he did in the last game. There is nothing new here, he still has his flash field that locks onto tagged enemies and electrocutes them (up to 3), he can still dodge projectiles as long as his flash field is not in use and he can still use specials that he steals from level bosses. If this was just Gunvolt again, I would have found this game comparatively unimaginative. But we do have someone new in Copen.

Before we finish on Gunvolt I would like to point out that energy is everything for our dear GV. It is energy that lets him use his flashfield and it is energy that lets him evade incoming attacks. Energy recharges naturally and a little rapidly if you burn it out but you can also recharge it manually by quickly tapping down. While recharging enemy hits go through you but cost dodge energy so feel free to recharge mid-combat.

Copen seems like Gunvolt when walking but the second he takes to the air he moves like a bat out of hell. Copen is a very agile character with a ton of abilities that make him a hoot to play as. Like Gunvolt or Mega Man X he can wall jump but he can also jetpack jump which reduces the frustration of climbing walls. Once airborne there is no stopping this mad man, he fires rockets into everyone he crashes into, he cuts up those he doesn’t like while dodging everything coming at him. Sure, he has the standard gun but to keep it company he has a ton of power attacks that he obtains from bosses which make him feel more like Mega Man compared to Gunvolt. While Gunvolt’s victories give him new weapons in the special category, Copen gets additional power weapons to use which results in a greater diversity to the gameplay. Copen is easily the more fun character

Copen has energy like Gunvolt but the player can only use it; you can’t recharge it like you can with Gunvolt. You can use it for power attacks but when the energy is full Copen has a shield that blocks incoming projectiles, it does not block most normal attacks though so I would rather spend it wiping out the area in front of me. Copen doesn’t need energy to dodge, he has shells instead. The shells can also be used to dash but if you hit an enemy while dashing then Copen will open up a long-range targeted assault on the enemy and your shell will not be used. It is an interesting concept that tries to balance risk and reward.

There are special attacks for each character. Gunvolt can que up to 4 on the right D-Pad while Copen only has one. 

Onto the levels: Each character has 4 unique levels while the rest of the levels are shared between both. The level design is simple and straight out of Mega Man games. This would be fine if Gunvolt was the only character again but he is not, Copen’s hovering and air dashing abilities make some of the levels feel completely worthless. Most of the levels make me think that Gunvolt was going to be the only character again but when Copen was added the levels rather than being remade were just repurposed. Sections that Gunvolt would struggle with, Copen can just fly through which diminishes the value of the levels.

Levels are filled with a bunch of enemies of different sorts. There are a ton of unique enemies, each with its unique attacks and strategies. While most of the enemies are cannon fodder there are a few here and there that need to be found by either shooting at an area or using a flash field to reveal them before they can be killed. 

At the end of each level is a boss fight. These boss fights are the cream of the crop. They are intense, challenging but they do deliver a sense of achievement when beaten. More often than not I’ve found myself breathing heavily at the end of a boss fight. The reason that they are so good is because they have been thought out, they are not just challenging for challenge sake but have been created in such a way that there are particular times to attack and weaken them. This weakness has been done for both characters but as always you can take cheap shots with Copen’s dash attacks to weaken them earlier than expected.

Before we conclude the gameplay, I want to point out the sidequests or “Challenges” as the game calls them. After you first finish a level the game gives you a few additional challenges that can be beaten to acquire parts that can be used to either obtain or upgrade equipment. There are two problems I have with this:

1. The upgrade system is less important than it was last time around since most equipment can be upgraded by simply using it.

2. The challenges have been streamlined since you don’t need to pick the one you want anymore but there are still secondary challenges that are unlocked after completing the previous. These secondary challenges don’t consider how well you did last time. An example of this is beating a level with an “A” Rank or better challenge, if you complete the level with an “S” rank the next challenge may be to achieve an “S” rank which you have already done so you are stuck playing the level again.

In the end, the challenges are an attempt at replayability but are just stupid.

Conclusion:

Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 might have bad upscaling and busy work challenges but it saves itself by having great voice acting, decent level design and fun gameplay. The gameplay goes from average to excellent with the boss battles that really save the game from getting a poor rating.

If you want to check out the gameplay further we have a ton of videos after the score.

Pros	Cons
Great Voice Acting	NA
Comics deliver the story	Ingame graphics are not scaled
Fun boss fights	Cheap shot final boss fight when playing as Gunvolt
Cool special abilities	Nope, nothing here
Well designed levels	Copen’s levels sometimes feel patched in
Excellent special abilities	Gunvolt hasn’t evolved

Recommended Purchase Price: $10 or ₹700

Final Score: 7/10