Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

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Azure Striker Gunvolt

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Time to completion: 15+ hours
Normal and true endings achieved; did not quite 100% game

Azure Striker Gunvolt was released in 2014 as an exclusive for the Nintendo 3DS before being ported to the Nintendo Switch via the retail release of the Azure Striker Gunvolt: Striker Pack (the version I'm reviewing). A PS4 port of the Striker Pack was also apparently released on PS4 in 2020. The game was developed by Inti Creates as a sort of spiritual successor to their previous Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX titles. As in a Mega Man game, you'll be choosing various stages to complete, which emphasize left-to-right platforming with the goal of reaching a unique stage boss at the end.

ASG maintains its own sense of identity in terms of the gameplay, however. The biggest difference from your average Mega Man game is in how you attack enemies. Your player character, Gunvolt, uses a gun to shoot tagging bolts into enemies. These bolts do very little damage on their own, but their main purpose is to direct the flow of electricity that he is able to generate with his psychic powers. While this detracts somewhat from the visceral simplicity of shooting enemies to defeat them, it opens up more strategic possibilities for the player, as they are able to tag and attack multiple enemies at the same time. Depending on how many tags you insert into an object or enemy, you can also strengthen or weaken Gunvolt's electric attack.

Combat and exploration are entirely tied into this mechanic. When you fight psychic bosses at the end of each level, for example, the fight will often task the player with both avoiding telegraphed super attacks (more on that later) as well as exploiting moments of vulnerability, which are often the best times to tag an enemy. Gunvolt uses his electric powers to solve simple environmental puzzles through the game's stages (for example, he'll sometimes use his powers to power up an elevator or some other device that he needs to progress further) as well as navigate his environments (when Gunvolt is using his powers, his fall speed will reduce dramatically, allowing the player to strategically activate the powers in order to, for example, cross large gaps.

Before elaborating further on the gameplay structure, I should briefly discuss the game's premise and narrative elements. The plot and plot presentation here... aren't great. It often feels like what would result if took the script for Final Fantasy VII's early hours (up until you leave Midgar), and designed a computer program to mix it up with a swampy stew of cringy anime fanfiction written by preteens. As far as I could make out (the game desperately wants to be story-driven, but isn't sure how to accomplish this), the game is set some indeterminate time in the future, when an evil power company/world government called the Sumeragi Group is maintaining order by oppressing and controlling the increasing number of people who are displaying powers, which the game calls Adepts. The psychic abilities they control, called "septimal powers," can manifest in a variety of ways, including as apparently sentient projections of the adept's personality. Gunvolt is a 14-year-old adept who was raised by an adept terrorist and inducted into his organization, called QUILL, which fights against the Sumeragi Group. Gunvolt is tasked with finding and killing an adept said to be working for the Sumeragi Group, who is apparently able to use her singing voice to brainwash other adepts (or something), but he discovers that his target was actually the septimal projection of a young girl named Joule, who appears to be around the same age as Gunvolt. Gunvolt decides to rescue Joule and parts ways with QUILL due to their determination to have her killed. Or, that was the way the game presented it, but Gunvolt just goes on to do freelance jobs for QUILL anyway.

Keep in mind that this all sounds far more interesting than it actually is. The game tells its stories via a handful of short cutscenes, which do very little to establish the setting, and via dialogue exchanges that irritatingly play across the screen as you play through several of the game's early missions. Yet none of this dialogue or these cutscenes are enough to actually establish the setting in any real way. It's like the developers wanted the game to be both a story-driven experience as well as a fast-paced Mega Man-esque platformer, and the settled for a halfway approach that undermines both approaches.

There are a number of background and side characters in ASG, but it almost feels like the game forgets about them as soon as they're off-screen, as 90% don't really do much of anything or make a difference to the larger plot.

The writing is pretty bad as well. Eyeball-rollingly juvenile. Particularly the dialogue. This game feels like it was written by twelve-year-olds. Which, I guess, is appropriate, given most of the characters are 14-year-olds with snazzy psychic powers.

With that out of the way, let's get back to the gameplay.

The gameplay cycle of this title has a somewhat unique focus. When you complete a mission, you will return to Gunvolt's apartment, where he lives with Joule. Here you have a variety of options, including conversing with Joule (the game often informs you that 'you've grown closer' with her after striking up a conversation, but I never noticed it changing much in terms of the character dynamics), changing your equipment and weapons (more on that in a second), activating optional missions (ditto), and crafting new items and equipment.

Your character actually randomly gains crafting materials at the end of each level. Additionally, when he activates a mission (which is a challenge to complete within the level itself: say, kill two enemies at the same time with your electric attack, or find a particular item, or complete the mission under a certain number of minutes, etc.), he will gain additional crafting materials for completing these. These materials, over the course of time, will be used to build gear that provides a variety of beneficial effects for Gunvolt (some change how much damage he takes, for example, while others allow to do things like air jump or air dash multiple times). Since this gear can dramatically change how difficult or easy a given level is, the game encourages replaying its dozen or so total levels over and over and over again to gain new crafting materials, but also to achieve higher scores within the levels themselves (the game itself is only as long as it is because the player will invariably replay the same levels time and time again in order to engage with most of the game's content).

And this brings us to the game's scoring system, which is a prominent feature and also deserves to be mentioned. Unlike other Mega Man games, where the goal of a given stage is typically to just survive and defeat the boss, the focus of ASG is different. Whenever Gunvolt successfully does something, like kill an enemy, he'll gain a certain number of points, called kudos. These kudos decrease back to zero when he is damaged by enemy attacks too many times or messes up somehow. Throughout the level, the player will be able to 'lock in' their accumulated kudos, which directly contributes to the rank the player receives at the end of the level. But if the player ignores this mechanic and pushes on with their score, they stand to earn far more points via an increased multiplier.

This introduces two major elements to the gameplay formula. The first is risk-versus-reward. The player is incentivized to go for higher levels of kudos by ignoring lock-in points, but this also increases the risk that they'll lose everything if they're not careful enough. The second is that this focus on accumulating points alters the focus of the gameplay, which also contributes to the ways in which levels are designed and enemies attacked. Basically, the level design and enemy types you encounter are sort of vanilla, but everything is designed so that, if you learn their patterns, you can avoid taking damage. With the exception of boss fights, death isn't really much of a concern here: taking damage is, which means the mental calculus you'll engage in when engaging with enemies will be different.

Kudos most directly affect the game's sound design, as, after accumulating 1000 kudos, Joule's septimal projection Lumen will actually begin singing, changing the BGM. This might sound like a minor thing, but a large amount of ASG's OST is composed of J-Pop songs that are locked behind skill walls of this sort. If you do well enough in a level, you can even synthesize a pendant that allows the player to permanently change the background music of the level. I also feel obliged to mention that when you die, sometimes you'll trigger Lumen to revive you, making you invincible as a J-Pop song starts playing in the background. It's hilarious when it happens.

The overall impact, then, is that ASG isn't about surviving levels. It's about memorizing patterns and learning to play beautifully. The idea is that the player will most fully appreciate the game when they have learned the levels enough that they're focused less on avoiding damage and more on figuring out the best way to rack up the most amount of points. In that one respect, it feels a bit similar to something like a rhythm game, where, again, the goal is less about survival or completion and more about performance.

I do feel like the game would have been better overall if it had offered more robust in-game rewards for playing better, though. Had Inti Creates committed to the implicit structure of their game, it could have been a more compelling experience. More stage variety, with multiple paths, and more rewards for playing well would have especially integrated well with the crafting system, which is extremely underutilized in this game unless you make a point of trying to build everything. Not enough carrot at the end of that stick, imo.

With this understanding, I also wasn't a fan of the way the game essentially had me replay most of the stages AGAIN to collect chaos emeralds hidden jewels that are required to see the game's true boss and true ending.

Speaking of music, it's not bad. The normal BGM is the usual peppy Mega Man spinoff sort of music, but the vocal tracks are pretty good if you like that genre of music.

The pixel art itself is somewhat chunky looking on the big screen. But, look, this was a game built for the 3DS. On the tiny 240p 3DS screen, this game probably looks great. It still looks OK. The pixel art is nicely detailed. You're always going to sacrifice some level of visual appeal when you blow up a game built for tiny screens on a large 1080p set.

I did play a bit on the handheld screen, and, unsurprisingly, the image looks a fair bit cleaner there.

If there is one thing that detracted from the experience for me, it was the controls. Now, the game allows you to remap most of the controls in this game to different buttons, but when you're activating special septimal attacks, you have to aim your right stick in a certain direction to choose the attack, and then click in on R3. I found this to be particularly obnoxious, as it was easy to move the stick a few centimeters in the wrong direction when clicking in, resulting in the wrong special attack being activated. Worse, despite at least a few buttons on the Switch controller being unused by anything meaningful in this game, we're never given the option to remap the special activation button to anything other than R3. This especially becomes annoying when you consider that boss fights are frequently frenetic and require quick, precise button inputs.

Azure Striker Gunvolt is an interesting game, and I imagine anyone who has been yearning for a Mega Man Zero-esque experience has already played and probably enjoyed the heck out of this game. For me, though, it felt a bit uneven and undercooked in spots. At times, the game feels like it's suffering a bit of an identity crisis. I'm not sorry I played it, though.

@Late

Didn't see this. Great write-up, friend! Always nice to see new EO players.

I'd definitely recommend EO4. While it's the easiest game in the series, it's also arguably the most ambitious and different of the lot, with its freeing overworld exploration, resource management, and the way it separates the dungeons you explore across the world. It also has the best OST in the series, in my own humble opinion (although all the games have excellent music). I can't recommend it enough.

EO5 is great as well. Probably my second favorite entry in the series, and it does the best job of integrating the series' traditionally minimal narrative elements with organic storytelling.

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt + Hearts of Stone DLC

Total quests completed: 195

Hours played: 70 (PC); 25 (Switch)

Completed: All main story content for the base game and the Hearts of Stone DLC expansion; all side-quests I found that didn't relate to Gwent, because I hate Gwent; all but one or two of the monster contracts

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has sold 28 million copies or so, so I doubt I need to introduce anyone to the premise. Needless to say, you play as a mutated monster hunter named Geralt of Rivia who journeys across fantastical landscapes on a quest to find a young girl named Ciri, who may or may not be the same as the A.I. who you harass with embarrassing questions on your iPhone. Nah, actually she's just an adoptive daughter with an Important Destiny because of her Magic Blood or something. The game doesn't exactly lean away from overused fantasy tropes, at least in terms of how the main scenario progresses.

This game released in 2015, but, playing on a somewhat old PC, I was still startled by how beautiful and detailed the game's open world was. It might not be pushing boundaries today in terms of sheer graphical fidelity, but it'd be difficult to find a more evocative, fully-realized fantasy world. There is a wonderful level of detail paid to lighting and natural beauty in this game. Sunsets, foggy mornings, desolate swamps... everything in this game, landscape-wise, feels like it was designed to tap into the player's emotions.

The music is also quite good. Unusually distinctive from the bland scores that tend to accentutate the majority of WRPGs I've played over the years. I'm not even sure how to describe it? Epic polish fantasy folk music, maybe?

Consider the track Steel for Humans Banana Tiger, which sometimes plays as battle music.

This unique sound extends to tracks throughout the game. Vocal tracks are everywhere, filled with passionate hollering and yipping. This approach to sound design even extends outside of the music, and you'll hear these sounds, for example, when your character completes a quest.

The area where The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt really excels, however, is characterization. A true-to-form epic, TW3 features an enormous extended cast that Geralt will encounter over the course of his journey: everything from multiple monarchs, politicians, assassins, bards, other witchers, etc. all the way down to common peasants and otherwise normal people. Some of these characters show up more than others, but all of them are sharply characterized and bursting with personality and nuance. More than any game I've played in recent memory, the people in TW3 feel complex and three-dimensional, and it is primarily this humanistic commitment to showing the good and ugliness in everyone that both grounds this otherwise far-flung high fantasy setting, filled with wizards, magicks, elves, alternate dimensions, monsters, etc. and makes many of the quest lines Geralt can take on throughout the game so singularly compelling.

And this is where we transition to the side-quests. The quests Geralt can take on throughout the game (apart from the rote and often somewhat boring monster contracts, but more on that later) are inseperable from the characters animating them. The somewhat dull and uneventful main story, in grand open world tradition, feels more like a travelogue designed to acquaint Geralt with the people you'll meet in these strange lands.

The most notable quality of these side-quests is how organically they blur into the fabric of the larger narrative. Indeed, while there are plenty of disconnected chores and whatnot Geralt can take on that will never ultimately make a difference to anyone, this game goes out of its way to blur the lines between side-and-main quests. Side-quests often transition into main quest objectives. Sometimes, decisions made on side-quests deeply impact the way a main quest later in the game will develop. In the same way, main quests can also splinter out into a variety of possible scenarios to the explore, depending on what happen in them. Just as the characters intermingle and create the sensation that one is exploring a living world, so too does the quest design often give one the impression that most of what Geralt does on his adventure matters, both to the progression of the game's broader story and to the way these character's lives will turn out in the long run.

This rich social tapesty lends the game a narrative depth that is more often a quality associated with good genre literature than it is with video games.

The combat system in TW3 gets a lot of flak online, but I thought it was reasonably fun. Geralt whips and twirls around the battlefield with the grace of a ballerina, and while random encounters with scrub enemies usually tend to be pretty mindless affairs, stronger monsters and bosses often require the player to learn something of their movements in order to avoid being damaged by them. Still, the bosses in this game tend to be rote, somewhat disappointing affairs (the Hearts of Stone DLC actually addresses this complaint somewhat; in terms of difficulty and engagement, the fights with The Caretaker and The Toad Prince blow away anything in the main game), up to and including the final boss, who could be mistaken for a mid-game boss encounter, aside from the tedious health bar padding and waiting the player is made to do in order to disguise how lame the encounter really is.

As a side note, I thought that having to maintain two different types of swords (silver for monsters and steel for humans) at all times would become confusing, but it wasn't bad at all. Even when I had to learn to manually unequip particular swords when fighting enemies because, for some reason, the auto-draw option when aggro'ing enemies didn't seem to trigger most of the time. Particularly when playing on the Nintendo Switch. But I very quickly mentally adapted to pressing different directions on the D-Pad to sheathe or unsheathe my sword. Maybe it's even better this way, because, in a small sense, it puts me into Geralt's headspace. There's a real sense of ownership when you're manually drawing a blade versus having the game draw it for you.

Despite the functional simplicity of the combat in this game, there are apparently a lot of systems underneath that I felt were never really relevant to my playthrough. For example, when you upgrade your character throughout the game, perks will reference something called "Adrenaline Points," and the upgrades make utilization of these points sound quite strategic, but, even reading up on them online, I'm still not entirely sure what they're really supposed to do. It reminded me of my playthrough of Bloodborne a bit, when the game would reference obscure stats and systems that never seemed relevant to how I could actively play the game one way or another.

As far as I'm aware, TW3 is the first game in the series to take place in an open world, and I'm not entirely sure this was to the game's benefit. Open world games have often been accused over the years of being giant, open wastelands full of meaningless activities to check off a list. And this criticism applies to The Witcher 3 as well. The world is NEEDLESSLY huge. Aside from the usual herb collecting, there's very little to do when you're traveling between quest markers. Like many an Ubisoft game, TW3 attempts to address this by spewing out an almost overwhelming number of question mark icons across its landscapes. While some of these will lead to interesting new quests or towns that will unlock fast travel points, most of them are disappointing repetitions of the same boring content over and over again.

I guess you do have encounters with enemies in the open world, but I found that, despite the massive enemy variety in this game, 80 percent of the time I felt like I was either running into groups of wolves, Drowners, or Nekkers. More crucially, though, fighting enemies in this game is a MASSIVE waste of time, because you get almost nothing in the way of XP for defeating even large groups of them. Even considering the loot you pick off their corpses for alchemy ingredients, they're almost never worth the damage they'll end up doing to your equipment. And the game has a really annoying tendency of changing the player's moveset when enemies spawn and making it where Geralt sometimes can't even escape an encounter until he kills an enemy. Even in scenarios where it's a timed quest and there's literally zero benefit to fighting the enemy!

My brief discussion of the pointlessness of wild monster encounters brings me to a larger criticism of the game, though. The worst aspect of TW3 is how almost universally terrible and unbalanced the XP distribution is for main and side quests.

Put frankly, side-quests in this game rarely feel like anything other than a waste of time when it comes to the rewards the game doles out for completing them. You can spend fifteen hours grinding side content and barely inch your way up another level, whereas the XP rewards for completing main story content is so over-the-top that I often found myself gaining multiple levels at once while attending to a single quest. Despite the game's most rewarding narrative content being found in side-quests, the game doesn't really incentivize the player to engage with it otherwise, which is a damn shame.

This criticism actually extends to the way money is handled in-game as well, and my primary issue with taking on monster contracts was that I often felt, just like with the side-quests, that I was engaging with the content in spite of the game's progression mechanics. While the side-quests were usually well-written and sometimes connected deeply enough with the main plot that I could forgive the pathetic way the game doled out a meager amount of experience points to me, it's harder to justify the fact that monster contracts felt like a massive waste of time. There were a few surprises, but most of these contracts felt like incredibly samey, rote affairs: Run to person offering quest. Haggle for slightly more gold than they originally offered (the haggling mechanic itself is so basic that it might as well not be there; 99% of the people in this game are unwilling to part with more than 40 - 50 extra coins, and there's no reasoning with them or extra dialogue that might net you extra rewards. The game effectively locks 20% or so of your money reward for each contract behind a needless extra step, and it's annoying). Run to location where someone had a run-in with a monster. Squeeze trigger to activate Witcher senses. Following glowing trail to monster. Fight monster. Run back to person to collect reward.

Wash, rinse, and repeat.

There were a couple of contracts that tossed in some nicely troubling developments, or moral decisions to make, but the vast majority of them are just... there.

Well, so what? A job is a job, right? Can't expect work to be constantly surprising, and Geralt's work in this game is monster slaying. And, early on, when you're poor and desperate for coin, this makes sense. But the problem is that the monetary rewards for monster slaying as you increase in level never really go up. What once was a windfall becomes barely a pittance. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, mid-to-late game, you'll make triple the amount of money for killing a group of scrub bandits and selling off their weapons as you would for taking on a monster contract. And you run across a LOT of bandits in this game.

Simply put, the moment you're not desperate for money, monster slaying mostly loses its value and the contracts become just more items to tick off of a checklist.

Another issue I have is with shops in this game, and really the way the game handles loot distribution, resource management (like potions and oils), and shop inventories over all. Because, despite throwing loads of vendors at the player, one has almost no reason whatsoever to actually visit them beyond dumping off the loads of loot the player will collect over even a small period of time. In one of the game's most singularly bizarre design choices, once Geralt learns how to craft potions and oils, he only has to meditate and possess alcohol to have them automatically refill. So unless you're ignoring hard alcohol throughout the game (and there is a LOT of alcohol in this game; people in this world must be lushes, because you'll find liquors, beers, wines, etc. stashed in nooks and crannies around nearly every location in this game), you'll never need to drop by the shop to refill on healing items, or ever even really run out.

There's also a pronounced weapon, armor, and runestone crafting element in this game, but, as with the alchemy, it feels unnecessary. The equipment you'll pick off the bodies of fallen enemies, or obtain on quests/in caves/etc. are usually far more than enough for the relatively meager challenges the game throws your way. It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend an hour, or hours, tracking down the items needed to craft these special swords and whatnot when, by the time you'd be able to do so, you're already drowning in good loot that renders the crafting system irrelevant.

Runestone crafting seems like a better way to spend one's time, but it's also poorly handled. The DLC quest to find someone who can do this for you comes INCREDIBLY late in the game (level-wise, and it'll take 50+ hours to accumulate the amount of money you need to supply him with the materials he needs anyway), and, even then, requires the purchasing of rare diagrams, sometimes from characters that aren't even accessible to you anymore. Anyway, putting all that aside, the Runecrafter requires obscene amounts of money in order to supply him with the materials to craft greater runestones, which, let's be frank, are the only ones really worth crafting. Who wants to waste time and money crafting something that only adds a 2% chance of adding a burning effect when you swing your sword, after all? Well, even having saved up the majority of my money throughout the game (because, as I pointed out before, there's almost no sense in purchasing gear in this game; it's NEVER necessary. Shopkeepers are irrelevant outside of the diagrams they occasionally have access to), upgrading the runecrafter to the point where he could craft these greater runestones almost bankrupted me. It's almost like the developers knew that players would have no reason to engage with shopkeepers besides pawning off the obscene amounts of loot they collected every time they hit a new location or bandit camp. Still, when I have almost no money left over, even after completing all of the available Witcher contracts, clearing out bandit camps, etc. it's probably the case that CDPR didn't test this aspect of the game very well.

My issues with this game's RPG and progression mechanics extend also to the game's perk system as Geralt levels up. Because there are only a very limited number of perks that Geralt can equip over time, and, between gaining perk points from both leveling and from Places of Power dotted around the map, it doesn't take long at all to wind up with far more perk points than you're ever inclined to use. Some perks help by allowing the player to pump multiple points into them to increase their effectiveness, but misc. buff perks, some of which are so OP that you've be crazy to do without them (I don't think I'd ever unequip the ones that allows food to passively heal you for 20 minutes), don't allow this. The end result is that I've wound up with tens of perk points that I just have no reason to invest in anything else. Maybe the intention was to have the player utilize multiple 'builds' throughout the game, but once I've found a build that works for my playstyle, I don't want to deviate from it. I'm not even excited when I find a place of power any more, because I know it'll just give me another perk point that'll go to waste.

There's also an entire alchemy system in this game, with tons of recipes, items to use, perks to boost effects from alchemical concoctions, a toxicity meter that seems to go up when using some potions, etc. But it feels like wasted effort, because the game feels complete without having to dip into this side of things aside from the three or four times it forced me too. I think I got some use out of a potion that allowed me to see in the dark, but I would usually just end up drinking it by accident and making the my screen look washed out for minutes on end, so I quickly unequipped that as well.

Geralt isn't the best at taking selfies. Especially not at 540p!

Boy, that's a LOT of complaining, isn't it? I can't deny that the failures of this game as both an open-world experience as well as an RPG keep it from greatness for me. Yet, despite this, I would still count The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as one of the better WRPGs I've played, and a solid modern-gen AAA game overall. Like other seriously flawed games that I ended up loving, TW3 wildly succeeds in certain important areas. Areas, like music and character development, that are usually disappointing in Western-style (and especially Western-developed) RPGs. I can absolutely understand why this title is beloved, and how CDProjektRed could build the majority of its reputation on this one title (considering how massive the hype around it is, I really hope their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't disappoint).

This would normally be where I'd end my post, but I didn't just play the PC version of the game, did I? I want to discuss, if only briefly, the improbable port this demanding game received for Nintendo's diminutive Switch console.

So, first, an admission: I'm a BIT of a Switch fanatic, so I'm more inclined to be tolerant of its limitations as a platform. With that said, even I have to admit that, while TW3 on Switch is a perfectly functional version of the game, I... wouldn't recommend playing it exclusively unless it's the only platform you own that can run it. Despite some really noticeable texture pop-in, this version of the game works marvelously well when you're out and about exploring the world. It doesn't look nearly as pretty, sure, but it looks good enough to not be distracting. Especially on the smaller handheld screen. This is one of the best looking handheld RPGs ever made. But, for some reason, the game really seems to struggle with lighting effects and movement in cutscenes. Character movement looks weird and disjointed, almost like they're animating at some absurdly low framerate, which frankly ruins battle sequences in cutscenes. Even worse, though, is the strobe effect that often seemed to trigger when fog or dappling light came into the equation. That reunion scene at the Isle of Mists? I felt like I was having a seizure.

I think it's a great complimentary version of the game, though. It's a lot of fun to just kick back and explore The Continent before going to bed, or when monitoring something that requires you presence, but not constant attention. This won't matter to PS4 owners of the game, but the cross-save and cross-play function works brilliantly if you own the game on PC, as both Steam and GOG support save file transfers from the cloud.

So, long story short, if you go the Switch/PC route, go PC for story content and the more cinematic side-quests, and Switch for exploration/small tasks/ingredient collecting/monster contracts/etc.