2/5 ★ – Hill417's review of Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX 2.

Never did I expect Copen from Azure Striker Gunvolt to receive his own spin-off game, nor did I ever imagine that it would end up becoming a sub series. So I was delighted when his sequel was announced, my hopes were high that the second installment could deliver… and it did for the most part. The story starts out when a blaster rifle (yes really, a blaster rifle) transports Copen, Lola, and Kohaku to an alternate world where only machines exist. There only way back is to gather six keys in a mysterious tower that might also reveal the secrets as to what happened on this parallel planet. The narrative starts very lazily, a MacGuffin just comes out of nowhere and kickstarts the adventure. Normally I would be more forgiving on a game that isn’t story focused so long as all of that attention went into the gameplay, but this is the fourth game in the Gunvolt franchise so I was at least expecting the plot to have a little more thought put into it. So how does the gameplay hold up? It’s still the same mechanics that make LAiX so addicting. Every time you tag an enemy by ramming into them with your rocket boost, your ammo will fire on them nonstop no matter where you aim, but what if you’re more of a close quarters combat type of person? Well that is where the “Razor Wheel” comes in. By connecting a three hit combo you can slice your enemies with a massive buzzsaw, cutting them in half. It’s a cool new mechanic, but not much is done with it, there isn’t any room for creating and executing new combos. I might be ok with it being so limited if the EX Bullets were involved, but they have been omitted from this entry. You see every time you got hit, an EX Bullet would absorb the damage and you wouldn’t lose any HP. You could constantly refill the bullet gauge, but everything was so chaotic that I had to divide my attention between the enemies and my health which provided a challenge. Here, you can just spam heal over and over. Even if I get hit once I can just use Lola to heal me with their being no limit. The only real challenge I had was avoiding a pitfall. There is a hard mode, but I’ll get to that in a minute. At least for every boss you defeat you obtain their EX weapon to spice up the gameplay and discover new routes to get to the checkpoint. These new weapons vary from blasting a fireball, a propeller to jump up to unreachable platforms, to slowing down time, to a good old fashion gatling gun. Sometimes you just can’t beat a gatling gun. The real obstacle to overcome is surpassing your previous time and grade for every stage. At least all of the levels all have an identifiable appearance to coincide with the boss. The bosses have maybe three minutes of screen time, but because the voice actors deliver such deliciously evil performances with their lines they were very memorable. Oh yeah, this is the first Inti Creates game to have English voiceover since “Mega Man ZX Advent” in 2009. Brittany Cox, Daman Mills, and Jennifer Losi are very entertaining in their roles. Cassandra Lee Morris and Kira Buckland suit Lola and Kohaku perfectly. The real star is Alejandro Saab as Copen. Our titular character has always been very monotone which Saab displays in his tone, but because Copen has grown as a character and formed bonds where he shows a lot more concern for his friends which Saab also captures in his performance. LAiX2 isn’t a particular long game, which isn’t surprising, but a little disappointing because —again— this is the fourth title in the Gunvolt franchise, so the levels could have been longer. This is where hard mode comes in. Once you finish the campaign on your first play through you will actually unlock the bad ending. So that begs the question on how do you get the true ending? Well you have to beat the game on hard mode, but when you press start “hard mode” isn’t an option. In order to unlock it you have to find the four hidden emblems on every stage, THEN you will unlock hard mode. Beat the game again then you will see what the real ending is suppose to be. This is the most unorthodox way to unlock a difficulty, let alone the conclusion to the story. If we just had to collect the emblems to obtain the true ending that would be understanding, but the decision to jump through so many hoops in a short game just seems more like padding. There is a lot of good with Luminous Avenger iX 2 like some new ideas and a great voice cast, but it’s story and requirements it ask of you are a let down, especially when a sequel is suppose to expand upon what made the original great. If we ever do get a third game I truly wish that they can expand upon the razor wheel and at least add a little more length to the levels.