This is more of a mixed review, but there's something in this game that I really like...
They took Copen's gameplay from iX, neutered it, and added via a weirdly unexplained saw-blade attack the vaguest possible hint of Megaman Zero (referenced explicitly in the bisection death animation when enemies are cut). Enemies are more interesting than in previous Gunvolt games, and it feels like some effort was put into making them fit with the gameplay mechanics... but not really. There are special enemies that you need to hit from the top and/or back with the dash, but the solution is always the same, and these enemies don't really allow for much interplay or anything else that could be interesting. When dealing with regular enemies, it feels too much like rote— dash at enemy, blast while hovering down, land, repeat. You do also have a melee attack, the aforementioned saw-blade, but it is ABSOLUTELY FUCKING USELESS. I don't understand what they were thinking when they designed this,
Bosses are more difficult than previous games. They straddle the line between reasonable and unreasonable, and some of them are more on one side than the other... truly though, I enjoyed a lot of them. A few are BS, and the worst are exacerbated by the amount of visual noise on the screen. That was a problem with Copen in previous games, too, but it sucks here because of how difficult the bosses are. One boss in particular has projectiles with colour-clash with Copen's projectiles and it makes the fight unbearable.
The final boss is fucking awful. It's not that difficult in general, but it's boring as hell and it has one attack that is literally impossible to predict or reliably dodge, at least as far as I can tell. It takes forever and just sucks ass.
What do I like? Well first of all, the songs are real good in this one. Secondly, I sort of sympathise with their plight... Copen is pretty much just zooming a screen or two across and then bouncing off whatever enemies happen to be there, or else memorisation of enemy placement for a score run. They wanted to make a game where the dash was more limited and you would have to pay more attention to things on screen, enemy attacks, where you can land etc... a slower, more considered version of Copen's gameplay. At points it almost comes together, but it doesn't feel like they were able to really bring it together overall, and so you just have a gimped version of Copen with sort-of more interesting enemies and decent, challenging bosses. It's okay!
