Inti Creates made some of the best modern Mega Man games including Mega Man 9, which despite being retraux and made decades after the series moved beyond 8-bit, is actually one of the best games in the classic series. Mighty Gunvolt was a 3DS freebie given away to anyone that bought Azure Striker Gunvolt before being offered standalone and eventually making its way to Steam with all the DLC included. Have no doubt, this is a budget side effort. But it looks and feels good.
You can choose between three playable characters: Gunvolt from Azure Striker Gunvolt, Beck from Mighty No. 9, and Ekoro from Gal Gun. Each has their own simple but unique skill set. Gunvolt can double jump and elecrocute enemies. Ekoro can hover and convert enemies into helpers. Beck can dash low and through the air. But you can't enhance their abilities in any way, and you get nothing from defeating bosses. At first I was disappointed by this, but that was before I understood what the game actually is.
Initially I thought the game was attempting to recapture that old school Mega Man magic by taking characters close to Inti and adapting them to an 8-bit enviroment, but that's not what this game is at all. Sure, there are 9 stages. There's plenty of running and gunning. And there are some bosses brutal enough to give any robot master a run for his money. But there are some peculiarities here as well - spikes and lava don't kill you on contact, and there's an ever increasing score in the corner. The truth is that this game is more old school than some people realize: it's a score attack game. Once you understand this, some of the design decisions will start to make sense. Every box you destroy, every enemy you defeat, every item you pick up adds to your multiplier. Doing none of these things for too long will make the multiplier drop back to 1.00. Your goal is to maintain your multiplier through the level and gain as high a score as you can before you reach the boss. You don't "get" anything for a high score (besides an achievement) beyond the satisfaction at the display of your own skills. You can play this straightforward and ignore the score but it can be addicting speedrunning these levels with each character. I still think there should have been some sort of upgrade/progression system, but I understand this game didn't have that kind of development time and budget.
Pros
- Cheap price
- Good looking retraux 8-bit art style with "chunky" characters.
- Feels and plays good.
Cons
- No kind of upgrade or progression system.
- Beck is trash tier. Seriously, he needs help.
- Difficulty imbalance. Some levels are really easy, some bosses are really hard.
I've heard great things about how much of an improvement Mighty Gunvolt Burst is and I hope it makes its to PC too.
3.5