Video Game / Blaster Master Zero III

As this game is a sequel, unmarked spoilers for the first two games in the trilogy abound. You Have Been Warned!

Blaster Master Zero III is a game in Sunsoft's Blaster Master series of 2D side-scrolling action-platformer games developed by Inti Creates and released on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store on July 29th, 2021. A playable demo was also released on Steam during the Steam Next Fest event on June 16th, 2021. It is the third and final entry of the Blaster Master Zero trilogy of the rebooted Blaster Master saga, bringing Jason Frudnick's story to its ultimate conclusion.

Zero III picks up right where Zero II left off, with Jason, Eve, and Fred, having destroyed the true mutant overlord Drolrevo and purged Eve's mutant infection through miraculous circumstances, arriving on Eve's home planet Sophia. However, upon their arrival, the trio are immediately apprehended by the planet's army, the Sophia Force, and separated. While being held captive, unknown circumstances throw the entire prison into chaos, allowing Jason and Fred to escape with Jason's upgraded tank, the G-SOPHIA SV. With Eve thrown into super-dimensional space and nowhere to be found, Jason sets off on one last adventure to recover his partner and bring an end to the mutants for the final time.

The game's main gimmick is Alternate Dimensions, taking the form of glass-like tears in space-time. By using the VRV System, Jason can send himself and/or the G-SOPHIA SV into a parallel dimension where the rules of reality itself seem to shift and change. While this parallel dimension is plagued by many dangers, including lethal dimensional rifts and mutants, braving this dimension is the only way Jason can move forward on Sophia the 3rd.

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Blaster Master Zero III contains examples of:

• Absolute Xenophobe: The Sophia Force, which is the planetary government's forces, will attack anything that could possibly be a threat to planet Sophia even without any evidence that the targets really are threats.
• All There in the Manual:
  • The song that plays during the cutscene prior to the penultimate boss battle of the True Ending route is titled "Lucia NORA-2057" on the official soundtrack, revealing that Lucia has the same model number as Eve, retroactively explaining some of Leibniz's behavior towards Eve during the events of Zero II.
  • According to an episode of Gunvolt News Channel, Jason's added Hover ability in this game is the result of Jason's research on Copen's flight suit. This is reflected by the boss fight against Jason in Luminous Avenger iX 2, where Jason already knows Copen despite the two having never previously met.
• And the Adventure Continues: Though Jason and Eve's story is done, their lives certainly are not, as now within super-dimensional space they set off in the SOPHIA-J1 to both protect the universe from the divergent mutants who refused Eve's order to withdraw, as well as find a way to return to the Earth so they can be with their children.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The superboss battle with the SOPHIA-J1 has its currently equipped weapons displayed next to its health bar so you know what's coming. Considering the absurd number of weapons (and combinations of said weapons) the boss has and how they have no other telegraphs, this is very helpful.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The Anti-SF Bullet fires a high-velocity penetrating bullet that does increased damage to armored enemies. While primarily useful against SF robots (as the name implies), it is also effective against some robotic/armored mutants. This includes Kane's Metal Attacker in the final battle.
• Arc Welding: The game's true ending strongly implies a connection between the original Metafight series and Blaster Master: Blasting Again.
• Arc Words:
  • "Reversal". On its surface the word is used to describe the effects of using the VRV System to travel to super-dimensional space, but the story also uses it to mean Screw Destiny.
  • "Family" and familial bonds are also a central theme of the plot, particularly how the bonds between the people you are closest to can persist across space and time no matter what happens. This is a key lesson that Jason takes away from his encounter with Eva Gardner, Jennifer and Kane's daughter, and this is what compels him to take up Leibniz's suggestion to create human children with Eve and have Leibniz become their godmother.
• Art Shift: Both the Bittersweet Ending and Golden Ending graphically depict Jason and Eve (along with Fred in the latter ending) in 32-bit, as opposed to the usual 8-bit graphics used in the series' gameplay and cutscenes.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Multiple instances:
  • Mostly averted this time around with the Final Accel Blast, the ultimate form of the Acceleration Blast and the Full Acceleration Burst. Unlike its predecessors, the Final Accel Blast enables free movement and attacking while charging it, you can no longer lose charge, and you can gain charge faster with the Gaia System. The only real drawbacks remaining are that it still requires a full bar of SP and that it takes a while to get going, but it is much more usable than its previous incarnations.
  • The rain cluster falls into this. It is a rapid-fire primary weapon that rapidly burns biological and mutant enemies, but its extremely short range severely reduces its utility since it falls to the ground shortly after being fired.
  • A lot of the sub-weapons for both the G-SOPHIA SV and Jason personally fall into this. To give examples:
    • The Ix Shredder is a close-ranged spinning wheel of death that works a bit too closely to Jason to be impactful in a fight, especially against the faster, more aggressive mutants and SF Droids.
    • The Unchained Effector lets you spam counters...if enemies enter its tiny radius.
    • As for the tank, the Ignition Spark is a shot-cancelling electric discharge that releases two sparks to hit foes - and only those initial two sparks. Once deployed, it can't be deployed again until the first one wears out, and if one of the sparks makes it back to the generator, it blows up on itself.
    • The Phantom Solid lets you make your own platforms to change up the terrain. You only get five blocks max, however, and while it certainly sounds cool on paper, making use of it for anything besides puzzle solving is inefficient and largely a waste of time - why create a platform from which you can rain down fire with the rain cluster when you can just arc the shot normally?
• Bag of Spilling: Once again, G-SOPHIA SV starts off with almost none of the weapons or upgrades that G-SOPHIA had by the end of Zero II, keeping only the Crusher, Dive, and Recoil Jump. Justified in that the Sophia Force had stripped off the other weapons and modules while it and Jason were in their custody, presumably to reverse engineer them. Eve ratified Jason's pilot gear between games but didn't have an opportunity to brief him on it, thus he's once again lost most subweapon and Blast Counter options, and while he still has Accel Charger, it's reserved for super-dimensional traversal on foot purely to be able to survive in there.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Early on, when first using the VRV and Accel Charger to enter super-dimensional space, Jason remarks that he can't rely on this for too long, as eventually it'll become too much. This is true, expend too much time in there and his health will plummet rapidly until dead. When Kane hears of this later, he warns Jason not to overdo it with the VRV in a similar fashion, thus a player would naturally conclude that entering super-dimensional space without the safety of the G-SOPHIA SV is best avoided whenever possible. This is false. If Jason doesn't spend a sufficient accumulative time in super-dimensional space before the Final Boss, he doesn't run the risk of being warped into a super-dimensional being — which, while on paper sounds like the sound course to take, means he won't be able to follow Eve and unlock the route to the Golden Ending.
  • The True Ending route tries to make it nebulous who exactly the player character by the end is. Jason’s MA got destroyed shortly before, so the MA being driven would make sense and he promised Eve they would meet again, and the super-dimensional space bordering Earth is much less harmful to humans,^note As was established back in Zero thus the Accel Charger isn't necessary to survive at least in the immediate sense, so it makes sense as a location to enter from to find Eve. Beyond that, in Trilogy’s case the player’s voice is distorted like Jason’s is on VRV mode. In the end you are actually playing as Kane, whom despite the narrative’s attempt to hide his identity there are quite obvious hints as to who he is right away.
• Balance Buff:
  • In a pre-release preview, Jason now has access to better offense compared to previous games, with the ability to fire homing bullets and hover with a jetpack in the overworld, and a dash maneuver to start the game with in the dungeons.
  • G-SOPHIA SV's Mana Meter system has now been split into two gauges determining Main and Subweapon usage. Appropriately, compared to Zero II, where draining the entire gauge would result in a full shutdown, in this game draining one of the gauges only results in a partial shutdown, with access to the second gauge still available. However, depleting both gauges still forces a full shutdown like normal.
• The Battle Didn't Count: Regardless of who you play as during the final boss battle, Kane will taunt Jason after the fight, claiming that his Metal Attacker is still primed for battle. Apparently Kane's just that good of an Ace Pilot to survive getting pounded by a fully-upgraded SOPHIA-J1.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Unlike the previous game, where you could easily vaporize Cerbeboss with a Full Acceleration Blast, in this game Metal Cerbeboss uses the Full Acceleration Blast against you.
• Big Bad Ensemble: There are two Big Bads. One is Planade-G, who has come back to abduct Eve and take over the Invem/mutant forces. The other is Kane Gardner, who mistakenly thinks that what Jason and Eve are doing is going to birth a new breed of mutants to attack Sophia in the Golden Ending so he falls in line with the false accusation that Jason and Eve are threats to be eliminated, but it turns out that they are trying to birth a pair of twin non-mutant human children. This mistake precipitates the True Final Boss fight.
• Big Damn Reunion: Jason spends the entire duration of the game searching for Eve's whereabouts after she is apprehended and separated from him. He eventually catches up to her in super-dimensional space, and The Stinger of the Golden Ending sees Jason and Eve sharing a hug.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • While most bosses have kanji subtitles behind the English ones that serve as Japanese translations, the Boss Subtitles for EIR replace the usual descriptive kanji with katakana saying "Flower!".
  • The EARTH MA-J1 SOPHIA-J1's "J1" designation looks like the Japanese katakana character リ with its strokes reversed. That katakana character could be the first character you would use if you transcribed the English word "reverse" into traditional Japanese script. This is fitting since the theme of this game is "reversal".
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • If Jason fails to pursue Eve into super-dimensional space, she remains there forever while also ensuring the mutants never threaten normal space again. Fast forward several years later, Jason and Leibniz are working with the SF thanks to an arrangement by Kane, and the SF would come to form an interstellar union with the other planets, Earth included. Jason, however, is left permanently pondering over how he could've avoided allowing Eve to enter super-dimensional space by herself, had he "reversed fate" at that point.
  • The Golden Ending is also somewhat bittersweet. On the one hand, Jason is able to reunite with Eve, who has now become the Mutant Queen, in super-dimensional space where they manage to conceive a son and daughter named Roddy and Elfie respectively. On the other hand, both of them have been changed by their prolonged exposure to super-dimensional space, rendering them unable to live in normal space. Furthermore, a number of divergent Mutants known as the Lightning Beings are disobeying Eve's will and continuing their attacks on the universe. As a result, Jason and Eve decide to entrust Roddy and Elfie's care to Leibniz while they focus on stopping the Lightning Beings, vowing to one day return to Earth and reunite with their children.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: The Life Energy Guard power ups serve as this.
• Book Ends: Area ??? is actually the setting of the first game, except you go through half the areas in a different order - Area 3 for Gonbei, Area 5 for Kanna, Area 7 for Stein, and the starting point in Area 1 shortly before the final fight with Leibniz. The very final shot is that of Jason and Eve departing on the SOPHIA-J1 in super-dimensional space. However, an eagle-eyed viewer will see through the pulsing exactly where this place overlaps in reality: it's the very same cave Jason first set out in on the SOPHIA-III, so long ago.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Spider Limbs upgrade is consistently useful throughout the entire game despite being the first and simplest tank upgrade obtained; it makes platforming easier by removing acceleration/deceleration from the tank, and its ability to prevent the Mutant Attackers from attacking you or inflicting Collision Damage is very helpful when they're one of the most common mutant types in the game.
  • While the Metal Attacker is massively outgunned by the SOPHIA-J1, some of its sub-weapons and mobility options can actually prove more effective. In fact, exploiting this factor is the key to winning most of the Metal Attacker fights, including SOPHIA-J1. To give examples;
    • Kane's Missile is a dumbfire missile spread that expands outwards as it travels. Compared to the Warhead Missiles, it has an easy time hitting its mark when up-close, and has an expanded range when firing from further out.
    • Thunder Break doesn't have all the cool features Ignition Spark does, but that's exactly why it's better. It has massive range and gives Kane a dedicated method of dealing with enemies below him and can be used repeatedly, whereas Ignition Spark drops like a rock and then can't be deployed again for a few seconds.
    • Most notable of all, the recharge system vs. the Gaia system. The Gaia system allows Jason to quickly restock his abilities simply by falling from a significant height or by getting hit. On paper, this is fantastic. Kane, however, can spend boss fights hugging walls and flying for a significantly longer period of time because Jason's Wall Drive uses energy and Kane's doesn't. The method of acquiring energy for Jason means he has to put in an actual effort to get energy back short of simply goring himself on enemies, whereas Kane can mostly focus on fighting while his energy restocks. More saliently, tying all of his weapons to the Gaia system means Jason is in a lot of trouble when his sub weapons run out, something that is deliberately made clear if the player sticks it out as Kane fighting Jason in the finale; once Jason runs out of energy, he's helpless, while Kane can still keep ticking away at Jason or use the Accel Blast. For all the Gaia system is talked up, the simple regeneration system can serve Kane far better. However, Kane's sub weapons can run out of ammunition, and the original Metal Attacker's automatic regeneration does not reload his ammunition, so Kane can wind up in big trouble if he runs out of ammunition.
• Boss Bonanza: Area ??? has five boss battles against the other Metal Attackers you encountered in the previous game, and they're all punishingly difficult (though the battle against Kane should you choose to be Jason is considerably less so). It certainly makes you feel like a true badass if you beat them all as the severely underpowered Kane in his SF tank.
• Boss Subtitles: Actually explained in-universe as an enemy identifier made up by the tanks' AI. Jason is explained to have one too - "Blaster Master".
• Brick Joke: Partway through the game, Leibniz has the chance to talk to Jennifer Gardner, upon which he quips "Put in a damn control stick.", in reference to how the GARDUA still uses a steering wheel despite being a flight-based Metal Attacker. During the climax of the True Ending route, Leibniz shows up in her upgraded Rising GARUDA, which does indeed use control sticks this time.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Repelling Planade-G irreparably breaks the G-SOPHIA SV due to Jason's inability to maintain the vehicle while racing against the clock to save Eve. It is later replaced by the SOPHIA-J1, which Jason uses to fight Kane during the True Final Boss battle.
• Call-Back:
  • An in-game screenshot of Jennifer and Eva's room shows that they have a photo hanging on the wall depicting Kane and Jennifer as they appear in the credits of MetaFight.
  • Kane's Metal Attacker and its attacks are based on the original game. His playable time in the Golden Ending has some more like Metal Attacker sub weapons having ammo counts, sub screen being inspired by the original sub screen, etc.
  • Jason in his first trip in super-dimensional space, remarks on his time in such in Zero (Area 9) The fact that earth's super-dimensional space isn't harmful to humans comes up in the Golden Ending as Kane finds he doesn't need accel charge to survive in it.
  • The music that plays in the Sophia Force Base, the first area of this game, is a remix of the music that plays in the battle against Goez in MetaFight or the Master Boss in Blaster Master, both which are those games' final bosses. Having a remix of a previous game's final boss music in the first area of this game fits this game's theme of "reversal".
• Chaos Architecture: Planet Stranga has a different geography when the planet is visited in this game than its geography in Blaster Master Zero II. Kenwood explains the vegetation has such wild growth that drastic changes in Stranga's geography are apparently a regular occurrence.
• Continuity Nod: Jennifer brings up Sophinium at one point in regards to the Metal Attacker's fuel source; it was previously introduced in Zero II as a mineral that Stein, the pilot of the ATOM, naturally produces in his body and can be fed into Metal Attackers to fuel (or overcharge) them.
• Counter-Attack: Blast Counters are back, and unlike Zero II, where you could only activate a Blast Counter against enemy attacks, in this game there are different Blast Counters for different situations.
  • The Reflex Striker works exactly like the Blast Counters from Zero II, activated the moment an enemy attacks Jason and causing Jason to unleash a flurry of powerful shots at foes.
  • The Rushing Attacker can be activated against Collision Damage, and upon doing so Jason retaliates with a powerful melee attack while restoring his health and gaining a Gun Level upgrade.
  • The Spinning Reflector activates automatically when Jason is shot while performing his Spin Dash move, causing him to reflect the attack and gain Subweapon stock for doing so. Can also be used while standing still, so you don't risk dashing into an enemy or unblockable attack.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Jason's G-SOPHIA SV stands little chance against Kane's original Metal Attacker during their first battle against each other. If the player defeats the Metal Attacker, it changes a couple of lines in the following cutscene (from Kane talking about how the Metal Attacker can still hold its own to Kane commenting on the gap between their combat experience), grants the Beyond the Metafight achievement, and then the game proceeds as normal.
• Death World: Jason has to make another trip to Stranga in this game, and it's just as dangerous as ever. Unlike before, however, while it's still inhospitable to mutants, some mutants are either too large to be affected by the pacifying flowers (such as the miniature Gatherviras, which are still quite large), or have found ways to get around it (like the Cerberboss, which has grafted metal plates onto its body). It also has a new layout, as it's revealed that Stranga's surface is constantly changing as new plant life grows and withers. In contrast, the super-dimensional space of Stranga is entirely peaceful and habitable.
• Degraded Boss: Just like in II, a lot of enemies that were bosses in previous games become regular enemies here. Perhaps the most striking one is Goez, the Final Boss of I, but Zavira and smaller variants of Gathervira from II also appear. Weaker forms of Planade-G also appear in the Forbidden Area, though they're harmless and only exist as obstructions, and the real Planade-G makes an appearance in this game, albeit in a much different form.
• Delaying Action: To allow enough time for his and Eve's children to safely be born as regular humans without any trace of their mother's mutant and super-dimensional lifeform traits, Jason calls for help from the other MA Pilots and Leibniz to slow down Kane.
• Developer's Foresight: The Full Accel Blast shoots out to a view from space partway through the attack animation, and this reflects the planet you're on when the attack is used. While Planet Sophia is the usual backdrop, you also get a view of NORA, Stranga or Earth if you use it in any of those locations.
• Distant Reaction Shot: Final Accel Blast is very powerful screen-clearing attack. The effect doesn't just take up the whole screen, the game cuts away to space to show a huge pillar of energy shooting out of the planet.
• Dramatic Unmask: Leibniz finally removes his helmet when he's about to face off against Kane, revealing that he's a woman with fennec-like ears. As she does it in her cockpit, the truth is only known to the player, as the other characters continue to refer to her as male.
• Dual-World Gameplay: You have normal space and super-dimensional space to play in for this game.
• Dueling Player Characters: Jason and Kane have to square off near the start of the game, partly because Kane is the leader of the Sophia Force and thus must stop any hostile threats to Sophia, but also to help cover up Jason's escape. They duel again at the very end of the game, but this time you have the option to choose who to play as.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Jason is pretty sheepish about telling Leibniz about the "SV" in "G-SOPHIA SV", which stands for "Supreme Vehicle".
• Evil Doppelgänger: The Evil Eves that appear in alternate dimensions are slime-type Mutants shaped to resemble Eve's Blaster Master Zero appearance with red eyes, and are also able to use the Unchained DDF Blast-Counter to slow Jason down. The fact that there are so many of them makes a lot more sense when it is discovered that Eve is now the Mutant Queen, it's only natural that some of the mutants would wish to emulate their ruler.
• Evil Knockoff: The Sophia Force will field a variety of drones emulating the Metal Attackers of Jason and friends, down to unmanned hovertanks based on the original SOPHIA-III. Of course, they're not quite knockoffs seeing how Sophia's engineers are the ones who made the originals in the first place.
• Failure Is the Only Option: No matter what Jason does, he can't get Eve back. He can't stop Eve from remaining the Invem Queen and he can't stop her from departing for super-dimensional space; if she were to return to normal, the mutants would be without a guiding will and just mindlessly rampage over Planet Sophia, thus sparking another war that would cost millions of lives, nor can she stay in the universe as to do so would invite this situation to reoccur, as the Sophia Force still considers her a threat and will attack her, meaning the Invem will keep fighting to protect their Queen, even against her will. He can, however, be with her on the other side, and this is the choice he makes.
• Final-Exam Boss: In the final fight, should the player switch back to Jason, they get a chance at a rematch with Kane from the game's beginning, a final showdown with the classic MA. Remain as Kane and face Jason, however, and the fight's considerably more complex with Jason's much more situational arsenal of tools. Even Fred is lending a hand by warping them around the battlefield, and when Jason's health gets low Eve herself steps in to flip the fight out of super-dimensional space so Jason can recover.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When you are in the NORA satellite, there's an optional dialogue where it's revealed that after the GARUDA was taken down by the Sophia Force's anti-air defenses, it was almost immediately stolen by its own development team, who still see it as their pet project and vowed that it would never be shot down that easily ever again. This doesn't come up again until the final Boss Rush, where Leibniz joins the fight in her freshly-upgraded Rising GARUDA.
  • In the late game, there's a conversation about how Jason's voice sometimes sounds distorted as if he's using the VRV System, even though he's not even wearing his helmet at the moment. Accessing the true ending requires activating VRV even though the helmet was wrecked in the battle with Planade-G, showing that Jason has been exposed to super-dimensional space enough that he doesn't even need it anymore.
  • In the Forbidden Sector, the G-SOPHIA will occasionally crackle with electricity whether you have one HP or 16 HP plus 16 life energy guard points. It's a warning the vehicle is going to break down, and it does just as Planade-G retreats into super-dimensional space.
  • During the final battle, if playing as Jason, Eve will eject you from super-dimensional space if you try to use the Full Accel Blast. If playing as Kane, she will eject him as part of her last-ditch effort to save him, which includes three Full Accel Blasts. You can use the Full Accel Blast in super-dimensional space in any other situation, so why go to all the trouble? The ending reveals that the items in the background are Jason and Eve's yet to be born children, so Eve does not want them to be killed as Collateral Damage.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Leibniz begins to shatter her helmet to show how deep her determination runs, just after the eyepiece shatters, there's less than ten frames of a single tear running down her eye.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • After their battle in the intro's escape sequence, Kane and Jason establish for the first time that the warning that appears before a boss fight isn't just for the player's benefit, it's a Metal Attacker's AI producing an enemy code for the encounter that the pilot actually sees. Incidentally, this is how Jason actually receives the title of "Blaster Master".^note As Kane remarks this is what he saw when he challenged Jason to battle.
  • The talk of having limited time in Super-Dimensional space on foot isn't just text; spend too long and the Accel Charger will give out and you'll start taking damage until you get out. That being said, the time frame is pretty generous and shouldn't come up much if at all. While the danger is never truly gone, the timer becomes more generous as the story goes on, as if to hint to the player that heeding Kane's warning might not be the best idea...
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Leibniz did go off saving Earth after Zero II as per the ending, but he refuses to tell Jason what happened back there, just to spite him.
• Golden Ending: Just like the previous games, there is a True Ending route, but this time the requirements are even easier than before: spend a sufficient amount of time in super-dimensional space, then during the cutscene after the Planade-G fight where Eve is about to leave, press the input for activating VRV when the screen "cracks".
• Guide Dang It!: Unlike the previous 2 games in the series, the best ending has a secondary requirement on top of the player input mentioned above: you need to spend a specific amount of time in total in the super-dimensional versions of the various on-foot dungeons to unlock the option for the player input during the cutscene mentioned above which is indicated by an unlocked achievement, as well as a pair of rings visible in the upper right corner of Jason's Blaster Rifle diagram in the pause menu. This can be easy to miss if you don't make it a point to do the super-dimensional versions of the said dungeons, as they don't contain any unique upgrades over the normal versions and spending too much time in them can sap Jason's health (but there's a good chance the player will do it anyway because the regular version of the Sophia Force dungeons are much more difficult than just exploiting super-dimensional space to get bypass the SF drones, and there's only one upgrade that requires forgoing super-dimensional space to acquire (albeit a required one), specifically the Final Accel Blast). As well, the game doesn't explicitly tell the player to use the VRV input (rather it just hints at it), but the game hasn't trained the player to expect using normal gameplay inputs in cutscenes, since none of the three games employ the use of dialogue choices or quick time events.
• Grand Finale: Zero III is the final entry that concludes Jason Frudnick's story in the Blaster Master Zero trilogy.
• Happy Ending Override: Blaster Master Zero II ended with Jason and Eve stopping a universe-shattering explosion, slaying a budding new Mutant Overlord, and restoring the wormhole leading to Planet Sophia. With said planet being the main hub of the Anti-Mutant effort, you'd expect the people of Planet Sophia to throw Jason and Eve a parade. At the start of Zero III however, no sooner do they make planetfall are they arrested and separated from each other, and then a disaster hits their internment facility before Jason can get any answers. That and Eve hasn't really been cured of mutant cells, but rather becoming a mutant.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Jason attempts to weaponize this with the Elemental Blaster, a "superweapon" ability that costs nearly all of his Life and Gun Levels but fires a Wave-Motion Gun imbued with his truest feelings, which he attempts to use to save Eve in a similar fashion to how Eve defeated Drolrevo with the Acceleration Blast in Zero II. It is successful; however, it fails to save Eve because Eve doesn't want to be saved, a possibility that he did not consider.
• Hijacked by Ganon: As the game continues, Jason is led to believe that the Mutant Core from the first game has made yet another comeback. There was a comeback, but it was not the Mutant Core, which stays gone. The actual comeback was done by Planade-G, whose core survived its defeat in the second game and went on to kidnap Eve, subjugating her to gain control of the mutant army.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the True Final Boss battle, when Jason's life is nearly out, Eve grants him a protective barrier which begins to restore his health. Jason decides to capitalize on this buffer by rolling out multiple consecutive Final Accel Blasts. Problem: The SOPHIA-J1 still runs on Gaia System technology, IE after that intense barrage, the J1 is tapped out and he has to manually induce landing shocks to speed up the SOPHIA-J1's recharge, giving Kane ample time to charge and fire his own Acceleration Blast, instantly shredding the shield and draining the Sophia J1's life bar all in one shot.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Shortly after gameplay begins, Jason is pitted against Kane Gardner from the Sophia Force. Unfortunately, Jason's G-SOPHIA SV has been stripped of its upgrades and rendered virtually defenseless, while Kane is packing a fully equipped Metal Attacker with three health bars. The odds are stacked against you such that the plot will progress even if you lose. It is, however, not impossible to win, and doing so will reward you with slightly different dialogue from Kane and an achievement on supported platforms.
• Jump Jet Pack: Say goodbye to Fall Damage with Jason's new ability to hover in the overworld to slow his descent. An early-game contextual tutorial tells you how to use it, and you have to do it right to recover Fred early on.
• Kill It with Fire: Late in the game you get the rain cluster, a primary weapon that ignites when it hits any surface; it's extra effective on biological and/or mutant enemies. However, its limited range prevents it from being an all-purpose weapon.
• Klingon Promotion: A big plot twist in the middle of the game reveals that Eve accidentally pulled this off by helping defeat Drolrevo at the end of Zero II. Her mutant corruption actually stabilized her body and quit being malignant by transforming her body into an organic humanoid mutant, and by her helping kill the previous Mutant Overlord after she has become a mutant, Eve became the new ruler of the mutants by default.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: According to a blog post, Jason's Blaster Rifle works vastly different in this game, as instead of access to different shot types being restricted by Gun Levels, Jason now has only five guns that are accessible at all times and can be individually upgraded to enhance their powers, such as the basic RG-Blaster gaining a Charged Attack function and the Turbo Whip gaining Combos.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The cover art for the game shows off Eve's purified form that was only shown in the true ending of Zero II. Official pre-release art also no longer depicts her with a right green eye or blue streaks on her hair. In game however that is indeed the case.
• Legacy Boss Battle: The boss fights in Area ??? consist of refights with Gonbei, Kanna, Stein, and Leibniz. However, they are much more aggressive than they were in Zero II due to participation from their Support Droids and Support Animals, and you are equipped with the vastly inferior Metal Attacker.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Because Leibniz's gender reveal prior to her fight with Kane is known only to players and not to anyone in-universe, Kane, Jason, and Eve continue to refer to her under the assumption that she's male.
• Love Confession: If the conditions to achieve the Golden Ending are met, Eve confesses her feelings for Jason before she leaves for super-dimensional space, establishing the pair as an Official Couple.
  "...I love you, Jason."
• Mana Meter: The G-SOPHIA SV comes with a new "orange" gauge on top of the standard meter, now used for solely maneuvers and subweapons. The orange gauge is used to fire more powerful variants of the normal shot, and can be replenished with the GAIA system just like regular energy.
• Mêlée à Trois: There are at least three factions that fight each other: Jason and his friends, the Sophia Force (the local government which commits Police Brutality against anyone that could possibly be a threat to the planet without anything showing that they really are threats), and the Invem Dark Star Army (the mutants that have been this series' villains).
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Unlike the last two games where Eve was the proper Mission Control, this time it's Leibniz in the passenger's seat, whose "help" consists of endless snarking, illustrating ways that Jason could die, and occasionally kicking Jason's seat.
• Musical Nod: The music that plays during the True Final Boss is a remix of the Boss themes from the original Blaster Master.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Unlike most other people who call the antagonists by the names from Blaster Master, the officials of Sophia use Metafight terms like "Invem Army" instead. Kane himself still calls the Mutant Lord "Goez" and confirms he's fought him once before, referring to the events of said game.
  • The family photo on the wall of Jennifer's lab is actually the ending screen from Metafight.
  • Just like the True Final Boss in the prequel, if you're playing as Kane against Jason in the superboss fight and survive his Final Accel Blast Spam Attack, his tank will Heroic RRoD and can be oneshotted by your Acceleration Blast in this state.
  • The Golden Ending contains numerous references to Blasting Again:
    • Jason and Eve conceive their children, Roddy and Elfie, safely and successfully as regular humans, naming them after the deceased pilot and Support Droid duo that Eve encounted in Zero II. Roddy and Elfie themselves are the children of the late Jason and Eve in Blasting Again.
    • Even Jason and Eve being dead in Blasting Again is alluded with with The Stinger having the two talk about Leibniz saying if they don't come back, she'll tell the kids they died. Eve's return as a sort of spirit in the same game is related to how Eve became a being of "pure thought".
    • A number of mutants refuse Eve's call to cease their attacks on the universe; Jason dubs these divergent lifeforms "Lightning Beings". These same Lightning Beings in Blasting Again are of Eve's species and serve as the main antagonists of the game.
    • The final form of the SOPHIA in the Golden Ending is the SOPHIA-J1, which seems like an odd designation — until it's remembered that, in Blasting Again, Roddy and Elfie's SOPHIA was the J7.
  • The scene of Eve creating Roddy and Elfie references the box art of the first Zero that depicts Eve holding the planet Earth.
• Nerf:
  • Zigzagged with the Life Energy Guard series, the replacement for the Energy Guard from the previous games. Unlike the Energy Guard, the Life Energy Guard series also protects the user's hit points in addition to Gun Level, you can effectively triple/double your health bar, and you can get Life Energy Guard for the G-SOPHIA. However, Life Energy Guards are not permanent upgrades, meaning that additional stocks of them must be found to preserve them, and you can only hold up to 16 units worth of damage, with each individual pick-up giving 4 units; if it runs out during a battle, you will no longer have its protection and must locate the item again to restore it. This essentially changes the function of the Life Energy Guard to being a safety net for mistakes or bad play and not something that should be relied on consistently because of its auto-replenishing nature.
  • The Cross Wave is (once again) a nerfed version of Wave Beam and Wide Beam. While it is still a wide, penetrating, multi-hitting shot, it is pitifully ineffective at low Gun Levels, and there's a hard cap of how much you can fire it before it needs to go on a short cooldown. Furthermore, the game strongly emphasizes using different guns, as many situations cannot be handled nearly as efficiently with just Cross Wave.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: The prequel engaged in it and runs in the same game engine, so it's understandable that this game does the same thing, though some cases are egregious copy-paste jobs that can appear out of place — Dig-Rawler is especially guilty of this. Another case is Planade-G's planetfall graphic clearly being ripped from Zero 2 and repurposed as a pilot obstacle, but this is justified by those sprites actually being Planade-G, which survived its defeat in Zero 2 and is spreading across Planet Sophia like a virus.
• No OSHA Compliance: Area 3, the mass driver facility, is one of these. It is an industrial setting with several instances of Spikes of Doom or Grimy Water.
• Not Completely Useless: The Graviton Vortex is a bomb that spawns a gravity well which consumes anything that comes across it. You can only deploy one, and it has a small area of effect, making it useless without serious prep. Planade-G spills mutant matter throughout the fight whenever injured, and absorbs said matter regularly to heal copiously; suffice it to say you are not winning without this weapon.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • To find a way to help Eve, Jason takes a warp to Planet Stranga to locate a plant that he helped get for Kanna during Zero II that is poisonous to mutants. While Jason mostly traverses the same areas, they have become much more dangerous, which is justified by Kenwood explaining that Stranga runs on Chaos Architecture and has a constantly-shifting exterior. In addition, Jason no longer has the Drill Subweapon, meaning EIR needs to carve a path for him.
  • Area ??? involves traversing between super-dimensional space and the regions below the Earth's surface in an altered order of which Jason went through them in the first Blaster Master Zero.
• Number of the Beast: Leibniz's official art for this game showcases him equipped with a shield that's inscribed with the number "666".
• Official Couple: By the end of the game, Jason and Eve are together, and they successfully conceive a pair of children named Roddy and Elfie.
• Once an Episode:
  • There's another Skeleton Boss iteration to fight in this game. To get around the aberrant atmosphere of Planet Stranga, the Cerbeboss has incorporated a cybernetic frame into its central body, thus siring the Metal Cerbeboss. And just like the others, on the rematch, the Full Accel Burst will one-shot it, although since you need to be on the ground to fire it and because the boss will start the fight by covering the floor and ceiling with beams of energy that repeatedly bounce you up and down and prevent you from touching the ground, you need to either charge it up before you start the bossfight and fire it before the boss has the chance to do the above or use the Phantom Solid subweapon to create a Temporary Platfrom to fire it from. That said, besides the metal frame, you get to fight this one on foot, and even then, firing the Elemental Blaster will make short work of it there.
  • There's a Call-Back to the original instance in Area ???. You can take a side route somewhere and you will actually come back to the room where you fought the original Skeleton Boss, where you'll find a wall guardian from Blaster Master Zero. Kill it and you'll get Acceleration Blast for Kane's Metal Attacker, which works the same as it did in the first game.
• One-Hit Kill
  • The dimensional rifts from II appear in this game and are as deadly as ever. You can survive touching one if you have a Life Energy Guard, but doing so depletes all Life Energy Guards you may have. Later on, however, you gain an ability that lets your Metal Attacker pass through them.
  • The Graviton Vortex Subweapon instantly obliterates any enemy that falls into it. While it has a lower maximum stock to compensate, it's very useful for dealing with the particularly-nasty SF robots. It's especially useful when fighting Bloodstained Planade-G, as it can easily destroy the clones it creates of itself.
  • During the rematch with ATOM in the Golden Ending sequence, Stein's support animal, Mr. Mug, will hop out and wander the arena, occasionally stopping to throw a punch. This will destroy you instantly if it hits, and unlike the aforementioned dimensional rifts, it goes right through your Life Guards.
  • This game's version of Plutonium Boss/Cerbeboss is once again killed in one hit by the endgame subweapon, both in the tank (Full Accel Blast) and on foot (Elemental Blaster).
• Path of Most Resistance: Whenever you step foot into an SF dungeon, a super-dimensional tear will appear near the dungeon entrance, giving you one of two options to progress through the dungeon. The normal route is the shortest and consists of very few rooms, but is populated by extremely dangerous and powerful SF robots and have gimmicks such as Gun-specific switches that need to be hit without pissing off the local security lest you die a gruesome death. The super-dimensional route, on the other hand, is a substantially longer detour and invokes Stalked by the Bell as taking too long will cause Jason to die quickly, but the enemies are significantly easier mutants and the room hazards are less tricky. You can usually get the goodies without incident using the super-dimensional route. The exception is the Final Accel Charge, which requires you to take the normal route on the last floor of the respective dungeon.
• Police Brutality: Jason, Fred, and Eve are arrested just as they arrive on planet Sophia by the Sophia Force, which will fight anything that could be a threat to planet Sophia, even though they arrive for medical asylum for Eve. This is a sign that Eve's composition isn't quite normal, though the Sophia Force's actions caused the mutant outbreak as the mutants reacted to their "queen" Eve being threatened.
• Post-Final Boss: Kane and his Metal Attacker serve as one after the onslaught that is Rising GARUDA, being a mostly simplistic tank with minimal upgrades compared to Jason's fully-decked-out SOPHIA-J1. However, you can choose to play as Kane and fight Jason instead, which gives you arguably the hardest fight in the game.
• Randomly Generated Levels: Unlike regular dungeons which are "properly" designed, the super-dimensional wormholes appear to be this, to the point that dying in one and trying again will often land you in a completely different layout than your first attempt.
• Relationship Values: Oddly enough, the game has one, and it's a requirement for the Golden Ending. Where you find it exactly is something of a secret, but the trope name is a hint. It's the ring (and later rings) in the pause screen at the top-right of Jason's armor display. This is how you track whether or not you've been in super-dimensional space long enough — once two rings fully form in the pause screen, the Golden Ending becomes accessible.
• Retraux: In-game graphics and music aside, the physical "Classic Edition" produced by Limited Run Games has a unique box art that vaguely resembles the box art of the original Blaster Master, with a robotic Cerbeboss standing in for the Plutonium Boss. The "Collector's Edition" even comes with a replica NES cartridge with this box art on it.
• Samus Is a Girl: The penultimate boss of the game is Leibniz, who removes their helmet to reveal they are a woman.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Sophia Force is an Absolute Xenophobe army that moves to contain or exterminate anything that might be a threat to their planet, which leads to them targeting Jason and Eve as soon as they make planetfall. This was a mistake for more reasons than Jason just being The Hero. Yes, Eve gave off readings of being a mutant and has become the Mutant Queen, but this hasn't changed her personality at all. The only reason the mutants did anything was to protect their queen, which wouldn't have happened if the Sophia Force didn't threaten Eve in the first place, leading to Eve's abduction and the very planetary invasion the Sophia Force wanted to avoid.
• Sequel Hook: The trilogy ends on a number of threads to lead into the future, except whereas the Zero series had drawn on the original entry and MetaFight with a spattering of other Sunsoft titles as its foundation, this one seems to be built around Blaster Master 2 and Blasting Again with the newborn Roddy and Elfie being sent to Earth and the emergence of the Lightning Beings, not to mention the appearance of the SOPHIA-J1, which would be the production line predecessor to Roddy and Elfie's vehicle in Blasting Again, the SOPHIA-J7.
• Sequential Boss: The major bosses will smash their way into super-dimensional space mid-way through the battle, entering a new arena where your tank is or isn't allowed, so Jason will have to fight them both with the G-SOPHIA SV and on foot.
• Shout-Out:
  • The game features the requisite Azure Striker Gunvolt reference, this time more of them:
    • The Lock-On Striker is effectively an enhanced version of the Striker gun from Zero. The audio file that Eve left behind has her saying it makes her want to shout "Oversurge!", which is Gunvolt's Catchphrase.
    • Also from the Gunvolt series, Eve in the True Final Boss battle will intervene when Jason's HP is low in a fashion akin to Anthem, which will heal him and recharge his energy (as a boss this has him really start cranking out attacks).
    • The Ix Shredder subweapon is named after Luminous Avenger iX and features Jason summoning bladed Attack Drones to circle him with very similar visual effects to Lola. Leibniz's dialogue also has him stating that the name gets a song stuck in his head, alluding to the heavy music themes of Gunvolt.
    • The Spark Salamander boss is back as "Spark Salamander G/C", a Dual Boss that features two Spark Salamanders that are colored in Gunvolt and Copen's color schemes respectively. The "G/C" in the name also presumably stands for "Gunvolt/Copen" as a result.
  • As mentioned on the character page, one of ATOM's attacks in the final area involves Tesset using Tesse's HaraHara attack, complete with an identical flashing warning text.
  • With Kanna's origin being fully revealed in here, all hints contained in Planet STRANGA, Kanna's flower theme, how Kenwood found her, her bunny creature Yacopu and lastly what STRANGA's dimensional vortex world looks like, all settles with everything being a clear cut reference to another older Sunsoft title, an old platformer called Trip World, released for the Game Boy in 1993, where a bunny creature called Yakopoo (in japanese it's actually the same spelling) must find a flower of peace to restore peace to the world; the scenery of Kanna's birth place as seen in III looks exactly like the views in Trip World, and how Kenwood found Kanna draws parallels with the flower of peace as well. To hammer it down, the narration of Kanna’s life during the reveal pretty much says it:
  Stranga is such a trippy world
• Spider Limbs: One of the new upgrades for G-SOPHIA SV allows it to transform its wheels into a set of legs, which give it more precise Jump Physics by removing momentum when changing directions or landing from a jump as well as allow it to walk through harmful liquids without taking damage. It also lets the tank pass as one of the Mutant Attackers, preventing them from harming you and even getting salutes from them as you pass by. The latter function is required to pass through certain rooms that are infested with large numbers of Mutant Attackers, as they will otherwise open fire on sight and rip through you before you have a chance to react.
• Spoiler Cover:
  • The cover of this entry shows two MAs on either side, one meant to represent normal space and one meant to represent super-dimensional space. The trouble is, while one's clearly the GAIA-SOPHIA SV, the other isn't Kane Garner's, the classic Metal Attacker. It's the SOPHIA-J1, the MA Jason only pilots for the True Final Boss battle.
  • The cover art for the Collector's Edition shows Jason and Eve sharing a hug. No guessing as to what happens in the Golden Ending.
  • This promotional artwork that became the cover art of Blaster Master Zero Trilogy features Jason and Eve as they appear at the end of this game, including both wearing their wedding rings. More subtly, on the left side of the art, you can see Kane Gardner and the other allied MA pilots...along with a person with their back turned, with long hair, a feminine figure, and fox ears. While you might think it to be an original character, it turns out that it's none other than Leibniz. The only hint of it being her (other than the fact that Leibniz is otherwise nowhere to be seen) is the fact that she's holding her helmet that you're more familiar with, though due to the yellow color filter, the small size of the image, and the fact that she's holding it by the "horn", it can be difficult to tell.
  • Also done subtly in the soundtrack cover. Leibniz is shown unmasked, but because she's wearing casual (and feminine) clothes, you wouldn't know this unless you'd actually beaten the game and seen Leibniz without her helmet. The only hint that it's her is the fact that she's wearing the same jacket as she does when fully armored, and that her unused support animal, Jao, sits atop her hat. The other two characters are Jason and Eve's children, Roddy and Elfie, looking to be in their teens.
• Stealth Pun: In the Golden Ending route, the SOPHIA-J1. Of course, the primary intent is to convey it as the beginning of the line that will lead to the J7, and the aforementioned "reversal" katakana above, but take a look at its serial: MA-J1. This is close to "majin", which has explicit demonic or otherworldly connotations. Where was this built, who does it belong to? In super-dimensional space, and by Jason who has cast off his humanity to become something else to be with Eve.
• The Stinger: The post-credits cutscene of the Golden Ending sees Jason and Eve reuniting in super-dimensional space in the flesh and sharing a hug, as they wish for their children, Roddy and Elfie, to grow up healthy and happy on Earth. They both swear to combat the Lightning Beings threatening normal space, so that they can return to Earth to be together with their children as a family.
• Superboss: In the final battle, you can choose to play eithier Jason or Kane, and the choice does not impact the ending. Picking Jason leads to a trivial boss fight, but if you pick Kane you have to fight Jason's super-powered Sophia-J1 in your very underpowered Metal Attacker. Jason fights with fast attacks, while you don't even get any Life Ups. It's much like the Invem Sophia battle from the original Zero... or rather, Zero's Boss Rush.
• Superior Successor: While the SV ultimately couldn't handle the upgrades it received without Jason able to do maintenance, the SOPHIA-J1 is built with them in mind, a prototype to a new line built entirely from his technical know-how just in the same way the Metal Attacker was the prototype to the line that would follow it, and the J1's loadout fittingly is largely direct improvements upon the Metal Attacker's:

  • Crusher Shot vs Anti-SF Ammo: Both standard firing rainbow-glowing projectiles, but whereas Kane's travel slowly with only three at a time, the Anti-SF shots are stronger, travel extremely fast and do greater damage, especially to mechanical opposition.
  • Missile vs Warhead Missile: Three missiles are fired, but whereas Kane's fire at a straight line, Jason's fire faster and at a waving pattern, allowing all three to connect at a single point with some clever positioning. Subverted against agile enemies in that the Metal Attacker's Warhead Missile's spread means that it will more likely hit an agile target than the Gaia-SOPHIA's wave pattern.
  • Homing Missile vs Homing Laser: Kane fires missiles that track in on enemy points gradually, whereas Jason's lock onto all enemies in radius and, unlike the missiles, cannot be shot down.
  • Thunder Break vs Ignition Spark: The Metal Attacker fires a discharge of lightning directly underneath it, giving a limited immediate radius, whereas the Ignition Spark projects an offensive barrier and discharges that travel far beyond the frame.
  • Wall Drive vs Phantom Solid: The Metal Attacker can drive along any available surface, whereas the J1 can produce a surface for it to drive upon in thin air, allowing it to create its own terrain to utilize. Subverted in that the Metal Attacker's wall drive does not require SP to run, while the J1 and the Gaia-SOPHIA SV require subweapon SP for their wall drives and phantom solid devices to run.
  • Accel Blast vs Final Accel Blast: Kane needs to remain stationary in a single place while the MA charges, unable to defend and will lose the charge if stricken while prone, whereas Jason is able to freely maneuver and continue attacking while the charge builds on its own, after which point he can unleash it at any point he chooses.

• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Jason has a habit of running his vehicles ragged, as was known from SOPHIA Zero wearing down before the previous game; likewise, Lucia is dead, leaving Leibniz to do all the maintenance himself, a subject where he probably was inferior to her. Put the two in the same Metal Attacker (one that's already a quick patch-up job, at that) without Eve, and G-SOPHIA SV's breakdown becomes a matter of when.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: The True Ending path has expendable upgrades quite easy to obtain, and often close to an area where they would be most needed; you play as Kane with a considerably basic Metal Attacker facing against opponents with far better gear, with only superior skills as Kane's deciding edge, chances are that a player might really need those expendables as a handicap.
• Time Skip:
  • In the bad ending, an unspecified number of years pass following Eve permanently remaining in super-dimensional space to prevent the Mutants from threatening normal space again, after Jason fails to pursue her.
  • One is implied to have occurred between the fight against Planade-G and the start of the True Ending dungeon, given that the VRV System is successfully repaired, Jason has constructed a new (but not fully functional) SOPHIA unit, and Tesset looks noticeably older than in the previous game.
• Title Drop:
  • The game explicitly gives Jason the Boss Subtitle of "Blaster Master".
  • Kane drops the title of his own game in the final battle, when he tell Jason that their battle is going to be "our Metafight".
• Tomato Surprise:
  • The events of the postgame don't make a lot of sense until you get to the end and see Jason in front of you... wait, what? You're not playing as Jason? Surprise, you were playing as Kane the whole time! The game engages in an impressive multi-layered deception to pull this off. Spoilers, of course:
    • Kane's face is obscured by his helmet until you reach Jason. Their armor is so similar that with the helmet on, there's no telling them apart.^note As seen all the way back in the first game, the Accel Charger isn't needed to survive in Earth's Super-Dimensional Space, and there were no hints prior to how much time had passed since the Final Boss and whether Jason had "acclimated" enough not to need the VRV to access it. Moreover, Jason's armor got busted up after the Final Boss, so any differences in his and Kane's armor are easily waved off as Jason getting a new set.
    • Both Jason and Kane have reasons to seek out Eve and be worried about spatial tears ticking off the Sophia Force again.^note What the game fails to mention, again, is how much time had passed: Jason had already found Eve (and got busy with her), while Kane was just responding to signs of spatial tears and knew only Eve could be behind it.
    • None of the MA pilots refer to Kane by name.^note Leibniz's muttering after her boss fight isn't directed at the one piloting the Metal Attacker, but a lamentation that she failed Jason and Eve.
    • The Metal Attacker could easily be mistaken for Jason's new tank.^note The G-SOPHIA-SV literally falls apart after the first phase of the Final Boss, so thinking Bag of Spilling happened again is an easy mistake, when in reality Jason actually salvaged most of the tank this time. Moreover, all of the Metal Attacker's armaments were also found on Earth, which is where the postgame takes place.
    • Jason's and Kane's on-foot armaments are almost exactly the same.^note Kane has Jason's main weapons and Blast Counters, but he has only one Sub-Weapon: an infinite-use grenade. You could easily mistake him for Jason because of their similar fighting style.
    • The Passengers list is empty, save for the Metal Attacker itself.^note This is your one true hint that you're not playing as Jason: Fred isn't there. The frog is as much Jason's family as Eve is, so there's no way in hell he'd go searching for Eve without him unless Fred is missing yet again and needs to be rescued.
  • However there are hints to those with good memory, knowledge of the whole series, and/or a sharp eye can pick up on that it was Kane all along.
    • No Fred in the passenger's seat is the most glaring one, but could be easily explained away if Fred was missing and Jason had to go searching for Fred yet again. Fred does have a nasty habit of going missing and needing to be rescued from time to time.
    • The fact that the allied Metal Attackers are fighting you to protect something.^note They're on friendly terms with Jason, the fact that the player character responds in such a controlled fashion would also apply as if it was Jason, the MA Pilots wouldn't be quick to fight and Jason would be more shocked.
    • Combining the first two, that when the other MA pilots go down and can no longer fight, they're rescued by a timely wormhole.^note There's only one entity in the series shown to be capable of tactically opening wormholes at will: a certain frog, who's conspicuously missing from your Passengers section...
    • The Metal Attacker looking the same as it did at the beginning of the game.^note No changes to the sprite between both times, and to boot, the cut in of Kane's in the first battle shows the NES sub screen with the same color scheme that the Golden Ending playable character has. That's before getting to the attacks being the exact same.
    • The fact that the person doesn't have normal grenades and instead has original Blaster Master/MetaFight infinite use grenades.^note They're the one item Jason always has, and the fact the player character in question has the latter, hints towards Kane who is a walking nod towards the original game
    • Leibniz's speech before the fight with her.^note If she's defending something for Jason and Eve, then why would she get in Jason's way? And the speech is rather impersonal in tone than towards someone she's familiar with. Likewise with the player character's response.
• Unseen No More: During the cutscene where Leibniz proclaims her intent to protect Jason and Eve's desire with all her might, a memory of her deceased Support Droid Lucia appears, with Lucia smiling brightly at the camera.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: The intro's escape sequence is capped off with a battle against Kane Gardner in the original MA-01. Despite the G-SOPHIA SV's newer hardware (though stats are base), the odds are heavily in Kane's favor, which he lampshades after the battle. The Golden Ending revisits this, with Kane's MA-01 going up against Jason in the new and fully-loaded SOPHIA-J1, with the twist that the player gets to choose which side they play as. As Jason, it's nearly impossible to lose, since Anti-SF Bullet will melt MA-01's HP and Eve will heal you if your own HP is somehow depleted. As Kane... good luck, you're going to need it.
• Video Game Dashing: Jason can now dash forward with a press of a button at the cost of some energy.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Bloodstained Planade-G is weak to the normal shot from the Gaia-SOPHIA SV that is fired whenever it is in main weapon shutdown mode.
• Weaponized Exhaust: Inverted: on top of the normal circular shockwave that surrounds G-SOPHIA SV when either the main weapon or sub weapon gauge fills back up after being fully depleted that deals damage to enemies, you can also convert the burst of energy into a beam-like directed blast of energy from the main cannon by firing just when either gauge fills up.
• Wham Shot: Leibniz’ Dramatic Unmask before their boss fight in the True Ending route, revealing that Leibniz has been a woman this whole time.
• Where It All Began: Fitting of the last game in the series, the game does this in a number of ways:
  • The bulk of the game takes place on Sophia 3rd, the planet Jason's original MA is named after.
  • The Golden Ending takes place in Earth's super-dimensional space, better known as Zero's Area 9. There you'll see bits of areas from the first game with one of the last such areas being the very first screen of that game. And one can see faintly the original cave where the iconic starting scene takes place in the shot where Sophia-J1 takes off.
• You Can't Go Home Again: In the Golden Ending, because of their prolonged exposure to super-dimensional space, Jason and Eve are unable to return to normal space, and they also must repel the Lightning Beings that threaten normal space. That said, they swear to return to Earth someday, so that they can be with their children.
• Zero-Effort Boss: In the final battle choosing Jason. Kane's Metal Attacker is hopelessly underequipped compared to Jason's SOPHIA-J1, and in the event that you run completely out of health, Eve will heal the tank back to full health once, making it next to impossible to lose without deliberately trying.

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