Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 / YMMV

This is the YMMV for the second mainline game.

Awesome Music: Continuing from the first game, now with Lola's tracks added to the mix. "Indigo Destiny", the game's theme song, is an especially strong highlight.
Breather Boss:
- Ghauri in Copen's route. His attacks have very little complexity, and the majority of them can be avoided with Flashshield or by simply getting behind him or staying airborne. His Poetry Slam is also easily negated by spamming EX Weapons on its weak spots.
- Tenjian in Copen's route can be this if you use Prism Break. A fully charged one can shave off a whole third of his health if it connects, and while normally he moves around too much to let it reliably hit, one needs only charge and wait to release it until he uses his ice chakram attack, which leaves him wide open and floating in the air long enough to get hit. Just lock on and release.
- The members of the Seven that Gunvolt normally faces in his normal scenario are complete jokes when Copen fights them in Eden as well as in the Special Missions, and that's before weapon weaknesses are even taken into consideration. Copen can make short work of Milas without any problems of overheating from his attacks; Gibril's ability to evade most shots in her second form is negated by the Bullit Dash; Flashshield blocks most of Teseo's attacks (and those that don't are still avoidable by Prevasion).
Base-Breaking Character: Zonda in the second game. Or, more accurately, True Zonda. While The Reveal of her true nature was praised as a clever and effective plot twist, some fans aren't too impressed with True Zonda, feeling her to be too bland and emotionless compared to the more exuberant and hammy Sumeragi Zonda and would've preferred Sumeragi Zonda to be the main villain. And then there are fans who feel that True Zonda adds to the mystery and intrigue of the character.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: The Clip category is designed to avert this, as in the first game, only three or four guns were good and the rest were niche or Awesome, but Impractical. The Clip category separates max Tags and Dart Leader types, vastly improving the viability of formerly niche weapons.
Crosses the Line Twice: Each of the bosses in the first game represent one of the seven deadly sins. The one that is associated to lust is an androgynous hermaphrodite who speaks exclusively through sexual innuendos. Then the sequel reveals that the Zonda seen in the first game is just an illusion created by the real one, who is a girl aged 10 at most.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Gibril and Asroc are among the more popular members of the Grimoire Seven, due to their dialogue fighting Gunvolt and Copen and the unique mechanics of their boss fight (the fact that Gibril essentially goes for a Suicide Attack and Asroc jumps into a Humongous Mecha for a second boss battle). For the Gunvolt 2 Halloween wallpaper◊ at Inti Creates, they were voted for the 1st and 3rd featured spots respectively alongside Lola.
- The same game also gives us Ghauri and Teseo who have gained quite a fan following of their own. Ghauri for the unique mechanics of his boss fight (chasing him down on a motorcycle driven by Nori before fighting him proper), his upbeat and lively personality, and his hilarious interactions with Copen, who finds his constant rhyming completely intolerable. Teseo for his unique powerset and for being a lovable Troll whose speech is peppered with hilarious outdated memes. And the writers apparently caught on to Teseo's popularity as he stars as the main antagonist and final boss of Mighty Gunvolt Burst.
Even Better Sequel: Gunvolt, while considered a solid title, is also criticized for some of its shortcomings, such as the stage design, lack of weapon variety, It's Easy, So It Sucks!, and initial Bad Export for You. 2 addresses nearly all of these complaints with a complete translation, Sequel Difficulty Spike with more complex levels and more difficult boss battles, and additions and streamlines to several of the game's systems, including equipment upgrades and the Challenges, not to mention the addition of a new playable character who offers a very different game altogether.
Game-Breaker:
- The sequel has the hidden skill Crashvolt, which is found in Gibril's stage. It allows Gunvolt to call down a bolt of lightning that damages anything above and below Gunvolt, allowing him to kill multiple enemies at once. And since it requires no skill points to be used, it can be used again and again. It proves especially useful in the battle against Copen in Gunvolt's True Ending as it can not only damage him, but also neutralize Mytyl's Anthem, leaving him vulnerable to attack. Combine this with Septimal Surge above, and you can defeat Copen in record time.
- The Shield Construct Subroutine. It takes a significant amount of skill to adapt to the sudden difficulty, but if you can handle it, the damage multiplier it gives Copen is more than worth it. The best part is that you can stack it with boosters such as OD King Slayer or Aerial Sniper R, which can equal obscene damage if you can avoid getting hit. If you're skilled enough to not get hit, you can also combine it with Heaven or Hell X to get maximum score efficiency.
- If you manage to defeat Ultimate Anthem Gunvolt in the Score Attack DLC, you'll unlock a Subroutine for Copen in the main game that, for the hefty cost of 24 Memory, gives you infinite EX Weapon usage. Combine with Weapon Overclock for serious EX Weapon shenanigans.
Good Bad Bugs: In the vanilla version of 2, Shield Construct was bugged in such a way that if you bought multiple copies and installed them all, the multiplier effect of each individual Shield Construct stacks with itself, causing Copen to gain god-like damage for the minimal cost of 5 Memory per Shield Construct. This was fixed in Version 1.1.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Initial reactions to the game's reveal complained about the gameplay essentially being the same as the first game. Then Copen came out, and the rest is history.
Jerkass Woobie: Most of the Grimoired Seven count.
- Ghauri was part of an Adept Dance Troupe who used their skills to add some special effects to their performances, but when Adept discrimination arose and his squad leader got seriously injured, his troupe disbanded.
- Gibril had a loving but weak willed mother, but an abusive father who worried about his status given Adept discrimination. He left the care of Gibril to her completely, and abused her to get her to properly control Gibril. When Gibril came home after graduating preporatory school, after finding her father over her mother's corpse having just killed her, she created a blade from her mother's blood and killed the bastard.
- Asroc was an eldest child of four raised by his mother, who had dreams of baking pastries like his mom would make. He was a quiet and kind child, and when he became an apprentice to a famous chef, his mother gave him the advice to simply hide his septima. Nevertheless, rumors spread about him, which he ignored. He eventually came home from work to find his home in flames and all of his family dead. Fearing it was because he was an adept, his teacher expelled him, and later on Asroc learned it was a non-Adept responsible for killing his family, essentially turning him into the hateful, bitter monster we know in game.
- Finally, we have Tenjian and Zonda, who were abandoned by birth because of their Septimas and left at an orphanage. Tenjian was seen as an older brother figure by the orphans, but eventually the owner of the orphanage died of sickness, shutting the place down. He tried to find a place for the orphans, but because of his septima, people ignored him. The kids also took up jobs to help pay for things, but due to the working conditions they all eventually died until only he and Zonda was left. He and Zonda were offered food by a kindly old man, but alas the food was poisoned due to the man was part of an anti-adepts group. Tenjian and Zonda have survived, but in a rage he froze over the entire town and everyone in it bar himself and Zonda. Combined with them (especially Zonda) having incredibly strong Septimas, there's almost no wonder why Zonda became a raving lunatic.
Magnificent Bitch: Zonda, "the Oracle", is the beloved priestess of Adept terrorist organization Eden. Desiring to create a paradise for Adepts by exterminating humanity, Zonda becomes one of the most powerful and respected members of Sumeragi's Adept Defence Task Force as "the Lustful Mirage" to steal their technology and learn about their experiments on Mytyl and Joule. When tracked down by QUILL, Zonda leaves a clone of herself to be dispatched. Resurfacing once Sumeragi is thrown into chaos by Nova's death, Zonda orders her warriors "The Seven" to rig an airship to crash into a skyscraper and kidnap Mytyl to draw out Gunvolt and Copen so that she can steal Joule's power from Gunvolt to be distributed among The Seven. Once three members of The Seven are killed, Zonda offers a prayer and urges her panicking soldiers to remain calm. When the heroes reach The Garden, Zonda uses the recaptured Mytyl to fuse with Joule and obtain a form where she can empower Adepts worldwide, having researched Gunvolt's battles with Nova and The Seven to ensure a perfect fusion where Joule cannot interfere compared to Nova's attempt. Polite and courteous to enemies and allies alike, Zonda truly does everything for the sake of love.
Memetic Mutation: This game introduces Teseo, who is practically the Anthropomorphic Personification of memes. Almost every word out of his mouth is some kind of internet slang or 2010s meme.
Moral Event Horizon: Gibril commanded the Eden troops under her command to kidnap dozens of people, which might or might not include a friend of Quinn's, and take them to her lair so she can drain them of their blood. Those zombie-like "enemies" that spawn throughout the level? Those are her victims.
Most Wonderful Sound: As in the previous game, almost any time you hear a vocal track is a good thing. Except in the True Final Boss fight, where the boss gains a Theme Music Power-Up against you.
Nightmare Fuel: Copen's Nightmare Face that he sports at the end of the game after Mytyl is seemingly killed. This is a person who, while vengeful, is known for keeping his cool even at his worst. To see him in a constant state of uninhibited anger and rage is incredibly jarring, which lasts throughout the entire fight. This goes on to show on how frightening "The Adept Slayer" is, especially if someone attempts to harm, or do something funny to the one family that he cares about.
Polished Port: Similarly to the first game, Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 was ported to the Nintendo Switch as part of the Striker Pack that offers a full HD 60 FPS experience compared to the 3DS version along with high-resolution cutscenes, portraits, and cut-ins, all while bundling all of the game's DLCs. It was later ported to PlayStation 4 and later Xbox One with similar enhancements.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Copen appears to be going this direction thanks to being Promoted to Playable in the sequel and featuring a fast-paced aerial style that works more fluidly than Gunvolt's "run, gun, electrify" style. It also helps that his character is a lot more fleshed out in the sequel. He's still the Jerkass who hates Adepts, but we get to see other sides of his personality that makes him at least more tolerable, such as a healthy dose of snark and inability to get a joke.
Scrappy Mechanic: Team Chats in this game have weird mechanics, in the sense that the chats that can be listened to are determined by the last mission played. For example, playing any mission from the latter half of the game onward (including Extra Missions) locks you from seeing any Team Chats until you either beat the game or play a mission from the first half of the game. Funny enough, the way this mechanic works means that there are even Team Chats that can only be seen by going back to the prologue stage (in both scenarios) and replaying it.
Self-Imposed Challenge:
- Try playing with Prevasion off. You'll see exactly how infuriatingly difficult 2 is meant to be.
- In fact, several pieces of equipment seem to exist purely to make the game harder. For example, both characters can get equipment that disables Checkpoints (useful for score attacking) and numerous equipment that gives powerful boons in exchange for things like disabling Prevasion, reducing HP, making Spikes of Doom lethal, and whatnot.
Sequel Difficulty Spike: 2 is significantly more difficult than the first, due in part to more varied level design and increased abundance of Spikes of Doom. Bosses are also much more aggressive and attacks are a lot trickier to dodge.
That One Attack:
- Teseo has an attack called Grid Raid that causes him to switch places with Gunvolt. This attack takes time to charge up, but once it does, he and Gunvolt switch positions, then microbots will target Gunvolt's new position and attack him, forcing you to react quickly. If that wasn't already bad, Teseo also trades tags with you. This means that any tags on Teseo will lock onto Gunvolt after the switch, and if you attempt to Flashfield, you'll hurt yourself, forcing you to wait for the tags to expire before you can continue attacking.
- Teseo's Impregnable Fortress is a very precise art to master. He fires exploding orbs at you that your Flashfield blocks, but at your base EP value, you'll overheat the moment the orbs stop shooting. You are then required to rush outside of the circle Teseo creates and book it around the arena before heading inside the circle to block the last assault of orbs, because if you stay inside the circle will contract around you and deal contact damage, and if you aren't fast enough in running outside you'll be hit by the Bug Lasers firing off from the circle. If you mess any of this up, you will get hit.
- Milas' attacks in general are hard to deal with due to the fact that they are all water attacks, which immediately forces Gunvolt into an Overheat state, disabling his Flashfield. This means that the vast majority of them go straight through Prevasion and Anthem. Special mention goes to his Vortex Rush, which traps Gunvolt in a cyclone of water. If it connects, Milas will immediately follow up with a Harp Boomerang which is guaranteed to hit him.
- Gibril's attacks in her "Beast Mode" are hard to avoid as it's basically like fighting Viper all over again. Her Strange World is a feint attack where she sends an afterimage to attack you while she attacks from above, her Dance of Death has her darting around the room and toying with you, and her Childhood's End has her firing a large, nearly unavoidable shockwave at you. Then there's her Iron Maiden Special Skill where she traps herself and you in a steel cage and creates metal spikes all around the ceiling, floor, and walls that requires near perfect skill to escape unscathed and will kill you in seconds if you're unprepared. Made all the more frustrating by the fact that you can't hurt her during this attack, meaning all you can do is try to survive the onslaught.
- Asroc's Furnace of Inferno attack has him command Gallete Krone to fire a large, screen-filling heatwave that is literally impossible to dodge without a well-timed Prevasion. The attack can be interrupted by shutting down Gallete Krone before he attacks, but it's a risky strategy and if you're not fast enough, this attack will deal heavy damage.
- Tenjian's Frigid Blossom and its upgraded form, Seven Slashes, ignoring the start-up period where you're free to bash his head in, is notoriously difficult to avoid due to the speed at which the pillars are summoned, especially with ice physics, and if you're caught, your Prevasion is disabled and you take enormous damage or in the case of the latter, it's a One-Hit Kill that forces a scripted Anthem that will destroy your stage score. However, there is a trick to it, but you should turn your volume up. Each of the beams have a faint audio cue moments before it spawns; timed correctly, a seasoned player can effortlessly avoid all four beams.
- True Zonda. Dear god, the homing cards. She'll spawn five purple cards that start spinning and flying at the player. The homing ability of the cards is uncanny, and are extremely difficult to avoid almost all the time. She can also throw up a barrier to defend herself and can summon two large, screen-filling drills that are hard to avoid. Eden's Presence (only used on Copen) is also rather difficult to not get hit by, since the window between Teseo's attack's hitbox becoming inactive and Tenjian spawning above Copen to slice him is tiny. Paradise Lost (only used on Gunvolt) is a subversion; while it makes her invincible and deploys a screenwide unavoidable attack repeatedly, it has no effect on your Kudos, and is defused in an entirely non-standard method.
- Anthem Gunvolt's Astrasphere is difficult to avoid if you haven't learned its trick. Stand as close as possible to the electric field, and the orbs will miss when he fires them.
- Lazy Laser returns with a vengeance in the DLC stages. While it was perfectly simple to bait out in the first game once you figured out the pattern, 2 rips the player a new one; it now spawns seven portals in a completely new pattern, and a fair number of them are now horizontal and diagonal in nature; due to Merak giving you little breathing room during the attack, there's extremely limited space in which you can bait the attack.
That One Boss:
- In Gunvolt's scenario, Gibril is a pain in the ass in the same way no one likes fighting Oddjob in GoldenEye (1997). While her first phase, her "Alchemist Mode", is easy enough to deal with, it gets much more difficult once she enters her second phase, her "Beast Mode", which is basically like fighting Viper all over again. Gibril mainly dashes around attempting to slash you with her claws, which can be very difficult to dodge. She also tends to assume a feral stance. Problem is, because she's a rather small girl, being in her feral stance makes her too short to shoot, making her nigh-impossible to hit 80% of time^note. It only gets worse in her third phase, when she enters her "Crisis Beast Mode" and uses her Iron Maiden Special Skill where she traps herself and you in a steel cage and creates metal spikes all around the ceiling, floor, and walls. This attack is excruciatingly difficult to avoid, especially with Copen, and can kill you easily if you're unprepared. In addition, her defense skyrockets, reducing your own damage to mere Scratch Damage per tick^note. You can get around it by using the Flashfield/Flashshield to dispel the pools of blood and reduce the number of spikes, but Gunvolt has a harder time as Gibril constantly zips around the cage and contact with her forces Gunvolt into the Overheat state.
- Asroc is a huge nuisance due to the presence of Galette Krone, who is typically capable of devastating area-wide attacks that have punishing aftereffects. Galette Krone also happens to have an enormous health bar, so unless you pack damage boosting gear, you're in for an uphill battle. It also happens to regenerate after a few seconds, so if you want that opening window to beat on Asroc, you're gonna have to disable it again. Then there's Amuse-Bouche, which is terribly difficult to dodge, even by Gunvolt 2 standards.
- Did you think Anthem Gunvolt was a bit too easy for a True Final Boss? Score Attack: Ultimate Mode says hi. In addition to a double speed buff that causes him to execute all his moves twice as fast, recharge Prevasion twice as fast, and causes Tags to wear off twice as fast, he starts using Voltaic Chains as a regular attack in 2nd phase, and when you get him down to 3rd phase, his Septimal Surge buff not only gives him a damage bonus, but also gives him even stronger moves, including the dreaded triple Luxcalibur/Astrasphere wall and Voltaic Chains that cover the floor.
- Ultimate Mode True Zonda is just nasty. They get the rather simple buff of being able to use multiple attacks simultaneously. This allows them to attack with both forms at once for certain attacks, which vastly reduces the variable windows in which you can avoid damage. Other attacks are just combinations of two attacks at once, which is surprisingly effective for dealing damage.
That One Level:
- Tenjian's stage. Slippy-Slidey Ice World. Prepare for a lot of sliding into obstacles because of Frictionless Ice slopes. Then there are the later portions in which Tenjian doesn't freeze the level segment until you're already in it, so you might wind up dashing into what looks like a harmless wall, then half a second later it's got Spikes of Doom on it.
- Carerra's DLC stage in 2 can be extremely unforgiving unless you already know what you're doing before you jump in.
- Both Ultimate Mode levels in 2 seriously push the limits on sadistic level design, especially on Gunvolt's end. While Copen can simply avoid most platforming gimmicks with Bullit Dash, Gunvolt has to live with them, including Ultimate Frozen City, which is now littered with Spikes of Doom combined with slopes that are guaranteed to send you plummeting into them if you aren't paying attention. Enemy placement for Gunvolt is also much harsher, with enemies inserted into places to keep you on your toes. Oh, and the boss battles at the end of both stages doesn't help either.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Why doesn't Zonda send out copies of her Grimoired Seven in the first four stages both characters go through instead of exposing them to danger? Sure, it may still be a part of the Normalization process she was trying to use with the Shards, but the Copies of the Adepts are shown to be at least just as functional as their originals. Not to mention it seems odd for Zonda to be willing to let her adopted brother Tenjian fight Gunvolt/Copen with the huge possibility of them dying, and that she shows sorrow at their deaths. But then again, Zonda does seem to have a twisted definition of "Love" if her Sumeragi forms mean anything.
The Woobie: If you thought Joule had it hard already, this game manages to make her situation even worse. As early as in the intro stage, she gets her powers extracted by Zonda, leaving her with a tiny fragment of power left. Despite being practically close to GV, she can't do much for him because she lacks a proper body. She also sometimes gets practically upset ("nervous" as the game calls it) instead of you getting closer to her during chats, many of them having Quinn involved. Then in the climax, Zonda fully snatches her away from GV and gets forced to power Zonda up. And worst of all, after that, she gets reunited with her proper body... Mytyl. Which, due to conflicts of her and Mytyl's memories, causes the resulting mix Identity Amnesia. Heartbroken, GV decides to let her go and decide her life for herself. Sniff...

YMMV / Azure Striker Gunvolt 2

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