Azure Striker Gunvolt Series / YMMV

For the YMMV of the separate games, click on the links below.

Broken Base: Story Mode+ (Live Novel in Japanese), depending on whether or not you care about the plot. Touted as a unique feature of the series, this puts a dialogue box and portrait over the bottom of the screen during gameplay, where characters will continue talking to each other and themselves throughout the level and boss battles. However, the rather large amount of real estate that the dialogue box and portrait takes up means that it can be fairly intrusive, to the point where it is possible for bosses, enemies and stage elements to hide behind the UI. Players who enjoy the series' plot like how the feature helps flesh out the characters and setting in a way that doesn't force the addition of more cutscenes to break up the flow of gameplay, but players who don't enjoy the plot find that most of the dialogue is meaningless drivel and that its presence makes the UI extremely cluttered and annoying. Later games have included Anti-Frustration Features to allow players to either tone down or hide the intrusiveness of the Story Mode+ UI, such as altering the transparency of the dialogue box and portrait, and Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 added a Log feature that allows players to read back the dialogue even with Story Mode+ turned off so it doesn't get in the way.
Fandom Rivalry: With Mighty No. 9, after its perceived failure by many of its backers, critics, and vast majority of Mega Man fans, most Gunvolt fans have been acting very condescending towards Mighty No. 9 (and Keiji Inafune) for not living up to expectations it was met with, suddenly pulling a 180 from this series So Okay, It's Average reception to claiming its a "true" successor to Mega Man, ignoring that Inti Creates also co-developed the former as well. The release of Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 (being considered a much-improved sequel to its predecessor) only months a few later from Mighty No. 9 and then followed up by Mighty Gunvolt Burst in 2017 (which was developed entirely by Inti Creates outside of Inafune's approval to use the Mighty No. 9 characters) only furthered the divide between fanbases.
Fanon: A popular fan theory is that Copen is a descendent of the Kamizono clan from the Gal*Gun series, since they share the same surname^note and Aoi Uno (a character from the first Gal*Gun) is alluded to in at least one of the games. The Kamizono clan is also a famed clan of demon hunters while Copen hunts Adepts, thematically fitting in with each other.
I Knew It!: The blue dog/wolf-like creature in the first previews for Gunvolt 3 was commonly speculated to be Gunvolt himself, due to the color scheme and having an identical braid. As of the New Game+ Expo 2022 trailer and gameplay demonstration, it was confirmed that it's a form Gunvolt takes when he's not the active player character.
Iron Woobie: Poor, poor Gunvolt. An orphan experimented on by Sumeragi until he forgot his own birth name to gain the most powerful Septima in existence and later became a hired gun for La Résistance due to strong anti-Adept sentiment from Sumeragi. He winds up having to kill his own father figure to stop his radical anti-human plans, loses the girl he cares most about twice, is forced to leave behind the only family he cares about due to Power Incontinence, spends decades being sealed until the world around him has changed completely, nearly causes The End of the World as We Know It, becomes a victim of Demonic Possession and nearly dies, and in the end he gets nothing, having to reincarnate himself to buy time to find an answer to said end of the world. The craziest part about him? No matter how much the universe has it out for him, he just keeps on pushing and grits his teeth, because he knows that if he does nothing the world around him will collapse in an instant.
It's Easy, So It Sucks!: One of the most consistent complaints about the series from players used to traditional action platformers like the Mega Man series is that the Gunvolt series is strictly geared towards score attacking, and thus makes the games very easy to beat casually via baked in mechanics like Prevasion and Anthem. This has drawn criticism from players who expect more conventional forms of difficulty and dislike how Gunvolt games hold your hand so much. Later games have included harder difficulty options, optional settings such as the ability to disable Prevasion, and have generally ramped up in difficulty with each game, but still hold your hand pretty tightly during the first run.
Magnificent Bastard: Merak, Asimov, Zonda and ZedΩ. See those pages for more details.
Play the Game, Skip the Story: While there is a fair bit of thought and effort put into the world surrounding the games, the games also offer the player the opportunity to tune out the plot and just get a high-octane Run-and-Gun series that prides itself on Stylish Action. Some players also consider the plot fairly weak and disjointed, causing this reaction.
Self-Imposed Challenge: Turning Prevasion off. It's available in every game in some way (in iX 2, you can turn Hyper Guard off instead), and in most cases you are not required to do so except in Score Attack mode (which forces a bunch of other restrictions regardless), in iX 2 Hard Mode, and in Gunvolt 3 Very Hard Mode. It's generally agreed that doing so makes the games significantly harder, and in the case of the latter two games they veer straight into Nintendo Hard territory due to how challenging bosses become when you no longer have the ability to negate their damage.
Tough Act to Follow: 2 seems to be the most highly-regarded iteration of the franchise, due to having an overall better story and characters than the previous title, fleshing out what made the first game good while replacing or updating elements that fans felt were obstructive in the first game, and introducing Copen as a playable character. Games after 2, while highly successful in their own right, have been more contentious compared to 2, with many complaints from dedicated fans levied toward their writing, characters, and world-building, or lack thereof. The iX duology also tends to get heat for its heavily streamlined or underutilized elements and overall lacking a sense of polish compared to the main series games.

YMMV / Azure Striker Gunvolt Series

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