This is the YMMV for the second spin-off game.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: The Creator. How much harm could he have prevented if he made different decisions in the past, like giving Mother different orders or more autonomy? Given that he's an alternate version of Copen - who started out as an arrogant, self-righteous young genius seeking to wipe out all Adepts - could the mysterious disaster that befell his world have resulted from him taking things too far, or was it unrelated to him? Is he the Big Good who's always done the best he could for the world and his creations, or is he a remorseful Greater-Scope Villain trying to fix his own mistakes?
- Contested Sequel: Compared to the previous game, the opinion is mixed due to gameplay changes and the alternate world setting. On the one hand, you have people who like the new Stance System and/or enjoy the interactions of Copen, Lola, and Kohaku with Null and the new antagonists along with the interesting questions the world brings up especially with the truth of the Mother Computer and The Creator. On the other hand, you have people who consider the Stance System the epitome of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! and/or are annoyed that Blade is Demoted to Extra after the ending of the first iX implied she'd have a bigger role going forward and wanting to see how the original world was doing firsthand outside of Exposition. Then there are others who appreciate that they were trying to mix the gameplay up in an attempt to avoid what killed Mega Man but feel it wasn't executed nearly well enough, that if Inti Creates had given Copen's (Or in some cases Blade, had they opted to make her a second playable character while keeping Copen and his unique gameplay untouched) melee combat the same depth they had given Mega Man Zero and made the score system reward it more instead of making it a chore for the player to do before having access to unlimited Bullit Dashes the gameplay could have easily been the franchise's best yet.
- Difficulty Spike: The jump from the normal game to Hard Mode is so egregious that the game simultaneously qualifies for Sequel Difficulty Drop and Sequel Difficulty Spike. It's essentially playing the entire game on Score Attack mode except with Video-Game Lives and enhanced bosses, which many have found to be so punishing that iX 2 Hard Mode is possibly the hardest a Gunvolt game has ever gotten. It's even more stressful as unlike previous games, Hard Mode is not optional if you want to get the Golden Ending.
- Epileptic Trees:
- The final stage of the game opens up a lot of different interpretations as to how the parallel world is connected to the main Gunvolt timeline. Most of these stem from the fact that both the Mother Computer and the Creator utilize Call Backs to Azure Striker Gunvolt 2, the events of which never occurred in the Luminous Avenger iX timeline due to Gunvolt and Joule's deaths.
- While Copen ultimately comes to the conculsion that The Creator sent him the Blaster Rifle, how the Creator obtained one remains a mystery. Based on the way it is described and the distinctive key shape used by the original SOPHIA-series Metal Attackers (as opposed to the G-SOPHIA's Blaster Rifle), the most likely explanation is that it is supposed to be Roddy's Blaster Rifle from Blaster Master Zero II, but that still leaves the question of whether the Creator obtained it from his own universe or from a different parallel universe, and how exactly this was accomplished. The Jason Frudnick DLC confirms that the Razor Wheel is in fact Roddy's Blaster Rifle, although this still leaves the question of how the Creator acquired it, since the only version of Copen seen obtaining it is his Guest Fighter appearance in Zero II and all hints in iX 2 point to the Creator not being that incarnation of Copen.
- Game-Breaker:
- Cryo-Flash. Ever wanted to be a Time Master in a Gunvolt game? Now you can, with the power of Cryo-Flash! Slow time when enemies are totally defenseless to pack on massive amounts of damage, or use it to avoid attacks that would otherwise be a pain in the ass to dodge normally! It even makes Break-Shift viable during boss battles, as the extended amount of vulnerability it enables allows Copen to hold out the third hit of Razor Wheel against a defenseless boss and chew through health far faster than any other method short of using a weakness. The fact that it also happens to hit everything on-screen for damage over time also lets you trivialize some attacks, mainly of the type that summon multiple destructible projectiles at the same time.
- Whirling Chopper is a mundane ability at first glance that becomes exceedingly broken in the right hands. When activated, Copen thrusts into the air with a whirling helicopter blade, gaining a little extra height like a Double Jump. One seemingly innocuous property of this move is that it instantly cancels whatever action Copen is currently performing when it's activated. This includes cancelling flight, leading to advanced movement and combat techs like dashing diagonally towards the ground, cancelling with Whirling Chopper, then cancelling the endlag of Whirling Chopper with another diagonal air dash, a loop that melts bosses far faster than was ever intended. Essentially every iX 2 Speed Run ever boils down to going to Vespa's stage first, beating her, then exploiting Whirling Chopper to break the rest of the game wide open.
- It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The game's difficulty is a bit of a sticking point, as there is a massively disproportionate gap between the "normal mode" and Hard Mode (as mentioned elsewhere on this page). The fact that there is no middle ground between the game being ridiculously easy and frustratingly hard has some fans wishing one or both of the modes were more balanced. This was remedied in a v1.4.0 update of the game, which adds an Assist Mode option to Hard Mode.
- It's Short, So It Sucks!: A complaint from the first iX that carries over to this one is the fact is that you can breeze through the game if you know what you're doing, and exacerbated thanks to the Sequel Difficulty Drop. Of course, this no longer applies when Hard Mode is added into the mix which is mandatory if you want the True Ending, as you'll be dying enough times to the bosses and redoing the stages to reach them again thanks to the lives system to easily triple your play time.
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- Break-Shift only really exists to nerf Copen rather than function as a meaningful gameplay change, as its entire purpose is to get Copen to Overdrive as fast as possible so you can actually play "normal" Copen. There's not a lot of situations where you want to use it when you have unlimited Bullit-Shift except during the second form of the final boss, who cannot be Tagged, since Bullit-Shift's ability to attack from range makes it infinitely safer and more effective in terms of DPS. The bosses clearly not being designed to be fought with Break-Shift makes this all the more glaring, since they force you to rely on the nerfed Bullit-Shift if you don't have Overdrive. Hard Mode especially exacerbates the issues with Break-Shift on a functional level, as the limitations placed on Copen make using Break-Shift comically impractical for mere survival and access to all the toys that make Break-Shift more worthwhile are sealed, locking Copen into the mediocre base form.
- Unlike the fairly-intuitive Aerial and Aerial EX bonus modifiers, the Quick Break bonus feels incredibly arbitrary and overall not really worth going for over Aerial bonuses. There's many instances where you will hack away at an enemy the moment it appears onscreen and get no bonus at all, and other instances where you will wait for something to come to you and still get a Quick Break from it anyways. It's frustrating for score attacking because the system feels so unreliable that you're better off trying to get Aerial EX bonuses, which only give +20 Kudos per kill until you have Overdrive but are consistent and generally don't screw up.
- Sequel Difficulty Drop: The base Normal mode is considerably easier than the previous game, which is something Inti Creates most likely did on purpose, in order for players to get a good gist of all Bosses and enemy strategies since they will definitely need it for the Hard Mode, which might as well be the real game all along since it contains the full story, a better ending, compared to what the base Normal mode presents.
- Sequel Difficulty Spike: The previous title only had harder Missions as mere challenges for skilled players to test their might and unlock a few cosmetics and had no bearing on the actual story. Here, there’s an unlockable Hard Mode which is mandatory to complete if one wants to unlock the best ending for Null and get the full resolution for Mother and The Creator’s characters.
- That One Attack: The Desperation Attacks in this game are even more difficult and have much less room for error than the previous ones, requiring very precise positioning and movement to avoid properly.
- Hail's Frigid Stasis is a strong contender for the resident "worst move of the game". Hail becomes invincible and creates a Bullet Hell pattern that Copen must weave through. The pattern has big gaps, which makes it easy to dodge at first glance, until she freezes time near the end of each wave and deploys drones that shoot ice crystals at Copen. The way this is set up means that straying too far from the center is a very easy way to get baited into falling for the crystal attack, and dodging bullets in the center is more difficult than going through the bigger gaps. The Hard Mode variation is far more challenging; the bullet pattern density is increased and the ice crystals fly faster when launched, requiring even more precise movement and some preplanning on the player's part to not get struck. In addition, the attack has a new ending sequence after the second wave where glaciers immediately erupt from the sides, followed by Hail using her ice blade attack to strike the center and summon ice waves, then drop icicles from the ceiling between the drones, then drop the drones. Evading the ending demands not only practice but knowledge of what exactly to do at exactly what time to not get hit by the sheer barrage of actions coming at you at once.
- The Final Boss has a particular move that is almost completely ripped from Air Man in Mega Man 2 where it summons a wall of spikes behind Copen and blows wind and several wind orbs in your direction. The orbs are arranged in such a way that you must take a particular path through them to dodge them while simultaneously fighting against the wind current, but getting the correct positioning and order of operations can be tricky in such a heated battle. There's even some orbs that are specifically positioned such that you must low-profile them with Copen's Recoil Dash to evade them properly, which will almost certainly trip you up the first few times since it's not immediately obvious that dashing on the ground reduces the size of Copen's hitbox.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The change to Copen's gameplay has proved to be incredibly controversial and has given some fans the impression that the developers completely missed the point of what made Copen fun in the last two games. Much of Copen's good air mobility has been lost in the transition and has been replaced by the incredibly mediocre Break-Shift, which provides two grounded combat tools of very little synergistic valuenote . Even with Overdrive, Copen still lacks some of his better tools like the Ground Pound, and in Hard Mode Overdrive will likely see little to no use due to the GV1 Kudos system making Overdrive unattainable for all but the most skilled players, forcing most to rely on the gutted base Bullit-Shift. The announcement of Yang Yumo soured fans on the changes even more, as it effectively gives a feature that fans have been asking for (less-limited Bullit-Shift)... locked behind an $8 paywall.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: It's mentioned in the Team Chats that the Workers apparently have a working human-like civilization, and Copen, Lola and Kohaku even stayed with them while Copen prepared to challenge the Grave Pillar. However, since the game focuses exclusively on the events surrounding the Grave Pillar and Time Skip is applied to avoid addressing events leading up to the start of the game, we never get to see friendly Workers besides Null or how they function as a society.
- Underused Game Mechanic: Surprisingly, Copen's upgrade system. It functions exactly like the previous game, except unlocking upgrades is now even more grindy, meaning you will have to spend a disproportionate amount of time farming the same stages over and over to get a full-power Copen. In addition, Hard Mode seals the upgrade system entirely, and given that the difficulty mode is Nintendo Hard, you'll spend far more time playing the game without upgrades than you would with them in order to get the best ending.
