azure gunvolt striker 3

Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 is the most recent entry for the Gunvolt series. Kirin is the protagonist and a new introduction to the series. She works for a secret organization, from Sumigami’s Shadow Yakumo group that is battling a massive threat. Kirin defeats the dragon Gunvolt who joins her in fighting the other dragons. 

This game is more focused on hack and slash mechanics, but you can still utilize the run and gun mechanics of Gunvolt too. Like before you can level up and gather currency to power up your abilities. With Kirin, you can throw shuriken called a “fetter” to tag enemies and also teleport to destroy them. Gunvolt, as a result of years of power just growing so big, becomes this God like dragon being and you can switch to him each time his meter reaches to a certain percentage and inflict massive damage to enemies. You can fly around and utilize his own special moves. The game has a new feature called image pulse where you can gain special abilities and bonuses, and level them up with image shards to make them more powerful.  

The music, graphics and art are excellent as usual. The localization from the dialogue and voice acting was really attrocious. The story is really the worst part of the game as there are multiple plot holes throughout the game.

Many characters from the previous games are missing and their fates remain unknown. The ending was a huge disappointment too as if they plan on just keeping the series ongoing. It did not need a sequel baiting ending.  

Despite its shortcomings, I enjoyed the game and would recommend it mainly for the gameplay not for the story per say.

It gets 4 out of 5 stars.