#inti creates

Majogami’s central mechanics is Setsuna, a homing slash that cuts through enemies at rapid speed. It performs a similar role to Gunvolt 3’s Arc Chain, allowing you to chain kill groups of enemies and reach distant positions. According to a developer stream, the concept predates Gunvolt 3, but ended up developing alongside it, due to both games’ extended development time. 

Setsuna use is limited by Shiroha’s gauge, which refills upon attacking with standard melee attacks, or killing enemies. Setsuna will outright kill many enemies, allowing you to rapidly chain kill them, and move through stages with speed. The wrinkle is that certain enemies need to be attacked from a certain direction to become vulnerable. Certain enemies have shields that can only be broken from vertical, horizontal or diagonal attacks, or they might need to be attacked from behind, when you’re out of their line of sight. 

Combined with Setsuna’s meter restrictions, it creates a natural ebb and flow, allowing Majogami to mix high speed sprints with more considering platforming and combat encounters that test your attention. Inti Creates’ Gunvolt series often struggled to build levels that couldn't be trivialized by their characters’ mobility, but Majogami is able to play with similar ideas while striking an even balance. 

In terms of level design, you could think of Luminous Avenger iX as a highway, Gunvolt 3 as a closed circuit track with gentle curves, and Majogami as a mix of the two with regular hairpin turns to modulate the pace and keep you on your toes. 

Majogmai also shares the Gunvolt series' emphasis on dropping vocal tracks, bringing them into an even more prominent role. After meeting the Astrals, deities of this papercraft world, you’ll gain access to Ascension, which allows them to fuse with your weapon, giving you an extra jump, powered up attacks and an accompanying vocal theme sung by that Astral. Unlocking the next form, Astralize, gains a new armored form, an altered moveset, and has Shiroha joining in on the vocal track, to signify her total synchronicity with her partner. 

Ascension and Astralize are better integrated than the similar Overdrive mechanics in the Gunvolt series, where they generally played the role of either a score bonus or last minute save. In Majogami they fill up naturally through fighting, giving them a function similar to a tokusatsu or magical girl transformation, a new form that Shiroha takes on as the fight escalates. 

It integrates particularly well in boss fights, where filling up the gauge is nearly guaranteed, and allows you to counter the boss’ super attacks with your own. Each partner powers up different directional attacks, so choosing the right one to counter a boss’ moveset and super attacks is a crucial piece of puzzling out each fight. 

The bosses themselves each occupy their own world, materialized by their desires, and warped by the magic of Aradia, the mastermind behind the game’s events. 

There’s a memorable rogues gallery here, including a spider made of severed fingers, an insect maid who plays with projections and shadows, and a centaur prince who rules over a toy-like fairytale kingdom. 

Penta, the prince, deserves special mention for his treatment. His fairytale kingdom is filled with paper subjects, standing in for the people and family of his actual kingdom, who were destroyed after they refused to acknowledge him as a man, attempting to force him to live as a woman. His identity as a trans man is unfortunately not respected by the Japanese script, which treats him as a woman with the mannerisms of a charming prince, but the English script is careful to only refer to him in masculine language. 

Penta isn’t the only queer character either. Louise, who initially shows up as an ally before being forced into battle with Shiroha, makes it clear that her affection for Shiroha is not just platonic. During her boss fight, failing to counter her super attack will have her kiss Shiroha, healing both of them and dragging out the fight. It’s a neat subversion of the usual boss pattern, with the mechanics providing a punchy emphasis. 

And that’s about all the good things I have to say about the writing. 

Majogami continues to drop well executed narrative touches, but the story itself continues to indulge in creepy sexual jokes that would feel offputting even if the cast wasn’t made up almost exclusively of young girls. Shirori, the only major male character, takes the form of a talisman nestled between Shiroha’s breasts, offering repeat commentary on her and other girls’ bodies--a fact only made creepier on the insistence that the’s Shiroha’s father. 

Majogami leans heavily into fetish art and sexualization, with ridiculous character designs and fullscreen animations that have the camera positioned dangerously close to each girl’s crotch. 

As someone who argues that sex and pornography are an essential part of the fabric of art, and by extension, videogames, I’m more interested in how sex and sexuality are employed than policing what’s in good taste. But Majogami’s designs are so obvious that it’s nothing more than the id on display, which such memorable designs as “girl with big tits in a bunny suit”, and “girl with FOUR big tits and a mommy voice”, or just straight lolicon bullshit that seems like it’s testing how close it can get to the line without crossing it. 

It’s little more than pandering, not really adding to the world or aesthetic, and it all gets worse with the final act revelation that Shiroha is in fact a grade school girl, with the playable character being a mere projection. It makes the events of the game, and all the sexual imagery and jokes, exponentially creepier, and doesn’t feel necessary for the story or its thematic aims at all. It’s a truly dogshit twist that hangs over the game, and alongside the sheer volume of truly bad writing, actively works against the compelling world and aesthetic that Majogami establishes. 

It hits at the peak of the game, before the emotional encore on the way to the finale, and drags everything else down with it. It’s offputting enough that I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to play the game after learning it. It’s truly one of the lowest points in any Inti Creates game I’ve played, so of course it’s buried deep in a game with some of the highest highs they’ve ever delivered. 

Maybe that makes it the perfect title for Inti Creates’ anniversary. Since their inception, Inti has been marked by compelling action and aesthetics, paired with a radical design philosophy that brings bewildering friction points into what could have been straightforward action games. I suppose it wouldn’t be in character to make a game that didn’t have at least one indefensible decision in it. 

When Gunvolt’s power begins to cause other Adepts to go berserk, Kirin is dispatched by Shadow Yakumo, Sumeragi’s sister organization, to find and seal Gunvolt’s power before it breaks containment. In the ensuing battle, Gunvolt’s power is contained and he’s inexplicably changed into a god, and teams up with Kirin and Sumeragi as part of a new department dedicated to fighting the out of control Adepts. 

Honestly, the story here continues the series trend of mediocre writing, leaving several nagging questions unaddressed, and having Gunvolt team up with his former enemies with nearly no hesitation. It’s a position far from his origins as an anti-Sumeragi terrorist, and he goes as far as to defend the corporation against the factions opposing it. 

It’s a waste, but it’s fine as an excuse for the new team based gameplay style. The tag mechanic returns in the form of Kirin’s sealing talismans, which can now be thrown in 8 directions, and streamlines the flow of combat. Landing a talisman builds up temporary damage to an enemy, which is cashed in when you hit them with a melee attack or Arc Chain. Arc Chain instantly slashes through every tagged enemy, and gives Kirin an additional jump afterward, allowing you to consecutively chain kills without touching the ground. As you gain new abilities, you can follow up Arc Chain with various directional attacks and combos.

The talisman system finally delivers a take on the tagging system that’s intuitive, with a moveset that enables incredible mobility while asking you to engage with the enemies and platforming.

Gunvolt’s original moveset made it easy to ignore half the obstacles, and while Copen’s moveset felt powerful and expressive at its peak, it was hard to design platforming challenges that he couldn’t fly over. Luminous Avenger iX2 attempted to address this by building a more melee focused moveset, but its sloppy solutions ended up removing most of what made Copen compelling in the first place. 

Kirin’s combos are fast and effective on their own, and when combined with tagging and Arc Chain, allow you to traverse long distances and take down enemies with incredible speed. Gunvolt 3’s combat combines a lot of the powerful abilities of previous games, but asks you to perform them with a more finesse, considering timing and positioning a little more. 

Gunvolt, by contrast, has finally achieved the power level that the series has hinted at. Throughout the series we see various teases of what Gunvolt’s moveset would look like if he unleashed his full power, and in Gunvolt 3 they finally deliver it. Gunvolt here acts essentially as a super mode, building power as you fight, then draining it when you switch to him. This version of Gunvolt has multi-directional dashes, infinite jumps and can output huge damage through his tag attacks, Arc Chain and suplex. He can essentially skip platforming areas and guarantee a kill on a boss if their health bar is low enough. 

The combination of the two playable characters allows the game to keep the platforming and combat challenging, while having a pressure release valve you can pull when it gets too tough. Admittedly, Gunvolt trivializes large parts of the game even more now, and with good routing you can basically skip the most challenging parts of the game, but his secondary role makes him easier to ignore if you want to challenge yourself. It’s an imperfect middle ground, but it finally aligns the goals of platforming and combat, making scoring runs feel like a natural step towards improving at the game. 

 If there’s one disappointment, it’s that the boss techniques learned in the second half of the game are just improved or alternative versions of your already existing kit. It keeps the combat focused on fundamentals, but compared to games it’s drawing on, like the X and Zero series, I can’t help but feel there’s a missed opportunity to give Kirin more tools that could allow more expressive, alternative paths through the stages. 

Should you go looking for them, Gunvolt 3 has plenty of flaws to pick at. But as the finale to a series, it finally manages to deliver on promises nearly a decade in the making. Its long development period absolutely paid off, making it one of the finest 2D action games of the generation in almost every regard. 

Then again, it doesn’t seem like Inti Creates is done with it yet. Gunvolt Trilogy Enhanced, a collection of the three Gunvolt games, brought a few balance changes, and added the Connect iX mode, a five stage time trial mode that allows you to play as Copen, sporting his moveset from Luminous Avenger iX 2, but modified to always use his Bullit Gauge, instead of having it only available during Overdrive. It’s honestly a bit underwhelming, cutting out a huge part of the playable game, not including any story scenes or new abilities, and ending abruptly without fanfare. It’s a neat preview of what an improved version of his iX2 moveset might look like, but not much more. 

Of course, Inti Creates need to split the games into yet another release didn’t end there, and the recently announced Switch 2 version of the Gunvolt Trilogy not only sees Copen return to Gunvolt 3, but adds an entire new alternative story mode that imagines what would happen if Gunvolt and Copen teamed up instead. It gives you a less OP, but still empowered, version of Gunvolt with many of his new tools from Gunvolt 3 intact, adds new tag mechanics, and even seems to include new weapons for Copen to use--all alongside a brand new story. It seems to be a fully realized version of what Connect iX promised, but only time will tell if it delivers. 

Copen’s Razor Wheel combo has noticeable startup and recovery, making it likely that you’ll take damage from one enemy as you attack another. Most weapons also bolster long range abilities, and alongside his ability to lock onto targets with his air dash, you’ll be equipped well enough to never need to use his melee combo in combat. 

The air dash limit does make targeting more awkward. Using the dash to get airborne is discouraged, since it’ll immediately waste your single dash, making you unable to dash into a target to lock on to them. It also removes the ability to repeatedly dash into the floor to refresh your jumps, a method to approach carefully from the air. Missing a target is also now more punishing, leaving you drifting slowly through the air, unable to dodge or retarget quickly until you drop to the floor. And while you could previously slam into the floor to recharge your dashes, that ability has been removed, giving Copen worse vertical movement and removing an option that might have limited his vulnerability. 

iX2 isn’t an out and out bad game, but it fails to make a compelling case as a sequel, or as its own unique entry. It trades the expressive movement for an underwhelming melee attack, and continually draws comparisons to some of Inti’s most refined work. Even worse, it teases you with Copen’s old abilities, locking his old movement abilities behind the scoring system--or a DLC boss. 

To get Copen’s air movement and speed back, you’ll need to enter Overdrive, the previously ornamental mode that causes a soundtrack change upon reaching a certain score threshold. Overdrive returns Copen’s moveset from the previous games, but with a new gauge replacing the bullet system, allowing him to perform multiple air dashes, long hovers and refilling upon colliding into enemies and platforms. It’s presented as a dramatic power up, but it’s hard to feel that way when it’s been achieved by removing abilities rather than adding them. 

If you play normally, you’ll never see it either, since entering a checkpoint or using healing will cash in your combo, resetting the counter and returning Copen to his base form. It removes the fast, expressive moveset that used to be the baseline, and turns it into a reward for players who are already good at the game. 

iX2 doesn’t really ask you to improve to that point. The standard difficulty is low by series standard, and made totally trivial by the ability to heal an unlimited amount of times. The healing ability existed in previous entries, but it was limited by a lengthy cooldown period. In iX2 you can easily brute force the entire game with this healing ability, and if you die you still have a chance to be brought back with unlimited weapon energy and flight powers restored, thanks to the Anthem system returning. 

It’s clear that this is another attempt by Inti Creates to bridge their challenging action game design with broader appeal, but this solution trivializes combat worse than Gunvolt 1, and there are even upgrades to increase your health, or reduce damage to a single point when on the ground. It makes Copen feel overpowered, but in an uninteresting way. 

Even funnier, should you fight the DLC bosses you’ll gain even stronger versions of Copen’s existing abilities, including the ability to freeze time, using flight without Overdrive, and more powerful melee attacks. 

Should you want an actual challenge, the hard mode is locked behind the tedious task of collecting the optional emblems in all the stages, and then finding and defeating a hidden boss. Hard mode of course disables all of Copen’s upgrades and removes healing, and adds a lives system, making it swing the difficulty in the complete opposite direction, to the point that they added an assist mode for it in a later patch. 

It’s a balance philosophy that only exists in extremes, making it a serious effort to discover anything interesting in it.

Despite all of these issues, iX2 does manage to become more interesting on a repeat playthrough, when you’ve gathered more upgrades and extended your moveset. 

Weapons have less overlapping utility than in iX1, and with each of them having their own individual energy bar, swapping between them is more practical. Whirling Chopper is the standout here, a melee attack that strikes above you and is able to cancel your current action, ending the recovery of your standard combo and putting you airborne so you can tag the next enemy. 

Because Copen failed to exterminate the Sumeragi Group and their Adepts, they have in turn enacted a genocide against the innocent, natural human beings. There’s no real attempt to reconcile or even acknowledge Copen’s fanatical attitude from the previous games, and because of it, it ends up stumbling into a “get them before they get us” framing. There’s no real malice or coherent ideology behind it, but it is a strange feeling to have your cool anti-hero accidentally reflect the thinking of right wing conspiracy theorists, and be right. 

Unfortunately, once again, Copen’s moveset is the best it’s ever been , putting Luminous Avenger iX among the peak of the series. 

The higher resolution results in an expanded playfield, with more open level designs and room to see what’s coming up ahead. Aerial combos are easier to pull off, with adjustments to the scoring system to prevent combos from ending prematurely. 

The extra controls available on consoles allows you to use the right stick to quickly swap weapons, making it seamless to swap between weapons to adapt to each situation (a mechanic seen previously in Mega Man 11). Each weapon now has its own rechargeable energy bar as well, allowing you to keep pushing your offense when one of them empties.

Unfortunately, weapon switching isn’t as practical as it could be, since certain weapons are so much more useful than others. Orbital Edge in particular ends up outstripping nearly every other weapon, hitting near instantly, doing good damage, covering a huge space whether locked on or not, and being energy efficient as well. It’s basically the game’s equivalent to the Mega Man 2 Metal Blade, except even better since it automatically recharges. 

A few other weapons still manage to make an impact despite this, such as Anchor Nexus, which allows you to basically do a Sonic homing attack towards the closest enemy, damaging them and tagging them for your main weapon. Photon Detonator drops a huge explosion that’s great for clearing group up enemies, and Rising Cyclone has both use as a vertical lock on attack, lifts you up during activation, giving you some extra vertical movement in tight spaces. And to enhance all those is the new Darkness Trigger, which gives you enhanced weapon properties and damage in exchange for constantly draining health when you’re not locked on. 

If you’re going for pure efficiency, Orbital Edge is less technical and covers almost every situation, but there’s still enough utility between the rest of the weapons that you can integrate them into styling on enemies as you run through stages. 

These small refinements to Copen’s playstyle have huge reverberations, giving him one of the most expressive movement in the series, and raising the speed of the game even higher, with tons of incentives to return to score attack stages. 

Between the refined movement, highly detailed pixel art, and endlessly replayable structure, Luminous Avenger iX is the first game in the series that confidently achieves all its goals. It provides an expressive moveset with a compelling playground for it, and sets it at just the right pace, so that every return trip is enjoyable. 

Should Copen run out of Bullits he’ll no longer be able to perform air actions, but he’ll automatically hover the ground after air actions, letting him still cover a good distance. Alternatively, he can slam to the floor to refill his full stock of Bullits, making him able to get into and out of the air at high speed. The moveset calls to mind DS era Sonic games, where you can instantly accelerate to high speed, and chain enemies together to gain extended air time. 

Beating a boss with Copen will also unlock their EX Weapon, an ability that adds to his long and short range arsenal, and dramatically powers up his tag attacks. These cover a variety of trajectories and functions, enabling you to cover wider areas and cut through areas and bosses even faster. Weapon energy is shared between all of them, so you’re not given a lot of incentive to switch on the fly, but it recharges quickly enough that you'll have almost every weapon available within moments. 

By comparison, Gunvolt’s moveset is nearly unchanged, and feels limited. Aside from a few new EX moves, his kit is essentially the same, including the same situational trajectory changing weapons. Gunvolt’s grounded movement is slower and his tag mechanic is less immediately parsable than Copen’s, making him almost redundant in his own game. 

The dual protagonist structure does at least allow for a more interesting narrative, with events playing out through multiple perspectives, and the boss order mixed up depending on which protagonist you’re playing as.The finale even presents a memorable climax, with Gunvolt needing to summon the Muse’s song to resist the overwhelming might of Copen, requiring you to use the microphone to sing the lyrics of the song that’s been playing throughout the game to power him up. 

It’s enough to justify the return of Gunvolt’s playstyle to the second game, and alongside Copen’s fantastic movement and gunplay, it marks the second game as a more confident and refined entry than the first. 

Still, Copen is still limited to being half the focus of the game, and his moveset begs a bigger sandbox than the tight stages that could fit onto the 3DS hardware.