Woah look! She has a sword and she shoots! Are we finally getting Mega Man Zero again? Nope, sorry bros. It's still Gunvolt. Shockingly good for Gunvolt but still Gunvolt.
Give me a minute here, I have to explain Gunvolt every time. Gunvolt looks like Mega Man but it does not play like one. Gunvolt is a score attack game cosplaying as Mega Man, with your main damage engine typically some indirect dance you are scored on. For the first time in the entire franchise, the mechanics involved are actually GOOD.
The sword is for show. Kirin will throw a talisman to mark an enemy and then do a teleport zip attack to actually confirm the damage. This is all you do in the levels, and the game demands you use these zip attacks to chain kill enemies and never touch the ground. The whole thing is thrilling and fun. If you hold forward, you can zip behind the enemy rather than in front, which is important for spiked, shielded, or hazardous enemies. This sounds basic but it is literally the first time in the entire franchise where there is SOME measure of gameplay challenge that interacts meaningfully with the score mechanic. Gunvolt has always been half-baked so by finally making a package that is fun and meaningfully tough, and actually having the game be designed around it, GV3 ends up being the absolute best this franchise has ever been. (iX1's human pinball was very fun as a power fantasy but it was stupid and ignored the level design.)
The bosses too are better. Zipping is used constantly to dodge wave attacks which works wonderfully and the sword also sees use against them. The Inti Creates standard of goofy unreadable attacks is actually quite restrained here. If a boss is going to make a half of the screen explode, he will usually brandish a sword and glow and glare at the target and similar better tells so you do not have to rely on rote memorization to dodge everything. Inti had been doing this trash going back to MMZ so it is nice to see them stay tough but fight more fair.
The story is stupid. Fractally. Every part of it is stupid and when looked at holistically it is stupid in different ways. Some of the characters are fun and Kirin and Gunvolt have some nice banter and chemistry. But beyond that just turn off the Story Mode+ in options so you dont have to read them talking midlevel. (You don't... really listen to EN dubs, do you? Need I remind you one of the characters has the "almost indecipherable thick Osaka accent" trope and if you don't know what that gets localized to you do not WANT to know)
Gunvolt himself is in this game too but he is just a super meter transform for Kirin with almost identical mechanics. The game offers some extra modes where you play as him, and these prove Kirin was fun by accident as his mode is an obligation at best. Fundamentally he cannot be played for score so he plays for speed zipping which is different than Kirin but not quite as fun (you would need a screen 4x as wide as this one to try to do Sanic speed zipping right) but an effort was made.
Note that GV3 promises a future free add on where you can play as the rival character coming 12/2022. GV3 may be the best Inti Creates has done but their average is still so low I have no faith this will be a game changer. Check back to see me crow or eat crow.
I am hard on Gunvolt because I keep buying these games and being disappointed at Inti making a mess with their CREATIVITY while even Mighty Number 9 married Mega Man to score play with more skill. Gunvolt 3 is the first time it feels like this series has figured out a workable way to make the schizophrenic marriage of easy score play and tough boss fights work. I suspect a lot of this came about by accident and the "everything and the kitchen sink" design suggests I am right, but the core product here is still really fun and for the first time I seriously want to replay levels and bosses in this game to actually master it. Faint praise, but it took them almost a decade and 5 games to reach this point so I am proud of them for it