What?! Azure Striker Gunvolt was awesome!
The game is fun to play but the many flaws that could potentially be fixed is probably the issue. Random item acquiring is probably video games in general biggest problems. While there is useful items to get using the synth options, the way to obtain them is uninspiring and doesn't encourage people to try, since is completely random luck how you will get them. The game in my opinion mostly teaches the player discipline or like
@Meteor7 said "Don't get hit" So is more of a game who tries to condition the player to be flawless or perfect and make as less mistakes as possible to gain a better reward. Most players will look and see how useful a item that lets you perform multiple jumps/air dashes, reduce energy used during flashfield or pervasion, higher damage or anything else, but then discover the only way to get it would be
- Find medals hidden in the stage
- Get high scores to get better ranks which require KUDOS as well as fast time completion (Was already explained you never wanna get hit)
- Complete challenges.
There was similar games in the past for example like mega man zero series where you had a rank system that was based on kinda the same thing
- Mission success = How much of the objective goal you completed (Max points 20)
- Clear Time = Time used to finish the mission (Max points 20)
- Enemies defeated = Number of enemies defeated (Max points 15)
- Damage = Damage taken during mission (Max points 15
- Retry = How many lives lost during mission (Max points 15)
- Elf = Number of cyber elves found during mission. (Max points 15)
It too was also a notorious infamous ranking system I hated cause it was very strict to get S rank. To get S rank you need 96-100 points while anything lower than 45 gets F.
Every mission has a objective, you need to clear to get 100% to earn 20 Points, you have to do it fast to get 20 clear time, defeat specific amount of enemies for 15, Don't take too much damage, don't lose any lives and find all cyber elf in the mission. Is too much pressure to get s rank they made elves that GIVE YOU A HIGH RANK just for the sake of it.
Mega man X 5 is another game with rank system, but is fairly small compared to mega man zero, Damage taken, time taken, and enemies defeated. The problem with the games is they never do tell you how much of anything you require for the high rank, you just have to figure it out, each stage has a preset clear time for best possible score, and the ranks are based on score. You never are told "Defeat 47 enemies, collect 6 cyber elves, don't lose more than 2 times, Don't take more than 12 damage, clear the mission under 4:10"
Though with me I usually do dislike ranking system in games simply cause they don't make it a bit more relax, nor do they tell you how to get high rank.
In azure striker gunvolt, is fun to play, i like running through enemies using prevasion feeling like a bad add speed runner with no care to safety. That how video games are to me, making me feel like I can do anything I can't do in reality. But I would also like to least try and get synth items which is only possible from player's determination. Unfortunate for them, i can beat the game without enhancements and i don't really need them to win, but would be nice to try.
I'm not saying ranking systems suck, games can have them just maybe do something like for higher difficulty, require better score or something for higher ranks, i don't feel it should be enforced, it should be optional.