I do like me a Gunvolt. Luminous Avenger iX plays a little differently, being a spin-off, and this sequel continues that way, but the Mega Man-ish roots are still there and as platform shooters go, the series is probably my favourite.
iX 2 involves yer boy Copen and some of his chums getting sucked into a parallel dimension where humans have died out and robots guard a huge tower. For story based reasons, the mission is to scale this tower (which helpfully has different biomes on each floor, in order to facilitate the genre tropes of ice/fire/jungle/etc. worlds), beat the bosses, nick their weapons (each of which is a weakness for another boss), and somehow return home.
![](https://lofi-gaming.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/gunvolt-luminous-avenger-ix-2-3.jpg)
Or, you ignore all that and have fun jumping and shooting and using loads of bizarre weapons.
Unlike all the other Gunvolt and Gunvolt-adjacent games, this one was a total breeze. Normally, the bosses at least would require many, many attempts, but here I stormed through the entire game with nary a death, and although the final boss took an age to defeat (perhaps I didn’t find the right weapon to beast it), it wasn’t difficult. Most of this was probably down to the addition of a power that lets you heal whenever you want, as often as you want, which is unlocked from the start. I suspect using this may lower your score, but I’m not score-attacking the game so I used it with impunity. Which, actually, wasn’t even all that often.
![](https://lofi-gaming.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/gunvolt-luminous-avenger-ix-2-4.jpg)
Luminous Avenger iX 2 is probably a weaker game than iX 1 in many ways – easier, shorter, less interesting story, forgettable bosses, and so on, but it’s still tremendous fun.