From a pure technical standpoint, BlazBlue is the best 2D fighter in years. Anyone who is a fan of Arc System Works’ previous installments of Guilty Gear absolutely must pick up this game if they haven’t yet done so. It is simply the fighter of the decade, no bones about it. However, Guilty Gear fans are not just the ones that should be convinced. Those of you that don’t particularly care for 2D fighters, or even fighters in general; now is the time to become a fan and BlazBlue may be the game to convert you.Obviously, the presentation for the game is awesome. This game is presented in a widescreen HD format and it looks simply amazing. Animations are crisp and smooth. The backgrounds are rendered beautifully and have incredible depth. If you’re not particularly a huge fan of anime or the Guilty Gear series, the character designs may be a little off putting at first however. A black blob with a mask that utters disjointed speech against a little boy with shorts, a top hat and glasses that commands a robot doll that he claims to be his sister is just one of your possible matches. Suffice to say, every character is definitely unique and each has their own little quirks and eventually they will grow on you. A nice little touch in particular is in regards to the speech during battles. Often times, different characters will say different things depending on who they’re fighting. It’s a nice little touch that helps to make each of the characters a little more distinct. Fighting games tend to have bad English voiceovers at times, but BlazBlue’s English voice cast is actually pretty decent. Many of the characters sound just like their Japanese counterparts although if English V.A.s aren’t your thing there is still the option to switch to the original Japanese voices. Daisuke Ishiwatari returns to compose excellent up tempo rock pieces that are easily on par, or perhaps even better than Guilty Gear. All in all everything about the presentation in this game draws you in and supplements the intensity of every battle.
That’s where the brilliance of this game truly shines. This game is the culmination of the errors and corrections that have been made to fighting games for the past 20 years. The developers at ASW have taken the mistakes learned from the past over previous fighting game design and have crafted the most balanced fighter to date. This game has an answer for everything. Simply put, button mashing is not an option. Turtling is not an option. You will learn the moves and you will learn to play as the character chosen properly, or you will pay. Sure you have your basic weak, medium and strong attacks just like any other fighter, but the drive button is where the differences really come into play. Each character plays so differently from one another because of this. One character drains life. One character controls the wind. One uses the awesome power of magnetism to draw his opponents closer to him. Every character’s special moves and abilities center on this fundamental concept that they each have an ability to exploit. You could easily spend hours in the training room perfecting moves and combos trying to learn the different characters. Now I told you button mashers out there don’t do it because there’s an instant block technique that speeds up the characters recovery time which means they will counter you and make you pay dearly. Oh and it also charges up a little bit of their special move meter. Do not turtle. I mean it. There is a meter called the Guard Libra. If you block too much, it will stun you for a brief period of time and you’ll be open for a punishing combo. These aren’t concepts that haven’t existed in fighting games before, but that’s the brilliance of BlazBlue. The developers took concepts from various other fighting games, including their own and have balanced everything out beautifully. This game forces you to play strategically, not spam cheap tricks.
Now I’m not trying to scare anyone new to fighting games or anything. This game is a bit more advanced than your average fighter and if you can’t perform a simple down to forward and attack to pull off a special move, then you’ll probably be in for a pretty steep learning curve going in. Before you decide to go online and show off your amazing prowess with your favorite character, BlazBlue offers lots of single player options and modes to keep you busy as well as help you learn the game. Besides your usual Arcade and Versus modes there’s a Score Attack mode where you fight every opponent in the game to try and get a top score, plus your exploits will unlock various movies and character art in the Gallery mode. But most likely the bulk of your offline excursions will be spent in the game’s Story Mode.
I’ll say one thing first; the story for this game is….ok. Compared to other fighting games, it’s not that bad. It may feel a little overwhelming to see so many characters and so much terminology thrown at you initially, but eventually playing through every characters story will unravel more of the games plot as you go and eventually everything will indeed come together. The fault of the plot is that everything comes together in a very convoluted, disjointed way. Though the game designers did add a special bonus section called “Teach Me, Miss Litchi” that helps explain some of the terms and character backgrounds, (and is absolutely hilarious by the way) the very need for something such as this is indicative of a rather poorly told plot to begin with. Oh well, at least it wasn’t Street Fighter 4.
But it’s a fighting game. Let’s face it; plot is merely a façade for two people to beat each other up until one’s life bar is completely drained. You’re sick of things like character development. You want to show your “mad skills” online! Well, good. The online net code for this game is probably the best for a fighter yet. There is sometimes a bit of lag particularly during the opening animations before a fight, but once the action gets underway, everything is smooth and fast as if your opponent were right there with you. The game keeps track of your win loss record as well as how many incomplete matches someone has had. While this doesn’t particularly avoid the issue of someone rage quitting in the middle of the fight, it does help alleviate the problem somewhat. Unfortunately, this is also recorded for the other person as well.
Offline or online, BlazBlue is an amazing fighter and Arc System Works has once again outdone themselves. They have proven themselves to be the company to beat when it comes to 2D fighters, now if only some of its competition would stand up and notice what they’ve been doing with the 2D fighter for the past 10 years or so and catch up; fighting game fans will be a lot better off. And to anyone who isn’t a fan of fighting games, you should at least give BlazBlue a whirl and see what one of the finest examples of the genre to date has to offer.
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