Blazblue

I am a Guilty Gear fan boy. I want to get that clear. I firmly believe that the Guilty Gear series is the king of the hill in the 2d fighting game genre. In a time when 2D fighters were on the decline, Guilty Gear was the glowing white bright star in a sea of darkness.

That being said I haven't played Guilty Gear seriously since 04. My last tournament was at USC where I didn't do so hot. When I heard that Arc System Works was developing a new IP and it was coming to the PS3, which I recently purchased, I was ecstatic. Online? Money in the bank.

The time of 2D fighting games is well past its golden age. That happened in the 90s. The release of Streetfighter 4 has brought about a resurgence of interest in the genre, but I don't see 2D fighters being the most played genre anymore. There won't be people lining up their quarters at arcades. Blazblue, as much as I want this game to be a huge huge hit in consoles, won't. Guilty Gear was a niche even within the fighting game community due to its difficulty and style. The same will be said for Blazblue.

Having played Blazblue for about two weeks now, I cannot put it down except maybe to eat and go to the bathroom. The packaging for the Blazblue Limited Edition I purchased was worth it and then some. You get the game, official sound track, tutorial Blueray disk, and an artbook. I would have payed $60 for the game alone.

As an avid fan of anime for many years now I enjoy Blazblue's art direction. What gets to me is some of the criticism Blazblue get because of that. Granted not everyone out there likes anime, but to say that they prefer the styles of Streetfighter or Tekken over Blazblue is asinine. Streetfighter has an anime design. Tekken has an anime design. Soul Calibur has an anime design. Marvel vs Capcom has an anime design. King of Fighters has an anime design. Virtua Fighter has an anime design. Most games developed in Japan have anime designs. Get over it!

One of Guilty Gear's best aspects has always been its soundtrack. Daisuke Ishiwatari did a great job taking elements of famous songs and using them to bring to life the Guilty Gear environment with heavy metal and hard rock. With Blazblue Ishiwatari-sensei takes a jazz/rock fusion direction. While the thought of jazz in a fighting game does not sound very fitting, I applaud Ishiwatari-sensei for making it work. Blazblue has one of the best sound tracks ever. EVAR! Get that IN-DES-TRUC-TIBLE SF4 crap out of here.

Game play wise Blazblue is very very similar to Guilty Gear. Air dashing, instant airdashing, roman/rapid cancels all came back to me like riding a bike for the first time in years. Granted the decision to not have false roman cancels, which allowed cancelling certain moves during 1 frame in exchange for 25% of their super meter, saddens me a little but I see why it was not present. Aksys wanted more casuals to play Blazblue than Guilty Gear allowed. False roman cancels were the biggest obstacle for everyone in Guilty Gear. Some characters could not even combo correctly without cancels. In Blazblue rapid cancels are not as necessary as roman cancels were in Guilty Gear, but are still present for those who are skilled enough to use them.

Besides the anime style Blazblue has, the other major criticism has been the small roster size. One could say that Blazblue is a new IP and the roster will grow with more releases. The most important thing people have to realize is that there are no clones in this game. What are clones? Does Ryu and Ken sound familiar? How about Sagat, Dan, Sakura, Morrigan? Kyo Kusanagi and Iori? Ralph and Clark? Jin and Kazuya Mishima? Cassandra and Sophitia? Nightmare and Siegfried? Hanzo and Fuma? Blazblue has no clones. Blazblue doesn't even have cloned special moves. Therefore Blazblue actually has more characters than most fighting games.

The primary aspect of a fighting game to me is how high of a skill ceiling does a game have in order to master it. Guilty Gear is the greatest 2D fighting game series ever. Blazblue is close behind. I realize not everyone likes the huge combos and deems it as unnecessary to be a good game. I understand that people prefer Streetfighter. I loved Streetfighter back in the day. Both Guilty Gear and Blazblue can do EVERYTHING Streetfighter can. That is how deep those games are. If you just want to jump around and dominate some people with jump kicks followed by sweeps, Blazblue allows that. If you want to spam projectiles and trap with antiair attacks, Blazblue allows that. Blazblue does everything Streetfighter does but if you do not like how complicated Blazblue takes the Streetfighter aspects, it means that you are not willing to be that skilled. There I said it. Saying Streetfighter is a better game is to say that your ceiling for skill either does not go that high, or you are unwilling to take it that high. Period. Blazblue's game play is only as good as someone's skill. I've told this to people around the time of Guilty Gear's prime, I'll tell people this same thing now.

I don't even need to give Blazblue some sort of numerical score. It is the fighting game that is closest to perfection, besides Guilty Gear XX Accent Core. Yet it is still not for everyone, aka scrubs but since when did scrubs matter. So if you're not a scrub, buy Blazblue and be proud that this game will challenge your skill ceiling.