Today we offer some hands on impressions of the latest Arc System Works IP which was recently released in Japan and in the US, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. A cursory glance will reveal that BlazBlue is essentially Guilty Gear with a brand new look and admittedly, that is what we believed as well. However, after spending some time with the final build of the game, we are pleased to report that BlazBlue offers a fresh 2D fighting experience, as it only has the essence and spirit of Guilty Gear. We now move on to our hands on experience with the import version of the game.
As soon as we booted the game up we were greeted by an animated opening sequence courtesy of Japanese animation studio GONZO, the studio that also contributed animated sequences to famous games like Lunar and Suikouden III. Kotoko’s new song Iconoclast served as the opening theme and mixed nicely with the style and mood of the game. We were quite impressed by the dramatic anime opening. It was just what a game like BlazBlue needed to fire up players who are heavily into this sort of thing.
Welcome to the new age of 2D fighting.
Next we are greeted by a whole set of standard fighting game menus such as Arcade, Versus, Network, Gallery and Training etc. We of course jumped straight for the arcade mode and picked the game’s main protagonist Ragna. Before we go on to our gameplay impressions, it’s worth pointing out again that BlazBlue aesthetically bears a few similarities to Guilty Gear. Fans will notice that Ragna bears a stark resemblance to Sol-BadGuy, and most of the characters in BlazBlue look quite similar to popular Guilty Gear characters. Jin looks similar to Ky, Hakumen resembles Justice and so on. That aside, the characters still look very cool from a design stand point and the artwork is stellar. Thankfully, not all characters look similar to the Guilty Gear predecessors, as there are plenty of unorthodox and unique characters as well.
Moving on to the actual gameplay, BlazBlue surprisingly ended up feeling quite different from any other 2D fighting game we have played. Right from the first round we were able to chain attacks into the combos we wanted with great ease and we were juggling foes in no time. The combo system certainly felt a lot more accessible and fluid than what was offered in Guilty Gear. That’s not to say the combo system is beginner friendly, as the combos you create are only as good as your speed and timing.
Ragna was a great character to use as he felt familiar, had plenty of good juggle set up attacks and his finishers were absolutely devastating. Pulling off most of his special moves wasn’t much of a problem but his devastating super move or ’Distortion’ called Devoured by Darkness could only be performed after first performing the Blood Kain. Both moves utilized 50% of the super gauge and the Devoured by Darkness move had to be executed during the time limit that the Blood Kain granted. This removed the element of spamming super combos mindlessly. Also we observed that Ragna was able to absorb his opponent’s health, which we found to be his unique ‘Drive’ attack.
After breezing through the story mode our biggest surprise came when we faced the final boss, V-13. Expecting to retry at least 20 times, mainly because fighting game final bosses such as Jinpachi, Seth, Gill, Orochi, Rugal and so forth are usually unfairly powerful and nigh impossible to defeat. V-13 surprisingly, ended up behaving just like any other opponent. While she did have a few powerful super attacks up her sleeve (such as one where she sprays a massive barrage of swords/arrows) but all in all it was a pretty even and enjoyable boss fight that did not make us curse like sailors.
Nice official artwork.
Next, we took the story mode for a spin which started off with a lengthy opening sequence of animation stills and then gave us a chance to explore each character’s story path. The story mode here is quite elaborate, containing plenty of impressive artwork and complete with voiced dialogue. While story modes in fighting games are usually half baked, BlazBlue offers something with a bit more substance.
All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed playing BlazBlue and found it to be very entertaining courtesy of it’s fast-paced and beautifully crafted fighting system. For a game that looks really deep and complex BlazBlue ended up being a lot more fun than we expected, rather than being confusing and complicated. We were only able to test the single player modes and the offline versus mode. The Network mode unfortunately remains untested but rest assured in the offline side of things, BlazBlue completely nails it.
While the upcoming The King of Fighters XII has a bit of an edge in the high definition 2D graphics department, BlazBlue nonetheless is still a sight to behold. The game animates beautifully and the quality of the character models is a very significant improvement over what we have seen since Guilty Gear X2. There are heaps of explosive special effects too, making the super attacks look more devastating and stunning than they already are. All in all we felt that BlazBlue is the bees knees when it comes to 2D graphics and animations.
When it comes to music, BlazBlue features some truly mind blowing and epic heavy metal instrumentals mixed with some very emotional symphony orchestra. This comes to no surprise as the game’s official soundtrack was composed by none other than Daisuke Ishiwatari, the same talented composer who composed the entire rock intensive soundtrack of the Guilty Gear series.BlazBlue features some truly fantastic tracks, such as the theme of ‘Shishigami Bang’ and the ’Ragna vs Jin’ theme. While the genre maybe similar to the Guilty Gear soundtrack, the soundtrack of BlazBlue has a bit of a more melodic and symphonic flair.
Say hello to the cast of BlazBlue.
An interesting thing to note is that both the US and Japanese versions are bilingual. Gamers will be able to enjoy the convenience of having full English text while also having the option to choose between English and Japanese audio. We preferred the Japanese audio but the English audio is still bearable compared to what we have seen in most past fighting game localisations.
Even though we really enjoyed playing this fantastic fighting game, unfortunately there is no official PAL release anytime soon. Hopefully, publishers will realise that people here care about quality games like BlazBlue. So far we have seen several Guilty Gear games make their way here and seeing that an obscure game like Fragile: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is getting a PAL release, there is still some ray of hope that BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger will soon make it to our shores.
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