My brother was in the NYC Chinatown arcade this past weekend, and noticed that the Street Fighter IV cabinets were practically empty while players were crowded around the Tekken 6 and BlazBlue cabinets. I’m a little surprised to hear that myself, but if BlazBlue is popular in the arcades, then it obviously has something going for it. This game is basically the sequel to Guilty Gear, with interesting character design, great presentation, memorable rock music, and a deep fighting engine. It’s a great fighting game if you’re willing to take the time learn it.
Before buying the game, I was reading impressions from different buyers of the games and everyone practically loves it. Even casual players were gushing compliments about the game and I found the character designs interesting so I jumped in. I told my brother I picked it up and the first thing he said was, “Wow – you know that it’s a pretty difficult game right?” After playing it for hours now, I have to agree. It’s more difficult than Street Fighter IV. I’m guessing this may be due to us playing Street Fighter games for over a decade now, making Street Fighter IV quite intuitive. But BlazBlue is something else. It’s safe to say that this is NOT a good game for fighting game newbies to pick up, as cool as it may seem. I’d even go so far as to recommend Street Fighter IV for fighting game newbies over this one. BlazBlue is very offensive oriented, with lengthy combos, air juggles, and traps and penalties for blocking too much. It’s almost like a cross between Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs Capcom 2, blending some of the simpleness of the former with the craziness of the latter.
The selection of 12 characters in the game seems meager, but each one plays very uniquely so it’s not like half of them are shoto characters. Sadly, I’d go so far as to say that some of the characters are a bit overpowered, and it’s probably why they’re used so often online. There are four attack buttons: a light, mid, and strong attack and a Drive attack button. The Drive button is what completely differentiates each character, as it functions quite differently depending on the character’s unique trait or weapon. For example, one character uses the Drive button to control his mech that accompanies him, similar to a helper in the Marvel vs Capcom games. Another character uses the D button to control wind, altering the direction that the players move on screen. A third character uses that D button for special attacks that allow him to steal life from the opponent. The list goes on. All in all, very drastic differences in how each character plays based on their Drive ability.
BlazBlue’s online is better and worse than Street Fighter IV’s online. On the better side, it allows for 6 player rooms for Player matches, allowing groups of buddies to “quarter match” it up, something drastically missing in Street Fighter IV. In the ”meh” side, you have a ranking level based on experience tied to both Player Matches and Ranked Matches. So even if you were to just play Player Matches, you would still level up. There’s a “Trueskill ranking” as well, and perhaps that is what is used for Ranked Matches but I’m not sure. I’m not a fan of any sort of “rank progression” based on unranked games, as it defeats the purpose, but it’s not a deal-breaker. What kind of sucks is when you play someone in a ranked game, both player’s stats for both ranked and unranked matches are displayed, which again, annoy me since unranked should just be that: unranked and not counted in any way. And on the bad side, it seems to take quite a long time to find ranked games, especially so if you’re just looking for a match in the low ranks. It looks like now that the game has been out for over a month, not many low level players are left in the game but that seems to be the case with many hardcore fighting games. I do miss Street Fighter IV’s auto-matchmaking mode where you could play while waiting to get matched up.
While I believe BlazBlue to be a great fighting game, the only issue I have is that the game is perhaps too tough for me. However, my brother is starting to dig it as he’s been devoting time to understanding the nuances of the game and he’s been helping me get better too. I’m lacking in so many fighting game fundamentals that it helps considerably when he is able to go over my character’s moveset and tell me what’s good for poking, what should be my bread and butter attacks, etc. I’ve never been able to figure that stuff out on my own but I’m thankful that he’s around so I’m catching onto the game. If I were just playing this by myself, it would probably already be thrown back onto the shelf by now! So I guess I can conclude my impressions of the game as this: if you’re willing to devote your time to learning this game, you won’t be sorry as it has practically everything a serious fighting game fan could want: interesting characters, top-notch presentation, and a functional and lag-free online mode.
