So as a fighting game fanatic, I was pretty interested to see what the possibilities of a genuinely new Guilty Gear entry could bring to the franchise, especially after the Street Fighter 2-ification of the series (GGX, GGXX, GGXX#R:TMC, GG:AC is to Guilty Gear as SFII, SFII'/T, SSFII, SSFIIT is to Street Fighter). But then I learned that GG2 would be a strategy/fighting hybrid, and my reaction was a mixture of uncertainty and trepidation. I was unsure of the game right from the get-go. However, I waited patiently for the game to finally arrive on U.S. shores so that I could take proper controller time with the game in order to give it what I try to give every game that I play - a fair shake, unbiased and unapologetic.

Unfortunately, that fair shake means the Rick James treatment: 4 thumbs down.
Seriously, folks - the milk's gone bad.

It seems like it's a cool idea at first, take the primary special moves that the primary story characters use and translate them into a strategic, 3D-action beat-'em-up. But as Dynasty Warriors-awesome as that sounds, it's nowhere near as mindlessly fun as DW can make things on it's best days. This thing is like some sort of hybrid (which is a nice way of saying BASTARD) cross between Guilty Gear, Dynasty Warriors, Advance Wars and doing taxes. There simply is far too much going on to ask anyone's attention span to splinter to that degree.

Take your character. Let's say it's Sol Badguy, main character of the GG series. You get (almost) all of the awesome moves that you'd want from his repertoire: Gunflame, Bandit Revolver, and other assorted maneuvers are present and accounted for. Now, it's in 3D, so 2D input won't do...so let's simplify things and let's put all regular combat on the X button for standard attacks and special move-style attacks on the Y button. Now, we need to limit your awesome-nicity, so let's make all of your special moves drain the "Tension" gage underneath the life bar. Attacking enemies gains you more tension, and if you want to screw up a lot of heads in one shot, you'll need to use the Y button attacks to do so most of the time. There is a function on the left-stick-click to cancel any move (but only while locked-on, which increases damage but slows you down), but what good that does you is your guess - I already used all of my guesses up.

Clicking the left stick while not locked allows you to sprint through the battlefields, which is pretty Goddamn awesome until you realize that no matter how many times they tell you to "drift" into a turn, you're going to smack the fucking wall and fall over like a jackass. Every. Fucking. Time. If you can master this technique and use it well in-game, then congratulations in the highest. Not seeing a vagina since the day you were born has finally paid off for you, I see.

Now, add in the fact that you have to not only fight, but manage the "troops" that you have to buy/recruit, which entails commanding their movements and respawning them from the "Masterghost." This is a home base, nothing more, nothing less. You can capture territories and gain more "Mana," which is used to buy items and reinforcements mid-battle. Oh, and there's got to be the obligatory "Type A is weak against Type B, but strong against Types C and D" system of troop success likelihood, which is just a stupid version of Rock, Paper, Scissors when you boil it down to its base idea. Oh, and there's the fact that your CPU opponent can do all this multitasking bullshit WAY faster than you can. Almost forgot about that.

Add in frustrating camera angles, a story that reeks of "if you can understand this, then you wrote this motherfucker"-itis, and the fact that your "dumber-than-rocks" troops do WAAAAY more damage than you do (and you make fucking fire from a sword - what the hell?) to everything, add in a dash of control issues and you've got a recipe for a game that had an interesting conceptual idea, but as most games these days tend to do, utterly fails in the realm of proper, polished execution. Play it if you're feeling masochistic, but avoid like the plague otherwise.

Oh, and a simple Google search on Sol Badguy got me that gem of a picture. I had to keep the words "Pizza" and "Burgers" in frame just to preserve the unintentional joke that the photographer seems to have made. And I gotta say, that unintentional joke is pretty fucking hysterical because of it.