Here's a preview of the new entry into the Guilty Gear series. And below is an interview with its creator Daisuke Ishiwatari, where he revisits the history of the series, leading up to creation of Guilty Gear 2.

First of all, this was quite a surprise. When I first heard of this, I didn't know what to think, and I'm still kinda confused.

On the one hand, it's not what you'd expect for a Guilty Gear sequel. It's like Street Fighter doing kart racing. Or DOA doing volleyball.

On the other hand, I'm all for a developer trying something new. More game companies could use stepping away from what they're familiar with to take risks on a different genre.

Experimentation can yield good results. For examples, lesbians.

Although I guess I'm more concerned about interrupting the progression of a series still in the act of establishing itself. Guilty Gear is not brand new, but it's not as ubiquitous as it could be. And sure this game could help increase the series's reputation, granted that it has decent gameplay, release date, and marketing. Or it could be a flop and have deprived us of a proper sequel.

Yeah they're working on other games like BlazBlue and Battle Fantasia, but then why couldn't those games have been the RTS?



From the interview, Ishiwatari sounds pretty confident that this new Guilty Gear is the first to pull off a good mix of action and strategy, and is rather proud of it. That offers me some assurance, but then again what developer wouldn't want to appear enthusiastic about their game?

Personally, I still can't shake the image of Dynasty Warriors. Some would consider that a good thing, I'm still not quite sure.

Planned for release on September 2008 in the U.S., and maybe 10 years later in Europe. You can download the demo in the Japanese XBLA Marketplace now (though it's been out since October last year), Google on how to do that if you don't live there.