We've had a few people that were into 2D fighters chime in with praise for Ark System Works' latest game, BlazBlue, but what about the rest of us? Yeah, it looks cool, and people that are already good at Guilty Gear and other 2D fighters claim it's accessible, but that doesn't sound like a very good measure. If someone can sit around and eat bird peppers, do you take their word if they tell you something isn't that spicy?


It's like Dr. Faust and a melted ShyGuy were involved in a zany teleporter accident

Well, it is pretty accessible. I never really got into Guilty Gear, despite enjoying the games and owning some of them. There was just too much shit to get through. Since I never mastered the Aerial Just False Roman Cancel Dust Loop... thing... I was never really going to get anywhere and the game was basically impenetrable. This was okay, because I was only going to play with my brother and neither of us were very good. BlazBlue feels like it cuts through a lot of the junk without compromising depth. I've been playing Arakune almost exclusively (for the mere hours I've owned the game, anyway) and I don't find much issue with the execution; I just need to learn what follows what and get a better sense of the distances, especially on his unusually short ranged grab. What I don't get is the impression that I'm missing some vital, roster-spanning technique for success. Defensively, it actually reminds me of Soul Calibur. Sacrilege, I know; how dare I compare a 2D fighter with a 3D fighter? It has block, block at the last second, or do an actual deflection. Each has a place and is easy to execute. There's also a last-ditch push back burst thing that everyone but me seems to fire off by accident, not that I mind them taking the extra penalty damage.

Does it really have the claimed accessibility? Sure. After struggling with arcade mode (Ais are always bastards) for a while I joined some other dtoiders online and actually won a few. I was also told that Arakune is one of the harder characters to learn, and made my ~50% success rate feel pretty good.

It also satisfies one of my big desires for games: variety. The roster isn't huge, but there aren't a bunch of interchangeable characters. I've leveled this complaint at games from SOCOM to Armored Core; I hate it when all your options are the same thing. The selection of weapons in SOCOM: Confrontation is badly in need of expansion with real variety; as it stands, it needs little more than one weapon in each category. As AC progressed on the PS2, it was loaded up with new parts until there were a dozen different small missile launchers and all sucked except for one. In BlazBlue, every character is different and they seem generally well balanced. I could complain about a couple things, but I don't feel I've spent enough time with the game actually know if they're overpowered, underpowered, or if I just haven't quite gotten it right yet.

The online play is the best I've ever seen. I thought Soul Calibur 4 was pretty damn lag free, but last night's match was full of people with two out of three or four bars of connection strength and even the sounds coming through the headset were nearly synced. If it had turned out we were all on a LAN in the same building, it wouldn't have surprised me much at all.


FUCK! They're on to me