If you’re wondering why I’m leaving it’s because I’ll be writing at a different site: toptier.gg. I’ve been a fan of their content and what they’ve been doing for the FGC for quite a while now, so when I heard they wanted my help on the writing staff I was over the moon. They’re a more community-focused fighting game news site, so I’ll be writing more on happenings and concepts relevant to the people of the FGC and what they play. Feel free to check out the website if you’re interested.

Once again, I’ve had a great time working with everyone on the VGCC staff, and while I wasn’t here for very long, I’m sure glad that I spent my first time writing here!

Thanks guys,

Tristan

The post Tristan’s Goodbye Post appeared first on Gamesline.

5. Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp

This game is exactly as simple as it sounds: you’re trying to get a date while you’re at monster summer camp. This competitive multiplayer board game-ish dating sim is a fun, immature, and lighthearted take on what a visual novel could be. The game has a diverse cast of characters largely poking fun at different horror and fantasy tropes, and an extremely cute art style that juxtaposes itself against its constantly off-color humor. Monster Camp isn’t a deep or evocative visual novel in any sense; in fact, most of the game is toilet humor followed by desperately hoping that your monster crush will take a liking to you, only to get rejected in some new embarrassing way. In most cases, it’s the opposite of a game you really want to crack open and discover its inner workings. Sure, there are rules to get the “good endings”, but all it takes is a wrong move or two and you’re back on your ass with the game making fun of you for drinking a glass of bees or something. Since it’s such a unique experience though, with a fun, cute atmosphere and tons of event scenes for both successful and unsuccessful endings, it kept my friends and I coming back whenever we needed a new casual game instead of Jackbox.

4. Yakuza: Like a Dragon

I almost let this game fall through the cracks last year since I had been meaning to work through the rest of the Yakuza series in order before getting to this one, but man, I am glad I didn’t. By now it’s well known that this is a Yakuza game with turn-based, JRPG style combat. You manage your party, improve relationships, choose classes, but the gameplay isn’t the only huge change with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. This new title includes a brand-new protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, who takes all the built-up dramatic aura and tone from past Yakuza titles and flips it on its head. Ichiban is not Kiryu, he is not cool and suave; he’s goofy, loud, and brash, and he makes it known that he loves his friends. Sure, there are still dramatic moments and big plot points like past games, but I loved how much this game managed to shake up everything I knew about Yakuza. The game also takes place in a totally new area in Yokohama, and while it includes the usual vast selection of minigames and things to do in the city, it’s nice to see something different for a change. The unique combat system works great and combined with everything else, it makes Like a Dragon a great and memorable entry in the Yakuza series.

3. Persona 5 Royal

I wasn’t sure how high I should’ve put Persona 5 Royal on this list since it’s another updated Persona game that we knew was coming out eventually, but it did have enough improvements on the formula that it feels about right to put it at number 3. The new story content added in Persona 5 Royal is…conflicting. It’s got great setup, a bunch of strange actions and motivations in the middle that almost broke my suspension of disbelief, and it boasts one of the strongest, most satisfying ending sequences to a game I’ve ever played. Of course, Persona 5 had a pretty crazy drawn-out end sequence, but after playing through a 150-hour game, Royal really felt like every single hour paid off just for the ending, as it should if you’re going to sink triple-digit hours into a game.

In terms of what has been updated from vanilla, the experience of playing Royal with its new areas and updated gameplay is probably the best representation of a Persona game purely from a gameplay perspective. Tons of quality-of-life changes were made to the combat, and the game has a much clearer path to set you up for its strong endgame with the new Kichijoji area. My favorite part of the updated content is the updated dialogue; it’s small, but lots of dialogue was rewritten and it definitely plays up the relationships between characters a lot more than the sometimes-stiff sounding dialogue of Persona 5. I was skeptical of how meaningful the new content and changes would be to the experience of playing Persona 5, but as I played through the game everything kept adding up to make this a much better feeling experience and definitely worthy of a spot on my list.

2. Hades

I didn’t expect to love this game as much as I did but here it is close to the top of my list. I’m not necessarily a huge fan of roguelikes, but every time I played Hades I was so interested in every aspect of the game, I couldn’t find myself caring about gameplay aspects I normally don’t like. Everything is just so cool: the music is great, the characters are super interesting both in the underworld and on Mt. Olympus, and the gameplay is way better than I expected. While I was skeptical of how a roguelike could create an interesting story while also having fun gameplay, Hades delivers. The way that the game doesn’t quite give you information in the same order all the time, and how it really does feel like you’re finding out new things at the same time as Zagreus makes a lot of story beats feel much more impactful. It also gives you more motivation to get right back into the game and try to progress. Everything, from the presentation to the gameplay is great in Hades and it oozes style while doing so.

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

I don’t have a graceful reason for why this game is at the top of my list, but here it is: it has Zombies. That’s all it takes. Don’t get me wrong, I love the campaign of Black Ops Cold War, and the multiplayer is great from what I’ve played, but damn can I sink hundreds of hours into running in circles with a Ray Gun. This was the year I thought my interest in COD would fizzle; I surely thought that Activision wouldn’t let Treyarch make an interesting story, much less spend resources tuning multiple game modes. I was prepared for another Call of Duty title with a battle royale mode I’m not interested in and a milquetoast campaign, but I was surprised.

All things considered, Black Ops Cold War delivered tons more than I expected, and the game was hitting on all fronts; Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies. I was floored by the campaign’s story, at least for a Call of Duty title, and ended up loving the combination of classic Black Ops faces and new characters. Once I finished through each ending of the campaign and hopped into Zombies, I found an experience so far beyond my expectations that I was certain I would be playing this game for quite a while. Everything about Zombies was improved and expanded upon, and after the shaky course of Black Ops 4’’s Zombies, it felt like Treyarch once again meaningfully put resources into crafting Zombies. With continued, free support for a game mode I’ve always loved but didn’t always want to spend $90 on, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has certainly solidified itself as a game I’ll keep coming back to.

The post Tristan’s Top Five Games of the Year appeared first on Gamesline.

Back in August, when we knew little about Black Ops Cold War, Activision released a teaser trailer for the game titled “Know Your History” which you might know as “the active measures trailer” and honestly, throughout all stages of this game’s release I have had no idea what they were thinking releasing that trailer. For those unaware, the trailer was a short teaser of clips featuring an interview with ex-KGB informant Yuri Bezmenov spliced together with shots of tumultuous events of the mid-late 20th century. While this wouldn’t be the most immediately alarming thing to see in promotional materials since, y’know, the game is about the Cold War, Bezmenov’s interview continues into what amounts to a weird, personally motivated McCarthyism-laden rant on why big (vaguely liberal) government is bad. By the time the trailer ends, the message of the trailer makes it seem less like Black Ops: Cold War is going to be about intrigue and tension between the US and Russia, and more about a hodge-podge of weird conspiracy theories with a “don’t let this happen again!” reminder shoehorned in for good measure.

Throughout the promotional cycle of Black Ops Cold War up until now, after I have finished the campaign, I have only thought to myself: “Why on Earth was THIS the first teaser trailer for this game?” Rightfully so, I think it probably hit too close to home for a significant amount of viewers, and with historic protests happening across the nation since June, I’m baffled at how no one involved in the release of the trailer thought it might be seen as a bit too sinister during a particularly rough year in many senses. In relation to the actual game it’s supposed to be promoting, there isn’t any resemblance or reference to anything even remotely discussed in the game, and the trailer probably did the worst job it could’ve to get people interested in what is probably the best Call of Duty campaign in the series to date (yeah it’s actually really good).

Moving on from the total crap promotional materials, let’s talk about what’s actually in the game. No matter what platform you’re playing on, Black Ops: Cold War includes three core experiences, a traditional Campaign, a new Zombies experience, and Multiplayer, with the battle royale component, Warzone, fully integrating into Black Ops: Cold War in their Season One Update which will happen in early December. There is no longer a season pass of map DLCs, which will instead be free, and the game’s post release monetization structure will consist of seasonal Battle Passes just like Warzone in Modern Warfare.

This is all great news, since the inclusion of Zombies this year means that players will always have access to the same maps without splitting the player base, whereas in past Treyarch titles any Zombies fans were essentially forced into buying the season pass lest they deal with only playing on one or two maps for the entirety of the game’s life cycle. Black Ops Cold War also has full crossplay and full cross progression, meaning that your levels and unlocks are the same across Zombies, Multiplayer, and eventually Warzone, and any attachments you unlock will be unlocked on any console you play on and across all game modes. Now the game truly allows you to play however you want, instead of having separate Zombies and Multiplayer progression systems, both are equally viable in terms of building progression, and even though most of my non-Campaign time was spent playing Zombies, I was still able to reach the overall level cap in a comfortable amount of time. There’s also a new seasonal Prestige system, which is pretty cool and looks like it will reward grinding beyond the overall level cap with small bonuses like level icons or weapon skins per season, which is certainly better motivation to keep playing than simply watching a number go up with no real reward.

While I had some concerns when I was approaching this game, once I began to play through the Campaign and experience it for myself, I found the entire experience to be way more compelling than I would expect from a Call of Duty campaign. In order to fully give the sense of agency over the Campaign to the player and emphasize the flatly dubious motives of your missions, you are frequently put in scenarios where what you do determines the events for the rest of the mission (and sometimes the Campaign). While this sounds like a cop-out from developers, the branching decision system in this game actually feels meaningful at all times and highlights the fact that how you behave carries consequences beyond just killing a person or letting them live. This extends seamlessly into the missions, where most can or should be done without killing anyone, creating a very natural presentation of the game, where it’s not clear what is a specific branching story decision and what is just part of the mission. Right from the start I found myself frequently thinking “ok, do I really need to be shooting now? Can I go about this another way? What are we actually doing here?”

With this framework for decision making in the game, it allows the Campaign to tell an effective story set in the late 70s and early 80s of The Cold War. The game begins with some introductory scenes leading you to find that an alleged Russian spy named Perseus is acting again and intends to destroy the United States. Perseus is a real-life hypothetical identity who may or may not have infiltrated Los Alamos during development of The Manhattan Project and is still speculated about today. In the game they are given (or supposedly given) a much more tangible identity, with a photo of a man assumed to be Perseus pinned to the center of your evidence board throughout the entire game. Tasked with finding and stopping Perseus, you assume the role of Bell, a member of an international task force led by the questionably motivated Russell Adler of the CIA. Along the way you learn that Perseus has reactivated because he has found out about a US operation to store hundreds of active nuclear weapons in NATO allied Europe, and he has gotten his hands on potentially all of them, giving him the power to effectively destroy all of Europe. While you play the perspective of a US agent, the game sows intrigue by highlighting the fact that most of what you are actually doing is a cover-up operation for a huge fuck-up on the part of The US.

Somehow, once again, this is based on a real move The United States took in the 1960s to store hundreds of atomic bombs across Europe should they need to, I don’t know, destroy a continent; again, with the Campaign’s focus on sinister actions taken by the US government abroad, it’s aiming to show the desperation and tension with Russia the US was driven to by itself during The Cold War, which it does albeit in a rather action movie sort of way. While I wasn’t sure how the game would really hammer what it wanted to home in the end, it managed to do a rather effective job, and gave a meaningful reflection in both endings where you do or don’t end up destroying the US and Europe. While the game centers so much around what it presents as a sure assumption that Perseus is the real Western threat, and not Russia, it continues to comment that perhaps Perseus wasn’t ever a real person and was merely a Western construct made out of fear, considering the fact that all the actions in the game could’ve just been actions provoked by The United States’ own fear and not any real enemy. For a Call of Duty title, I was kind of surprised that it managed to even sort of drive a halfway decent point home instead of “US good, Communism bad”.

Beyond the strong showing from the Campaign, the Zombies experience in Black Ops Cold War is exciting and certainly shows a meaningful next step in the evolution of what Call of Duty Zombies can be. If you’re not caught up on your Zombies lore, I’m afraid it’s far too late for me to explain it concisely, but the old WWII crew and their alternate dimension counterparts are gone in this iteration of Zombies. In fact, everything that previously existed in any COD Zombies game has been sucked up and banished to the shadow realm (sort of, but I don’t have time to explain the Apothicons). It is the job of a new team called Requiem to find out why there are suddenly ruptures in the current spacetime causing eerily familiar enemies to return to reality again. Since technically the new timeline of the universe is based on one that already existed, all the classic Zombies staples remain, but everything has received a facelift.

Gameplay-wise, you’re now granted much more flexibility with how you spend your points, and since weapon rarities and killstreaks have been introduced to Zombies there’s now much more reason to keep spinning The Mystery Box. Perks are also more flexible, with a dynamic pricing method that determines how much each perk costs based on the order in which you buy them and not based on what that perk does. In addition, you’re no longer limited to four perks, but the price per perk increases the more you buy, suggesting that you should be picking up just the perks you need and maximizing them around the endgame. You are now also able to customize classes to begin the game with, allowing you to pick any single gun to start with as well as a field upgrade which will remain throughout the game. Even though this seems like it could start you out overpowered before you even leave the first room, the rarity tier system causes your gun’s starting damage to be so low that you’ll need to either upgrade it or get a new one after the early rounds.

The map that ships with the game, Die Maschine, is an interesting reconstruction of the original Zombies map Nacht Der Untoten with about 80% of the new map being entirely new content. There are tons of open areas making popular Zombies strategies for arranging your enemies a breeze while providing enough challenge and repeatable elements to keep you playing. This map has a unique built-in challenge terminal, which you can pay points to activate to get a short challenge to complete on the map in exchange for rewards. While the common and rare rewards are just okay, doing multiple challenges in a row could get you a weapon of the highest rarity tier, the new map’s Wonder Weapon the D.I.E. Shockwave, or Intel which appears to be a new way Treyarch has decided to enhance Zombies storytelling.

While the main map easter egg presents something new to do and offers some challenge while also telling some new parts of the Zombies story, a significant amount of the story of Black Ops Cold War Zombies is hidden in various Intel pieces which can be found through exploring the map or by completing trials. Intel can be viewed outside of the game, allowing Treyarch to tell a bit more of a focused story with more clear involvement from specific characters or factions without having you fight off 40 zombies while trying to transcribe a radio recording after 2 hours of jumping through hoops. While I personally like the old complex and epic map easter eggs, it was probably a safe bet on Treyarch’s part to start the Zombies series of maps with a simpler easter egg and more Intel viewable outside of game. Don’t be fooled that Intel isn’t interesting to look at though, or that the story is simply solved once you read it all, in classic Zombies fashion there are several ciphers and cryptic messages within the Intel pieces that are still waiting to be solved by the community, which I’m sure will bring a new light on what the new map presents.

The one point of contention I have about the new Zombies experience is the characters. I like the new direction they’ve chosen with Samantha Maxis being a former German agent working with Black Ops’ Grigori Weaver to stop the zombies, but I wish some of the other characters in-game had a bit more personality to express. The operators you can choose from within the Campaign certainly feel like they have fleshed out personalities in Zombies, but I’m not too sure about the Operators who only appear in Multiplayer/Zombies and I hope that with new maps we’ll either see a set cast of characters or have some more interesting voice lines for the current Operators.

Alongside all the interesting new content and innovation added in the new Campaign and Zombies experiences, Black Ops Cold War’s multiplayer is likely the weakest of the three modes. With a return to 150 player HP and Treyarch at the helm, Multiplayer in Black Ops: Cold War certainly feels more like classic Black Ops than something like the unforgiving and sometimes frustrating Modern Warfare. While this gives the mode a strong starting point in terms of core gameplay, content in Multiplayer is currently rather lacking. I would say the quality of the maps present is mostly good, but with only nine core Multiplayer maps and two Fireteam maps, there is certainly something to be desired in terms of content. While this isn’t a great way to launch the game’s most popular mode, it’s clear Treyarch has plans to add more maps, likely at a fairly rapid pace post-launch. Even in the short time after launch, Black Ops: Cold War’s iteration of Nuketown has already been added to the game, and more maps are likely to come in the soon approaching season one update. With the interesting late 70s to early 80s era of Black Ops: Cold War, the strongest element of Multiplayer is certainly the weapon selection. Plenty of prototype and strange weapons that are likely not to be found in any other first-person shooters have made their way into the game, with great weapon customization and interesting progression.

One thing I haven’t addressed yet is the game’s compatibility and performance on PC. For those uninitiated in the experience of playing a CoD title on PC instead of console, the stability and compatibility of the game is…well, really rough. CoD titles on PC have tended to receive a lot less attention in the past in terms of polish compared to console platform releases, and while now it’s clear Treyarch is trying to rectify that with Black Ops: Cold War, the game certainly isn’t the most optimized PC game out there. Menu bugs and odd performance limitations are prevalent, and getting the game to run well on your computer could take quite a bit of time to set up even if you have the newest drivers for the game installed on your system. While the game’s stability seems to have settled down a bit for now after a series of small post release patches, I’ve experienced and seen friends get game breaking errors or abrupt game crashes while we were all playing together. While CoD titles have certainly been worse in this department in the past, I could only strongly recommend you to pick up the game on PC if you’re confident in your system’s hardware, and you’re okay with possibly doing a bit of troubleshooting on your own.

In addition to straight up bugs and crashes, the recent CoD titles have also been plagued with poor optimization and performance on PC, typically being very demanding games on hardware even though the game’s visual fidelity might not match up to the demands. While this isn’t quite as bad as Modern Warfare’s merciless chewing up and spitting out of all but the most recent graphics cards and CPUs, you may still find yourself getting slower performance than typical with little to ascribe it to other than “CoD magic”. All that said, Black Ops Cold War is still the best running CoD title on PC in recent years, and my experience with the game has been much better than last year’s Modern Warfare.

With a stellar Campaign, great new Zombies experience, and serviceable Multiplayer, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War offers quite a bit of good content if you can run it, and is likely another COD title to leave a legacy beyond the simple annual FPS release the series has come to be known for. With more content coming for Multiplayer, Zombies, and Warzone, we’re likely to see more innovation come to the title as Treyarch works to expand the newest installment in the Black Ops story.

The post Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War (PC) Review appeared first on Gamesline.

Starting off the conference with a Q&A section, the panel covered the issues inherent in releasing and making a new fighting game such as roster selection, crossplay possibilities, and the idea of accessibility in fighting games. Some of these answers were surprising coming from Japanese developers, like the fact that most devs seem to be big proponents of crossplay, wherein previous inquiries regarding adding crossplay to games, it was generally considered diluting the experience since there was a perceived introduction of cheating from PC players. Additionally, on the issue of balancing accessibility vs. difficulty in keeping legacy players, virtually no one on the panel had a solid answer, but the representatives all agreed it was quite a difficult challenge, especially balancing the simplicity of both the gameplay and visuals. The panel also touched on some topics regarding the current state of affairs of fighting games looking to the future, including talks on where arcade sticks fit in modern games, and what the user experience of future games would look like. The stream gave valuable insight to the community, and with all the publishers together in one place, it was an especially unusual opportunity to witness.

After the Q&A, each publisher presented some features on what fans of their games could expect soon. With Street Fighter V already planning to have their big announcement stream on August 5th, CAPCOM was pretty tight lipped with new news, but they did mention a trial mode coming up soon with access to all 40 current characters for about two weeks, a great opportunity to try out some new characters if you didn’t already shell out the cash.

SNK was pleased to announce some news for Samurai Shodown including Gongsun Li from Honor of Kings as a new DLC character for Season 2. Samurai Shodown players will also be pleased to hear the game is getting a third Season of DLC, which if anything, suggests SNK has enough faith in developing their new fighting games that they’re willing to support the game through three seasons. Arika, developer of Fighting EX Layer noted they were working on greatly improving FEXL, with a new beta and improvement to netcode which should provide a nice bump in player base for the small game.

Bandai Namco and Arc System Works closed out the show with the larger announcements of the night. For Soul Calibur VI, Bandai Namco showcased the new character Setsuka and a new costume DLC pack including crossover TEKKEN 7 character costumes. Tekken 7 came in with big news of its own, including a whole new season of support, with a much needed balance patch, more new moves, online play improvement in the form of a wifi/ethernet connection indicator (and hopefully some netcode improvements) and a teaser for a new character likely to be Kunimitsu.

Finally, Arc System Works came up big with announcements for ArcRevo America and ArcRevo Japan online tournaments, in addition to two character trailers for Guilty Gear -STRIVE-. Surprising many, Leo Whitefang made his appearance, with a lot of old moves, including his signature Brynhildr Stance, and some new tactics to…make his opponent block for the whole round. Additionally, the cyber samurai we have been waiting for finally got showed off and finally has a name. Nagoriyuki got a trailer of his own, and showed a teleport dash with invulnerability, and a pretty damn cool sword. With all the great news for -STRIVE-, it was also announced that it will be on PS5, making it the first fighting game announced for the next-gen console. Responding to the excitement generated from the conference, the publishers mentioned they looked forward to another, although the suggestion was definitely tentative. Hopefully, depending on the reception of the news from the current JFGPR we’ll hear more from developers in upcoming conferences in a time where in-person events are scarce.

The post Fighting Game News: Japanese Fighting Game Publisher’s Roundtable appeared first on Gamesline.

The post Deathloop: Fast-Forwarded (and Rewinded) Dishonored appeared first on Gamesline.

The post Destruction Allstars: Next-Gen Twisted Metal appeared first on Gamesline.

The post Gran Turismo 7 Makes an Appearance on PS5 appeared first on Gamesline.

Buttons:                                                           Directions:

P- Punch Button                                              7  8  9

K- Kick Button                                                  4  5  6

S- Slash Button                                                1  2  3

H- Heavy Slash Button

D- Dust Attack Button

For example, crouching Slash would be abbreviated as 2S. c and f refer to close and far proximity from the opponent, so c.S would stand for close slash, not crouching slash. Special moves note motions by sequences of numbers, for example 236P for a fireball or [4]6P for a charge fireball.

With the beta for Arc System Works’ newest fighting game, Guilty Gear -STRIVE-, concluding last weekend, players had three days to work with the game and understand what’s new and what’s changed in the next radically different installment to the Guilty Gear franchise. The beta included six mainstay characters from past Guilty Gear titles and featured online and offline vs CPU battles. With the huge amount of changes made to the fighting system and contentious opinions being held and discussed since the first public showing of the game, there was much to explore with -STRIVE-, so let’s take a look at the new system, looks, and how things have changed.

Let’s start with what I liked about the beta. The music and overall presentation of the game were strong, and aside from a few UX features which ended up being let downs, the game is easily the nicest looking modern fighting game. Characters and stages are beautifully animated and although there are a few lighting issues with certain stages and characters, it’s certainly eye-catching. I don’t think anyone is surprised to hear or see that the super animations look great, and in terms of cosmetic appeal, the game has a lot going for it. Additionally, while the character select screen looks a bit too much like it’s aimed at the game being a tech demo, most menus in the game retain an easy to read minimalist style which is a nice change of pace for the series.

Aside from these cosmetic changes however, the battle system in -STRIVE- has also seen some positive changes. First off, the idea of RISC and Dust playing a more important factor in the game has seemed interesting to me since the first livestream where ArcSys showed that they would be important features. Your RISC meter acts as an extension of a guard or stun meter, when you block, the gauge fills and when you get hit with a move while the RISC meter is filled (fully or partially), hits of the combo will drain your RISC meter in exchange for unscaled damage on those hits. With RISC filled beyond 50%, all hits are forced counter hits as well including throws, allowing for combos which would not normally be possible. In -STRIVE- the RISC gauge fills much faster than in past titles and can be stopped by using Faultless Defense, the Guilty Gear equivalent of pushblocking (which costs meter). Since air blocking is now possible without the use of FD, air blocked attacks will crank the RISC gauge up even more in order to mitigate meterless air blocking. In addition to this, Dust has been changed to have a much faster startup but will not launch the opponent unless it lands Counter Hit. The interaction between RISC and Dust in this case means that since having a 50% or higher RISC gauge results in all hits in a combo being Counter Hits until RISC is depleted, 5D can now turn into a potent, less reactable overhead launcher than its counterpart in past games if applying proper pressure (we’ll discuss that later). The implementation of this idea has resulted in some good and some bad changes to -STRIVE-, but in total, RISC and Dust in past Guilty Gear titles have felt very much like low interaction mechanics, so seeing them brought into the spotlight feels much more interesting than if the game simply removed RISC for being so “on or off”.

Now on paper (again we’ll discuss why later), RISC feels like a mechanic that you should always have to think about so that you can try to avoid being put into a state where you are susceptible to worrying about a 5D coming at you and potentially ending the round. The reason this is so much more interesting is that in past games, RISC and Dust Attacks felt like mechanics whose usages were heavily dictated by the tools of your character or the skill difference between you and an opponent. For example, in the Guilty Gear Xrd series, as I played Leo, my character’s pressure tended to be so strong, that if I were playing him properly, I could count on coming across situations about once per match where I could capitalize on the opponent with specific combos that were only possible with high RISC gauge, however, some players of other characters in an even match would almost never have to concern themselves with high RISC combos because a situation in which the opponent would have that high of a RISC gauge would simply be so uncommon that players would not be preparing for those sorts of scenarios. Additionally, if I were playing someone of much lower skill level than me, I could count on them not understanding when my offensive pressure ends and continuously blocking, this would then mean that because there is a large skill difference between players, suddenly the RISC gauge is now coming into effect constantly whereas in a typical game it would not. The same goes for Dust Attacks, where some characters like Slayer were able to utilize 5D frequently in combo scenarios, or characters like Millia had tricky animations attached to their 5Ds which made them harder for opponents to discern as an overhead in complex wakeup scenarios. The skill gap vs. usage issue comes into play much more aggressively here, where usage of 5D completely hinged on whether or not your opponent could react to the move or not. If your opponent couldn’t react fast enough, you now have a hugely damaging overhead combo starter you can throw out nearly at will, whereas if your opponent could react to the startup animation of 5D, the move suddenly becomes unusable and equivalent to purposefully whiffing a DP due to the huge recovery time. By making RISC a more universally applicable mechanic, and making 5D less of a “feast or famine” type of move, ArcSys has theoretically made both mechanics options that a Guilty Gear player really has to consider in -STRIVE- , but we’ll get into why this isn’t exactly the case later.

Additionally, the Roman Cancel system has been given a similar treatment, and ArcSys has doubled down on RC being the “creativity mechanic” in the new Guilty Gear. As in past games, Roman Cancel acts similarly to a Rapid Cancel in Blazblue or One More Cancel in Persona, where you may spend meter to cancel whatever animation you are in instantly, with the added benefit of a time slow effect happening on screen depending on how the RC was used. Roman Cancel now has many different effects depending on how the Roman Cancel was used, similarly to Xrd’s color-coded Roman Cancel system, but moreso. ArcSys has been tight-lipped about these new uses of RC, so it has so far been up to players to find out the details and we were able to find out some of the nitty-gritty. Roman Cancelling can now be used in pretty much any situation including while blocking, it has also been standardized to always cost 50% meter. RC now applies a very powerful time stop effect specifically to what it hits now, and the intensity of the time stop varies according to whether or not you were cancelling in an attack or not, so cancelling while you are in the middle of hitting someone will apply more of a time stop than if you were simply RCing as you were standing next to them. Notably, due to the fact that Roman Cancel only affects things which the bubble of the Roman Cancel touches, the usage of what was previously a Yellow Roman Cancel in Xrd has been severely reduced. The existence of YRC in Xrd resulted in the possibility of many powerful strategies by basically allowing you to do anything you wanted after throwing a projectile. The issue present in the system which caused some contention was that this resulted in character power level and ease of use being closely related to how well one could utilize YRC, similarly to the issue of Street Fighter IV characters being limited by how well they could utilize Focus Attack Dash Cancelling. While whether or not YRC “should be in” Guilty Gear has been debated even before -STRIVE-, ArcSys has made a decent compromise by severely nerfing it but allowing for the possibilities it provides to exist, albeit without slowing everything on the screen down. In total, the Roman Cancel changes allow for some very interesting situations. As mentioned before, since you can RC while blocking now, you can effectively make any move into a Guard Cancel Reversal, additionally, it seems that Red Roman Cancelling while your opponent becomes wallstuck will allow for an additional hit on the wall before it breaks. On top of those combat-focused RC uses, Roman Cancel can also be used as a unique movement option as people have noted, similarly to the Max Mode Auto-Run of KOF XIV, allowing for you to input 66RC or 44RC and dashing and Roman Cancelling at the same time. Once again, on paper this looks like a great change allowing for more freedom and creativity in matches, theoretically allowing you to “break the rules” of some other changes present in the game, but unfortunately this isn’t the case.

Sadly, all of the new and interesting mechanics we have just discussed all tend to fall apart when it comes down to the drawbacks of the new system. It becomes clear that all of the interesting applications of Dust with the new RISC changes, and all the theoretically interesting uses of pressure all simply didn’t matter in this beta when damage was so incredibly high. In past builds people had commented on the damage, saying it looks like everything lands Counter Hit when in reality it doesn’t, but this wasn’t completely made clear until this beta when everyone was able to play the game. Even in matches against equally skilled players who I typically have drawn out, close matches with, I felt like it simply wasn’t worth worrying about doing anything fancy because very basic combos with little optimization managed to do nearly 50% of my opponents health, which would then leave them in the corner, meaning that if I hit them with any special cancellable move the round was effectively over. The flow of a match very quickly proved to me that it simply wasn’t worth trying to do anything fancy in neutral and that all I had to do was take my damage from a few core hits, and the round was won. Trying to set up a mix up using a fireball RC simply wasn’t worth doing if I knew I could simply block a slightly unsafe move and punish with huge damage, or fish for Counter Hits and end the game in two touches. While damage in the beta was certainly a concern that impacted my gameplay the most, it is not what I am most concerned about in the future, since it is a trivial fix for ArcSys to retune the damage of moves compared to changing other core gameplay mechanics.

On the other hand, the Gatling Combo system in -STRIVE- is pretty questionable as it is right now, and it impacts everything from the feel of the game superficially, to the behavior of combos very awkwardly, all the while making it uncertain if it achieved the goals that ArcSys has been highlighting as core philosophies of Guilty Gear -STRIVE-. Gatling Combos are a core of anime fighters and have many names across other games, but all act similarly to chains or the magic series in Marvel games, where you can rapid-fire your inputs and your normals will cancel into each other in a certain order. Compared to past Guilty Gear titles, the Gatling Combo system has been severely reduced, and the universal PKSH “magic series” Gatling Combo has been removed across all characters so far. Instead, characters have largely universal rules which their Galtings follow, namely close slash will Gatling into most moves, including command normals, and P and K moves will only Gatling into command normals. This is a huge change to the overall flow of Guilty Gear combos, as the Gatling chain is effectively divided now into PK/SH, with no connection between the two “halves” of the chain. As a result, Gatling Combos are now largely two hits, with the “big” three-piece Gatling Combos almost only coming from landing a c.S. In addition, with the P and K buttons, not exactly every P or K can Gatling, for example, with Sol, 5P>5K simply isn’t possible, but Gatlings are possible from 2K into certain moves. After considering how these changes affect the game at large, it’s unclear if this Gatling change has impacted -STRIVE- in the way ArcSys was actually trying to. Accessibility and clarity have been core ideas that ArcSys has mentioned when creating the new Guilty Gear, and while it’s likely that these changes were made for other reasons to allow for higher RISC build, it’s unclear why they would make this change. Instead of characters following the general rule of PKSH, with certain exceptions and a few character-specific unique Gatlings, the new Gatling system makes it harder for a newcomer to memorize more odd Gatlings of seemingly arbitrary moves and making it nearly impossible for casual players (read: potential longtime players) to appreciate the game without looking up the Gatlings of their character, in turn making them not casual players. In the context of newcomers, these new Gatling Combos effectively have the game tell you “memorize this chart of confusing and unsatisfying small chain combos or don’t succeed”, which isn’t appealing to newcomers or veteran fans.

My final concern I noticed with -STRIVE- and perhaps the one that affects the general win conditions of characters the most is the change to how the corner behaves. Unlike most 2-D fighters, -STRIVE- features a unique wall break mechanic on all stages when a character is hit a certain amount of times on the wall in the corner. This might look a little similar to what you see in TEKKEN or Injustice, however in Guilty Gear -STRIVE- the wall breaks are always the same on all stages (as far as we have seen and been told), meaning there is no variance or “advantaged stages” for certain characters. The difference (and issue) between -STRIVE-‘s implementation and TEKKEN’s is the reward. In the TEKKEN series, typically a wall or floor break results in massive damage, and importantly, usually an extension of your corner pressure and advantage (as you will typically bring your opponent to the next wall with your extension), however, in -STRIVE­-, when you break a wall after ending a corner combo on your opponent, the wall simply breaks and you and your opponent are returned to neutral, with the aggressor gaining a meter gain bonus called Positive Bonus. The glaring issue here is that while corner combos are extremely powerful, there is not nearly enough incentive tied to breaking the wall for finishing a corner combo to feel good to players. Positive Bonus as it stands now almost may as well be useless except for in some edge cases, this is due to the fact that if you landed a corner combo to wall break your opponent, you have already landed one combo to carry your opponent to the corner, and the corner combo itself, leaving your opponent at such low health, that unless your opponent is Potemkin, you will likely not need to use meter on your final combo to kill. Since the game is what I would refer to as a “two and a half touch” game right now, and you get Positive Bonus only on that final “half touch”, it is largely useless to have extra meter when you know you can kill your opponent with any solid combo starter. Wall breaking and Positive Bonus only become more questionable when you consider that the game will likely become a reliable “two touch” game as people optimize their combos more and know how to play within the game since a Counter Hit combo can do enough damage to have your opponent waking up in the corner with 50% health just with the knowledge players have right now.

Additionally, looking past whether or not Positive Bonus is useful enough to justify wall breaking or not, is that in a game like Guilty Gear it feels terrible as a player to kiss the corner goodbye after a big combo. This is the closest I will get to saying that -STRIVE- doesn’t feel like a Guilty Gear game, but it does take away a significant point where momentum shifts and a different style of play begins. Being in the corner in past Guilty Gear games was almost always the win condition of most characters due to the incredibly strong presence of okizeme and the possibility for hugely damaging combos. Because of this, play on both the offensive and defensive side changed significantly while in the corner, and due to powerful movement and defensive options defenders still had a chance when in the corner. Players on offense in the corner would then have to account for these possible defensive escape routes and change their play in order to prepare for the defender Bursting out of a corner combo or using aerial mobility to escape over the attacker. To me, this is what is most exciting about Guilty Gear, I usually enjoyed experimenting with new escape strategies while playing with my friends, and while failed attempts usually resulted in me giving a perfect to my opponent, successes suddenly became unique sequences which I could keep in my back pocket for later. This was hugely important, as offense in Guilty Gear has typically been superficially overpowered, and being able to navigate around it could usually mean a player could make a defensive situation into their own powerful offense and turn the tides. It seems ArcSys decided that all of this intricacy was simply too much to risk new players getting angry at the game for getting blown up in the corner, so instead, you get blown up everywhere and the game pries you and your opponent apart mid-match. The fact that breaking a wall returns both players to neutral shows that the game simply tries to avoid scary situations for new players by inserting a hard breakpoint where you know that offense will eventually end, similarly to how Dragonball FighterZ got rid of Marvel-style incoming situations and instead reset to neutral between characters. While in DBFZ this could be seen as a stylistic approach to solving how a new character comes in, in a 1v1 fighting game like -STRIVE- this is much more obviously something implemented to change behaviors and “solve a problem”. Finally, considering all of this, even if you simply choose to not finish a wall combo and instead go for okizeme in the corner as your opponent slides off the wall, it feels bad to know you are forgoing damage and something positive just to set up a mixup, even if that positive isn’t very strong. Overall, it seems that ArcSys wasn’t sure how strong losing the corner would be in a match of Guilty Gear and the bonus for forgoing the corner is simply not enough, hopefully, Positive Bonus is significantly buffed or changed, or the wall is changed in a later build of Guilty Gear -STRIVE-.

After considering the changes in Guilty Gear -STRIVE- and having plenty of time to experiment in the beta, it’s no surprise people have quite conflicting opinions about the newest installment in the series. Since there tends to be very little overlap between Guilty Gear players and other anime players, either consequentially or purposefully, the community was bracing for negativity to be present, however, it’s important to keep in mind that the game has changed significantly with each demo iteration, and it still has at least another 8 months if the “late 2020” release date we were told is still holding true. With so much time and an extremely useful survey to gather opinions from this beta, it’s likely we will see at least one more significantly different build of -STRIVE- before release. Even with more iteration on the game’s systems though, there is still room for concern that the game simply won’t be changed enough. Only time will tell how the game turns out, and hopefully, with the announcement of more characters before release, we will see how ArcSys decides to flesh out the game system and make it a complete Guilty Gear experience.

The post First Look: Guilty Gear -STRIVE- Closed Beta Test appeared first on Gamesline.

Starting with the announcement on Thursday, Arc System Works’ social media accounts unexpectedly teased a big announcement coming. Later in the evening, ArcSys posted a link to the information page for their upcoming Closed Beta Test for Guilty Gear -STRIVE-. The page covered a variety of details to let fans know exactly what to expect, but news of a beta test didn’t seem to be as big of a deal as the teases earlier suggested. The page noted that the beta will be sometime in April and will include both online play during the network test and vs COM while the network test isn’t live. Seven characters will be playable, which includes characters announced from Sol and Ky through Faust, but ArcSys also included one interesting piece of information which has gotten many people excited about the future of the game: the inclusion of rollback netcode in the final product.

For those unaware, fighting games have had quite a bit of difficulty creating a seamless online experience since they are primarily played over peer-to-peer connections. This means that your connection quality is directly based on how well you and your opponent connect to each other and not based on how well you can connect to a dedicated server or data center as in larger games with a higher player count. Because of the nature of peer-to-peer connections, most fighting games use a method of lag compensation referred to as delay-based netcode to assuage connection issues. Unlike in a modern multiplayer game like Overwatch, when connection quality is poor in a delay-based environment, inputs are directly delayed by a certain amount of time in order to keep both players in sync. As you could guess, this isn’t very good for fighting games, where the exact timing of your inputs are what matters, and not just if you pressed a button or not.

Notably, some developers have made open source or proprietary solutions to these issues through the use of a rollback netcode framework for peer-to-peer connections instead. To give a practical example I’ll go back to Overwatch. If your game of Overwatch is laggy, your inputs aren’t permanently delayed by a set amount of time; you’ll actually notice that if there is lag, the game will instead snap you back to a point in time just a few fractions of a second before a connection interruption was experienced and attempt to correct the problem. This is rollback netcode; your game simulates what it thinks you are going to do, and as long as there are no issues it continues with your inputs, if an interruption is experienced, the game will notice and snap both players back to a determined point in the match. What this means for fighting game players is that you don’t have to time your inputs specifically for a certain amount of variable delay, instead you do your inputs normally (theoretically as if offline!) and if there is a connection issue you will notice and can pick up where the game leaves you off. Practically, there are usually some buffers to delay inputs by just a few frames so even if there is a one frame delay, you can count on it to consistently be a one frame delay and not variable as in a delay-based environment.

With rollback being the standard in games magnitudes more popular than fighting games, it seems like a no brainer that fighting game developers would work to include this sort of netcode framework in their games. Inexplicably, this hasn’t happened yet, and companies have been hesitant to focus on creating good rollback netcode by their own volition. Recently, this has resulted in community uproar and nearly all of the fighting game community has been calling for companies to work on implementing some form of rollback netcode into their games. Community figureheads like Sajam and Maximillian Dood have been calling for this reform for years, taking vocal stances to encourage fans to hold the functionality of their games to higher standards and provide feedback on netcode when appropriate. By being one of the first companies to clearly respond to the community and implement this system into a flagship game, ArcSys has put themselves in a very advantageous position. While people questioned whether or not -STRIVE- would be “true Guilty Gear” based on early gameplay changes, this move shows that ArcSys is not paying lip service by saying they are willing to fundamentally change their game based on feedback from the community.

This was no small change for the game, and the website for -STRIVE-‘s closed beta test confirms that while the beta will be using a delay-based netcode framework, rollback netcode will be implemented in the final product of the game. For Arc System Works to show players that they are willing to change underlying systems of the game to make a great experience, they have garnered tons of attention with many people saying that even with the gameplay concerns they have at present, they would be willing to give the game a try based on the transparency of ArcSys. Of course, this was before ArcSys dropped a trailer that addressed all those gameplay concerns.

Following the announcement on Thursday, ArcSys planned to show off a combined trailer of what was supposed to be shown in both the Final Round and Brussels Challenge trailers on Saturday. With everyone tuning in to YouTube on Saturday night to view the trailer, ArcSys had the perfect chance to show that they are following through on their commitment to the community. When the trailer dropped and everyone was able to see what they had in store, ArcSys delivered in a surprising, but rather modest way. The trailer was only one minute and six seconds long, but managed to show off two characters that fans were convinced simply wouldn’t be able to function in -STRIVE-‘s gameplay system: Millia and Zato-1. The superficial response seemed positive with many people praising both Millia’s and Zato’s design updates, however, it is what these characters can (and seemingly still) do that is exciting.

To explain meaningfully, I’ll have to use some basic fighting game terminology, but don’t worry, these are concepts you already experience in fighting games. For context, the community has been hesitant to fully embrace Guilty Gear -STRIVE- primarily due to some radical gameplay changes which have affected significant parts of the game down to core principles of Guilty Gear. The chief issue among these changes is that a component of standard gameplay called okizeme has been radically nerfed compared to the last Guilty Gear title, Xrd REV 2. Okizeme is a term meant to encapsulate the actions (and attacks) used after knocking the opponent down to hit them as they are getting back up. Xrd REV 2 was an extremely okizeme focused game with several mechanics designed purposefully or not to facilitate crazy sequences of actions which would make it very difficult for an opponent to wake up into and successfully block, eventually scoring the performer of the okizeme more damage, pressure, and options to win the game. Since most people so far have not been able to meaningfully play Guilty Gear -STRIVE- combined with the fact that each demo iteration of the game has included some radical changes, the community has only been able to form opinions based on gameplay mechanics directly shown to them, and most of those mechanics have been changed or created to cause powerfully hard to block okizeme to become much less common, or function completely differently in Guilty Gear -STRIVE-.

This brings us back to Millia and Zato-1. These two characters are known as okizeme monsters in Xrd REV 2 and are most powerful when they can score a knockdown to begin setting up absolutely wild okizeme setups and potentially mix up the opponent into a kill; this was to such an extent that Millia is rather notoriously known as a character that can either be double perfected and die early due to low starting health or get a double perfect because her opponent simply can’t block everything when she throws the kitchen sink at them. As mainstays of the series, fans were dubious as to whether or not Millia and Zato-1 would even be reflections of their past selves in the new Guilty Gear, and ArcSys managed to show that they weren’t going anywhere. Throughout the trailer, rather than showing superficially cool looking moves and following the formula of past trailers, all the gameplay was focused on what these characters do best. Hard to block setups were abound and while the trailer was only a few seconds, it shows that even if Guilty Gear -STRIVE- won’t be exactly like past games, ArcSys is still making sure there’s something in it for veteran players. Notably, none of the setups shown in the trailers involved meter and were obviously not close to what optimal okizeme setups for those characters would look like, so it’s possible that this trailer was even meant to show off that they have made changes at a larger scope, possibly allowing for these sorts of setups with more characters than previously thought in past demo builds. Time will tell if this stands correct, and with a beta coming up, it seems we shall find out.

I hope there’s a Guard button in Strive. pic.twitter.com/qPOfLKzjEG

— J I Y U N A (@jiyunaJP) March 22, 2020

Reception to both announcements seems to be very positive, and while people aren’t as focused on Guilty Gear as they usually are with present affairs in the world, people seem to be excited for the additions of Millia and Zato-1 into the game. With such a long amount of time until Guilty Gear -STRIVE- is set to release (possibly up to eight months) it’s now clear that huge changes will likely come to -STRIVE- before its final build. The game’s prerelease coverage has been quite unique due to the extreme amount of transparency and feedback solicitation from ArcSys for a game that was being billed as a complete restructuring of Guilty Gear. Thanks to it, we have seen each new iteration of changes as they have come out, and while that means we will definitely see the bad ones, that also theoretically means we’ll see the good implementations if ArcSys continues to be as receptive to feedback as they are now. Ultimately, we can only wait for more and I’ll see you all in the CBT (hehe).

The post Rollback Netcode and Two Characters May Have Saved Guilty Gear -STRIVE- appeared first on Gamesline.

Gameplay in UNICLR remains standard from past UNI games and consists of four buttons to control your character, referred to as ABCD: light attack, medium attack, heavy attack, and ~*special button*~. The game’s simplicity carries through from this button scheme to the actual fighting. Combos are performed simply by canceling a button from a lower strength attack into an equal or higher strength attack; this means that if you land a random A attack against an opponent and don’t have a combo prepared, a simple A>B>C will do and your opponent will think twice about getting hit by stray jabs. This is where the UNI series gets really elegant, a complete beginner won’t have to worry about any timing on their attacks and can pull off whatever combo they can happen to press, while an advanced player can really use all the freedom of this sort of combo structure to perform stuff you wouldn’t otherwise expect from a stray hit. I have always found UNI games to be great to introduce to new players for this reason; combined with a unique aesthetic, anyone playing the game for the first time can really feel the fluidity of gameplay, and when a game feels immediately good to a new player, there’s a strong chance they’ll stick with the game.

For players familiar with fighting games or wanting to learn how to play the UNI series beyond just the basics, don’t worry, notice when I described the gameplay earlier I mentioned it being “elegant”. The game is definitely NOT shallow and as soon as you look deeper into UNICLR this becomes more apparent. The beauty of the game is that you only really need to learn what you want to, so a beginner’s basic skills in this game will directly evolve into more advanced skills later because things like combos or spacing will never be fundamentally different unless you choose a character or playstyle that avoids certain elements of the game. While an autocombo is present (which isn’t really a bad thing), UNICLR differs from games like Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle where the main focus of combos falls on the autocombos available to a character; instead, it’s a quick substitute for A>B>C that has more advanced applications found by experienced players, so it has situational uses but doesn’t rule over your other combos. Everything in UNICLR can be taken advantage of by the player to the extent they want, so plenty of depth is present once you begin to critically look at mechanics like assault and the vorpal cycle, which are critical for high-level play.

In addition to learning the system for yourself, the tutorial in UNICLR is incredible and serves as both a useful mechanism to teach you the game as well as a meaningful chunk of content in the game itself. Beyond simply teaching you how all the mechanics of the game work (so you can forget them and start mashing buttons once you get into a game), UNICLR also teaches you theory on how to use them consistently from beginner to expert to make sure that players not only can do the inputs but understand when and where to use certain moves. If you’re a beginner, this is probably the best way to learn how to play any fighting game, as the tutorial will teach you about relative safety, how to use your attacks, and how to think effectively in-game. With over 100 missions teaching everything from basic movement to the various option selects present in UNICLR, I truly think this is the best tutorial to learn how fighting games generally work and how to play them. The tutorial also has extremely helpful tips for veteran fighting game players as well, and even though I know how to play the game, I will still find myself going through late missions in the tutorial to make sure I understand how to respond to a situation correctly. Character specific tutorials are also present and are as helpful as you would expect by providing tons of combos and strategy tips to explain how a character typically plays or when to use certain moves. At every step of the way playing UNICLR, the tutorial will be there to help.

Moving on from hard gameplay, let’s talk about the aesthetics of UNICLR: they’re great. UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH is an anime fighting game series, so if you’re averse to the sound of Japanese sung anime openings, look elsewhere (your loss!). Beyond the simple statement of UNICLR being an anime game, the game oozes a feeling of eeriness and coolness, making the more lively characters a welcome stirring of the pot when you get sick of seeing boys with dark jeans and trench coats on screen. The music in each UNI game has always been great, and this installment is no exception, with lots of soft synths and the occasional shredding guitar solo, like music to ride a motorcycle at night to. Continuing to where you fight, most of the game’s stages are like the gameplay; beautiful but streamlined. Based on the lore of the game which I am admittedly not an expert on, most of the stages take place in different locales at night, whether it’s a playground or a mall, the stages are exactly what you expect, and they greatly reinforce the mysterious mood. The character’s songs combined with the menus and stages really pull the game together into a cool and calm package when most fighting games try to make things as exciting and frenetic as possible. Also, with UNICLR being an anime game, you get no shortage of cool overly dramatic moments. Leaving the song selection on auto will cause certain character matchups to play a special song due to rivalry or adversarial conflict in the story. Along with the huge amounts of gibberish English text on the screen and the dramatic, mysterious anime soundtrack, UNICLR makes no point to hide its Type-Moon, Melty Blood origins.

Despite the unique aesthetics of UNICLR, my one complaint with the game may be others’ favorite part: the roster. Functionally, the roster leaves nothing to be desired; it provides many unique playstyles through each character and there’s no shortage of fun to be had playstyle-wise. My issue, however, is that most characters simply lack the extra oomph I crave when I look for characters in other games. With the overall chill and dark mood I described before, most of the character designs are also quite simple, much like something in the Melty Blood series, another game the developers previously worked on. Many characters’ outfits consist of pretty ho-hum getups, and while there certainly are some characters that break the mold like Gordeau and Waldstein, the fantasy of what each character should be doing in-game based on how they look isn’t always clear based on their designs. Characters like Linne and Seth have always fallen flat to me for this reason; even if I think they do super cool things in-game, it doesn’t feel like I’m picking a super cool character on the character select screen. This has been remedied with each subsequent version after UNI (the first in the series) as more unique and over the top characters have been brought in, and I feel that for most people UNICLR should not have this issue with the addition of the very cool Londrekia rounding out the roster. Obviously, this is a pretty minor issue, I’ve still found a character I enjoy playing in Gordeau, yet I never truly feel like my itch for a character has been completely scratched looking at the UNICLR roster.

In total, UNICLR is truly a great game and time will tell if it becomes one of the more memorable fighting games of this era. While we haven’t quite gotten enough time to see how all the balance changes have shaken out in the long term just yet, if it’s anything like past UNI games, no casual player should have to worry about picking a “useless tier” character unless they are really looking to optimize their gameplay (and transitioning beyond a casual mindset). Community support for UNI has always been great, with people looking to play this game pretty much throughout the fighting game community. With the game scoring another consecutive appearance at EVO 2020 for the series, it’s safe to say this is likely the best general representation of UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH so far and perhaps the best of anime fighting games as a whole.

The post Review: UNDER NIGHT IN BIRTH Exe:Late [cl-r] (PS4) appeared first on Gamesline.