Here's another one that's been sitting on the backlog for way too long. BACKGROUND:
I had only played the beta of BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle and I wanted to learn about the BlazBlue characters I didn't know about. Thus, I bought this game on a whim during a Steam sale, but never got around to playing it. PLOT: BlazBlue is set in a world that, at one point, was threatened by something called the Black Beast. The Black Beast was vanquished by six heroes with the help of Ars Magus, the fusion of science and magic. This war changed everything, as the Library was formed to oversee the world afterward, and humanity moved skyward to avoid a dangerous substance called seithr, which spread after the defeat of the Black Beast. It's after this whole setup that things get a tad complicated. The way this game handles story is different, as instead of a singular story mode that features most of the cast, each character has their own story mode with a series of fights that cover events in the present day. While this is really neat (because everyone gets to shine in their own story, instead of some characters being sidelined in a singular story mode), what's canon and what's not canon immediately becomes confusing. Not only does every win and loss lead to a different set of dialogue or even lead to branching story paths, you'll also find that there are goddamn time loops in this game. It takes a great effort to piece together what really happens in this game, as you have to see all the possible outcomes in a lot of characters' story modes, and to make sure you have as many details at your disposal, you'll have to play through pretty much everybody's stories. Again, I maintain that this is a cool approach to the story that lets you spend time with the entire cast, but there is admittedly a bit of tedium to running through every single story route possibility, and the lack of clarity as to what's canon made things a bit frustrating to me. Evaluating the stories on their own, there's a good variety of stories that give you a good sense of each character's backstory and motivations. However, you still have to play a bunch of other characters' story modes to get the full picture. For example, Noel Vermillion's story mode is all about finding the deserter Jin Kisaragi and bringing him back in to the Library, but you don't get a real sense of why Jin deserts to begin with unless you play Jin's story mode. I did like this approach, because it incentivized checking out everyone's stories to piece together certain details, but I understand that it's a lot of effort for something you could probably just look up online. There are a variety of tones across each characters' stories. Ragna's, for example, is a super edgy revenge tale, while one of Noel's branching story paths is an absolutely silly reason for a conflict. I must admit that getting emotionally invested in a single character's story is a little difficult since you have to play through multiple characters to have as much context as possible. That said, some characters have pretty compelling stories if you put in the time, like Litchi having a surprisingly tragic tale connected to Arakune's present circumstances. Although a lot of the stories lean more towards the serious end of the scale, there is more than enough goofy shit to go along. Taokaka, for example, is more of a comic relief character who says stupid shit all the time. There's also a weird thing with this game where characters make real inappropriate comments about certain characters' breasts (e.g. Litchi is straight up called "boobie lady" by Taokaka, while Noel is mocked for being less... endowed), and that makes me feel uncomfortable. This game also has an arcade mode, and like most arcade modes, each character has an ending. None of it made much sense to me until I messed around with the story mode, so it's probably best to think of the arcade endings as a supplement to the main story. PRESENTATION: BlazBlue goes full anime with its aesthetic, and it's got some real inspired character designs for its roster. You've got badass-looking edgelords like Ragna and Hakumen, weird robot-looking things, abominations like Arakune, a sex appeal character in Litchi, and even a cutesy anime lady in Rachel. I wouldn't go as far as to say there's something for everyone, but there's something for a bunch of people, I guess. The game goes for the visual novel method of presenting story moments, with static backgrounds, minimal animation for character art, and a whole lot of reading. The art looks impressive, especially the intricate locales that serve as the backgrounds for both cutscenes and the stages. There is some voice acting, but not for all dialogue, and I'd say this department is hit or miss since I found the delivery of some characters a little off. Speaking of stages, there are a small but decent variety of locations that you can fight in. The ones that stand out to me are the Halloween-themed spooky mansion and the Chinatown-inspired Orient Town. The gameplay itself has highly detailed pixel art for its character sprites, which I'll always find impressive since I don't notice it until I look closely. Perhaps the only other thing I can say here is elements of the UI feel overdesigned, as I found some of the detailing rather distracting to look at. There's a solid soundtrack in this game, with most music leaning towards a rock sound that gets your heart pumping during fights. Some of the other tracks lean towards other genres and use notably different instruments for its sound, like one that goes hard on the pipe organ. GAMEPLAY: BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is a 2D fighting game, and the basic idea holds true: beat the shit out of your opponent, don't die first. The control scheme has four buttons: light, medium, heavy, and special (called Drive in this game), and for the most part, combos are freeform and you can chain most things together. There are command inputs in this game, but from what I've played, these rarely go beyond the typical quarter-circles, so it's not that tough. Moreover, certain specials can be mapped to their own button (or in the case of a controller, on the right analog stick), which makes combo-ing into them much easier since you don't have to perform the command input. Most of the standard things you can expect from games like this are present. You've got overheads and lows, forward and back throws, and you can tech/ukemi out of hitstun. There's probably a lot of complicated mechanics hidden in here somewhere, but against Normal AI, I got by more than fine with standard LMHS strings. I found this to be a pretty mobile game, since not only do you have grounded dashes, you have a double jump and air dashes to help approach or hang back. I like this a lot, because I have a tendency to play rushdown, and being able to air dash over projectiles or simply to close distance goes really well with such an aggressive play style. One mechanic I find interesting is that there are two different types of blocks in this game. There's your regular block (done by simply holding back), which can be broken based on a gauge in the upper middle portion of the screen. The other requires an additional button input, and holding it consumes the Barrier meter. If that Barrier meter runs out, you actually take more damage, meaning there's incentive to manage it properly. If you're feeling particularly risky, you can use a Barrier Burst, which immediately expends the entire meter to perform a breaker move that gets you out of an opponent's combo. The game also has something called the Heat gauge, which is akin to many similar meter mechanics in other fighters (hit or get hit to charge, use meter for big moves). Some moves use a portion of this Heat gauge, but the most significant of these is the Distortion Drive, which is your flashy super move. Everyone's got a Distortion Drive, each with different properties, and if you manage to win a round with it, you get a Distortion Finish, which feels nice. Despite only having a dozen or so characters, the variety in terms of play style or mechanics is solid. This is highlighted the most in each character's Drive moves, which defines their main gimmick. For example, Carl Clover's Drive has you control Nirvana (his automaton sister) to attack independently, leading to some Noob Saibot-style tag team shit. Another example is Litchi, who is sort of a stance character in that her Drive lets her fight with or without her staff. You have your usual assortment of game modes, from Arcade (ten fights in a row, get a unique ending for each character), Story (one for each character, each with multiple paths), Versus (standard local multiplayer), and Training Mode (where you can test stuff out). Unfortunately, there's no full tutorial (which BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle ended up having), so players new to fighting games will have to mess around quite a bit in Training Mode to figure things out. Aside from the unique ending, beating a character's story mode unlocks their Unlimited Form (which is just them, but stronger) and their Astral Heat move, which is this insanely flashy finishing maneuver that you can only go for if you're close to winning and the opponent's at low health. Though incredibly situational, getting an Astral Finish is extremely satisfying. You can mess around with some game settings like AI difficulty, round counts, and such in the options menu. Always good to have these handy. VERDICT: I thought BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger was a decent 2D anime fighting game that I found easy to grasp, had a few neat mechanics, a small but diverse roster, and was set in an interesting world with a lot of lore behind it. The story being structured the way it is made it difficult to get into, unfortunately, but the stuff I could understand, I did appreciate. I liked this game enough that I'm willing to try its sequels, but I'm really hoping the story is easier to parse there. I haven't played enough 2D anime fighters to say definitively that this is the one to get over other titles, but if any of the character designs speak to you, I'd say you should give this game a shot. I think it's relatively easier to get into mechanics-wise (at least compared to something like Dragon Ball FighterZ, which has a million things going on), and with this being the first game in the series, it's as good as any a jumping point if you're curious about the series as a whole. I will say that figuring out the entire story will take some major effort, since you have to play as everybody to get all the details, so perhaps you should just play who you like and look up the rest online. Get the game on Steam: BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger on Steam (steampowered.com) - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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