Arc System Works has once again proved that Daisuke Ishiwatari and his team know a lot about what they do.
Similar in spirit
A small lyrical digression. Yes, I know that the game was released more than a month ago and this text, to put it mildly, was a little late – I apologize for the delay. On the other hand, as practice has shown, there is an unexpected plus in being late. Over the past month, the Guilty Gear Strive meta has settled a little bit, and now that the hype has finally subsided, the project can be studied much more calmly. Plus, fans of the franchise don’t need any reviews anyway: they bought the game long ago. So this material will be more useful for those who want to take a closer look at Strive, but have little knowledge of either the series or the genre in general.
Heaven or Hell
Guilty Gear is a specific thing in every sense of the word. Calling it a 2D anime fighting game is like calling it JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Adventure Manga: The label is technically appropriate, but in reality it does not convey the magnitude of the disaster. Because Guilty Gear is a fighting game with a surprisingly vivid character and a strong sense of its own identity, which, in principle, is not often found in video games. It is an absurd, inimitable blend of 90s anime aesthetics, fantasy, hard science fiction, steampunk, post-apocalyptic and an immense love of rock music in all its forms and shades. The mixture is ridiculous in places, but stylish and charismatic in its own way. The creator of the series, Daisuke Isiwatari, has invested in Guilty Gear, it seems, in general, everything to which he had a heart, not at all worrying about how these ideas will combine with each other. What for? The main thing is that in the end it turns out cool.
And it turned out something really cool, albeit in a slightly postironic manner. Another thing is that when it comes directly to the battles, there is no trace of the merciless frenzy with a million references to anime and rock bands. Guilty Gear’s gameplay embodies pretty much everything that fighting games tend to put off normal people, but attract a hardcore audience that has rubbed their hands to the bone in arcade halls. The series has long been famous for its high pace of gameplay and an extremely demanding combat system with many subtle nuances. It offers the player a wide range of expression through flexible combos and character mobility (both on the ground and in the air), but in return requires almost impeccable knowledge of mechanics, not to mention good reflexes and motor skills.
As a result, Guilty Gear has taken a rather peculiar place in the market, as is usually the case with cult classics. Fighting game connoisseurs and critics rightly consider it one of the most important works in the genre, but outside of a relatively narrow circle of enthusiasts, the franchise has never been very popular. Strive is designed to correct this historical injustice. If in the previous parts of the Arc System Works series took only small steps towards the casual audience, then Strive was originally created with an eye to the widest possible audience. And in order to lower the threshold of entry for newbies and attract fresh blood, the authors have seriously reworked the mechanics that served as the core of the series for several decades.
One of Strive’s best finds is the extended movelist. Now the pause menu shows not only the commands for entering, but also a brief explanation of all the techniques: how they work, what properties they have, in which situations it is better to use them
But even if you consider that Strive is indeed much easier to grasp than any of its predecessors, I would not say that it feels much easier – it just became a little less chaotic, more down-to-earth. In Strive, the developers have noticeably reduced the speed of fights, but in fact this is not a reason to relax at all, since the cost of a mistake, on the contrary, is higher than ever. Normal attacks do noticeably more damage than in the past Guilty Gear, and for powerful combos you do not need to learn an entire piano symphony – the main bundles of most characters consist of just a few hits, they are not difficult to remember. Therefore, in order to win, it is much more important to possess basic, fundamental skills: to keep an advantageous distance for yourself, to move on time, to seize the initiative, to create pressure. The ability to flaunt multi-step combos in Strive is more of a nice (and rewarding) resume item than a dire need.
The new mechanic of breaking down walls leaves a mixed impression. On the one hand, it does not allow you to endlessly keep your opponent in the corner, which, again, will save the life of beginners more than once. On the other hand, the player who breaks the wall gets a very serious buff – an experienced player will definitely realize this advantage
Rather still Hell
However, this does not mean at all that the combat system has finally lost its former depth. Especially for those who are used to squeezing the maximum out of their character, the authors have saved, perhaps, the main feature of Guilty Gear – the Roman Cancel mechanic. In Strive, its essence has been preserved without drastic changes: RC allows you to “cancel” the animation of almost any attack (both normal and special), sacrificing half of the energy scale. In words, this does not sound very tricky, but in practice RC opens up a lot of tactical possibilities, breaking the traditional rules of fighting games. Did you miss with a slow attack and don’t want to receive the punishment you deserve in return? You can interrupt the rollback animation to immediately go on the defensive – or set up a trap for your opponent. With the help of RC, hits, which usually go nowhere, are easily converted into full-fledged combos, and a few seconds of slowing down gives a chance to continue the link and keep the opponent in the air for as long as possible. In a word, the measured pace and changes in the gameplay in no way prevent Strive from providing an unprecedented scope for improvisation and self-improvement (provided that the player wants to use it).
Some players complain that the combo counter takes up too much space on the screen, and in general the abundance of special effects makes the eyes fall out. As for me, this is a matter of taste: during the battle, you quickly stop paying attention to the pop-up numbers, and the special effects in dynamics look great
This is largely due to the competent design of the characters – however, unfortunately, it was not without problems here. Since the gameplay of Strive is quite different from everything that was in the previous installments, Arc System Works had to rebuild the classic heroes of Guilty Gear from scratch so that they fit better with the updated mechanics. New players are unlikely to pay attention to this, but fans of the series are rightly indignant: some characters have lost almost half of their instruments from previous parts, and sometimes you feel phantom pain from this. It is clear that in this way the authors again wanted to lower the entry threshold, but in some places they seem to have overdone it. Good Doctor Faust, twenty years later, suddenly forgot how to jump on a giant scalpel, which previously helped him control the distance. Ramlethal Valentine put pressure on her opponent, placing her swords in the arena, and now they cannot be controlled in any way – just throw them at the target like any other “fireball”. The Internet hates May with all her heart for endless spam with dolphins (in the context of this phrase makes sense), but she simply has nothing else to do: advanced techniques and manipulations with the call of sea animals have sunk into oblivion.
Nevertheless, I repeat, for beginners, such details are unlikely to spoil the fun. Otherwise, the Strive character roster was a success: now there are only 15 fighters available in the game (five more will arrive in the DLC) – not very many, but all of them are well worked out. Each, of course, has its own characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. In early Guilty Gear, for example, I played a lot as Chipp, an American ninja and canon viabu who loves to shout random Japanese words out of place. In Strive, he relies on his speed to choke his opponent and force them to err under the pressure of attacks, but he himself has the worst defense in the game and disintegrates from several missed combos. Therefore, most of the matches played for review, I played not for Chipp, but for the rock and roll witch I-No with a curious unique mechanic: during a dash to the enemy, she does not run on the ground, but slightly soars into the air. This nuance forces the victim to guess exactly how I-no will attack: will she land or start a combo right in flight, where her blows will have different properties? In addition, in 40 hours I never got tired of overclocking, at full speed, hitting people on the head with a guitar.
This, by the way, is, in principle, a very eloquent argument in favor of the game. In Strive, every character has a trick or combo to master. Potemkin’s click, deflecting enemy shells, and the famous Potemkin Buster, Millia Reige’s rampant mix-ups, Sol’s volcanic uppercut, Zato-1’s surgically precise control and his shadow Eddie. And when hours of training and dozens of lost matches finally pay off and you don’t hesitate to use the technique in the heat of battle, this adrenaline rush is hard to compare.
In training mode, you can customize everything from AI behavior to health, energy and position on the screen. This helps simulate specific situations in which the player is having difficulty.
In addition to old familiar characters, two new recruits made their debut in Strive: Secret Service agent Giovanna and the vampire samurai Nagoryuki. Both look like family on the roster. Joe is perfect for those who have moved to Strive from other fighting games or are playing them for the first time. As a mobile rushdown fighter, it’s easy to learn, but monstrously effective – it doesn’t even need any special moves. And so that newcomers, who are still uncertainly using RC and “ult”, do not put themselves at a disadvantage, Giovanna receives a passive bonus to damage for the unused energy supply.
Nagoryuki, on the other hand, is an extremely technical character: during the beta testing of the game, the community in absentia recognized him as weak, but the first impression turned out to be deceiving. Nago is the only character in Strive who can cancel his special moves at each other; with the proper skill, it will be difficult for the enemy to get out of his long and very painful combos. But for such a high damage, he pays by the fact that successful attacks gradually fill the bloodlust scale: when it reaches the maximum, the distraught vampire loses access to special techniques, and his health begins to quickly melt. So a competent Nagoryuki player needs to literally keep his finger on his own pulse and act prudently.
Why there is no Russian rock in “Gilty Gear”
Only one thing disappoints. For a game that supposedly aims to bring Guilty Gear to a wider audience and comfortably bring newcomers up to speed, Strive is a bit casual about its task. Don’t get me wrong – the developers have clearly tried to provide the players with everything they need. The detailed (maybe too much) tutorial mode, first added to Xrd, went straight to Strive, which is great. This set of playable cheat sheets explains almost everything from the most basic mechanics like blocks, jumps and the like, to specific nuances like aerial acrobatics or countering annoying attacks from specific characters. Also Arc System Works finally changed the antediluvian delay-based netcode to rollback, and the result exceeds all expectations: online Strive can be safely called one of the most (if not the most) comfortable in the genre. The delays during the fight are not felt at all, and the characters respond perfectly to the commands – in 40 hours I have not had a single bad match on the network.
The ranking system is designed in the form of a tower, where players gradually move from the lower floors to the higher ones. Each, by the way, contains some reference to rock music.
At the same time, for some reason, the authors did not bother with completely elementary things, the absence of which in 2023 looks wild. First of all, Strive does not have normal single-player content – only a training dojo, training missions and the notorious arcade mode, completely devoid of any interesting ideas. And, well, survival, where you can see how many bots you can defeat in a row on one health bar. If you are not going to play with real people in one form or another, then you don’t have to buy the game at all. Of course, there is still a story campaign, but the word “campaign” needs to be put in bold quotes, because the story here is a long (five hours) animated film without any gameplay. Is it a good movie? Not really, but if you are not confused by the quality of the level animation Berserk 2016, then you can get perverse pleasure from it. There is, after all, something ingenious about the fact that Strive’s “beginner-friendly” story cannot be made out without the academic knowledge of Guilty Gear’s lore.
Even the authors themselves understand what an array of information about the universe has accumulated over twenty years, therefore, without a shadow of irony, they propose to study it using diagrams and archival data. It’s so bad that it’s even good: everyone would do it
I don’t even want to say anything about multiplayer lobbies. I don’t know how it happened, but Strive manages to combine great networking code with disgusting, enchantingly awkward lobbies that no one ever asked for, but the developers made them anyway. Can you imagine a situation where you have to literally run after your opponent in order to offer him revenge? Can you imagine a ranking system where no one forbids dodging matches with characters you don’t like? Do you like to wait three or sometimes five minutes to connect to the server each time you start the game? Exactly. It remains to be hoped that the upcoming patch will fix at least some of these annoying bugs. Still, I don’t want to enjoy a decent game while grinding my teeth.
Guilty Gear Strive had all the chances to turn into a catastrophic failure, but Arc System Works once again proved that Daisuke Ishiwatari and his team know a lot about their business. While the studio hasn’t quite succeeded in making Guilty Gear with a human face, it has managed to create something far more valuable: a fighting game that wants to be played. And it’s damn hard for him not to reciprocate – such dynamics, depth and charisma are nowhere else to be found.
Pleased
- deep but accessible combat system;
- stable network code;
- detailed, easy-to-understand training;
- chic visual design;
- as always, great soundtrack.
Upset
- there is no intelligible single content;
- traditional balance problems;
- awfully uncomfortable lobby;
- long loadings.
How we played
In what: the key was purchased by the author.
On what: PC.
How many: 40 hours.
Achievement of the editorial office
Gorilla gaming
Не блокировать вражеские атаки, потому что лучшая защита — это нападение.
О локализации
Вердикт
Несмотря на серьёзные изменения в геймплее, Guilty Gear Strive не потеряла ни капли задора, харизмы и чувства стиля, сделавшего серию легендарной. Да, боевая система Strive не может похвастать запредельной глубиной своих предшественниц, но это нисколько ей не вредит: в истории франшизы наступила новая эпоха. Рок-н-ролл, может быть, мёртв, однако Guilty Gear живее всех живых.
