I mainly played this for the story, and thought it has some good moments, both storylines (both Arena and Ultimax’s follow-up) and their respective new characters weren’t much to write home about and the stories themselves felt like they went on for waaaay too long. It’s a very visual novel-like presentation, but the game in itself is entirely too verbose. I feel like you could cut away a bunch of text and not miss anything of note, and that’d be hours worth of reading that nobody would have to put up with. Labrys’ origin is pretty interesting and told well, but Sho Minazuki’s entire shtick and just the character as a whole feels like a very edgy copy of Adachi, with none of the interesting development, characterisation or charm.

As a complete beginner to fighting games though, after I got the hang of it… this is a pretty beginner-friendly fighting game. I didn’t really like the persona mechanic at first but after getting to grips with it, it ended up being pretty unique, even if I’m still not a big fan of it because of the ‘puppet-figher’y nature of the mechanic. If you got some friends to play against and like persona, I’d say it’s worth your while.

P.S.: Elizabeth and Margaret are busted.