being an axl main is awesome. everyone hates you and routinely skips past playing you for the simple crime of forcing them to play a bit of neutral. you prevent them from running their twenty second lockdown pressure drills for a bit and it’s the end of the world; they’d much rather go up against the litany of other rushdown characters who can all do that or the guy that can eat your healthbar in three decisions.

the game is fine. as far as its pace is concerned, strive is essentially rocket tag, and that’s a fine thing to enjoy. it just comes at the obviously infamous cost of representing a departure from xrd (or prior entries but i won’t pretend to be knowledgeable in this arena). this has invited natural comparisons to street fighter (super turbo in particular) and samurai shodown, but i think the core system mechanics manage to carve their own niche within the high damage subgenre. for all the debate around simplification, it seems clear to me that arcsys’s goal was to create a fighting game that the majority of people familiar with the genre can learn simply through relevant match experience, avoiding the confines of the training room and bringing the title in line with an older arcade experience. again, totally fine thing to be. i do think i prefer xrd’s brand of bullshit but not because it’s inherently more cerebral or anything - matches just tend to feel more dynamic. it’s an instance where strives emphasis on creatively using meter’s hundreds of applicable permutations to open holes in opponents defense is somewhat negated by the lack of opportunities to tap in per round and by how viciously quick some of these rounds can close out.

i strongly dislike the menus, user interface, and lobby system, but this aside it’s curious to me that strive represents an artistic departure from the rest of the series as well and this aspect has mostly been swept under the rug by the community. i assume this is fine for most because it’s pretty and because we will never escape the fondness gamers have for the metal gear rising/anarchy reigns soundtrack. still, its very much an intentional continuation of xrds aesthetic sensibilities - understandable given that titles landmark reception - but it feels worth mentioning that we are at this point quite far removed from the grungy, muted, and punk tone of earlier entries. but giovannas hot so who can say whether this is bad or not

This is not a review based off of the game as a competitive game

BlazBlue Calamity Trigger is without question an extremely interesting game. Mainly because it suffers from first game syndrome harder then just about any other game I’ve played. Which is especially noticeable when it’s the beginning of my favorite series of all time. To get presentation out of the way the spritework is great and the soundtrack is top tier. Now let’s start with the basics of gameplay. BlazBlue is a 4 button fighting game with an A, B, C ,and D buttons. A is light, B is medium, and C is heavy. Now where things get interesting is the D button which is a unique ability for each character known as a drive ability. Most drives are some form of attack with a special property for example Ragna’s Drive Soul Eater allows him to steal health from the other player and Jin’s Frostbite allows him to freeze the enemy solid. While other drives such as Noel’s and Carl’s are more complex with Noel being put into a state that completely changes her normals for a brief time and Carl being able to move Nirvana around and attack with her.

These drives allow for an extremely diverse cast of characters in the gameplay department and speaking of characters and gameplay let’s go over them.

Ragna is a pretty basic Rushdown character similar to Sol from Guilty Gear. With the main difference between to 2 being that Ragna has a larger focus on spacing to get his pressure going and is arguably less punishing with mistakes due to his life steal.

Jin is the closest your going to get to a Shoto in this game. However he is much more pressure focused then say Ryu. He’s probably closer to Ken in all honesty. His ability to freeze enemies is extremely powerful especially in Calamity Trigger for reasons I’ll get into later.

Noel is a pure rushdown character being able to do massive damage with her Drive Chain Revolver which allows her to chain together her various drive normal

Rachel is a trap based Zoner character with the ability to use her drive Sylpheed to control wind allowing her to adjust her projectiles before the hit the ground and can move her various traps around. Also lightning rods.

Taokaka is a fragile speedster who uses her Dancing Edge Drive to rocket herself around the stage. She may not do that much damage but damn is she fast

Tager is a grappler with a major twist. That being of he hits an opponent with his Voltic Battler Drive they will be magnetized allowing him to pull the opponent in with his grabs.

Litchi is a stance character revolving around her staff Mantenbou which is controlled via her drive button and can be placed down to give her access to new moves as well as being able to launch the staff at a later point.

Arakune is weird to put it lightly. His gameplay revolves around hitting the opponent with his drive so he can summon an army of insects to basically create a bullet hell situation other then that don’t ask me how he works

THE ONE AND ONLY BANG SHISHIGAMI IS A HIGH SPEED MIX UP BASED CHARACTER WITH THE ABILITY TO MOVE EXTREMELY QUICKLY ACROSS THE BATTLEFIELD AND RUN MIX! HIS DRIVE ALLOWS HIM TO BLOCK AN ATTACK AND THEN COUNTER ADDING A SEAL ABOVE HIS SUPER METER WHICH WHEN HE GETS ALL FOUR CAN ACTIVATE HIS SUPER FORM FU RIN KA ZAN!!!! A FORM SO BADASS THAT IT CHANGES THE MUSIC ITSELF!!!!

Carl is a puppet character. Who requires the player to not only control him but a massive marionette as well. I think that’s all I need to say on him.

Hakumen is a defensive character based on countering the opponent with his drive Zanshin and has a unique super meter that slowly builds over time and can cancel his specials into each other with the trade off being that all special moves cost meter

Nu 13 is without question the “Queen of Zoners” who has the power to combo the opponent from just about anywhere on screen with her Drive Sword Summoner. With that combined with move like Gravity Seed and Act Parser she can basically control the match from anywhere on screen

What did I tell you we have a diverse set of gameplay styles here and while that’s a good thing the game play still has a few issues. Such as barrier burst being way too risky among other things like you needing to mash a direction in order to break out of Jin’s ice but overall with airdashing and other universal arcsys mechanics CT is a good time. At least causally. But wait you say! Didn’t I say that this isn’t a competitive review? You’d be correct! Which is why now we’re going to go into the single player of the game!

Calamity Trigger does have an arcade mode which is pretty good on it’s own with a few of the fights for each character having a little story sections which makes arcade mode well a little story mode similar to King of Fighters. But one very interesting thing is that the arcade endings (except for Ragna) appear to actually take place before arcade mode starts. Very interesting don’t you think?

However that’s not the real attraction here. That would be an actual Story mode. That’s right! Calamity Trigger has a full on story mode! But let’s be honest it’s probably just some version of a tournament arc like every other fighting game… Right?

Yeah the whole tournament arc thing a lot of games do. BlazBlue doesn’t roll that way. We have a full on anime style story mode to go through! And it’s not some short 2 hour affair. It’s a full length game. Like a good 8+ hours. BlazBlue’s story mode starts off being split between 10 characters with the final 2 being unlocked after all of them are cleared and finally a true ending once those are finished.

Our story begins with some scientists running an experiment on a “Subject 12” before they are obliterated by a Space Laser. Yep that’s how our fighting game begins. The best way I can describe BlazBlue’s Narrative is that they somehow made a JRPG plot and put it into a fighting game.

The rest of the story revolves around the 13th hierarchical city of Kagutsuchi on the day when the SS class criminal Ragna the Bloodedge appears in town to destroy the branch of the evil world order known as the Novis Orvis Librarium located in the city and how the various playable characters react to his appearance. Ranging from bounty hunters and residents of the city to members of the NOL’s military. As well as a few special cases.

However a player who pays attention may notice various hints and references to a bigger narrative. However problems exist. There are also some joke endings but that’s not the real problem. Besides the fact that in order to have literally any context you’ll have to read the manual. Thanks game from 2009… There is the teach me miss Litchi sections but those are relatively hidden on the story menu and requires you to sit through these comedy segments before the actual information comes, Each character story has multiple endings and to have the game consider it cleared you only have to get 1. Because of this on one hand you can get an extremely important ending or you can get some random bullshit that has nothing to do with anything and the true ending isn’t very satisfying due to blatantly being sequel bait.

I’m going to be point blank here. While I do genuinely enjoy Story Mode I know the main reason I’m able to is because I already know what’s going on and know what endings to trigger for each character and well that’s a massive issue. Because I can guarantee that many many players got a bunch of BS endings that explain little to nothing and were left with pure confusion. Hence why BlazBlue’s story has a reputation of being a convoluted mess. I can appreciate the mystery novel style approach they took here but It really doesn’t work in this case.

There’s also some weird presentation quirks in story mode as well. The biggest one being the lack of music outside of battle. Which honestly makes things feel pretty empty at times. For example Ragna meeting Jin among other moments. This is extremely strange considering they released an entire soundtrack disk full of unused music which really has me questioning why they didn’t have music during story scenes.


Also the voice actors while great (I played this with the dub btw) have some weird direction at times and are oddly soft spoken. I mean it matches the relatively serious and honestly pretty edgy tone the game goes for. I say relatively because THE ONE AND ONLY BANG SHISHIGAMI and Taokaka exist. It’s just weird to me after playing the rest of the series is all. It’s blatantly obvious that the actors are still settling into their roles. But we still have some stand out performances mainly David Vincent’s Jin Kisaragi. You’re probably thinking it’s weird to be talking about the VAs in any sort of detail but it’ll make sense by the end of the retrospective. Not to mention the characters themselves are also still finding themselves. The most noticeable being Ragna the Bloodedge who is much more brooding then he is in later games.

Anyways back to the positives. This game at least the Steam version anyways has probably the coolest unlockables in any fighting game ever in the form of Unlimited Characters. You know how fighting game single player modes usually have extremely cheap boss battles which this game obviously does. Now imagine that for every playable character and all of them being playable. All you have to do is clear Arcade mode with the character of choice and boom! You get a comically overpowered version of the character to play around with in versus mode. I love stuff like this even just for the bragging rights of beating them on the highest setting and the pure chaos of 2 Unlimited Characters facing off.

I think the last thing I should cover is the version you should play and well I’d say the steam version is the best due to how often it goes on sale for a dollar and ease of access as well as extra content. However it lacks online mode (not that that matters for this game) and has a bit of a frame rate bug on certain setups. Mainly Laptops with Nvidia cards Mind you this is easy to fix once you know what to do.So [Here’s a Reddit post explaining how to fix it]( https://www.reddit.com/r/Blazblue/comments/8oydqd/psa_arcsys_pc_port_low_fps_fix_for_nvidialaptop/) Edit: Actually I just found out that all you have to do is switch it to use the Nividia graphics card and force V Sync

Overall I’d say CT is a really high 3.5/5. It’s far far from a bad game but it comes with so many issues that’s it’s hard to rate it much higher especially when the series does everything this game does much better in the future.

Edit: Upon further consideration and playing it some more my opinion of the game has been pushed over the high 3.5 mark into the 4 range

I am a firm believer that games, at heart, are an art form. They exist like all other art mediums not for any extrinsic value such as money or fame, but for the inherent beauty that they posess. Art, for the sake of art.

Yet, this "game", or rather I should call it, kitsch, goes against all of those values. Yes, the waifus are hot, which is why this gets more than a half star rating. But in terms of its design, it's clear that every aspect around this piece of kitsch revolves around making mihoyo money. And to be fair, there's nothing wrong with that. What I take offense to is the idea that this is somehow a game. Call it a digital experience, a interactive simulator, whatever, but don't call it a game. It lacks any sort of artistic merit or creative vision needed for pixels on the screen to be classified as a game by me.

The story, while better than genshit, is still hilariously bland and generic. Characters pop out of nowhere and are introduced with gaping holes in the plot and lopsided development, all for the sole reason so that they can later be sold as 5 stars a few months down the line. The environment and world, while beautiful, is hollow and static: there's no life to be found in the scenery here, only eye-candy setpieces and window-dressing that fades in the midst of time. For all the expansive set of characters and lore, there is nothing to keep me caring or invested in any of it due to the stylistically uneven and overly flowery writing and bad story. The gameplay, while passable (another reason why it doesn't get a 0.5/5 star rating), has almost zero connection to the story and feels forced in, like at a boardroom meeting a bunch of mihoyo executives looked at a chart and determined that the target audience wanted turn-based combat rather than considering whether said turn-based combat would work in the context of every other part of the game.

And really, that's my main concern with this game. Up until I abandoned it out of pure disgust, the entire game felt...constructed. Every single stylistic and gameplay choice made in this game felt formulaic and -- again -- made with the goal of monetization. Every single dialogue line felt forced and made with some ulterior goal or motivation rather than being spoken for the sake of speech itself.

If you want to play a "game", don't play this, because it simply is not one. It's a highly elaborate interactive gacha simulation with all the beauty, creativity, vision, and perspective that makes games one of my favorite artistic mediums ripped out and replaced with shady monetization and shameless sexualization.

Overall Rating: 1/5 (Dumpster Fire)

Played for about an hour, and it became immediately apparent that this is basically a sci-fi Genshin reskin. Down to the UI layout, cutscenes still being unskippable and the same shitty gacha system that seldom gives you actual characters. I know for a fact that this is a game that, like Genshin, will not respect anyone's time, asking you to spend days gathering space mushrooms or some bollocks just to be granted the privelege of being able to level up characters in a turn based RPG. Obviously, I don't know that last bit for sure, but seeing how derivative the game is of Genshin in the first hour, I don't think it's unfounded, and my patience has its limits.

This is typical gacha slop wherein the waifu slot machine was designed first, and then the game around it, made to get you addicted and waste as much of your time as possible. But people are going to eat it up anyway and act like this kind of game design is actually good and acceptable.

Addendum:

holy shit guys just please play any other turn based rpg I don't care if "you don't like turn based combat but this game is good!" there're infinitely better entry-level rpgs/rpgs that appeal to people who don't like the genre I'm on my knees

Genshin Impact is certainly uhhh, something.

Or at least, it really wants to be something, it takes a lot of different things and smashes them together, somehow coherently, in the hopeful goal of being a something. But it really doesn't, it's not a something at all.

That's the long and short of it, but let me break stuff down to the specifics. Genshin takes a shitton of inspiration from other ps4 anime titles (weirdly Atelier Ryza kept coming to my head), BotW, and korean mmos in this weird mesh of trying to be a hack n slash anime open world. You have exploration, dungeons and character class and element mechanics, a pretty standard anime story, and a somewhat sweet vibe in the visuals. But like, each every one of these components are soulless, they don't really come together to make anything special, they're just there.

Exploration is route and boring, with a lot of fucking about getting numbers to go up and seeing very uninteresting sights. You might find some neat gear but gear generally just means number and stat ups rather than anything of much worth.

Mechanics boil down to being very simple, mostly picking whichever buttons you want to mash to make enemies keel over because enemy design asks nothing of you and all characters can functionally instawipe a group in their own way. Elemental play leads to very particular lock and key options but not anything dynamic, sheikah slates and element play of BotW it certainly isn't or really trying to be, it's just dressing.

The vibe itself is very disturbingly stolen from BotW, with the overworld music using the same kind of piano timbre that goes back to it, but it's just MISSING something. It's easy to say it's just missing a soul, but there's more to it, there's not even a sense of direction to what the music is playing. It feels ethereal but in the bad kind of sense, the one where you're playing around anime open world limbo rather than something serene.

I won't deny that the game at least looks pleasant, if anything that was the one thing I enjoyed in the amount of time I spent, getting a literal "ooo pretty" out of my mouth in the first five or so minutes. I guess another plus in this game's direction is that the gacha isn't overbearing as it is basic f2p design really, it's pushed in your face once and then it at best only subconsciously works for people going for completionism shit. From what I've been told, you can clear the story just fine without interacting with the shop at all, so that's nice.

That's kind of all the positive sentiment I can scoop up for this though, it really just kinda sucks otherwise. None of this ends up with Genshin Impact having its own identity, being something from even just one of its parts much less the sum. It really feels like a game made for eastern audiences that does 'just' enough to be relaxing and comfy to waste time in, but then offer nothing in return. Originally I was going to make this review just as I tweeted about it, saying that Genshin Impact is just Destiny 2 for eastern audiences.

I don't really even know about that anymore though, there is certainly a lot more I can give and recommend about Destiny, this is just going to be an afterthought eventually.

MiHoYo's guide to a mickey mouse game:

- soulless characters with generic & recycled designs
- dry ass story completely reliant on dropping the longest most boring exposition dumps of your life that never even go anywhere
- painfully verbose wall of text explaining some shit you already knew Paimon: So what you're SAYING is... says the same exact fucking thing again
- baby easy combat w/ no real endgame
- employees are probably overworked and rarely get to see their children
- gacha

The machine did indeed, cry.

Crymachina is a spiritual successor to Crystar, carrying over plenty of the old game's systems, ideas, and staff which would make old fans feel at home right away but also give them an entirely different experience that often times feel like the complete opposite of Crystar. While this can possibly be a bit of a turn off for returning fans depending on how much they expect this game to be like the other, I believe that anyone going into the game with an open mind would find this different experience to be a very enjoyable, lovely, and emotional experience.

Mechanically, the game is a gigantic leap from the first game in pretty much every aspect. The character models are very high quality and animated very well, accurately depicting their really unique and expressive designs by Rolua. The graphics themselves are also very good and shown off a lot in the really flashy, unique, and very enjoyable combat system which can get quite challenging too. The game also has a different gameplay loop from Crystar, now offering very short linear stages that always ends in a boss fight with all playable characters having their own differing playstyles and offering a nice degree of customization in the form of assistive gear that you call up during combat to cover different situations like hitting from afar, granting impenetrable defense, starting launch combos, etc. Although, the map designs definitely don't feel as expressive as they used to be, which is fairly understandable given the entirely opposite setting with a "grounded" spaceship interior as opposed to Crystar's colorful depiction of purgatory.

The aspects that really took me by surprise though would definitely be the characters and story with how they really went in a different direction from everything I expected. Despite the game still having plenty of really dramatic moments and intriguing mysteries, the game in general has a much lighter tone for a majority of the time compared to Hayashi's previous works. I often found myself with a grin or giggling every time we're shown the characters interactions, whether its among the main 4 or with the rest of the interesting side cast. I also did not expect, but very much appreciate, how hard they went into the sci-fi aspect of the story and setting with a very refreshing far-future world done so well that it really pulls you into the entire thing. The story's various twists and surprises were all handled really well too and kept me hooked the entire time with how well they've put their own crazy spin to the classic concept of machines gaining sentience and emotion and how far those would take these machines whose sole purpose and reason for creation were to simply obey commands they were given.

Admittedly though, the game sadly doesn't hit the emotional highs that I've gotten from Crystar which I feel is a bit of a shame but I'm perfectly fine with considering everything else the game handles really well. It was everything I didn't expect it to be but still really left the best impression on me given what the game was openly going for, and for that it deserves all the praise I can give it and really makes me more excited for the future projects Hayashi will hopefully have which I will definitely be there for.

GOTY.

There's something amusing about seeing a lot of big fans of Persona 5 in my circle rag on Persona 4 constantly when, in reality, the core issues of both of their stories are near-identical. They both have very formulaic story structures that wear out their welcome by the time they do start shaking things up, they have fairly weak casts that are severely underwritten past their initial arcs, and they're both very non-committal or even contradictory with presenting their main themes. If this is the case, then why do I view Persona 4 in a somewhat more positive light while Persona 5 gets worse for me as time goes on, despite the fact that the lowest lows of 4 are far worse than 5’s? Well, not only does Persona 4 have its own unique strengths that 5 fails to capture, but these direct parallels in shortcomings give me the impression that Atlus learned practically nothing from the shortcomings of 4 after a near-decade, aside from slightly getting the memo that homophobia might not actually be that funny. (Emphasis on slightly)

The main cast is probably the worst out of any modern Persona cast. Not to say that they’re all irredeemably terrible, but they just become incredibly flat once their specific arc is concluded, which makes it even more damning when characters like Haru don’t even have that to their name with how poorly implemented Morgana’s arc is. It doesn’t really take long for them to neatly slot into their respective archetypes without branching out much beyond them. Ann probably gets this the worst, she doesn’t really get to go beyond being “the girl” of the group when she had so much going on during Kamoshida’s arc. I think a better approach would’ve been to limit the cast just to the initial trio. Their dynamic in the early game is very strong and could totally carry a whole game on its own. Yusuke felt pretty out of place once he fully joined the Phantom Thieves, and the sidelining of growth for each party member becomes very apparent once Makoto joins. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to say it would work, with how often the series tries to push a “main trio” of their parties. Even Persona 4 directly did it, when it arguably started off with more of a quartet than a trio. I don’t know how it would affect the rest of the game, but what I do know is that the characters do need a lot more than they get, especially in a series that prides itself on interpersonal relationships like Persona does.

I don’t see myself as someone that’s too harsh regarding the “Show don’t tell” critique. I like a good chunk of media that are very in your face about their messages and themes. The point where I do feel it’s right to make that critique is when it feels like a piece of media is talking down to me, which is absolutely the case with Persona 5. It never trusts the player to come to their own conclusions about what they’re being presented, so it feels the need to spell the meaning behind every interaction out in meticulous detail so that a 3 year old can keep up with it. For example, there’s a reoccurring puzzle throughout the Pyramid of Wrath, (Which is my least favorite stretch of the whole game for a myriad of reasons that I don’t intend to go into) where you put together hieroglyphs that depict parts of the palace ruler’s past, and their relationship with a close family member. I thought it was a cool way to let the player piece together the trauma that they endured, especially with how that comes together with the palace’s boss, but every single time you clear one, the characters explain exactly what it means and tell you exactly how to feel. It’s really frustrating when it feels like it has to spell out every single interaction in the entire game. I feel like you could shave off 10 hours from the game just by giving it a tighter script, it’s unnecessary bloat that does nothing but dampen the storytelling. It’s even more baffling that it has this approach when ultimately, it doesn’t really have anything to say until the Royal arc hits. It’s trying to tackle much more grandiose themes of society and rebellion, but it always feels like it’s only putting a single toe into an incredibly deep pool. Let me be clear, I don’t need the PTs to start picking apart every aspect of each corrupt system in the nation. I feel like too many critiques go down that route, especially since it does place more of an emphasis on personal conflict. But even so, it could do a lot better with acknowledging it than the “All’s well that ends well, right?” approach we’re given. That’s honestly my biggest problem with the modern series. It’s so non-commital with presenting these potentially interesting ideas that the stick it’s hitting the issues it tackles seems to be more like a damp pool noodle.

As I’m writing this, I’m noticing a major pattern between each of this game’s aspects. I really like everything about it on paper. The general theme of rebellion that has sparks throughout the whole game, that’s cool! Too bad the ways it explores that theme are pretty paper-thin, even with the social links that usually thrive with conveying themes just as well as if not better than the main plot. Having social links teach you more specific abilities to use throughout the game for a sense of growth, that’s cool! Too bad that the way they’re balanced makes them range from practically meaningless to game-breakingly powerful. Every single addition to the game’s combat, the baton passes, the guns, all of that is cool! Too bad none of the game is balanced around it and it makes even a normal playthrough one where you’re stupidly overpowered. I think this is why Persona 5 fails for me in ways that the other games in the series don’t quite as much. As much as 3 and 4 had their low points and downsides, both of those did have consistent strengths that they were able to bring out exceptionally well. For every great and fresh idea that P5 has that isn’t strictly related to its presentation, there’s something else that ends up completely undercutting it.

In a way, that’s why despite how fun it can be to dunk on Atlus and this game, I don’t like the distaste that I have for it. It does have some genuinely fascinating ideas, I can see a spark of something truly spectacular trapped inside of this. The Royal arc proves this, it’s a fantastic piece of work that’s only weaknesses are the foundation that it’s built upon. If Atlus really is capable of being a tour de force in video game storytelling and can capitalize on the strengths of Royal’s writing, then Persona 6 could be the first game in the series that I really like without any caveats. All I need is proof that modern Atlus has that bite in its narratives, which it’s mostly consistently proven to not have over this decade. I want to believe that Atlus can pull through, and bring us one last surprise…

(Also maybe don’t have a prominent party member that plays into every single autism stereotype in the book at maximum capacity with the core point being “ooh she’s such a quirky gamer girl!” Cool? Cool.)