The third BlazBlue game follows the trends of the second for the most part. The story is even more concrete this time around, the visuals are ever so slightly upgraded, and the gameplay has been more tweaked than overhauled. It’s bursting with content and wonderful to play, moreso than ever I’d say, and like the last two would be easy to recommend if there wasn’t a sequel that was more worth it on both those fronts, in addition to having rollback netcode.
Mechanically I think the biggest change is the addition of “overdrive”. If you haven’t played an arc system works fighting game before this might be hard to parse, fair warning. Anyways, in many arcsys games, you can “burst” if your opponent is comboing you and you want to break that. Usually it’s tied to a meter of some sort, and usually you start a battle with it. Calamity Trigger experimented slightly with this by putting you in a low-defense state afterwards, increasing the risk of using it. Continuum Shift reneged on that idea, using a more standard implementation (but having two bars I think? I didn’t end up digging too deeply into that). Chrono Phantasma’s change is 1. bringing that bar back down to one, and 2. letting you enter overdrive with that bar instead of a burst. This works more like the roman cancel system in guilty gear, but powers up your moves (in a different way for each character) and uses up your burst. This is a cool change and I thiiiiink it was kept in central fiction, so when I start really digging into blazblue mechanically that should be fun to dick around with.
Story-mechanics-wise this is the most straightforward yet, with just three paths that kind of intertwine a bit, where you can only go so far in each path until you match that progress with the other two. It feels like a more successful take on the solidified storytelling of CS, since the way that game held on to Calamity Trigger’s “every character needs their own story route” made that all kinda messy. This, on the other hand, is easier to piece together. Or it would be, if the story didn’t really go all “penultimate 4 episodes of evangelion” on you. Honestly this is the hardest to follow yet, and I would be surprised if Central Fiction goes back on that trend. Luckily the characters are still great, even the new ones (though did Kagura need to be that much of a horndog?), and even as the literal events of the story get out of hand, the thematic core stays clear, as well as all the other themes they touch on.
To be clear, I don’t have an issue with the convolutedness of the story, I just kinda felt it worth mentioning that at every point they’ve simplified the story mechanically they’ve made it that much harder to follow along with, and like you have to try to do something like that.
There’s some good character moments, explanations of things that needed explaining while still keeping most of the nitty gritty behind the curtains (or behind the manga cover), and while it succumbs to it’s own heft a bit, it’s enjoyable and straightforward and fun :). PLUS they finally added an auto-text mode thank GOD.
But yeah, I don’t have a lot else to say about this one, and probably won’t about central fiction either honestly. These are fantastic fighters, and playing through them in order has been super interesting, as they’ve gone further from the Guilty Gear XX template and ended up in their own weird territory, even more focused on character differences and nuances. And even if the story twists itself in knots without meaning to (there’s still this one bit that I have no idea when it’s supposed to be happening), it’s fun to go through and feels good to think about, whether from a fanboy-I-wonder-what-will-happen-next perspective or a more literary one, even if it’s not exactly the greatest prose ever. It’s a fun mess, and certainly worth a shot if the story’s piqued your interest.
Mechanically I think the biggest change is the addition of “overdrive”. If you haven’t played an arc system works fighting game before this might be hard to parse, fair warning. Anyways, in many arcsys games, you can “burst” if your opponent is comboing you and you want to break that. Usually it’s tied to a meter of some sort, and usually you start a battle with it. Calamity Trigger experimented slightly with this by putting you in a low-defense state afterwards, increasing the risk of using it. Continuum Shift reneged on that idea, using a more standard implementation (but having two bars I think? I didn’t end up digging too deeply into that). Chrono Phantasma’s change is 1. bringing that bar back down to one, and 2. letting you enter overdrive with that bar instead of a burst. This works more like the roman cancel system in guilty gear, but powers up your moves (in a different way for each character) and uses up your burst. This is a cool change and I thiiiiink it was kept in central fiction, so when I start really digging into blazblue mechanically that should be fun to dick around with.
Story-mechanics-wise this is the most straightforward yet, with just three paths that kind of intertwine a bit, where you can only go so far in each path until you match that progress with the other two. It feels like a more successful take on the solidified storytelling of CS, since the way that game held on to Calamity Trigger’s “every character needs their own story route” made that all kinda messy. This, on the other hand, is easier to piece together. Or it would be, if the story didn’t really go all “penultimate 4 episodes of evangelion” on you. Honestly this is the hardest to follow yet, and I would be surprised if Central Fiction goes back on that trend. Luckily the characters are still great, even the new ones (though did Kagura need to be that much of a horndog?), and even as the literal events of the story get out of hand, the thematic core stays clear, as well as all the other themes they touch on.
To be clear, I don’t have an issue with the convolutedness of the story, I just kinda felt it worth mentioning that at every point they’ve simplified the story mechanically they’ve made it that much harder to follow along with, and like you have to try to do something like that.
There’s some good character moments, explanations of things that needed explaining while still keeping most of the nitty gritty behind the curtains (or behind the manga cover), and while it succumbs to it’s own heft a bit, it’s enjoyable and straightforward and fun :). PLUS they finally added an auto-text mode thank GOD.
But yeah, I don’t have a lot else to say about this one, and probably won’t about central fiction either honestly. These are fantastic fighters, and playing through them in order has been super interesting, as they’ve gone further from the Guilty Gear XX template and ended up in their own weird territory, even more focused on character differences and nuances. And even if the story twists itself in knots without meaning to (there’s still this one bit that I have no idea when it’s supposed to be happening), it’s fun to go through and feels good to think about, whether from a fanboy-I-wonder-what-will-happen-next perspective or a more literary one, even if it’s not exactly the greatest prose ever. It’s a fun mess, and certainly worth a shot if the story’s piqued your interest.