Striving for greatness

As someone who has been a fan of fighting games since an early age, I was first introduced to the Guilty Gear series on the Dreamcast and even though I appreciated the visual spectacle, stellar soundtrack and complex combat mechanics, it was never quite my cup of tea as I became more of a fan of the Blazblue series.

After an extended hiatus, the Guilty Gear series returns with its newest entry, “Guilty Gear Strive” and once again I throw down the gauntlet, hoping that this will be the entry that will finally make me fall in love with the series.

The story/plot is appropriately over the top as you would expect from a guilty gear game.

MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PS4, PS5, PC
Voice Acting: JPN/ENG
Played: 20~ hours

Following the events of Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, the world is still reeling, having just narrowly escaped a mass extinction event. As the leaders of the world are gathering for a summit to discuss peace, their plans are thrown into disarray when the infamous “Gear Maker” shows himself to the world and chaos ensues.

As was the case with the previous entry, the story is presented as a series of 20~ minute anime episodes. With a total of 9 episodes, it felt like I was watching a mini-series and I found myself impressed not only with the quality of animation and visual direction, but also with the unfolding plot as I found it quite easy to binge watch the entire thing in only two sittings.

While it’s not quite at the quality of MK11 or Injustice 2 story mode, I feel they’re making strides in the right direction with their story modes and have come very far since the days of the visual novel-styled story modes.

Having said that, I could imagine the story being mostly non-coherent if you’re not familiar with the world, characters and events of the previous games (especially Sign and Xrd) so if the idea is to get the best experience out of the story, I would recommend playing through Sign and Xrd first or watching some kind of a recap video.

The vibrant colors and fluid animations showcase some of the best visuals seen in a fighting game.

Given that Arc System Works track record of developing titles like Blazblue, DragonBall Fighterz and Guilty Gear Xrd, the visuals in Strive do not disappoint.

Despite the character models being 3D, they look like incredibly detailed 2D models thanks to the various wizardry techniques they’ve mastered over the years and applied here. However, as they are indeed 3D, the camera following the action can provide exciting and dramatic angles during the fights that adds to the style and flair the game exudes. The stage backgrounds are also impressive as well, especially during area transitions after wall breaks.

As for the core combat engine of Strive, most of the elements from the previous entry like bursts and romen cancels remain but there were enough tweaks and additions to make the game feel fresh. Luckily there was an extensive challenge mode that painstakingly introduced me to every single mechanic as well as handy character match up advice which I was happy to have before hopping into online netplay.

However, I found it odd that there wasn’t a combo challenge mode like there was in previous entries that taught basic and advanced combos routes. As someone who has just as much fun in training mode creating combos and setups then actually playing against other people, this was a disappointing exclusion.

Welcome to the tower.

When hopping onto a network match, there are some hoops I had to go through first in order to get on. Creating my personal avatar, a test match to place me in a ranking floor and even just communicating with the server took quite a long time. The interface within the lobbies left much to be desired as well as the completely unnecessary and oversized “GUILTY GEAR NEWS” always taking up a third of the screen.

I honestly believed that during the feedback from the open beta would have them remove the banner and change things about the online lobby but not enough was done and it felt clunky to navigate and not entirely pleasant to look at.

The matches themselves however felt smooth and responsive thanks to the famed “Rollback Netcode” and when I tested playing both on Wifi and Ethernet, I only had very infrequent drops in connection quality and almost every match felt playable. Given netplay is how the vast majority of the community will be interacting with each other, to have a solid foundation is an absolute must and that’s exactly what we have here.

Leveling up my character profile rewarded with me currency that I could spend to play a gacha fishing game to unlock new cosmetic pieces for my avatar, songs from previous games and other extras but it felt frustrating when I just wanted to directly use the currency to buy a handful of songs I really wanted to be able to listen to while fighting/spending time in the training mode and having to rely entirely on luck for that felt unnecessary and frankly, a waste of time to have to grind for a chance to unlock something that I actually want.

I get that gacha is all the rage these days but I’d much prefer it if they kept it to the mobile games and left it out of my full-priced games.

Daisuke is taking care of BUSINESS as usual.

Despite a rocky development cycle amongst a series of open and closed betas that had the FGC divided in their impressions of the game, Strive has released in its best state so far and presents itself as a solid foundation to build upon for many iterations to come in the future.

Fun Tidbit: This entry didn’t make me love Guilty Gear as much as Blazblue but I could definitely see myself spending more time with it in the future. Now if I could just find a character that will truly click with me, perhaps a DLC character will fit the bill.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.