![]() ![]() We think it's easy to argue that Strive is the best looking fighting game ever made. It's easily Arc System Works' most impressive release yet, and that's saying a hell of a lot when we already have the likes of Rev 2, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Granblue Fantasy Versus to gawk at. Indeed, Guilty Gear Strive is a ridiculously good looking game. The animations, the sparks, the crunching sound effects - it all adds up, and it's glorious. It may not be quite as fast, frenetic, and twitchy as Rev 2, but boy does it feel great to land a big old counter hit square on your opponent's face. Between character-specific matchups and use of the Roman Cancel - a mechanic that can be used to cancel into and out of different moves - there's still so much to learn.īut right now, the most important success for Strive is that it feels fantastic to play. At the time of writing this review, it's obviously still early days, but the intricacies of higher level play are already beginning to blossom. However, to say that Strive lacks depth is absurd - it's just that it's way more welcoming on a surface level. Beginners can jump into Strive and immediately dish out big damage with cool looking moves that are easy to use - and that's a crucial hook for any modern fighting game. ![]() ![]() As such, there's less emphasis on complex combos - combos that require deft fingers and extensive knowledge of the game's various mechanics. That is, characters have less health, and fights are generally over a lot faster. For starters, it's a much higher damage game than Rev 2. Guilty Gear Strive, on the other hand, is far more accessible. Perfect for Guilty Gear veterans, daunting for new players. The aforementioned Rev 2 was and still is an extremely dense fighting game, boasting layers upon layers upon layers of technical depth. Guilty Gear Strive still feels like Guilty Gear - but it's definitely a different kind of Guilty Gear. And while this is also largely true of Guilty Gear, Strive makes some significant, system-level changes when compared to its predecessor, Guilty Gear Xrd: Rev 2. Tekken, for example, has never really altered its core mechanics - it's simply added to, or evolved them over the course of seven mainline titles. Most fighting games shy away from drastic change as they make their way from one instalment to the next. Complete with jaw-dropping visuals and more accessible gameplay (we'll expand on both of these points later), Strive represents a new direction for the series, as it attempts to walk a very fine line between appealing to newcomers and sating its established hardcore audience. Guilty Gear Strive is specifically designed to break through the barriers and deliver a more welcoming incarnation. And that's a real shame, because Guilty Gear, at least in its more recent forms, should be revered for its artistic achievements and engrossing gameplay. The franchise, which first threw punches on the original PlayStation all the way back in 1998, has steadily accumulated an incredibly loyal fanbase over the last couple of decades, but it's never been able to crack a more mainstream crowd. ‘Not losing’ can be a viable substitute for ‘winning’.Guilty Gear has always been massively underappreciated as a fighting game series. Winning fights is not the only way humans can gain victory, you know. You get the details all muddled up and keep overgeneralizing how the world works. Of course, even the unbreakable can wither away, you’d do well to remember that. For the record, ‘unbreakable’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘cannot be broken’. You might as well discard morals entirely! Ah, but another thing actually begs the question. Doesn’t that seem unfair? Like how thinking too hard about something makes it MORE difficult? Instead of giving hope, you take it away. Destroy the laws, destroy the things the laws allow. Culture, civilization, everything humankind has created, even the idea of God. But ‘unbreakable’ suggest that an object had flouted those laws discarded its natural limits. That word, ‘break,’ being unable to break you, you being ‘unbreakable’, that strikes me as arrogant all things have a beginning and an end. After all, even if I go all out, I’m afraid I won’t be able to break you. Haha, did I just raise some more questions? Two? Four? More? Exponentially more? Haha, sorry, to be frank, I’m a bit nervous. ![]()
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