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Story: Before the events of BlazBlue, humanity was on the verge of extinction from the "Black Beast", a creature of Darkness. The world was saved by six heroes who wielded magic. They helped humanity create "Armagus", a fusion of magic and technology, to defeat the Beast. After the war, the Novus Orbis Librarium Armagus (the Library for short) was created to govern the world with the use of Armagus. A great deal of dissent was caused by the Library, partly due to Armagus' use in nearly every facet of society, and the widening socioeconomic gap between those who could and couldn't use Armagus. This dissent would eventually form years later into The Ikaruga Civil War, when the Ikaruga Union openly rebelled against the Library. After the war, the Library imposed a harsher rule on the world, punishing any rebellion against the Library with the death penalty. On December A.D.
2199, several years after the Ikaruga Civil War, a branch of the Library was
utterly destroyed by an SS-class traitor named "Ragna the Bloodedge"
also known as "The God of Death", in an attempt to destroy the entire
Libary. The Novus Orbis Librarium Armagus, hoping to stop him, immediately put
the largest bounty ever for anyone who could capture him. Interestingly, Ragna
possessed a powerful form of Armagus known as the "Azure Grimoire"
(Grimoire of the Blue in Japan), also known as the BlazBlue. This led to the
Librarium, as well as the Ikaruga Union and other fighters, to be after not just
his bounty, but also his grimoire.
Review:
Running
on Tatio's Type X2 arcade board, Blazblue is Arc System Works' newest 2D fighting
game franchise. It has nothing to do
with the Guilty Gear series as far as storylines go, but both
gameplay & character designs are closely reminiscent of Arc System Works'
original fighting game series. Blazblue launches with a respectable 12
characters (each with 12 color variations), a nice variety of gorgeously designed stages, and a
metal/techno/opera
soundtrack that (thankfully) exceeds the guitar-thrashings of Guilty Gears'...
some of the BGMs are actually quite
catchy (which makes the collector's edition soundtrack a sweet
addition to the home package). Unlike the arcade version, the home versions of Blazblue introduce
a multi-path, fully-voiced Story Mode (with English or
Japanese voiceovers) for each
character, Online Multiplayer, and
an all new animated into by anime studio GONZO.
First, you have to wrap your head around the bizarre and intricately detailed anime-style character designs... they are a unique bunch indeed. Seems like Arc System Works put every ounce of effort to make the characters of Blazblue stand out as "original" fighting game characters... from the way they look to the way they fight! Each character has a distinctly different playing style, and overall balance out the roster quite well. Some characters can attack from tons of different angles, which allows players to really "mix-it-up" & be creative with their attacks. The "freedom" that Blazblue's gameplay system gives players can both be looked at as a good & a bad thing however. That said, it really all depends on what kind of 2D fighting game you fancy. Blazblue has 4 main attack buttons...
weak attack, medium attack,
strong attack, & a fourth "do-something-cool" button that greatly
differs depending on the character. For experienced & non-experienced
fighting game players players alike, it's easy to jump right in and start
pulling off epic looking special moves & even combos, almost making it look
like you know what you're doing (even if you don't).
Blazblue is indeed an
"all new" fighting game to most of
us who picked it up on PS3 or 360, since it didn't exactly have a widespread
North American arcade release. The special move commands are familiar
enough to get a hold of rather quickly, but learning how to combo, cancel, &
actually use each character effectively will take some dedication. Some of the more
dynamic gameplay mechanics include offensive & defensive techniques like Rapid
Cancel, Instant Block, Barrier Block, Barrier Burst, etc. Not all techniques
have to be mastered to enjoy the game casually, but there is a lot to learn if
you're a new player and want to jump online without getting destroyed. Each character has a good variety of super moves
(distortion drive) and also an Astral Heat, a flashy instant-kill move that
can only be used in the last round of a battle. To use an Astral Heat, your
opponent must have less than 20% of their life left, and your Heat Gauge must be
at 100%.
The attention to detail in Blazblue does not go unnoticed,
and I'm not only talking about the graphics. "Character specific" dialogue
before the fight in character intros, during the fight with their
special moves (which is offers some much appreciated variety), and even after the
fight in each characters win quote (all of which fully voiced) takes character
interactions to a new level. Blazblue's characters really seem to have
relationships with one another, which is shown in even more detail with the
games multi-path Story Mode (of which takes a good 30+ hours to complete). The
voice-overs in the Story Mode are done exceptionally well both in English &
Japanese, and the slow pacing of the story really contrasts the game's insanely
fast gameplay. It's nice to step out of the game for a while and take a
breather with the Story Mode... the actual story is a mixed bag, some moments
slow & boring, though others will make you laugh out loud. In any case, the
artwork within story mode (and in the entire game) is stunning I might
add... Blazblue packs some of the
best "in-game" fighting game artwork I've seen in quite some time. |
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Taokaka for instance, can fly all around the screen using only one button
and holding the directional pad in a specific direction. Comparatively, in games
like Marvel VS Capcom 2, you actually had to
"know how to do" that sort of stuff. 
With Blazblue, air dashing & triangle jumping seems like child's-play in some cases.
Blazblue's user-friendly control scheme and fairly straight forward move-sets
makes it an easy fighting game to pick up and enjoy for players of all
levels, but of course, offers a much deeper gameplay
experience for higher skilled players... of which requires practice to
truly master. 
)
Arcade), November 20th
2008 (
PS3/360), March 31st 2010 (
~F.Yagami,
Webmaster
of TFG
