Guilty Gear X
(LAST UPDATE: 6/28/2009)
Developer(s): Arc System Works
Publisher(s): Sammy Corporation
Designer(s): Daisuke Ishiwatari
Platform(s): Arcade, Dreamcast, PS2, Game Boy Advance, Windows 95
Release Date(s): July 2000 (Arcade), December 14th 2000 (Dreamcast), September 30th 2001 (
PS2)
Characters: Sol Badguy, Ky Kiske, Millia, Chipp, May, Jam, Johnny, Baiken, Potemkin, Dr. Baldhead, Axel, Anji, Venom, Dizzy, Testament, Zato-1
Related Games: Guilty Gear, Guilty Gear X Advance, Guilty Gear XX, Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, Guilty Gear XX Slash, Guilty Gear Isuka, Guilty Gear Judgement, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus, Blazblue, Hokuto No Ken, Sengoku Basara X
Story: Less than a year later reports of a newly discovered commander Gear surfaced. Fearing the dawn of another war, the United Nations held a tournament, offering 500,000 World Dollars for the destruction of the Gear. The Gear was a girl named Dizzy, who, while very powerful, lacked a desire for war and unnecessary destruction. She was defeated but her life spared by Sol Badguy. Soon, though, she was found by Ky Kiske, the charismatic police chief of the United Nations and ex-chief of the Sacred Order of Holy Knights. He entrusted her care to Johnny, leader of the Jellyfish air pirates, who welcomed her as one of their own. Jam Kuradoberi, a bounty hunter and struggling chef, claimed credit for Dizzy's disappearance so she could collect the reward and finance her restaurant.
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Review: Guilty Gear X was a huge improvement over it's predecessor, showing off some of the largest and most impressive 2D sprites ever seen in a fighting game (or video game for that matter). GGX's presentation is complete with a badass anime intro, a wild metal-driven soundtrack, top notch voice acting, and high-res graphics from start to finish. Surely one of the best looking fighting games out there at the time.
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Guilty Gear X is not your typical 2D fighting game... The characters and gameplay can definitely be described as unorthodox and off-the-wall, which really allows the game to stand out from the crowd of more traditional 2D fighters. Though Guilty Gear borrows some obvious attributes from Capcom's and SNK's more well known 2D fighters, the game's control scheme and style of gameplay is nearly completely different than your traditional 2D fighting game. The dynamic and fast-paced gameplay system features air dashing, overdrive attacks, instant kills, faultless defense, roman cancels, and dead angle attacks. I could go and explain every one of those gameplay elements, but that would take quite a few paragraphs...
To sum it up, each characters super meter or "tension" gauge is used for several different techniques, but most notably is used to unleash those devastating super moves or overdrive combos. The instant kill moves are quite entertaining if you can manage to get them off, although they cause unbalance in high level play.
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Once again, the graphics of Guilty Gear X are top notch and helped the game make a pretty big impact when the game debuted. The animation can be described as "anime" style, in other words, frame counts are kept low but animate best "where it counts"... However, some of the characters could move a bit more fluidly, especially when compared with "the best" 2D fighting game animation out there. In comparison, the animation of Guilty Gear X doesn't come close to the fluidity of the Street Fighter III series... A compromise for the bigger sprites perhaps. Still, the animation does justice to the tall 2D sprites, as fighters duel in some of the flashiest and most intense battles you'll see in any fighting game.
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Gameplay Engine 9 / 10 Story / Theme 9 / 10 Overall Graphics 9.5 / 10 Animation 8.5 / 10 Music / Sound Effects 8.5 / 10 Innovation 9.5 / 10 Customization 8 / 10 Options / Extras 8 / 10 Intro / Presentation 9.5 / 10 Replayability / Fun 7 / 10 "Ouch" Factor 7 / 10 Characters 8 / 10 BOTTOM LINE 8.5 / 10
Closing Comment: The first Guilty Gear X certainly made a big splash when it first arrived, and undoubtedly caught the attention of many casual & even non-2D fighting game players, while offering a new "flavor" to the diehard 2D fighting game fans. I remember being quite impressed with the game when I first got my hands on it, but for me, it didn't have the lasting appeal that other (more traditional) 2D fighting games had. I could tell the game had bark and bite however, and featured a fighting system that's easy to pick up and play, but hard to master.
The bizarre characters are no doubt the main draw of the series, and are no doubt some of the wildest and most intricately designed fighting game characters to date... The best part is, nearly all characters are in fact good designs, which means there's likely a character or two that will float your boat. ~F.Yagami, Webmaster of TFG