The Replacement for Guilty Gear

If you don't already know, the Guilty Gear series has been taken to a completely different route by making Guilty Gear 2: Overture a Dynasty Warriors-ish action game. Many have wondered why ArcSystem works would make such a move to take such a balanced and beloved 2-d fighter and take it away from what made it successful.

Enter BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. The spiritual successor to Guilty Gear. I recently ran across a gameplay trailer for it. I can't believe I missed it back when it came out. It's fast paced, got neat anime inspired characters, and a wild looking combo system. I was really excited for this game... until I saw it. Now that I've seen video, I can say I'm utterly disappointed. Everything seems too eerily similar to Guilty Gear. The guy in red with the thick sword is Sol, the guy in white with the thin sword is Ky, big guy is Potemkin, and the girl in white might as well be Millia. One of the biggest reasons Guilty Gear was so fresh and invigorating was the character design. Never had anyone seen the uniqueness of the fighters. Each one played differently ranging from possessed backward fighter to boy dressed up as cute girl with yo-yo. Besides the characters bearing resemblance to Guilty Gear, some even have the same moves, the most notable being Potemkin's backbreaker throw. Something I also have a problem is that you hear the same sound effects, similar voice actors, same rock music and text style. It's a spiritual successor but does that mean you can just import everything from the last game shuffle it around and call it new? It's a fighting game yes. The most important thing should be the fighting system, but if I you're going to run your original flagship title into the ground and try to give birth to something to take it's place, it's got to be something big and BlazBlue is not it.

Look at Street Fighter IV. I can't stand the way it looks but hell, it's something completely different and although a lot of the characters are the same from previous games, I can appreciate the visual upgrade and changes being made. But maybe I'm just looking at things the wrong way. Maybe BlazBlue isn't the game I'm making it out to be. But from my perspective, they're using the "Guilty Gear" name to sell an action game while rehashing their old formula to call something "new." Both of which, in my book, are not cool.

David