BlazBlue Review / Half-circle half-circle A-B-Kitchen Sink
I do like beat-em-ups (specifically the Soul Calibers and Guilty Gear before this one) but I'm not actually all that good at them. Specifically, the most complex move I can do is the quarter circle. Anything above that I can't do with anything like the consistency necessary to even make it worth attempting in a fight. Anyone who can (or who knows how to cancel) would be better guided by a review other than mine.
That out of the way, BlazBlue is fun, looks cool and has a nice mix of characters. I'm impressed by the fact that even basic fighting style is radically different for the different characters and there are quite a few fun characters.
Oddly (for someone coming from Soul Caliber, I'm not sure about other beat-em-ups) A-A-A, B-B-B, etc are never combos. All the true combos in the game require some combination of joystick motion in combination with the attack buttons. This would probably make the game much less interesting to me if they hadn't introduced "quick specials". Basically they mapped four of each characters most powerful (or most interesting) moves to up/down/left/right on the right thumb pad. This makes it very very easy to pull off these moves on demand and I think is one of the most interesting choices they made. Of course, they also made it so quick specials aren't allowed in almost all online play.
A couple of minor complaints:
- Why are the characters pixelated? The backgrounds (a mixture of 3d and 2d objects) aren't and look really good. It can't take that much more processor power to up the resolution on the main characters, surely? Of course, this is only really noticable at the start before the fight. Once the fight starts, you're a bit too busy to care.
- Why aren't the full 3d backdrops used in story mode? This seems like a really odd choice.
Story mode is fun (once you've changed the voices from English to Japanese *shudder*) but doesn't really add that much to the game play. The only unlockables I am aware of are the final attacks for 90% of the chars and an unlimited (read, "much stronger") mode for the other three and those are for completing arcade rather than story mode.
In fact, though it seems strange and possibly unfair to criticize a fighting game for being just a fighting game, that's pretty much all you get. Few unlockables, nothing to collect, no alternate modes, no challenges. For those with the time and determination to really get into the complexities of cancels and the like, it's probably a very good and possibly complex fighting game. For the rest of us, it's fun for the occasional bout but I'm not sure it has long lasting appeal.
Even as BlazBlue gives us quick specials, it also makes a point of blocking them from use in most online play, effectively labeling them as a form of cheating.
So why do most beat-em-ups use ridiculous combinations of motions to trigger attacks? I can think of a few reasons:
- Limitations of input device. There are only so many buttons available.
- To simulate how hard the move is for the in-game character.
- (Relatedly,) To intentionally make it hard for the player to perform these moves, to make it hard to use in the middle of an attack.
- To intentionally make it hard for the player to perform these moves, to reward players with the time, dedication and dexterity to learn how.
While all of these are valid to a certainly extent, I find it interesting to consider what would happen if this limitation was removed. I don't think it would actually make the game simpler, it would just move the complexity to the actual interaction between the characters rather than controlling them.
Right now, the majority of my attention is spent on my own character. Will they do what I want? Will they get up? Will they jump / dodge / attack in this way or have I miskeyed and they will just stand there and perform a couple of basic and ineffective attacks? These are obviously not the questions I should be asking. Rather, I should be concentrating on what the enemy is doing so I can counter but when I can't even trust my character to do what I want, this is basically impossible.
This is, to a certain extent, my fault for not investing enough time in the game to learn the interface, but I can't help thinking that in any other game or system, issues with the interface are criticized, not complimented.
In short, I think I would prefer to be fighting the other character, not the controls.