Guilty Gear X2 Review - PAGE 1

The World is Full of Fighting

Even those entrenched in the genre may never guess what possessed a budding game designer to one day come up with an idea for a fighting game series that blends highly stylized anime aesthetic sense with mock-heavy metal "animetal" music trappings, but it happened, and thus Daisuke Ishiwatari's "Guilty Gear" was born. Since the series' inception on the PSOne all those years ago it's drawn quite the kinship over at its homeland in Japan, and it's earning the same respect worldwide as well.

Guilty Gear X2, then, is the latest addition to Team Neo Blood and Arc System Works' fighting game franchise. It boasts gameplay that is faster and more balanced, as well as a variety of new gameplay modes and features.

Just Another Savage Day... on Planet Earth

Four new characters join the already motley crew of 16 brawlers from the previous game. As with much of the original roster, these new characters don't look like they would be out of place in most counter-culture anime and manga series. The important point is that they play just as differently too. The returning characters haven't been left in the dust of course, with many receiving new specials and/or modified attacks that will give you the chance to re-master their options in battle. Even if you're not fond of the sometimes-outlandish character designs, the sheer variety of attacks and animations each character possesses give them a great deal of personality and panache.

In keeping with GGX, GGX2's gameplay is very open-ended, allowing the inquisitive player a lot of room to discover how to best play the 20 fighters available at the outset. This kind of variety does give GGX2 the potential to favor unbridled cheese and chaos in competitive play, but fortunately new additions like air throws, "Psyche Bursts", "Force Roman Cancels", and the "stagger" effect, help make GGX2 all the more technical compared to its predecessors. The game engine has also been tweaked in this regard, but many returning characters are still as dangerous as ever when it comes to "rushdown" tactics! Overall though, these new features help make the game more balanced, as mentioned earlier. Be sure to practice first if you're in doubt of, or intimidated by, the kind of synergy this game can offer.