Blaz Blue: Calamity Trigger
Blaz Blue: Calamity Trigger is the new fighter from Arksys Works (the developer behind Guilty Gear and Battle Fantasia). Blaz Blue comes out at a pretty interesting time for fighters. Street Fighter 4, and Super Street Fighter Turbo HD Remix are out. Tekken 6 and King of Fighters 12 are coming soon (KoF is only weeks away). Blaz Blue is a new franchise from a niche game developer. Very hardcore fighter fans here love Arksys games, but everyone else have never heard of them. So Blaz Blue is out and is competing with King of Fighters 12, it really has to step to step it up to do well.
Those of you who already purchased this game are lucky to get the limited edition, which comes with a DVD of features including some tips from pro players in Japan, and a 2-disc soundtrack. Only the first run of this game was limited, all the other runs won’t include the bonuses, and it’s tough to find a special edition still on store shelves.
Onto the game, which is absolutely gorgeous. It’s the best looking 2d game to date, and the animation is superb. The opening cutscene for story mode had some interlacing issues, but the in game stuff is perfect. The game only has 12 characters, which is a small roster, but for the first iteration of a fighting series it’s expected.
The fighting engine is just as complex as Guilty Gear. Although it’s easy to pick up the simple combos and special moves, there are a lot of rules that revolve around using the biggest attacks. The new instant kill attack for example can only be used during the final round of a match, and only when your opponent is down to 20% or less health. This has been criticized, but “come on!” it’s an instant kill attack! It’s better to compare it to the fatalities in Mortal Kombat than a regular special move. It’s only designed to allow you to finish a match in complete glory, you don’t have to use it, and there’s not really much benefit to having it available. It’s a nice new touch. There are also a couple bars to watch during the match, which will allow you to pull off some special moves.
Blaz Blue also adds a lot of new defensive tactics to the genre. The more you block, a new bar will tip to your side, and if you block too much, you’ll get to a state where you leave yourself open for a huge combo. You can also use one of your bars to do a mini explosion type move that will throw your enemy away from you. You can only do this once per match and it leaves you in danger mode for the rest of the fight. It can help in the worst situations, but you have to be super careful, as you’re vulnerable after it.
So far this must sound like an in-depth fighter that you’d be crazy to try and master, but Arksys has done some interesting things to level the field for new players. The biggest thing being that they’ve mapped moves for characters onto the right analog stick. Now you can push that stick in any direction to pull off a special move. This allows new players to focus more on strategy and less on doing quarter or half circles.
The game has the standard fighting modes. An arcade mode, story mode, vs, training, and online. The story mode takes the style they used in Battle Fantasia. You can choose a character and play through their storyline, the game saves after every match and you can switch characters at any time. The menu keeps track of how far you are in each character’s storyline. It’s quite a long mode, and while the overall story is pretty boring, the individual character’s tales are very interesting.
Finally the online mode puts all other fighting games to shame. Online for fighting games can easily be screwed up. The games have to be frame perfect to allow for good matches, and most of the time there’s tons of lag and connection issues online. That isn’t the case at all with Blaz Blue. It also has a nicely put together lobby system for up to 6 players and you can sign on just to watch other matches. Handy if you want to learn what other players are doing. The only problem with the online mode is that the people online will kick your ass. They are GOOD! The match making will try to set you up with someone of the same skill level, but that’s not always possible. So be prepared to be educated.
Final verdict: Blaz Blue is awesome, but you HAVE to invest the time into it. You have to learn the characters and combos well. If you spent a lot of time playing fighting games than grab this for sure! If you only play fighting game casually, stick with the Street Fighters.
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