Game: BlazBlue Portable
Publisher/Developer: Aksys Games/Arc System Works
Platform: PSP
Price: $24.99 (PSN Store)
Pros: Same experience as the console versions; plenty of game modes; comedic metafictional “Teach Me, Miss Litchi” series; there’s a lot of depth here if you’re willing to explore it…
Cons: …whether you’re willing to devote the time and energy to try and decipher this game is another question entirely.
Verdict: For fighting game die-hards only.
Review copy provided by publisher
BlazBlue can be best described as Arc System Works looking at what they’ve created in the Guilty Gear series and saying, “No, this isn’t crazy enough. We must get crazier.” This means the character designs are even more outlandish, the androgynes are even more androgynous, the story line even more incomprehensible, and just the whole level of crazy has been turned up to 11. This is not a fighting game for casual players, and it shows.
The fighting system is still a simple 4-button system a la Guilty Gear. The attacks are marked A, B, C, and D – A, B, and C being light, medium, and hard attacks respectively, and D being a kind of special attack (and often used to initiate super moves). Similar to Guilty Gear, by holding down a direction and the A & B buttons (Square and Triangle by default) to initiate a nearly impenetrable block, and B and C are used to throw your opponent. Most of the motions are typical Street Fighter motions; quarter and half circles and Z motions rule the day here. Those are the basics, and they seem simple enough, right? Well, that’s where the simplicities end.
The eclectic (to put it lightly) cast of characters lacks a ‘simple’ beginner character, like a Ken or Ryu type who’s simple enough to get you acclimated to the game right away. All the characters have their own eccentricities to where figuring out how to use them takes a lot of time. Probably the easiest character to use is Noel Vermillion, but even she (yes, she is a she, despite the initial confusion I had) has some oddities like her combos that you can string together by starting with D, then you just kind of start mashing buttons after that and it looks really cool. Other characters have moves that use up fractions of the the super bar, or their own special bars, or just a whole bunch of other attributes that take vast amounts of time and energy to hope to ever comprehend.
And comprehending this game is a challenge. You’ll likely dive into the Arcade mode, which is your simple ladder progression until you reach an annoyingly near-impossible final boss, quit, and either turn the difficulty down in shame or check out another mode. That other key single player mode is the Story mode, which attempts to apply some order to this madness. The emphasis is on ATTEMPT – despite the cutscenes telling each character’s story , I still had no clue what so ever what was happening. As well, there are multiple paths in each character’s story, where winning by a “Distortion finish” (using a super move to defeat your enemy in layman’s terms) is sometimes necessary, or even losing entirely to reveal each character’s story thread. You can fumble blindly through the dark with these character stories, or you can let the addicts on GameFAQs figure it out for you. I recommend doing that. I also recommend giving the story guide a look, as you will quickly learn that this game’s story makes Lost look like an episode of Three’s Company.
And I’m just not quite sure that I’m a big fan of games where I feel like I can only play them when I have access to GameFAQs. When a game requires a piece of self-parodical metafiction (purchased in the in-game store using points earned through gameplay) to explain the game’s universe to you (replete with numerous boob size jokes), I realize, maybe this isn’t the fighting game for me. This is a fighting game made for experts, by experts. I can tell that there’s a lot of depth in BlazBlue, I just can’t hold my breath long enough to see it all. The learning curve is just too steep, and I feel like there’s a really engaging fighting game here if I was really willing to master the characters, learn the combos, and really just dig in to this game. The question is if you have the desire to do so, and what I played here did not give me the desire. This seems like the kind of technical game that experts and the fighting genre diehards will completely dig into and love, but newbies and more casual players like myself will find themselves lost. Even experts already familiar with the console releases will be interested in the PSP version – based on my comparison to the 360 version, this is pretty much identical gameplay wise (and the graphics basically just scaled down) minus any online modes, so this would be great if you needed a portable fix of BlazBlue.
BlazBlue’s greatest sin is just that appeals to a different audience than your average Street Fighter game – it is for the hardcore. That a game is not immediately decipherable to any gamer is not necessarily a flaw, but it should serve as a warning to you – if you feel the need to play BlazBlue, go in ready and willing to be flustered by the odd feeling of the characters. Be prepared to not understand what the hell is going on without quite a bit of experimentation and practice. This game will give back what you’re willing to put into it…it’s just a question if you’re willing to put in enough to get enjoyment out of this game.
Popularity: unranked [?]
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