Beautiful and complicated fighting
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is one of those fighting games where you’ll either get it or you won’t. This 2D anime-style game will have you asking a lot of questions, a lot of which you won’t get the answer to. Of course you can find the answers you’re looking for, but unless you get really skilled and dig deep, you’ll leave this game thinking it’s one of the craziest things you’ve ever seen.
There’s a cast of twelve characters that look like stock anime drawings — spikey-haired guy with a big sword, cat lady, the big monster man, etc. Luckily they’re all unique with how they fight and going through each of their stories is interesting, even if you don’t understand it all.
As with most fighting games there’s a story mode, however, unlike most fighting games, there’s more of a story than usual and it’s pretty interesting once you start figuring it out. Upon choosing story mode you’ll see a lengthy intro setting up what happens in BlazBlue. There is a prologue in the manual that gives backstory and explains why these characters have such bizarre powers. If you want to get 100% on any of the stories and see the true endings, you’ll need to meet certain requirements. If you don’t meet these requirements the story will end about halfway through and you’ll get a bad ending. Aside from the story, there’s an arcade mode, score attack, training, and online modes. Additionally there’s a replay theater and a gallery to view your unlocked art.
BlazBlue is made by Aksys Games who brought out Guilty Gear. You could find some similarities between the two games, but BlazBlue is a solid fighting game on its own. To help make this game stand out, the visuals are great to look at in HD. Flashy and stylish combos can be executed with a few button presses, but that isn’t to say all the combos are short and easy. While they aren’t the sharpest graphics out there, the 2D characters are still well detailed and animate nicely. To top things off, the soundtrack of the game fits right in with the game.
This isn’t a fighting game that can be easily picked up. There is a steep learning curve if you aren’t familiar with the science of fighting games. Each character plays completely different, making it hard to go from one character to another. There are a few tutorials to go through and a helpful move list. There’s even a tips section in the story mode that…sort of explains what’s going on in the game, but it’s fiction-in-fiction so that doesn’t really make sense either.
The online seems up to par with good features. There’s the standard ranked match, and then a player match where you can enter in a room with up to six people and watch or fight with them. Lag isn’t a total burden but it is noticeable at times.
At the end of the day, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is certainly one of the best fighting games this year. Its 2D high-res anime style raises the bar for other games like it. Looking at the game, it’s definitely intimidating and complicated, but it handles difficulty pretty well so there’s room to experiment and figure things out. If fighting games is your thing, BlazBlue is absolutely worth a try.
