WTH?
Guilty Gear 2 has been released pretty much under the radar. Well, true, the fighting series hasn't been a top-tier series to date, but they always seemed to be enjoyable 2-D fighting games. Not on the level of Street Fighter, but better than most of the other fighting games out there. I can also appreciate a developer's desire to try and branch out their franchise to different genres, but these moves tend to be laden with potholes. When the ONLY remotely successful attempt at this was MK: Shaolin Monks --- and that game, mind you, was really good --- this is one of those moves that is up there with trying to date an ex-girlfriend's younger sister. It MIGHT work out, but it probably won't.
So, they decided to branch out the Guilty Gear fighting games to the world of action RTS. OK, they ended up making a REALLY bad Samurai Warriors clone. Keep in mind, I cannot STAND Samurai Warriors. So, imagine my joy. I didn't mind Ninety-Nine Nights, but I'm sick of Samurai Warriors.
Amazingly, the visuals are WORSE than in the old fighting games. I LOVED the artistic style of the GG fighting games. Beautifully drawn and lushfully animated 2-D characters are, now, muddy 3-D models that actually look about as bad as the ORIGINAL Samurai Warriors. What is the point of actually making a next-gen title look worse than the last-gen game it is marginally based upon.
The storyline is the usual --- OK, I don't care about the storyline. At all. Useless nonsense. The gameplay, though, does matter and it was pretty boring. You walk around small, linear levels and lead a tiny force of people against a group of foes. Not as many foes as in the usual game of this genre --- which actually shows that you can make a tedious game worse by providing FEWER enemies. I had long wondered if it were possible and, yes, it is possible.
There is nothing to recommend this game. Quite bluntly, the X-Box Original of GG is a better title and it costs significantly more. Sad.
