Game Cover

It seems the wheels are already in motion... Prepare yourself. Ragna, they look serious.

Platform played on: Xbox Series X (Special Edition)

Review

This is my first BlazBlue game and it’s actually a crossover with two other fighting franchises, Persona 4 Arena and Under Night In-Birth, and the animated web series RWBY. I’m not familiar with any of these franchises so the association with the familiar characters is lost on me. I did look up the voice acting and apparently they used many of the same voice talent as the original franchises, so fans of any of the four franchises may get a kick from that.

Gameplay Crossover

The gameplay is a 2D tag battle fighting with pixelated graphics; the battle format is 2v2. The player controls one of the characters with the ability to involve the other character to perform special attacks and extend combos. The core mechanics are very simple and feel much easier to pick up than most other modern fighting games. I really like the tag-in mechanics which can switch up the match quickly. The main story is short and quirky and there's not too much single player content outside of the Episode Mode. If you're purchasing this game today, I'd recommend the Windows Store/ Xbox version because it comes with all the DLC. If you care about multiplayer, you may want to do PS or Steam because there may be more players online, though.

Gameplay Tag battle

Conclusion

A fun and easy to pick up 2D fighter.

Overall rating: 7.5

What does the rating mean?

DLC Reviews

The vast majority of available characters are locked behind DLCs.

Additional Character Pack Vol.1 to Vol.7

This DLC includes all 7 volumes of characters released both in Season 1 and Season 2 and effectively doubles the roster of characters from the base game. Many core characters from franchises such as Hakumen from BlazBlue and Teddie from Persona 4 Arena are added. Heart from Arcana Heart is also introduced. It's nice that there's so much content released to keep the game fresh but one would think that many characters probably should've been included in the base game, as it had a relatively small pool of characters.

Overall rating: 7.4

Ver. 2.0 Expansion Pack

This DLC adds some more characters and two new franchises (which I also have never experienced): Senran Kagura and Akatsuki Blitzkampf. Blitztank in particular is one of my favourite characters to use in the game because it's so ridiculous. There also is a shorter Episode 2.0 that expands the story.