Was Guilty Gear Strive Worth It?

Guilty Gear is a 2D fighter set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has been ravaged by conflict between humans and Gears (biomechanical weapons). It’s a bit of long runner at this point, with the first entry clocking in back in 1998 for the original Playstation. To say it was influenced by hard rock and heavy metal is an understatement. Was Guilty Gear Strive worth it?

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This review was provided by a friend of the site: Minimum Payne. You can also follow him on Twitter!

Background

Guilty Gear Strive is the latest installment of the long-running fighting game franchise from Arc System Works. It’s currently available on PS4, PS5, and Steam. It blends the aesthetics of heavy metal music and anime to craft a unique visual and sonic experience within the fighting game genre.

Prior Knowledge required?

The story mode requires you to be familiar with the lore up to this point and provides an encyclopedia to learn or refresh your memory about things. Prior experience never hurts but the game has been designed specifically to get new players to jump on board with the series and even with fighting games in general.

What does Guilty Gear Strive do well?

Our contributor for this article is an expert on the game, so here’s a detailed breakdown for Guilty Gear Strive.

Gameplay

Fights are always fast paced and exciting, with the game’s mechanics encouraging aggressive offense and smart defense. Damage is high across the board compared to previous entries and blowups are quite common. Due to trading long combos in favor of high damage, hits now feel heavier and crunchier than ever before. Matches can end fast but once they’re over you’ll find yourself rushing into the next match hoping for another fix of adrenaline.

Controls are responsive and satisfying, especially during online play, thanks to its implementation of rollback netcode. When connections are at their best, combos flow naturally and the high damage adds tension to every encounter. The tower system that makes up the game’s ranked experience also does a great job of bringing together players in a similar skill bracket which helps mitigate the usual frustrations of learning a new fighting game.

The game’s learning systems in its Mission Mode and a robust training mode give you the tools you need to understand the core principles of 2D fighting games on top of Guilty Gear Strive’s unique mechanics. The game does an incredible job of making the fun of fighting games accessible to anyone, more so if they choose invest more and more time into it. Xrd’s tutorial and mission mode was an immense help in my understanding of that game’s systems and thankfully that’s been retained here. You can also go fishing, a vital part of any gaming experience. (It’s really just the in-game currency sink for avatar costume and classic song lootboxes.)

Visuals

Guilty Gear Xrd was always considered a technical showpiece in the late PS3 / early PS4 era for its use of cel-shaded graphics, but this new entry manages to handily surpass that. Attacks have significant weight and impact during gameplay and cinematic moments during super attacks only further enhances that. Characters are also expressive in combat, with no two characters looking or moving alike. Action during the story mode is also well choreographed and shot. Seeing the camera crank in on Ky’s face during his Ride the Lightning super was a real feast for my eyes, more so in motion than in still images.

Sound

The game’s soundtrack features an array of heavy metal sounds with individual songs blending elements of other genres as appropriate for each character. The vocals have proven to be a mixed bag for many players but personally I think these tracks make for some of the best in the fighting game genre. Stand-out tracks for me include the workout soundtrack that is “Find Your One Way,” “The Roar of the Spark,” which is destined to be a crowd favorite for in-person tournaments, and the high-energy speed metal of “Play the Hero.”

In-game sound effects also complement the visuals well, with heavy attacks having some serious bass on counter-hit. The crashing steel of Sol and Potemkin’s attacks prove satisfying on a base level while the plinking sound effect of a successful guard point by Anji makes me feel smart. The game also includes unlockable tracks from previous games that can be played during multiplayer. If you have any nostalgia for those old tracks, you once again have the option to smack dudes around while “Holy Orders” plays in the background. You also have the option of switching between Japanese, English and, following the 1.05 update, Korean voice acting. Your mileage may vary with each dub.

What could Guilty Gear Strive do better?

Online

While the skill-based matchmaking in the game works well enough, the lobby system for actually starting a game can be frustrating: the game uses a virtual arcade room of sorts where players connect through battle stations. Disconnects and desyncs in this part are common and trying to meet up with friends is tough. While rollback netcode is a blessing for online play, it can’t save every connection; one battle against a Wi-fi Warrior got to the point that my victory was rolled back and led to a loss.

At the time of writing, player lobbies are not functional on the Steam version and both ports don’t even have the option of inviting through their system’s built-in networks, things NetherRealm Studios have figured out for well over a decade now.

Gameplay

At the worst of times, Strive can feel more like two gorillas tackling each other until one can’t get back up anymore, with the finesse that the older games demanded getting sanded down in the interest of accessibility. Balance issues are also starting to come up at this current state, and some tools can come across as overly oppressive. Even as a Sol Badguy player I think his far Slash attack, or the Hulk Hand as I call it, is pretty stupid and encourages mindless play. Indeed, at the higher levels, he’s even considered the strongest character in the game.

There are also some decisions that Arc System Works have made that seems to go against their overall philosophy concerning accessibility; the old Gatling Combo system that let entry level players freely come up with basic combos has been replaced something complicated and restrictive that I can’t even succinctly describe here.

The UI has also been rightly derided for the giant text that pops up frequently. Expect to see the screen fill with COUNTER and the length of your current combo a lot and try not to let it distract you too much. The RISC gauge, which measures how much you’ve been blocking and increases damage when you do get opened up, is that tiny gray/pink bar under the Burst gauge. If you had to squint to even see it, you’re hardly alone.

Story

Story is often considered a secondary concern for fighting game. Ultimately, this game doesn’t try too hard to challenge that assertion. It does offer a large encyclopedia and correlation web to help make some sense of what’s going on in Guilty Gear’s world. You’ll probably need it too, as the proper cinematic story mode doesn’t do a great job of making sense for people not already in the know. The animation can also feel lacking in the slower story beats. For example, characters lock themselves into their walk cycle and slowly glide to their destination. Truthfully, Guilty Gear Strive’s story isn’t too far off visually from the average wholly 3D CGI anime, but that says more about 3D anime than anything else.

Port-Specific Issues

I own this game on both PS5 and Steam. The latter has pretty high CPU requirements and some graphical bugs to contend with, especially at 4K settings. The game takes eons to connect to the server to let you play on either version. Modders have even had to come up with their own solution to the issue on PC.

Patches should be on the way to fix this but I always anticipated that the consoles would be the “primary” platform. On the plus side, the aforementioned modding capabilities have been figured out. Have fun replacing Leo with the Green Power Ranger or making every counterhit say “Bruh”!

It also turns out that while PC always naturally has low input lag compared to console games, the PS5 is actually worse than even the base PS4 in this regard, another point in the PC version’s favor. Even turning v-sync on has minimal impact on lag which is surprising.

Read “Was Guilty Gear Strive Worth It? Pt. 2” at the link below.