If you’ve been reading my articles, you may have noticed I have quite a love of fighting games. In addition to my love of fighting games, I also love heavy metal, and, on top of that, am complete and utter weeaboo trash. So obviously, Guilty Gear is a series that really resonates with me. The newest entry in the series, Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator-, just came out two weeks ago, and I’ve been playing it ever since I got my hands on it. The previous entry in the series, Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, was known as the most anticipated fighting game of the year after its announcement, and had received critical acclaim upon release. How does the follow up to Daisuke Ishiwatari’s passion project do? Well, let me be straight with you here: Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- is the single greatest experience I’ve had with a fighting game.

Gameplay

When people talk about fighting games with a lot of mechanics, Guilty Gear is one of the first that gets mentioned. Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- (from here on out referred to as just “Revelator”) is able to hold on to a lot of complex mechanics without making learning and adapting to them difficult, thanks to its incredible tutorial mode. Normally I wouldn’t talk about the tutorial mode in a review, but Revelator is able to do the one thing other fighting games can’t: teach the game well. The tutorial mode puts you in a fun minigame-like environment where they present concepts to you and then ask you to execute them OUTSIDE of a battle situation, which allows inexperienced players to learn much easier, and opens up the game to a broader audience.

The tutorial is fun! (Image courtesy of Kotaku)

Okay, now that I’ve gushed about how good the tutorial is, let’s get into the actual combat. Unlike Street Fighter, which is a 6-button fighter, Revelator is a 5-button fighter. In Street Fighter, you have 3 punches and 3 kicks, with each ranging from light to heavy. In Revelator, you have Punch, Kick, Slash, Heavy Slash, and Dust. Aside from punch and kick, I don’t really know what the names mean, but that’s what they’re called. Combos in this game focus more on chaining everything you can get together in a flurry of flashy hits and specials, as opposed to the more slow combos in something like Street Fighter. It’s very easy to make combos in Revelator, but to make good combos is going to take time and effort. Unlike in most recent fighting games where they are trying to lower the execution barrier, Revelator still retains the complexity the Guilty Gear franchise is known for. Don’t let that scare you off, though, because Revelator has this special little thing called Stylish Mode. A mode that originated in the other flagship Arc System Works fighting game, BlazBlue. Basically, Stylish Mode is a mode where you don’t need to have any skill in execution at all to do all these cool-looking combos, so you can just relax and have fun without going into a scene where everyone outclasses you. It’s a very good decision to include this because it allows the more casual audience to have fun and be invested in the game without having to spend hours learning someone that they might just wanna jump right into and mess around with.

Now, remember when I said that there are a lot of mechanics in this game? Well for the sake of keeping this review at a reasonable size I’m only going to explain the more important ones. That said, every mechanic in this game is important in some way or another, and you should totally learn the rest of them if you’re interested.

First off, there’s the Burst technique, which is a blast of energy that pushes your opponent off of you while they’re mid combo, mid block string, or anything really. It uses up burst meter, and you have to use it wisely, because of you burst and it doesn’t hit your opponent, you won’t get it back for a while, meaning your opponent doesn’t have to worry about being thrown away. There’s the Blitz Shield, which is a universal parry that everyone has, and making a good read and blitzing the opponent can lead to huge damage. You can also charge it for this really strong focus attack style move, which does good damage on its own and produces a crumple effect on the opponent, allowing for huge combo potential. Finally, there’s the most important mechanic of Revelator: The Roman Cancel. Red, yellow, and purple Roman cancels (here on referred to as RRC, YRC, and PRC), each do basically the same thing, but their uses vary on the situation. The RRC is used mainly as a combo extender. It interrupts your current animation and resets you, so you can follow up with literally anything and combo for even longer. The YRC is used when you need to maneuver a bit better, or start moving sooner. You use it to either adjust yourself to avoid an attack, or use it to reset your animation after throwing a projectile. Finally, the PRC is used in case you mess up and have to reset your animation to save your ass. Each mechanic is vital to competitive success in the game, and they reward players who master them very well, and punish players who don’t.

The Blitz technique. (Image courtesy of hitconfirm)

The focus on combat in Revelator is the perfect blend of fundamentals and execution, revolving around a strong neutral game, but also needing big combos to deal significant damage. But the neutral isn’t something like Marvel where you’re hit once and you’re down. The tools given to you allow for many different styles of play in the neutral. Moving around is very fast and free-flowing as well.

My only complaint with the gameplay is the online. It’s not bad by any means; When playing within a few hundred miles, it works perfectly fine, with little to no lag. The only big problems the online has is handling playing people more than a few hundred miles away from you, and that the searching for matches is really tedious. In an at-capacity server, which is normally filled with people looking for player matches, your search results will only show you 2 or 3 people you can play with, even though there are clearly much more than that searching. That said, the online is still solid enough to play well consistently, and so long as you know what to do to get good matches, you’ll pretty much always get them. Like I said, it’s not bad, it just needs some work. The game is also only two weeks old, so these issues will likely be polished out down the road.

Looks and Sound

Arc System Works has always delivered some of the best-looking fighting games on average, and Revelator is no exception. It is by far the best-looking fighting game of the current generation, and one of, if not the best-looking fighting game period. The characters are very well-designed, and their models are beautifully made. The stages have so much color and life to them, and the environments are insanely cool locations that I would love to actually be in. The game runs at a smooth 60fps, and the characters’ movesets look really cool and really flashy, which make for an entertaining time for both the player and the watcher. Just like in -SIGN-, the opening animations for the fights enter this 3D-ish world, and eventually pan to the point of it becoming a 2D fighter. When supers happen, it enters this kind of 2.5D animation style again for the moves, and also at the end of the matches, when someone gets a KO. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Hidehiko Sakamura’s art style fits the animation of the game perfectly, and I really hope we get to see this kind of style with even more Guilty Gear entries to come, because it’s one of the best I’ve seen in Arc’s games. Not only is it just a genuinely great style, but it’s able to communicate the game’s “rock n’ roll” aesthetic perfectly.

LOOK AT HOW GORGEOUS THIS IS (image courtesy of Arc System Works)

Now, not only is it the best-looking fighting game you can get right now, but it’s also the best sounding. As I’ve said before, I am heavy metal weeaboo trash. I love metal (and I’m a weeb but that’s beside the point). The soundtrack of this game is full of nothing but heavy metal and rock, composed by the ridiculously talented Daisuke Ishiwatari. Songs range from the lighter part of hard rock to the heavier side of traditional metal, with a little bit of thrash metal thrown in for good measure. You’ve got songs like Suck a Sage, which are more hard rock, and The Lily of Steel, which are more metal. Every song is catchy and well-written. There isn’t a bad song in the game. In addition, not only does it have Xrd tracks, but you can unlock songs from pretty much every Guilty Gear from the past.

Story

The story concept of the Guilty Gear Xrd games is quite simple. Back in the far away time of 1999, people created a source of limitless energy that they called magic. Yes, they scientifically created magic. I don’t think I’ve ever written something as stupid as that, like, ever. Anyway, this magic was immediately used for war (go figure) and was used to create these biological weapons known as Gears (the title Guilty Gear actually has a meaning, believe it or not). There was a war. Almost 200 years later, a being known as Ramlethal Valentine declares war on the entire world and its inhabitants. These had been another incident like this with someone else who went by “Valentine”, so everyone was like “dude this is real we need to fight” and then everyone went to war.

And then plot happens.

It’s not NetherRealm Studios levels of good, but it’s still a pretty good story, with a lot of nice fights and entertaining characters. Except Elphelt. That waifu trash should go back to BlazBlue where she belongs. It’s only about 3 – 4 hours long, so if you’ve got a free afternoon, you can beat it.

Content

The sheer amount of stuff to do in Revelator is insane. It’s got a pretty good story mode, the obligatory versus, arcade, and training modes, and fantastic tutorial, which you can go back to and play minigames. On top of that, you’ve got the always fun Medal of Millionaire mode, which is pretty much Guilty Gear’s equivalent to coin mode in Smash, except actually good. After that, we have combo mode, where you’re put into a training room and asked to do specific combos, most of which are worthless in actual fights and are there just for fun. Then there’s mission mode, which is pretty much just the advanced tutorial, but with a LOT of tutorials on general situations and mechanics, but if you go to the next page in there, you something no other fighting game does: Matchup tutorials. That’s right, there are specific tutorials that allow you to gain matchup knowledge against other characters/techniques. This is incredible, and all fighting games should do this.

But wait, we still have to talk about the best mode of all: Fishing. Basically, you walk up to a lake and fish for unlockable things, like songs that can play in battle (including ones from older Guilty Gear games), character colors, avatar customization items, concept art, and more. And yeah, you could also just save up your in-game currency and buy them in the gallery, but that’s no fun.

The lobby system, where you walk around as that cute little thing. You can also fish here! (Image courtesy of Fighters Generation)

Even outside of modes, Revelator still has other things to do. When playing online, you have an avatar that is the most precious thing in the world, and it walks around the lobby and you get into matches by sitting at arcade machines and waiting for other avatars to walk up and sit at the same one. It’s so cute. And the best part is that you can customize your avatar. You can give it little square heads of the characters in the game, and change their body color to your liking, though you have to unlock those. And then there’s your plate, which is more or less your trainer card for the online. You can unlock custom frames, change your profile picture, and give yourself a title, normally composed of really goofy words. Mine is Magic Manly Mustache.

Conclusion: Should you buy Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator?

Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator is the single greatest experience I’ve ever had with a fighting game. It has an incredibly unique and balanced roster, fantastic blend of fundamentals and execution, and well-designed mechanics, along side a fantastic score and the best graphics I’ve ever seen in a fighting game. It’s got plenty of options other than versus and arcade mode to keep you from getting bored, and not to mention a pretty good and fun story. Fishing is great, and despite some issues with the online, I’m still willing to give this game the best score I can, because the online still works well so long as you know what to do.