Recent reviews by Danny

I bought this soundtrack and found out it CAME WITH A WHOLE GAME AND A MOVIE... AND THEY'RE MAKING ANOTHER MOVIE FOR IT TOO... These times indeed do have me bullsh*t blazing for more. And at that,

Arcsys Team RED has really shown they're the kings of anime fighters with the stunning visual flair they're known for, all while creating a fighter for all to enjoy. I personally myself have fallen into the Zato-ONE pit with this installment of the franchise.

This installment also feels very beginner friendly to a lot of folks just getting into fighting games, yet has a lot of room for creating wicked unethical combos that will cause your foes to not only cope, but also seethe and mald at your fine skills. Rounds are relatively fast, clocking in from anywhere between 20 seconds to about a minute if things are getting loco. A full match in it's own is usually around the 3ish minute mark, making it great for drop in and out play, or just sitting several hours at your screen, glued and determined to beat down on that one faust who keeps flying and dropping love on you like an angry magpie in mating season. The game also is relatively input lag friendly, allowing you if you're practicing in training mode or against ai to up the input lag as to emulate the same as in online play. I'm not sure if this is a common fighting game feature, but if it is, god bless ye for adding it in. It's helped with a lot of my own learning on how to throw hands with society after blaming the beasts.

As for the sound design, I'll gladly say that this game has some tasty audio for when a counter connects, giving you that feeling of "YES, RIGHT WHERE I WANTED YOU" when you might have been about to lose a round. In this sector, I'll also be talking about the voice work. Both the EN and JP voice casting for this game has been legitimately solid, though it's not really just in gameplay where they'll be shining their brightest. As some folks might know, the two games prior to this title, both Xrd SIGN and Xrd Revelator(I'm bundling both Rev1 and 2 in this mention, seeing as Rev2 is an addon) had lovely story modes portraying the narrative of those games in a watchable format, along with voice acting, some songs specifically composed for their emotional high points and fantastical visuals. Strive doesn't drop the ball here, it follows up in a more grounded fashion than the Xrd entries, yet still keeping us on the edges of our seats, even causing me to sob at one point. As for my favourite character voices in both the JP and EN voice acting cast, I'll have to say JP Zato does an incredible job; all while the EN has to be Leo due to how cocky and fitting it is for the big cheesy king he is. The last mention of anything audio related goes out to this soundtrack, I only really found one or two tracks to not be my style, but I've found myself jamming when I see about 90% of the cast I'm fighting against. Like I'll be about to go full cowboy rock when I'm throwing fists with Sol, Yelling about the bees knees when squaring up with Millia, or getting a little too into breakdown on Faust's theme when being cooked alive by his meteors. I will say though, the fact that an OST album didn't come with the deluxe edition is really my largest gripe. I would have genuinely gone out of my way to throw a good hefty sum of money at our lord and saviour Daisuke Ishiwatari to own a physical copy for the car even. It's just downright criminal that it's not an option. Another thing I should just throw out there is with the DLC fighters, this MADMAN IS WRITING EVEN MORE MUSIC FOR EACH ONE! THAT HAS TO BE THE CRAZIEST, YET MOST AMAZING THING THIS GUY COULD DO ASIDES FROM CREATING THE CHARACTERS AND WRITING THE NARRATIVE. Props to you, ya magnificent bastard!

Last but not least, I'll give a summary of my recommendation:
Pros:
Ooozing with style
Keyboard support, controller support and fight stick support!
Very beginner friendly, yet not completely watered down
Time-friendly gameplay
Extensive training and tutorial mode
Meaty combat sound design
Great JP and EN voice acting direction
Suspenseful and tear wrenching story mode (with another installment for this game slated for 2022)
THE SOUNDTRACK, OH THIS STUFF SLAPS
More DLC characters, more jams

Cons:
Expect your hands to hurt when starting to play this, first timers to fighters
A small figment of the OST has some tracks that miss their mark or grate on you
Story can be intimidating or confusing for newcomers
NO PHYSICAL OR DIGITAL ALBUM AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE ON THE STEAM VERSION!!!!

All in all, I do heavily reccomend GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- to those wild individuals who are indeed *Bullsh*t Blazing* and don't even know The Smell of The Game.

Great story beats, fun and intuitive fashion systems, countless rewards and goals to chase after and a friendly community to boot. I reccomend this game to both those who've not touched an MMO as well as MMO veterans. I will however warn, this is an RPG before it is classed as an MMO, so enjoy the story, learning the systems, crafting and gathering, housing and all the niches this game manages to hit!