Guilty Gear Strive; it was my first ever Fighting game that I took seriously. And I think I'm better for that, if I were to suggest a fighting game to someone who's never played one before, the main options would be this, or Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising (Because of the simple specials inputs) But all-in-all I still believe Strive is the better fighting game.

Graphics: 9.8/10
Guilty Gear Strive is a new dimension for the Guilty Gear series, as this is the first 2d Guilty Gear game to utilize 3d models for the characters in an also, 3d world. It's a 2.5d fighter! Very high quality models (and maps) Very pretty models, credit where it's due.

Audio: 10/10
Audio is amazing, great mixing and let's not forget the joke of "I can't believe this album came with a free fighting game" yes the soundtrack is phenomenal, I don't use that word lightly by the way. Just look up some Strive songs on spotify or youtube, I promise if you like Rock music, you will love this game's Series' music, moving off the music. The combat sounds are all weighty and feel impactful, while still staying true to the 'anime fighter' sorta feel, amazing audio mixing

Gameplay: 10/10
Fluid combat, great response time for motion inputs, good balance patches, they actively listen to the community most of the time for balance patches and such. I almost forgot to mention how natural weaving together your own combos is in this game. You aren't constricted to the typical fighting game chain of Punch > Heavy Punch > Kick > Heavy kick sorta gatling chain, while you CAN do that here, there's a lot more diversity in what you're allowed to do (even more when you learn how to Roman Cancel)

Story: 9/10
Personally this story is a 10/10 but it is also INCREDIBLY complex, which I'm sure will make some people shy away, so I've lowered it to a 9, if you love deep stories spanning multiple games? This is gonna be a banger of a story for you, with two basically full length movies of story in Strive alone, you have a lot to look forward to with this game!

Characters: 10/10
Characters feel genuinely unique and varied (both designs and movesets) every character has their fandom, and niche in-game. No two characters play the same, and as someone who plays every single character, I can safely say, there's a character for everyone. Typically people will suggest looking through the characters, and picking your main based on one of three things. 1, character appearance 2, character archetype or 3, character moveset. I say pick three you think look cool, try them out, at LEAST one of them will feel good to play too. Unless you main Potemkin, you aren't real if you do... There's so many characters, with more to come, we're even getting Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners midway into this year! That's wild to me, our first collab charcter btw!

Community: 9/10
The community (at least what I've interacted with of the community) is very chill, especially for a fighting game. This community is all about mutual improvement as far as I've seen, if you have questions, chances are there's at LEAST two people willing to answer them especially if it's about their main characters. So join a GGSt discord and ask questions! I'm sure you'll get your answer and then some! (rating is at 9/10 because I'm positive there's people like LTG in here somewhere, I just never interacted with them)

Modding Support: 10/10
You can literally turn any character into anything, and all these mods are client-side and safe for online play too! Unless you're playing with a balance patch mod (Such as Guilty Gear Beyond aptly named the 'broken balance patch') if you are all connected players MUST share the exact version of the balance patch to play with eachother! But other than that, this game is HEAVILY moddable, I mean my Johnny is V1 from Ultrakill right now.

Rapid fire stuffs
Character Customization: 10/10 with mods 5/10 without mods
Replayability: 10/10 So long as you keep finding new folks to play with or just play proper tower matches
Combo Diversity: 8.5/10 Roman Cancels bring this up to 10/10 as you can combo nearly anything into any other thing!

Final Verdict: 100/100
I'll add, this has very rapidly become my favorite game of my entire steam library after a short year with it. And being my first fighting game that I've genuinely put time and effort into learning, makes it feel all that much better that it's getting another year of updates! So yes, I DO recommend this game. If you have ANY interest at all in the Fighting Games Community (or just Fighting Games in general) Please do give Strive a genuine honest try, I'm sure you'll find it enjoyable too!