I’d mentioned before that Guilty Gear tends to fail if it tries to do something that isn’t
a fighting game.
Well, save for the side-scrolling beat-’em-up that was Judgment, but that’s the exception
that proves the rule.
But here we have something different entirely.
Guilty Gear 2 didn’t just go off the rails, it built an entirely new track several miles
away from the established expectation.
Note that this isn’t Guilty Gear XX anything, no subtitles, no sharp reload, no accent core.
This is the true Guilty Gear 2, meant as a direct successor to the original Playstation
Guilty Gear.
As such, the events of this game - and there are plenty of events, don’t you worry - take
place between that founding title and Guilty Gear X.
Following me?
Don’t worry, there won’t be an exam later.
Take everything you know about the franchise in terms of mechanics, and throw them out
the window.
This has nothing to do with the established tradition.
This isn’t even a fighting game.
It’s something much more obscene: A real-time strategy melee combat... thing.
Basically, imagine it as the bastard offspring of Dynasty Warriors and Final Fantasy XII:
Revenant Wings.
Sol Badguy and his... protege, the flag-carrying Sin, wander the countryside until a strange
enemy force attacks the kingdom of Illyria, presided over by...
Ky.
The road to the castle town is difficult, though, and our pair soon find themselves
being shadowed - and assisted - by a strangely-dressed fox guy diety thing, with a knack for anachronism
and strange tuning.
I’m going to avoid going any deeper into the story, because unless you’re familiar
with every other piece of the Guilty Gear mythos, and know how to tune a guitar, you’re
going to miss everything.
Long story short, That Man who’s behind everything in the series, is at the root of
it all, and you’ll have to beat down hordes of enemies to stop him.
And here’s where it gets weird.
Rather than just being a straight beat-’em-up, which would’ve been fine and dandy, Guilty
Gear aspires to more.
On the larger scale, it’s a game of resource management, with “ghost” points providing
the fodder with which to create servants and deploy them to the battlefield.
Down on the ground, though, where you spend the majority of the time, you take control
of the “Master” (usually Sol, but can differ depending on the mission) and take
a direct part of the action.
It’s very, very not a Guilty Gear game as we know them.
And some have taken issue with this.
I, however, commend them for doing something this out-there with a series that was beginning
to run a little dry.
Fine-tuning the game experience would help a bit, though, as the camera can get a little
out of control during skirmishes and the running-slash-drifting controls are quite a pain.
But all that can’t turn down the level of rocking this game does.
In that grand Guilty Gear style, it’ll take all you can muster to keep from headbanging
to the awesome metal soundtrack.
The vocal performance isn’t bad, and Dave Wittenberg as Izuna just steals the show.
However, there’s no option to set the dialog to Japanese...
I’m sorry, but series creator Daisuke Ishiwatari is, was, and always will be the voice of Sol,
if only in my mind.
Guilty Gear 2 is about as different as you can get from its heritage, which I commend.
Now that BlazBlue has taken the mantle of “The Fighting Game Arc is Working On,”
hopefully we’ll get to see these unorthodox but entertaining mechanics refined.
Or, in lieu of that, I’ll settle for Guilty Gear Vs. BlazBlue.