Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-

[Progenitor]

This is a bit late, but we're live fam.

If you don't already know, Guilty Gear is an intensely fast paced 2D airdash fighting game, and Xrd -Revelator- is the most recent installment.  This game is, first off, very anime.  If that isn't your cup of tea, then I ask you to at least go through the rest of this introduction with the most unbias perspective you could possibly have.  Because regardless of the games themes and visuals, the game's gameplay is out of this world.  Not since Skullgirls, the first fighter I ever got serious about, have I ever been so committed to figuring out a game.

 

So for starters, this game is actually for both PS4 and PS3, and features crossplay between the systems.  This is absolutely fantastic, as I have not had any reason to buy a PS4, and didn't really want to buy a system for 1 game.  The visuals are fantastic no matter which system you play on.  They style looks hand drawn, but it's actually a brilliant trick on the eye.  The game actually uses 3D cell shaded models for the characters, but presented on a 2D plane, and saturated such to give them flow.  In this way, while in motion, the game actually looks like hand drawn, animated sprites rather than 3D models.

 

As for gameplay:  I'm not gonna lie.  If you've never played an ArcSystem game before, you are gonna have trouble; even more so if this is your first fighter.  This game is hard.  Not hard to play, but hard to process.  You have so many options available at any one time to deal with your opponent's plethora of options, and the game comes down, fundamentally, to reading your opponent in order to break their pressure and start your own.  The neutral, thus, becomes extremely complex.  You have Blocking, Just Blocking, Fautless Defense, Blitz Shields, Blitz Shield Charge Attacks, Bursting, Roman Cancels, Throws, Dashing, Air Dashing, and various combinations between all of these, and those are all just universal defense options.  Lets not even discuss how attacks exonentiate the amount of options you have to limit and track at any one time.  However, if you are having trouble, I do have one word of advice, as it works for every character: hard knockdowns are the ideal enders in this game.  OTGs are practically non-existant.  However, every character benefits from knocking the opponent down in order to set up a move to cover their wakeup option.  This interaction is called Okizeme, or Oki for short, and will be referred to as such.

 

There are 22 characters on the roster, and a 23rd coming at some point soon as DLC.  And every one of these characters plays much, much differently than any other character.  The best way to start playing this game is to, after you do the tutorial of course (which is actually one of the most fun tutorials I've ever played trust me it's brilliant), pick any character you think looks interesting, and try their combo dojo.  The combo dojo is structured into 3 parts for each character, and you must complete every combo in each section in order to move on to the next.  First, you start in the special moves section.  This is just showing you all of the character's moves, what they do, any special interactions, etc.  Next, is the Basic section.  These combos are the character's Bread and Butter.  For the most part, they are not optimized for damage or knockdown, but if you don't know what to do, you can always fall back on these.  Each one covers a very specific situation: An Anti-Air starter, a Dust Air followup, Counter Hit followups, etc.  Once you complete all of these, then it's on to the Advanced section.  These are much harder to preform, and generally much more situational.  However they are much more rewarding.

 

My general rule is, if you just can't get a feel for the character's Basics, it's probably best to look for someone who more fits your playstyle; someone you resonate with a bit more.  For me, that character was Johnny.  Unfortunately for me, Johnny is one of, if not the, most technically heavy and momentum based characters in the entire game.  His extensive combos are character specific, he relies on a consumable resource, and has very few defensive options to get out of tight spots.  But when a johnny is just on point, you're freakin screwed.  He needs 2 mix ups.  Thats it.  He will kill you in 3 combos with optimal execution and proper utilization of his tools.  Thats what I love about him.

 

If you have any more concerns about this game, take it from Max, who has literally been playing fighting games his entire freakin life and works for Killer Instinct:

 

 

So for the like 3 of you that may play this game, who do you play?  Are any of you interested?  Want to know more or discuss combos and stuff?  I want some discussion dammit!

[DL]

Since my crew recently is trying to expand beyond Smash into Blazblue/GuiltyGear/SFV, I've bought this game, and messed around a bit with May (tho I wanna focus on BB for now cuz I bought it first,and wanna get the story and stuff done with x3 lol)

But MAN is she fun. I'm still a total scrub and have yet to do the tutorial (tho I have heard it's considered the best tutorial for fighting games out there)

 

Needless to say, I'm pretty excited to play it.

[Progenitor]

I dabble in May. The thing is I had Sign on my PC, which could barely run the game, and because of the slight frame drop she felt not quite as heavy. She just feels kinda awkward right now. But fun to play nonetheless

[GalaxyIdol]

XrdR is the best fight game out at the moment. YRC is dumb and Danger Time shouldn't exist tho.

[Progenitor]

TBH YRC kinda needs to exist in order to keep up with how freaking insane offense is. A well placed YRC can turn a quick read into a full blown punish at the cost of a little meter. Danger time is really stupid, but in all honesty it doesn't actually do much except make both players very scared to hit buttons. The Mortal Counter hit doesn't open up too many combo routes for all but a handful of characters, and while you get increased damage it only applies to the starter, which means you should be somewhat safe unless you get smashed by something super unsafe.

[GalaxyIdol]

YRC isn't really needed honestly. I like what Pachi was going for when he talks about why he made YRC saying he doesn't want people to mash throw/dp out of pressure, but it was horribly implemented to the point of characters with projectiles just projectile > YRC or being able to whiff a move on startup and just YRC the recovery frames to apply more pressure.

 

There is quite literally nothing good about Danger Time and Mortal Counter. I play a pixie character so I die in 1 hit already so no thank you.

[GalaxyIdol]

Bumping for interest, but who wants to play sometime soon?

[Progenitor]

First I need to find a way to run an ethernet cable to the port cuz whoever designed this townhouse has no concept of room layout.  If I do anything except run it over the ceiling it's just asking to be tripped over.