The Guilty Gear Strive Closed Beta just finished leaving many people with many different thoughts and opinions, some being good and some being bad.
Guilty Gear Strive is an upcoming fighting game developed by ArcSystemWorks and is the seventh title in the “Guilty Gear” Franchise.
The game was announced last year at EVO 2019, with the creator and game designer of the game, Daisuke Ishiwatari, stating that this new title will be a completely new take on Guilty Gear.
Over the months, they have released trailers and gameplay showcases showing off returning characters and announced a closed beta which would take feedback from players with what they like and hated about the game so far.
First item to discuss is how the lobby matchmaking system works and to be perfectly honest, it is not that good.
The lobby consists of an eight-bit avatar moving in a room with other people to challenge.
It’s better to have less people in the room, as too many may cause the network to disconnect or crash.
Players can choose up to seven characters ranging from “balanced, speedy, tricky and power” characters.
For balanced, there’s Sol Badguy and Ky Kishke who are easy to use for players that want to get into the series, much like Ken and Ryu from “Street Fighter.”
For power characters, there’s May and Potemkin, who uses charge moves to deal damage and is able to armor through opponents’ attack, dealing insane damage from command throws or dolphin combos.
Chipp is the speedy character where he doesn’t do much damage but is super fast and is able to do combos much longer and faster than any other character.
Tricky characters, like Axl and Faust, are played differently from the others as they need to be strategic with their moves, setting up traps and strategies in order to complete combos or surprise opponents.
Each character plays really well. The most fun playing has been Faust as his randomness factor makes the matches more intense and confusing for opponents.
The animations and visuals look beautiful.
It looks really fluent like a Disney or Studio Chibi film.
Their last game looks like an anime but this one looks like a full-length anime movie.
The gameplay is by far the best in any fighting game this year as its commands seem easy to do and easy to get used to.
First-time players are able to send opponents from the wall to another part of the stage, doing so they gain a positive bonus which basically is more meter for the tension gauge.
The music is beyond amazing.
Each song has a unique feel to it, telling a story with each word and beat, by far some of the best “Guilty Gear” songs that have been made since the previous six games.
However, there were some problems with the game as it constantly lags whenever playing with someone far away.
It doesn’t happen a lot but only a few times where it starts to be hard to play.
Thankfully the final game will use a rollback net code. That way, better thank what has been used in the beta.
Another thing is the UI, though many feel like it’s fine and makes it easier to look at.
Others seem to think it doesn’t feel like “Guilty Gear” and a bit basic, wanting a bit more character to it.
Again, the lobby needs serious work as it looks bad to look at and to get to play as it crashes the game when too many are in the room.
One last thing is that attack deal causes too much damage with Sol’s and Potemkin dealing over 50% health loss from their command throws with many wanting the damage to scale down with a lot of the characters moves and combos.
Thankfully, many players are able to give out the feedback to the developers so that these issues can be addressed so that it’ll improve for both the UI and lobby as well as any minor issues the people have with it.
“Guilty Gear Strive” will release later in 2020 and will be available for PS4 and arcades as of right now.
