I picked up the PS3 version on my way home from work tonight, so here are some impressions. First point is I'm coming to this as a complete n00b, never played Guilty Gear seriously before (but love the soundtracks!) so I am utterly clueless.
I dipped into the Arcade mode first, made it up to stage 7 or so before i had to use a continue simply by trying basic fighter type stuff (double taps, half circles etc) but the screen was still covered by lots of weird energy bars and status indicators that I have no clue about. The presentation is great, and the music is everything I hoped for - lots of gothic rawk guitar! Unfortunately it's kind of hard to hear it because your characters are so noisy.
This wasn't story mode but every few stages there would be some story type exposition, no idea what they were babbling on about though (despite being in english!) and the voice acting is pretty embarrassing, but what would you expect from an anime style game. What I did notice is that sometimes the dialogue moves on before a character has finished speaking, so they interrupt themselves - I guess they didn't optimise the timing for the english. Doesn't really matter as nobody is likely to watch these things more than once before skipping through to the action.
The action itself is very pretty, but the animation could be better (just like all other games from these guys).. I can't talk too much about the system and stuff, only thing I discovered was something called 'barrier burst' which seems to up your attack power but cause your health to drain off... got a trophy for discovering that one.
Next I jumped into online mode to get a baptism of fire. BIG MISTAKE. First thing noticed is that the custom filter for beginners rooms returns no results. That's a clue. So I did quick match, and oh my god the humiliation! I didn't land a single hit, the other dude just spammed out some constant stream of bullets type move that I got caught in and couldn't move.
It turns out I had joined a lobby, so I got to watch all the other players facing off in a round robin kind of way.. very nice - but they were clearly all experts, and it took a long time for my go to cycle round again which was over in 5 seconds - instant humiliation.
One nice touch is that the characters language alters based on all the players, so my Ragna was speaking english but the other guy was speaking Japanese.
After a while I went seeking a beginner room again and found one, but this guy is obviously a beginner in the 'played it a lot before but doesn't feel very confident' sense. I fought him for five 3-round matches and never won a single round, lol. I don't feel too bad because I really have never played this type of fighter before, but if there doesn't get to be a bit more balance in the online mode it's going to be hard to keep motivation to try.
At this point my girlfriend came home and I had to turn it off because she complained it is disgustingly geeky, and I have to admit she's got a bit of a point! Will get more practice in when she's at work tomorrow.
(although I am going to sneakily try the PSP remote play mode later on, will post my experiences)
I dipped into the Arcade mode first, made it up to stage 7 or so before i had to use a continue simply by trying basic fighter type stuff (double taps, half circles etc) but the screen was still covered by lots of weird energy bars and status indicators that I have no clue about. The presentation is great, and the music is everything I hoped for - lots of gothic rawk guitar! Unfortunately it's kind of hard to hear it because your characters are so noisy.
This wasn't story mode but every few stages there would be some story type exposition, no idea what they were babbling on about though (despite being in english!) and the voice acting is pretty embarrassing, but what would you expect from an anime style game. What I did notice is that sometimes the dialogue moves on before a character has finished speaking, so they interrupt themselves - I guess they didn't optimise the timing for the english. Doesn't really matter as nobody is likely to watch these things more than once before skipping through to the action.
The action itself is very pretty, but the animation could be better (just like all other games from these guys).. I can't talk too much about the system and stuff, only thing I discovered was something called 'barrier burst' which seems to up your attack power but cause your health to drain off... got a trophy for discovering that one.
Next I jumped into online mode to get a baptism of fire. BIG MISTAKE. First thing noticed is that the custom filter for beginners rooms returns no results. That's a clue. So I did quick match, and oh my god the humiliation! I didn't land a single hit, the other dude just spammed out some constant stream of bullets type move that I got caught in and couldn't move.
It turns out I had joined a lobby, so I got to watch all the other players facing off in a round robin kind of way.. very nice - but they were clearly all experts, and it took a long time for my go to cycle round again which was over in 5 seconds - instant humiliation.
One nice touch is that the characters language alters based on all the players, so my Ragna was speaking english but the other guy was speaking Japanese.
After a while I went seeking a beginner room again and found one, but this guy is obviously a beginner in the 'played it a lot before but doesn't feel very confident' sense. I fought him for five 3-round matches and never won a single round, lol. I don't feel too bad because I really have never played this type of fighter before, but if there doesn't get to be a bit more balance in the online mode it's going to be hard to keep motivation to try.
At this point my girlfriend came home and I had to turn it off because she complained it is disgustingly geeky, and I have to admit she's got a bit of a point! Will get more practice in when she's at work tomorrow.
(although I am going to sneakily try the PSP remote play mode later on, will post my experiences)
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