Blazblue Cross Tag Battle (English) · Test

Blazblue Cross Tag Battle: An unexpected Crossover

A new fighting game is joining the rumble. In a crossover with a slew of new and old known faces are duking it out together in a 2v2 Tag Format. Arc System Works the developer behind Guilty Gear, Blazblue and Dragon Ball FighterZ are kind of known for their complex style of play that includes loads of mechanics. Starting with DBFZ, they began toying around with a new philosophy in hopes of reducing barriers and making it easier to have fun for everybody. Did they succeed? Read further to find out.

Can’t escape crossing fate

The story is rather simple. Characters of 4 different worlds are seemingly summoned to a different world with an unknown voice announcing their participation in a tournament.

Each of the 4 worlds have their own small story line with Blazblue being the only one with routes. All of them are seemingly standalone stories and bear no relevance to each other, except having the characters clashing. There are also some DLC characters included as opponents, none of them are playable.

The Story itself is painfully shallow lacking in exposition for each character, concentrating on some short slapstick comedy meetings or some talk about the situation between characters. While it’s indeed better than the standard Arcade Ending style story, the execution leaves much to be desired. Considering that, most of them have rich backgrounds. In a world where crossover games like Project X Zone, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite or Super Robot Wars exist, it is lamentable that the Story Mode isn’t at least slightly on par in comparison. It’s rather the opposite, it completely falls flat.

As much as it pains me to say it. The story comes off as rather low effort story. With a visual novel style storytelling the biggest effort one can see or rather hear are the voicing of the dialogue. Even Art wise it’s being kept on the low end, when looking at the Gallery there are only like 21 Artworks and 10 of them are either duplicates with different colors or just a character with a different posing on the same background with different colors.

There is also no Arcade Mode, which means this is all you get story wise.

Add to that the lack of singleplayer modes, which consist only of Story, Survival, VS, Tutorial, it becomes a rather glaring point within the whole package. There is also a Shop where you can buy colours and some customization like Lobby Avatars and title plates, etc. to show off online to other people.

Gameplay & Controls

As I mentioned earlier the controls are kept simple as a 5-Button Fighter and the most complex inputs consisting of quarter circle motions. Yes, you read correctly. There are no Dragon Punch, Half Circle or 360° motions. With the inclusion of Smart Combo it adds another layer of simplification giving you access to some easy combos, but leaving enough room for some branching into other things.

20 Characters are available in the base game another 20 are coming in either a complete pack or in piecemeal. Due to the additional layer of simplification and lack of more complicated inputs it’s certainly one of the most accessible fighting games ASW has developed. There are also some easy to use mechanics like Cross Burst, a saving mechanic where your partner Tags in with an attack while you are in a combo, or partner attacks. On top of that, it still leaves enough room for higher-level play by mixing everything into the gameplan. Those who fear that skill becomes diluted; there is no need for that. Advanced players are still able crush beginners with the greatest of ease, as it is still a competitive game between players.

Graphics & Sound

It is no secret; the game consists of reused assets as at least Blazblue and Persona 4 Arena were made by ASW. UNIB characters probably involved some additional work to make them fit into the game. Even their Distortion Skills and Astral Heats are the same. RWBY on the other hand are brand new characters and you can even see it as they are in a slightly higher resolution than the rest of the cast.

The majority of the stages are from each respective game with one or two new ones for RWBY.

That doesn’t mean it looks bad of course. As always as it is with sprites, the animation work still looks fantastic and this game shows it’s advantage of it.

In terms of music there are quite a few from their respective games and a few new ones specially made for it. As with the characters and backgrounds, RWBY comes along with their own soundtrack.

I’d like to remind that although they are reusing assets it doesn’t mean there is no work involved. A lot of it is repurposed and balanced to fit the new format and making the mixture of cast work.

Verdict

BBTAG is a very interesting and maybe the most accessible ASW fighting game yet. Despite the weaknesses in content and story, it offers the core gameplay in a very palatable manner. Considering that this is a fighting game, it means that most people can take an easier dip into the actual core of the genre. Not to forget, there are also tutorials that tries to ease the player into it, on top of the accessibility.

The “anime”-fighting games by ASW always had the reputation of being too complicated and BBTAG attempts to fix that and they are rather successful, in my opinion.

Offering an accessible core gameplay certainly can ease off some of that lacking content and hopefully can motivate more people to dip into the genre. When the gameplay pushes the right buttons, it can offer more playtime than anything else can.

DLC

The base game is already priced at a lower price point due to the plan of adding another 20 characters as DLC, effectively doubling the roster. Considering the initial price + DLC pack, it’s still a very good price. Making it cost slightly above a full priced game. Old games like Marvel vs. Capcom had only 21 characters, including dupes.

In regard to DLC pricing I really have to praise Pqube for the fact that they are offering the full DLC character pack at a very fair price of 13.99£/16.99€ compared to 19.99$ in the US. So unlike others they aren’t just switching the € for $ and call it a day.

Wertung

9.0 Sehr gut

Kaufempfehlung

80% Kaufempfehlung

80%Sehr empfehlenswert