Aksys Games has revealed the Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] Collector’s Edition, and it is now up for pre-order on their website. It costs $59.99 USD, only $10 more than the game on its own, and it available for both PS4 and Nintendo Switch.

The collector’s edition comes with the game, a keychain featuring new playable character Londrekia Light, a 96-page artbook, and a compilation soundtrack CD. The artbook is 5.25” x 7.25” and full-color, only slightly larger than a PS4 game case. The contents of the CD are unclear, but the website says “your favorite themes for each character”, so it’s likely all of the character themes.

Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] is set for release in 2020, and features a heavy rebalancing of the entire cast in addition to Londrekia being playable.

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I won’t pretend that I have the most experience with the work of PlatinumGames. I’ve played several of Nier: Automata’s endings (although not all of them yet, I know I’m a bit late to that train), a bit of Bayonetta, and quite a bit of Infinite Space, as well as Okami from Clover Studios. That being said, Astral Chain still got my attention when it was revealed with its slick, shiny urban sci-fi presentation and exciting gameplay, and I jumped at the chance to review it when it came up.

Astral Chain follows the Howard twins, a brother and sister, one of whom the player customizes, names, and plays as throughout the game while the other is a major NPC named Akira. They and the other characters live in a city on a massive artificial island known as the Ark, which serves as the last vestige of humanity following the corruption of the rest of the Earth. The corruption comes from portals that started opening to the Astral Plane, which also produced monsters known as chimeras with a vendetta against humanity. The Howard twins join the Ark’s police force to help resist the corruption, eventually being recruited into a special division known as Neuron, specially equipped to fight against the chimeras themselves. They are paired with a bound creature called a Legion, which they control in combat to give them an edge against the corruption by becoming a Legionis.

The game is divided into 12 “files” – essentially chapters – and each one has several objectives known as Cases with a generally consistent chapter structure throughout. At the start of each file (after the first one) you’re at Neuron HQ, where you have the opportunity to buy field supplies, customize your outfit and legion colors, talk to your fellow officers, and replay previous files. Once you leave HQ, you’re usually sent to a mission hub, which varies depending on which file you’re playing. In the hub you can take on minor objectives which range from helping civilians, to capturing petty criminals, to closing any Astral Plane gates that you happen to find. I actually found myself liking how mundane some of these objectives were – one of them was taking ice cream to a child who’d dropped theirs – it gives a kind of grounding to the setting. One of the hubs is essentially a futuristic reimagining of Times Square, in addition to a variety of relatively run-down residential areas and slums. The whole world feels and looks lived-in, as well as having occasional little details that I appreciate, such as needing to wait for the light to change colors before you can cross the street, and the vending machines having diverse AI personalities that you can interact with.

Often the first part of the file’s main objective consists of gathering information, which is done by talking to civilians and completing any objectives they give you. Any important points they give you are compiled in your police notes, and after collecting them all you’ll need to summarize what you were told and use that to determine where you should go next. Some chapters, especially later in the game, take on a more linear, combat oriented structure, but many of the chapters start out more open-ended. There’s a lot to find in each area, such as buried and otherwise hidden items, stray cats, a special golden slime chimera, and toilet paper for the toilet faerie that lives in the bathroom.

Aside from exploring and talking to civilians, the other and probably most significant aspect of the game is fighting against chimeras and corrupted humans known as Aberrations. While the game starts out with fairly simplistic combat in the first couple chapters, starting out with the protagonist alone and then only giving partial control over your Legion, from the third chapter onward you have full control over both characters. Astral Chain was directed by Nier: Automata’s lead designer Takahisa Taura, and it shows, with the combat in the early chapters being generally similar to that game’s combat. However, once it gives you full control over your various Legions it starts differentiating itself.

The combat is the core of Astral Chain, and even with how I enjoyed the setting and exploration, the combat is what will make me keep coming back for postgame content. It’s incredibly fast-paced and has a lot of depth, but the options at your disposal never feel overwhelming, especially since it gives you each of the five different Legions one by one. The way the game uses the Astral Chain that binds you to your Legion is ingenious as well, with options such as wrapping the chain around enemies to bind them for a Chain Bind, stringing the chain across the path of a charging enemy to launch them back for a Chain Counter, and moving the Legion across a gap to have it pull you towards it in a Chain Jump. You have mostly full control over the Legion’s movement, pressing ZL to summon it, and moving the right stick while holding ZL to control it. You can also press ZL to have it attack the targeted enemy or return to your side, as well as using ZL for any Legion command attacks that it has learned and Sync Attacks that can be done after regular attack strings or certain other times. ZR, meanwhile, is used for regular attacks. There’s a lot of other things that can be done with the Legion that would take too long to list here, but the system is impressively deep and adds a great amount of nuance and possibilities both to combat and exploration.

Head through the dimensional gate to the next page ->

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In a Japanese ArcNama and English ArcLive stream, Arc System Works revealed the five remaining characters who will be coming to BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle with version 2.0 on November 21. The five characters are: BlazBlue’s Celica A. Mercury and Susanoo, Persona’s Elizabeth and Tohru Adachi, and Under Night In-Birth’s Hilda.

You can see the trailer here:

The first character to be shown off is Celica from the BlazBlue series. She fights alongside her automaton Minerva as she does in her home series, with it being the main force behind her attacks. Like in the BlazBlue series, Celica can use her magic to heal herself. Her B auto-combo is the same as her Drive strings, ending with healing part of her recoverable health. She also has an EX special that heals past her recoverable health.

The second character is Persona 3’s Elizabeth, as she appeared in the Persona 4 Arena games, fighting alongside the Persona Thanatos. She retains the Awakeninc mechanic from her home series – unlike the rest of the Persona characters – and it changes the properties of her special moves, allowing her to get combo extensions from them that she can’t get when she’s at full health. She also has Mind Charge as a Distortion Skill to put herself into Awakening state and restore her Skill Gauge, as well as Dia as a special move to heal herself while retaining Awakening. Hama does not instantly kill, functioning as a regular special move, triggering when the opponent touches it to lock them down whether they get hit or block. She can use Mind Charge in the middle of a combo, as well as using Dia during a Cross Combo to heal herself in relative safety.

The third character is Persona 4’s Tohru Adachi with Magatsu Izanagi, whose moves have been changed somewhat from his appearance in Persona 4 Ultimax. Some of his previous SP Skills have been repurposed as special moves, namely Heat Riser and Magatsu Mandala. He also has a new move as one of his Distortion Skills: a copy of Yu Narukami’s Cross Slash.

The fourth character is Under Night In-Birth’s main antagonist, Hilda. She retains many of her moves from that series, although they’ve been changed to account for the more limited movesets of characters in Cross Tag Battle. Her Skewer special is now her B normal attack, as well as several of her other special moves with more unique inputs being shuffled around to new inputs.

The final character to be shown is Susanoo from the BlazBlue series. He no longer needs to unlock his special moves as he does in Centralfiction, instead having his full selection of moves from the start of the match. Blade of Judgement and the command grab Splintering Thrust (known to players as God Press) are EX special moves, with the command grab carrying all the way to the corner from anywhere on the screen for a combo extension.

After the trailer, the stream continued showing off each of the nine characters’ moves and abilities. Blitztank is similar to how he is in Akatsuki Blitzkampf; low mobility and nonexistent air game, but incredibly high damage, high health, super armor on his attacks, and the ability to attack while moving. Akatsuki is more similar to his Under Night In-Birth appearance; he’s a straightforward shoto character with high damage, as well as a new Distortion Skill that allows him to continue a combo. RWBY’s Neopolitan is a tricky character, with numerous moves that create clones, mix up her movement, and parry attacks, as well as an ambiguous command grab Distortion Skill. Senran Kagura’s Yumi uses her ice powers to freeze her opponents, can use her EX specials to launch opponents into an Aerial Rave, and uses multi-part rekka-style special moves to mix up opponents.

BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle version 2.0 will be releasing on November 21. There will be a patch with balance and mechanics changes released for free to all players on that day. In addition, the “Ver. 2.0 Expansion Pack” will be available, which includes the nine new characters along with new story elements, new interactions, and new color palettes, for $24.99 USD.

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At Tokyo Game Show 2019, Cygames and Arc System Works showed off a new trailer for the upcoming fighting game Granblue Fantasy Versus, featuring another character joining the roster: the beautiful Erune archer, Metera.

See the new trailer here:

The trailer shows off her long-ranged capabilities with her magical bow, as well as a slight hint that she may have some more aerial movement capabilities than most of the rest of the cast, given her ability to fly. It’s hard to determine much about how she’ll play from a 50-second reveal trailer, but it shows both her regular and Super Skybound Arts, as well as vague looks at her specials and some normal attacks.

There’s still two unrevealed slots in Granblue Fantasy Versus’ 11-character base roster, along with five more characters post-release through a DLC Character Pass. The game is set to release in Japan on February 6, 2020, and will be published by XSEED Games in North America and Marvelous Europe overseas at some unannounced date.

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At Tokyo Game Show, Arc System Works released a new trailer for the untitled upcoming Guilty Gear game announced at EVO 2019, showing off a bit more gameplay than the original trailer.

You can see the trailer here:

As the name of the trailer suggests, it mostly focuses on series main characters Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske, showing off some combos and their iconic moves; such as Sol’s Volcanic Viper and Tyrant Rave ver.Beta, and Ky’s Vapor Thrust and Ride the Lightning, among others. It also looks like they retain many normal moves from previous games. The trailer ends by announcing that fellow veteran May will be returning, as well as teasing another trailer to be shown off at the fighting game tournament CEOtaku later this month.

The new Guilty Gear is set for release on PS4 in 2020, and will be playable to attendees at Arc Revo World Tour 2019 Finals in November.

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Publishers Aksys and Arc System Works have announced that French-Bread’s fighting game Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] (also known as UNICLR) will be coming to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch when it releases in early 2020. The platforms were previously leaked along with the game’s title prior to the official announcement at EVO 2019, which itself did not mention platforms. An official site for the game is now up from Arc System Works with both English and Japanese, along with being up for pre-order from Aksys for $39.99 USD.

As discussed at EVO, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] builds upon the gameplay established in previous iterations of the series, bringing a slew of balance changes, including new moves, as well as new playable character Londrekia.

PC is not listed as one of the platforms, but both previous entries received PC ports several months (or over a year) after they launched on consoles. Also of note is that there’s no sign of an arcade version, when every previous version was available in Japanese arcades long before any home releases.

The game will be playable at select events between now and its release, two of which being the Arc Revolution World Tour Finals in California this November and CEOTaku in Orlando later this month. No new trailer accompanies this news, but if you missed the initial reveal you can see the announcement trailer here:

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At Magical Mirai 2019 – a yearly event focused on the Crypton Future Media Vocaloids, including Hatsune Miku – Sega showed off a new trailer for Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix on Switch, first announced back in July, featuring some of the 101 songs to be featured in the game, as well as the new gameplay mode.

The trailer can be seen here:

The trailer features several songs: livetune’s Catch the Wave (an original song commissioned by Sega as the game’s theme song), Tohma’s Envy Cat Walk, 40mP’s Karakuri Pierrot, Reol and Giga-P’s Hibikase, Mikito-P’s 39 Music!, emon’s Dreamin’ Chuchu, Hachiouji-P’s Sweet Devil, NayutalieN’s Alien Alien, wowaka’s Unhappy Refrain, Jesus-P’s Remote Controller, Dixie Flatline’s Just Be Friends, halyosy’s Snowman, yuukiss and rose’s Nostalogic, and sasakure.UK’s *Hello, Planet. It also gives a first look at the new gameplay mode, where players move the Joy-Cons to match incoming notes and wave them to the rhythm of the music, in addition to the standard Project DIVA gameplay found in the earlier PlayStation titles. Players will also be able to create custom playlists and view PVs for the music without gameplay.

The game has a slightly redesigned artstyle to give it a more anime-like look, as well as over 300 outfits. Players can mix and match outfits and hairstyles, as well as having custom-designed T-shirts.

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix is set to launch on Switch in Japan on February 13, 2020, with a more vague 2020 release window internationally. More details will likely be made available on the game’s official site as it gets closer to launch.

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I’m generally not one to follow Arc System Works’ releases other than fighting games. That being said, World End Syndrome caught my attention as a visual novel, but I lost sight of it around when it released. I was aware it was a romance story with some sort of supernatural mystery, but I didn’t know much about it aside from that when I was going in. But, I tend to like mystery and romance stories, so I was still interested in giving it a shot.

World End Syndrome follows a sullen, nameless protagonist who moves to a remote seaside town called Mihate Town to try and start a new life for himself. He meets the five main heroines: the aspiring writer Yukino Otonashi on her way to Mihate to investigate a local legend; his strong-willed, unwitting roommate Maimi Kusunose; his mysterious, quiet, and stubborn classmate Miu Amana; an heiress to the powerful local family behind one of the largest companies in Japan Saya Kamishiro; and the strange girl from out of town Hanako Yamada. These six, along with another classmate Kensuke Asagi, form Mihate High School’s Mystery Club investigating local folklore, under the leadership of Kaori Yamashiro, a teacher at the high school, folklore researcher, and author of a popular young adult novel centered around local legends called Worldend.

The local legend in question is about the Yomibito, where the dead come back to life every 100 years during the summer and bring misfortune upon the town. The game is set 100 years since the previous incident, where a Yomibito supposedly went mad and killed several people before being found and stopped. The story picks up after a local student dies under mysterious circumstances. It starts in July, with the prologue taking place throughout the entire month, with the main bulk of the game and the individual routes taking place afterwards in August. The prologue will also always lead to a bad end the first time you play it, and you can only see the “Chapter” section and do routes after your second time through the prologue. It threw me off when it happened, but does give some important insight into what exactly is happening in Mihate Town, even if you will probably not know what to make of the information you get from it at the time.

Once you get into August, the structure of the game changes from the relatively linear nature of the prologue. Three times per day – in the morning, afternoon, and at night – you’re presented with a map of Mihate Town and you can choose somewhere to spend time. At first, you’re pretty much in the dark about where you should be spending your time, with the only hints being areas with events to see or missions to accept highlighted, but in subsequent playthroughs any areas you’ve seen will have markers showing which characters are there at that time. That being said, it’s not particularly difficult to get into a character’s route, since once you’ve started you’ll be notified about any events that are important to continue it, and aside from avoiding those events the only thing you need to worry about that could make the difference between a good and bad end are the occasional dialogue choices.

Since the bulk of any given arc takes place through a few events scattered over the course of a couple in-game weeks, it makes for some strangely-paced romance. The game is relatively short overall, and with five routes to get through plus a true ending, there’s not enough time allocated to any given route for it to develop in a way that feels natural and not abrupt. It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of time spent on non-important activities such as wandering around the town and spending time with friends, in a way that doesn’t progress anything besides building your “Aura”, which represents your affinity with each heroine. I’m not entirely sure what effect it has on the progression of the routes.

That being said, even if I found the romance and character arcs somewhat lackluster, the mystery it sets up with the Yomibito is excellent. There’s subtle foreshadowing throughout, but nothing that exposes too much, and each route hits similar beats (especially towards the ends) that clue you in just a bit to what’s going on. There some degree of forced order with the routes: to avoid spoiling too much, three of them are doable in any order, followed by the other two in a fixed order. The central mystery is what kept my attention the most while playing, more than the heroines and their routes. There were a few minor typos I encountered, but for the most part it was fairly clean.

There are a few oddities about how the game is played, compared to other visual novels. The first thing you’ll notice is that you can’t save whenever you want; throughout the prologue and true end, the game prompts you to save fairly frequently, and during the Chapter you can save on the map screen and between days. The game also presents you with various missions as you go through August, generally requiring you to go to specific places at the right times in exchange for items, which serve no real purpose other than trying to be completionist. The exception is the brochures, which allow you to check the tips you gather throughout the game, similar to Little Busters! English Edition’s Busterpedia or the glossary in Steins;Gate. They’re interesting touches, and while they do help develop the world and setting a bit, they’re ultimately unnecessary.

World End Syndrome is very nice visually. Character designs are by Yuuki Katou, who has done character designs and character select artwork for the BlazBlue series, and are all very appealing. The backgrounds all also have subtle animation, such as trees swaying in the breeze, sparkling ocean water, or an oscillating fan. There are also occasionally short transition animations when going from one scene to another. This, combined with both back and side sprites for all the main characters and how the sprites tend to move around the screen, gives a lot of life to each scene. The music is fine, but not particularly memorable, and sometimes doesn’t seem particularly well-suited to what’s happening.

While World End Syndrome may have some strange and unnecessary elements and somewhat lackluster romance arcs, the mystery and presentation are both excellent. There are also some cute references to other Arc System Works properties sprinkled throughout, but for the most part not overused. The amount of inconsequential events as you explore the town are nice for seeing character interactions, but I found there were too many of them, and I would’ve preferred to see a greater number of more substantial events for your chosen route, which goes back to the problem of not enough time being given for the romance to develop. That being said, it’s a good mystery story with some supernatural elements and romance, and if that sounds like something you’d be interested in, I’d recommend it, especially if you enjoy the demo. It’s not particularly long, listed on VNDB in the “medium” 10-30 hour category, and I believe my playthrough came out to around 20-25 hours, not bad for $39.99 USD. Even if the romance isn’t fantastic and it seems like there’s a lot of wasted time, it’s an engaging mystery story with beautiful visuals.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by publisher

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Control is a game that got my attention when it was revealed back at E3 2018, but I somewhat lost track of it after that. It’s developed by Remedy Entertainment, the same team behind the Alan Wake games and Quantum Break, all games I have never played and know relatively little about. That being said, Control had me looking at it since it looked like a shooter with interesting mechanics and a very unique, unusual environment design. Realistically, though, I had no idea what I was getting into, or just how weird it could get.

Control puts you in the shoes of Jesse Faden, who enters the headquarters of a secretive government agency called Federal Bureau of Control in search of her missing brother Dylan. Upon entering the unassuming-looking New York building she finds herself in a sprawling, multi-dimensional complex called the Oldest House, filled with strange artifacts, under attack from a mysterious alien threat she dubs the Hiss. She becomes the Bureau’s director, and with guidance from an ethereal presence that’s accompanied her in her mind since childhood, along with the survivors she finds inside the Oldest House, she goes off to stop the Hiss invasion and find Dylan.

The game has a very distinct and unsettling atmosphere. You proceed through the Oldest House and experience both the otherworldly phenomena inherent to the facility as well as the wholly alien nature of the Hiss; the game starts immediately with being strange and off-putting, and while it does explain things over time so you can make sense of it, things never really get any more normal as you progress. It can be quite creepy at times, but less through actual horror elements and more with the generally incomprehensible weirdness of the Oldest House and the powerful and dangerous artifacts it holds.

The Bureau exists to investigate and contain Altered World Events (AWEs), as well as the Altered Items and rarer Objects of Power associated therewith. Altered Items are everyday objects that have bizarre and dangerous properties, tendencies, and capabilities, such as a Japanese paper lantern that entrances and soothes anyone who spends too long looking at it, a hand chair that creates a gravitational singularity every full moon, an anchor bound to a floating sphere that spits out endless amounts of clocks, and a refrigerator that consumes anyone nearby if left unobserved even for an instant, among others. There’s also a handful of Objects of Power that each grant Jesse different abilities she can use at will, such as a telekinetic 7½-inch floppy disk, a teleporting carousel horse, or a flying old-fashioned television. The abilities that Jesse picks up from the various Objects of Power all have their own distinct uses in combat as well as traversing the environment, allowing players to approach different situations as they see fit depending on what abilities they have and wish to use.

In addition to the Oldest House and the various interdimensional Thresholds it contains, Jesse also finds herself in the Astral Plane from time to time, which consists of angular platforms in an endless white void, all dominated by an inverted black pyramid known as the Board that communicates with Jesse telepathically and is in charge of the Bureau. The game is structured as a Metroidvania, with areas of the Oldest House becoming accessible as you progress, increase your clearance level to unlock more doors, and gain new abilities. Exploration is a major focus of the game, and while the environments all generally have an office and laboratory look to them, there’s always something different going on with them, along with the unsettling atmosphere the game creates. There’s even a number of areas that are never visited as part of the main story, all there to be explored on the player’s time or as part of one of the many side missions the game has to offer.

The main reason to explore the Oldest House is the slew of collectibles to be found, which consist of written and audio notes including accounts of various Altered Items and AWEs, inter-departmental correspondence of both official and unofficial varieties, and presentations from head researcher Dr. Casper Darling. I found the collectibles quite entertaining, mostly the very normal office correspondence with the uniqueness one would expect from a setting like the Oldest House. One that stood out in particular was a complaint about the facility’s pneumatic tube system used for communication between sectors, that with a structure that’s constantly shifting position and shape in spacetime the tubes can be somewhat unreliable. Other items to be found are crafting materials and weapon and personal mods, which don’t have much use once you’ve already found the best of each type. You can use crafting materials to create and upgrade forms of your gun, the Service Weapon, but aside from that, crafting has relatively little use.

Proceed deeper into the Oldest House ->

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At the end of character designer Na-Ga and scenario writer Kai’s Talk Show and Live Drawing at Animaga 2019 in Melbourne, they showed off a video of gameplay of Key’s most recent visual novel Summer Pockets in English, along with an announcement that a full English version of the game is in the works.

The announcement was posted on Twitter (in Japanese), although nothing has been said by the VISUAL ARTS Western branch yet:

Animaga expo 2019
2日目トークショー終わりました。
ライブドローイングは「しろは」です。
そして「Summer Pockets」の英語版の発表です。
現在鋭意制作中です。
(オーストラリアより) pic.twitter.com/4UTOhb4qLe

— Key開発室 (@key_official) August 25, 2019

My best translation of this is something along the lines of:

“Animaga Expo 2019
Day 2 Talk Show is over.
It’s the Live Drawing of Shiroha.
Now, Summer Pockets English version announcement.
We are working hard on it.
(From Australia)”

Pretty low-key announcement, and without the video itself publicly available at the moment, there’s not much else to go on – much of what I know comes from a Reddit user present at the announcement. We will be updating this if and when more concrete information on the English version of Summer Pockets comes to light tonight.

Summer Pockets was released in Japan on PC in summer of 2018, with a Switch port following in June 2019. There was an English fan translation in the works, but how this announcement affects the future of the project remains to be seen.

The post Summer Pockets English Version Announced appeared first on oprainfall.

It was an exciting moment to see one of my favorite developers, Arc System Works, teasing a video game adaptation of one of my favorite anime series, Kill la Kill. It made me somewhat less excited to see that said adaptation would be an arena fighter, rather than a more traditional fighting game. It made me even less excited to see that it also wouldn’t be developed by Arc System Works, but rather by A+ Games, the developer behind the somewhat poorly-received Little Witch Academia game, with ASW taking on a publishing role. But now Kill la Kill – IF has been released, and it’s up to me to see if it retains any of the anime’s fun and excitement, or the depth and complexity that Arc System Works is known for, even outside of their wheelhouse.

Kill la Kill – IF has a somewhat slim roster of only ten characters, two of which are variations of others, with two more promised as free DLC. It stars heroines Satsuki Kiryuin and Ryuko Matoi, both with regular single-wield as well as dual-wield variations; the head of the disciplinary committee Ira Gamagoori; the athletic clubs head Uzu Sanageyama; the non-athletic clubs head Nonon Jakuzure; the information and strategy committee head Houka Inumuta; the CEO of the clothing manufacturer REVOCS Ragyo Kiryuin; and Ragyo’s trusted Grand Couturier Nui Harime. In addition, Mako Mankanshoku as well as the Nudist Beach boys Aikuro Mikisugi and Tsumugu Kinagase combined as Ultimate Double Naked Dotonbori Robo (DTR) will be coming as DLC in the future, but were not available at time of writing.

It’s a disappointingly small roster, but at the same time, Kill la Kill itself doesn’t really have that many characters, at least those that would work in this sort of game. The characters here are actually surprisingly diverse in their gameplay; while both forms of Satsuki and Ryuko are both understandably straightforward, being the protagonists, the others each possess their own unique abilities and mechanics, even beyond simple archetypes. For example, Nonon, Nui and Ragyo are all zoning characters based on controlling large amounts of the screen while being weak at close range, but they do so in different ways: Nonon uses projectiles that create stationary orbs that boost her attacks, Nui creates clones of herself to attack, and Ragyo uses projectiles that transition easily into a close-range combo for high damage. Every character also receives a different bonus to specifically enhance their unique traits and abilities when they reach Valor Level 1, which I’ll explain a bit later.

When I say this game is an “arena fighter” rather than a traditional fighting game, I mean it’s set up similarly to a fighting game, with players facing each other one-on-one with the preset capabilities of their chosen character and no customization, but it controls more like a standard third-person action game. Characters have a full range of movement around the arena, while the camera swings around to different angles rather than being fixed, like in many 3D fighting games such as Tekken or Soul Calibur. Blocking and jumping are both done with buttons, and the game forces you to use analog control with a full 360-degree range of movement rather than just eight directions. As with other arena fighters, the game also allows characters to homing dash, either in the air out of a jump or on the ground out of a block. The camera also moves around quite a bit, and especially as player 2 you’ll need to be able to deal with it being centered behind the other player with you further away a decent amount of the time. It also changes angle during the endings of regular attack strings to give an extra visual touch, as well as for special attacks, break attacks, and Valor Burst.

On that note, there are three types of regular attacks: quick close-range, slower and often more unique long-range, and unblockable but slow break attacks. Holding left or right on the stick while close attacking will give a wider attack that’s more difficult to avoid by dashing to the side, and holding up or down while doing so gives an anti-air. You can do this on the last attack of a close string as well for different enders that provide different benefits, such as continuing the combo in the air or giving a bigger knockback. At the surface level combos are very simple, but there gets to be significantly more depth and very high potential damage when you start taking advantage of the game’s wall-splat mechanic, and other ways you can find with any given character to extend combos beyond the basic attack strings. There are also special attacks for each type of regular attack, which spend 50% of a player’s SP meter for extra damage or other benefits.

The SP meter can also be used for Valor Burst, which leads on hit to the game’s most significant unique mechanic, called Bloody Valor. Bloody Valor is a rock-paper scissors element where players choose between Provoke, which boosts the initiator’s SP and beats Mock, which restores the initiator’s health and beats Taunt, which deals extra damage and beats Provoke. Both players choose one, and if the initiator wins, they gain one Valor level (up to level 3), gain their choice’s associated bonus, and Bloody Valor repeats. On a tie, the same happens, but Bloody Valor ends. If the defender wins, Bloody Valor ends, and the initiator takes damage. Valor levels provide various benefits; the aforementioned character-specific boosts at level 1, changing the regular beak attack special to a stronger break attack super at level 2, and giving passive SP gain and access to the SEN-I-SOSHITSU Secret Art (this game’s instant kill) at level 3. You can also burst while taking damage to break your opponent’s combo, but it will not lead to Bloody Valor.

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Once Harada was done with his announcements for Tekken 7 at EVO 2019, Daisuke Ishiwatari from Arc System Works took the stage to show off what he and his team have been working on, and what kept him away from EVO last year. They’d announced that a new Guilty Gear game was in the works, and while we still don’t have an official title, he at least had a short teaser to keep fans busy:

Unfortunately there’s not much to go on for real gameplay, but the trailer gives a look at the more refined version of the art style pioneered by the Guilty Gear Xrd trilogy. It depicts a clash between series protagonists and rivals Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske, all set to the series’ trademark rock music composed by Ishiwatari himself. The trailer ends off with a look at a new character, but no more information than that.

It’s a short trailer, and doesn’t give much information to go off aside from a 2020 release. There’s also a teaser site, but at the moment it doesn’t have any more information either.

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After the Tekken 7 top 8 at EVO 2019, series producer Katsuhiro Harada took the stage to show off a trailer for what’s next for the game. There’s a Season 3 incoming, complete with a set of new characters.

You can see the trailer here:

The majority of the trailer is showing off the new moves coming to the existing cast in order to refine the game’s balance, before showing off two of the new characters coming with the season 3 pass.

The first is a returning character from Tekken 6, Zafina. She uses the claw of Azazel in combat alongside her regular techniques, a departure from her previous appearance, along with a new design.

The second new character is an entirely new character, named Leroy Smith, a martial arts master and victim of gang violence from New York. He brings these techniques – and his sunglasses – into the ring in Tekken 7.

Leroy and Zafina are scheduled for release in September 2019, along with a free update to the game with the rebalancing and a new UI, among other improvements. Four other characters will be added through Season Pass 3 later in 2019 through the early parts of 2020.

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After the Street Fighter V top 8 at EVO 2019, Project Soul’s Motohiro Okubo, producer of Soulcalibur VI, came onto the stage to reveal some new trailers for the game, teasing what’s to come. The first trailer showed off returning character Cassandra, the final character to be part of the game’s first Season Pass.

The trailer can be seen here:

Being Sophitia’s sister, Cassandra uses similar weapons, but her different personality is reflected in her fighting style, with a more playful touch to her moves. Cassandra had also been leaked through the PSN Store listing for the Season Pass, which briefly had its description updated to include her. She will be available to pass holders on August 5, along with her weapons and clothes for the character creator.

Okubo then surprised viewers with a second trailer, announcing a second season for the game, along with gameplay changes and four new characters, including one guest. As someone who doesn’t actively play Soulcalibur VI I wasn’t able to tell much about gameplay or balance changes from the trailer, but the most immediately obvious thing was the ability to go into a regular attack string out of Reversal Edge, which normally leads into the rock-paper-scissors mechanic that players are familiar with, as well as seemingly being able to cancel into Soul Charge both out of attacks and while blocking. The trailer also goes on to reveal the second season’s guest character, Samurai Shodown protagonist Haohmaru.

The trailer was shared by Bandai Namco:

While Cassandra’s release date is known, it has not been revealed when the second season of Soulcalibur VI will be live.

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Following the BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle grand finals at EVO 2019, series creator Toshimichi Mori took to the stage to present a trailer showing off an upcoming major update to the game, complete with a slew of new DLC characters coming alongside the update.

You can see the trailer here:

The first new character shown off is from the sixth fate teased at EVO Japan earlier this year, Yumi from the Senran Kagura series, specifically as she appears in Senran Kagura Estival Versus. It shows off her ice-based moves, similar to those used by Jin and Weiss, along with being the second character to use fans as a weapon after Yukiko. Yumi was also leaked through a datamine back before the game fully released, but when the fifth fate was revealed to be Arcana Heart it seemed like the voice lines people found regarding Asuka and Yumi were perhaps just leftovers from early development, when it was still undecided what series would make appearances in the game.

The second and third new characters both come as more of a surprise, with the addition of a seventh fate: SUBTLE STYLE‘s doujin fighter Akatsuki Blitzkampf. The first character from the series is Akatsuki, who will be familiar to anyone who played Under Night In-Birth, where he was present as a guest character. He’s a standard shoto-style character, the general Ryu archetype, with a fireball, an invincible uppercut, and an advancing series of kicks. He comes alongside Blitztank, who is indeed an actual tank, and is about as big on the screen as you’d expect a tank to be, even bigger than the current big-body grapplers Iron Tager and Waldstein.

The fourth character comes as a surprise ending to the video, as the RWBY characters have tended to in previous BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle trailers leading up to release: it’s Neopolitan, Roman Torchwick’s sidekick and bodyguard from the early volumes of the show. She fights with acrobatic martial arts and her parasol, and has a whiff-punish teleport for when your opponent gets too comfortable keeping you out with ranged moves and long-reaching attacks.

The new characters are part of a major update to the game called version 2.0, which will also include a full rebalance of the roster, a new story, a slick redesigned UI, new character interactions (as shown in the trailer with Naoto Kurogane and Ragna), and new colors. The patch will be released for free alongside nine new characters, five of which are still unrevealed, on November 21, 2019. The new DLC will bring the roster up to a total of 53 spread across seven series, possibly more with all the unrevealed characters.

[UPDATE] In their announcement page, Arc System Works has released more details about how the update and new content will be distributed. There will be a version 2.0 update and balance patch delivered for free to all players. The majority of the new content, including the nine new characters, the new colors, the new scenario, and the new interactions will be released as the “Ver. 2.0 Expansion Pack”, which will be available for $24.99 USD on November 21, 2019.

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At the tail end of the Dragon Ball FighterZ EVO 2019 grand finals, Bandai Namco announced the final unrevealed character to be part of the game’s second season pass: the incarnation of evil from Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn, Janemba.

The reveal was done through a trailer, which you can see here:

The trailer gives a look at Janemba’s gameplay, which makes use of his portals and sword, as well as the unique effect on a teleporting attack. He seems to notably have the ability to absorb and store projectiles before firing them back at the opponent, somewhat similar to Azrael’s Growler Field and Phalanx Cannon from the BlazBlue series. He also has normal attacks that make use of his stretchy limbs and tail.

The trailer also gave us our first look at gameplay for SSGSS Gogeta, revealed alongside the second season pass in January. It’s the version of Gogeta from the recent Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie (with that version of Broly also coming as part of the season pass), but unfortunately we weren’t able to glean much from the brief look at him in the trailer.

Janemba will be joining the Dragon Ball FighterZ roster on August 8, and Gogeta is still just “coming soon”. They’re joining Jiren, Videl and GT Goku, all already released as part of the second season pass, which is available on Steam, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

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Following the top 8 and grand finals for Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] at EVO 2019, developer French-Bread showed off the reveal trailer for the next version of the fighting game, titled Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r]. It was previously leaked through a Taiwanese (and later Australian) rating board, but this is the first we’ve seen of it and the official announcement.

You can see the trailer from the EVO stream below:

The trailer starts by showing off some new moves and teasing a full rebalance of the cast. According to North American publisher Aksys Games, the game will feature almost a thousand balance changes, including these new moves, across the cast. Moves that have been added include a full-screen beam for Hyde after Black Orbiter, a straight horizontal slash into a vertical launcher for Yuzuriha, and a follow-up attack to Gordeau’s Grim Reaper.

However, the most immediately obvious difference is the addition of a new character: Londrekia Light of Ritter Schild. He brings his staff and ice-based powers into the fight, and the brief look at his gameplay from the trailer shows his ability to freeze his opponent in place, looking similar to Jin Kisaragi’s ice powers from the BlazBlue series, as well as a meterless invincible reversal. It also gives a look at both his regular Infinite Worth and his Infinite Worth EXS.

Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] is set for release in early 2020. Platforms were not stated, but the leak earlier this year suggested that it will be releasing on PS4 and Nintendo Switch. The game will have demos playable at future events, as well as new information to be revealed, but exactly which events will have these demos was not stated.

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Cygames has released a new trailer for the Arc System Works-developed fighting game Granblue Fantasy Versus ahead of August’s Granblue Extra Fes, showing off a new character to join the roster: The Lord of Flame, Percival.

You can see the trailer here:

The trailer shows off Percival’s imposing stature, huge zweihänder, and fiery powers, as well as giving a brief glimpse at his Skybound Art and Super Skybound Art. Unfortunately, there’s not much else to be gathered from such a short trailer, however.

Percival joins Gran, Katalina, Charlotta, Lancelot, Ferry, Lowain, and Ladiva in the cast. Granblue Fantasy Versus will be discussed at the aforementioned Granblue Extra Fes 2019 on August 3, and is set for release on PS4 later in 2019, published in North America by XSEED Games. There was also a closed beta test back in June, and you can find our impressions of it here.

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Redout is a game that was introduced to me by a friend of mine, via the Steam version of the game roughly two and a half years ago. Despite my love for science fiction, the various sci-fi racing games had somewhat passed me by over the years, but this game was something of a revelation. The high speed and high difficulty grabbed my attention, and when it was announced for Switch, I was excited for it. Now, two years later, it’s finally released.

Redout is a high-speed anti-gravity racing game, similar to the F-Zero and Wipeout series, as well as Shin’en’s Fast RMX already available on Switch. The biggest unique mechanic in Redout is that, as well as the standard steering and boosting, players are able to control their ship’s pitch as well as strafing from side to side. The ship is also highly susceptible to physical forces exerted on it by the track, such as sliding around on a curved surface and becoming borderline uncontrollable on the occasional tubular track. However, at the same time, the ability to strafe gives an extra layer of control over your ship, creating an experience that is highly challenging and incredibly satisfying, requiring a lot of practice and rewarding knowledge both of the tracks and of the game’s mechanics. This becomes especially true in the later stages of the over 200-mission single-player career mode.

The career mode is the main way both of unlocking tracks and of increasing your level, which determines which of the four classes you have access to. Higher classes mean generally higher stats, most notably an increase in speed. All your other stats increase to compensate: acceleration, top speed, grip, structure (which determines maximum health and regeneration rate), energy pool, and energy recovery rate. This means that the game gets more difficult at higher classes, both through the opponents and properly controlling your ship. That’s not to say the difficulty doesn’t spike even in the lower classes, with classes 2 through 4 all having their own particularly challenging stages. The wildly varying difficulty comes partly through the plethora of event types, such as time trials, standard races, tournaments, and last man standing where the racer in last gets eliminated each lap, as well as different rules on standard modes such as arena races with no respawning and speed trials where you stay above a target speed to gain bonus time, among several others.

All the stages and vehicles you’ve unlocked can be used in single races in addition to the career mode, which can help you get a feel for the game as well as just being an enjoyable diversion from the pressure of career mode. There’s not much to be gained from single races aside from better knowledge of stages and ships, but that can go a long way in the career mode. It’s especially helpful when the stakes are raised with random contracts that require you to race under specific conditions or place high for extra bonus money on top of the usual amount you get for completion, at the risk of a fine if you fail.

All that being said, that’s all there is for offline modes. There’s unfortunately no local multiplayer. The online multiplayer also seems to be somewhat dead, with no open lobbies when I tried looking and no one joining the lobbies I tried hosting. You could probably find people to play with if you looked, but just looking without that it seems like you may have a hard time if you want to play online.

The visuals are bright and striking, with a distinctive and pleasing low-polygon look, simple textures, and bright colours and lighting. The sense of speed is excellent, with the small size of the other racers on the track giving a sense of scale to the whole affair. The tracks are divided into several locales, including both regions of Earth as well as other celestial bodies such as the moon, Mars, and Europa, to name a few. Each locale has a distinct and beautiful look, with tracks bringing racers through deserts, over ice fields, through mountain ranges, and even underwater, all rendered in the beautiful visual style. The music is pounding electronic music, and I found it was great for helping me focus on the incredibly high-speed gameplay.

One problem that I ran into while playing Redout was less a problem of the game and more from the Switch itself. I was playing using the Joy-Con, but since I needed to hold down ZL constantly to accelerate while holding my thumb on the right stick to strafe, I found my hands cramping up, needing to awkwardly adjust my grip while playing somewhat frequently. Maybe it would be less of a problem for those with smaller hands, but for most people I would recommend finding some other, larger controller to use.

Redout is a game with beautiful visuals and great music to go with its incredibly enjoyable, fast-paced, and challenging gameplay. I do wish there was a local multiplayer mode and not just the seemingly dead online multiplayer, but there’s a wealth of single-player content with over 200 missions in its career mode that I wasn’t able to get all the way through in the roughly 20 hours I have between the Switch and PC versions. There’s a decent amount of variety through the different event types, ships, and stages, and with how much fun the racing itself is, even just knocking out a quick single race is a good time. It runs for $39.99 USD, not a bad price considering the surprising length of the career mode. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who misses F-Zero, or whoever wants a fun, fast, challenging sci-fi racer.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by publisher

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In a video celebrating the tenth anniversary of Sega’s Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA series, the company announced the next game in the series, titled Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA MEGA39’s, for Nintendo Switch. You can see the video, including the new game’s trailer, below:

The game will feature a total of 101 songs, including kz’s “Decorator”, ryo’s “Odds & Ends”, the late wowaka’s “Rolling Girl”, Nayutan Seijin’s “Alien Alien”, and Mikito-P’s “39 Music!”, the latter two of which have new recordings that will be featured in the game. 100 of the songs are from the history of the Project DIVA series, while the last one will be the game’s theme song written specifically for Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA MEGA39’s.

The game will feature over 300 modules (costumes), and the 3D models have been updated with a more anime-inspired style. There will also be a new game mode unique to the Nintendo Switch, but no more information on that has been revealed.

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA MEGA39’s is set for release on Nintendo Switch in 2020 in Japan, with no information on a western release announced so far. The new songs will also be added to Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone DX through DLC in 2020. You can see more information on the game’s official site.

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