This past weekend Guilty Gear -Strive- had its open beta and it was a blast. Bringing together this (initial) insane roster of characters for players to whet their appetite on was a recipe for delight.
Initially, there were issues. For myself and it seemed for players across the globe. I couldn’t access the game itself. I imagine it was because the servers were jammed with players that the developers did not expect. When I did eventually arrive at the Guilty Gear -Strive- arena (two days later) I was immediately blown away by the setup.
Thrust into an arena of gods and monsters
I’ll be honest, I’m a fan of beat ’em ups but I’ve never given serious time to the Guilty Gear franchise. This is mainly due to the fact that I’m terrified of the skill of its player base. It’s on another level compared to other beat ’em ups in my opinion. Now with Guilty Gear -Strive- I had to jump in and I jumped in the deep end.
It’s Tutorial Mode (which I recommend for first-time players) is fun and intuitive and then before long you can jump into the Online Lobby which is maybe the best lobby I’ve seen in a beat ’em up.
I’m a big fan of Dragon Ball FighterZ and its lobby is hilarious as a touching tribute to the Dragon Ball fanbase. However when I entered the Tower within Guilty Gear -Strive- I found myself instantly in love. You gain access to a pixelated avatar that you can fully customise with various quirky items inspired by the roster of playable characters, which I can only imagine will grow when the game comes out.
You are then given a practice bout which gauges your strength. After your fight, you are placed within the tower and have to try and battle your way to the top, simply for the enjoyment of it. It’s infectious and incredibly thrilling to try and climb this online tower.
Then the fighting began
Right, I’ll start on the technical side of Guilty Gear -Strive-. It runs buttery smooth, I found no issues on the technical front once I began the game. I was so impressed and I loved every moment of every fight whether I won or lose, and there was significantly more of one than the other.
Now I won several matches, at least 10 over the course of the several hours I played. However, I did lose a lot. It didn’t matter ultimately. I had so much fun playing as one particular character. Giovanna and her spirit wolf. Learning her techniques and then putting them into practice was tough but once I figured it out I was winning so much more. There was definitely a sense of growth throughout the course of my playthrough and it just added further enjoyment to the whole experience.
I’ve talked a lot about Guilty Gear -Strive- but why don’t you check out the GamEir Stream below to see how much I was exaggerating about my win/loss ratio.
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