Review: GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- Stands Out From The Competition
Fighting games need speed, personality, and challenge. Don’t worry, Guilty Gear -STRIVE- has all those in spades. After seven main games and a ton of spin-offs and updated versions, it is impressive how fresh Guilty Gear -STRIVE- can still feel so fresh. While the roster may be a little slim and the story mode being very different than other fighting games, these changes make the game stand out from the competitors.
Let’s talk about the actual gameplay. Guilty Gear has always been punishing and powerful. When players nail combos or get juggled in the air, lots of health will be lost and it isn’t any different in this game. But, Guilty Gear provides ways to get out of these combos, counter them, and more. In other words, STRIVE will force players to stay well-engaged match after match because of its relentless and intense gameplay. If this is one of your first fighting games or your first Guilty Gear game, STRIVE offers a thorough guide that runs from basic movements to complex combos inputs and more. STRIVE isn’t an easy game by any stretch of the imagination, but it does its best to prepare players for the complexity and intensity of its gameplay.
Now, let’s talk about characters. Most of the roster is the core fighters that you’d expect to see, which is great. But fifteen characters do seem really thin, especially when looking at games like Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur, Tekken, and Street Fighter. However, each character here is so unique in both move set and fighting style that the roster feels bigger than it is (to a degree). Some of the characters are so unique, like Faust and Nagoriyuki, that it can take a couple of matches just to figure out their basic attacks and movements. While this may seem like a hassle, this makes each character a brand new learning experience which becomes fairly satisfying once a player starts to pull off killer combos and use the uniqueness of each character to their advantage.
Story or campaign modes in fighting games are always a big hit or miss. Usually, the story consists of mediocre cutscenes that contrive obscure or odd situations for players to fight enemies one on one or to try out each character. STRIVE goes in a direction I’ve never seen before, they cut out all the fighting. The story is essentially just a movie or anime that runs for a couple of hours and players sit back and enjoy the story without any lame plot devices to stuff battles in it every three to five minutes. It is commendable to see STRIVE try something experimental and the story is greatly improved because of this, but it feels pretty weird to load up a game, go to the story mode, and just set down your controller. This wouldn’t be so impactful if there were a lot of other game modes to play through, but the game is fairly minimal. A basic arcade mode, a survival mode, and then offline and online multiplayer are the only other game modes available, so the lack of a story mode that involves actual gameplay feels a bit lackluster.
Guilty Gear -STRIVE- is a master class in combat and character design. Battles feel intense and there is a great tutorial for beginners. The music rocks harder than ever and the visuals are crazy beautiful. But the lack of gameplay options and a smaller roster make this game feel a bit empty. The hours you’ll put into this game will be extremely fun, but unless you like grinding arcade on harder and harder difficulties or live for online play, the number of hours spent here will be relatively short.
