Guilty Gear: Strive in the test - Fighter convinces with a breath of fresh air

Guilty Gear

Although, or maybe because, Guilty Gear has been involved since the dawn of the fighting game genre, the latest installment has been eagerly awaited by fans. The last main part of the series came out with Xrd Revelator in 2016, the DLC Xrd Rev2 expanded the whole thing a year later with new characters and additions to the story mode. For those who love fighting games, the developer has meanwhile also delivered other titles from the Blazblue and Dragon Ball Fighterz series.

Guilty Gear Strive is now the seventh part of the main series and was launched last year Beta. Even then, changes were made that should make the game more beginner-friendly - which was sometimes more and sometimes less well received by those who know the series. Nevertheless, Arc System Works managed to get the title well received. The story continues, well-known friends and enemies can be found next to two new fighters in the character selection and the animations are even crisper than before.

Table of contents

1 For Justice 2 Beat what the stuff lasts 3 What takes a long time is (finally) new 4 Of heroes and villains 5 The AI ​​and me 6 In the beginning there was the triangle 7 The big, wide online world 8 Shut up or I'll hit you in the face [AME = " "]

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For Justice

That Man, Gears and some secrets - getting started with the story is anything but easy for Guilty Gear newbies. Source: PC Games Even if you think of fighting games more of a trade fair among friends on the couch or tournaments, Guilty Gear has a lot of backstory. As in the last part of Xrd Revolution, you don't get much say in story mode. You don't get to play here, instead there is an approximately four-hour anime in the style of the rest of the game. If you just want to concentrate on the story and enjoy the plot without interim battles, that might be fine, we can't get much from it.

Don't expect that just because the game is supposed to be more beginner-friendly, too the story has been made more accessible. It starts with the developments of Xrd, wastes no time with explanations or summaries and starts straight away with action. It's best to do a recap beforehand, because Strive culminates in the final confrontation between the protagonist Sol Badguy and That Man. In general, the world of Guilty Gear is, unlike what you might expect, shaped by magic. At some point, technology turned out to be too dangerous in the series' cart. Nonetheless, the development of the gears - people who were turned into biomechanical weapons. And who would have thought, our rather cynical protagonist as well as other fighters of the game belong to this category and they struggle for their respective ideals.

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Guilty Gear Strive with a big discount: Steam Deal at Gamesplanet

The franchise is renewed with Guilty Gear Strive. The fighting game is available from Gamesplanet with a 15 percent discount as a Steam Key. #werbung 0

Steam discount guide: bargains from 19.07. - Firewatch & Guilty Gear

In our Steam Discount Guide you will regularly receive information on discounted games, free titles or free weekends. All information is available here! var lstExcludedArticleTicker = '1373923,1373766,1233516'; The collection that lists people and events does not necessarily make it easy to get started with the plot; it is much more practical as a repetition or for reference. Do not be surprised if you do not understand everything yourself with summaries, the story is confused and partly not entirely understandable, that was also the case in the predecessors.

Beat what it takes

The real core of the game is of course the battles that can be fought online and offline. The main features of the whole thing are simply listed than executed: attack, block and knock out the opposite. beat. There are normal attacks such as kicks and punches, which, in combination with different direction keys, become special attacks that behave differently depending on the character. In practice, this is much more difficult because you have to know and learn techniques and timing in order to progress.

There are also various bars such as Burst and Tension, which are used for passive and aggressive techniques. If you completely fill up tension through attacks, you have access to overdrive attacks. One of them triggers a short cinematic sequence and gives your opponent a lot of damage. New in Strive: Should you hit your rival against the wall and cause enough damage, the invisible barrier breaks and you get to a new part of the stage. If that's fun for you, you can try to hit the dummy across the map in training mode.

Wall breaks are new to Strive and are great fun. You can use it to take advantage of different parts of the stage. Source: PC Games

What takes a long time becomes (finally) new

Some techniques require a lot of practice. The well-known novel Cancel is just one of them. Source: PC Games connoisseurs of Guilty Gear will also notice other innovations, especially the changes to the Gatling, which many fans see critically. In the previous parts it was possible to go from one attack to the "next higher" attack, which resulted in long combos. In Strive there are now many combinations that work differently than Xrd or have been completely removed.

Simple button mashing, which beginners liked to use in the predecessors, no longer works here. It's more about memorizing the shorter combos and knowing when to use them. The changed gatling, higher damage and punishments for defensive behavior give the game a different speed, riskier games are rewarded.

Of heroes and villains

A total of 15 warriors are available for the beating Available, among other things from the series well-known faces like Sol Badguy, his rival Ky Kyske or the strange Faust. They are joined by two newcomers: Giovanna, who in tandem with her ghost wolf, Rei, and Nagoriyuki, a vampire samurai who falls into blood. The different types, under which many of the characters fall, ensure that everyone can find a fighter that suits them.

For fans of speed, for example, Millia is suitable, who fights with her hair, who prefers firearms should choose Ramlethal, while Sol and Ky are more balanced. The characters are assigned to categories, but even within a group, the individual fighters play very differently. And of course there are a few outliers that don't fit anywhere, such as Faust who fights with a giant scalpel and throws things around.

Giovanna and Nagoriyuki are the two new characters who became known as thirteen Join contenders from the predecessors. Source: PC Games

The AI ​​and I

In arcade mode you compete against many different opponents who can surprise you with strange attacks like stuffed animals. Source: PC Games In solo mode, fights against AI opponents, training modes and missions are available. When measuring with the computer opponents, you can either put together your dream match by selecting the length of the lap, CPU strength, stage and music. If, on the other hand, you prefer to clap a number of different opponents, there is the arcade mode, the difficulty of which adapts depending on how well you do yourselves. If you lose a match here, you usually get ahead, but you have to emerge victorious from certain fights. In survival you have to hold out as long as you can, one fight follows another. Since you hardly have to wait between the individual opponents, the whole thing feels very fluid, so your adrenaline will continue to pump diligently. You only need a little patience when you start the game, it can take a few minutes until your device has finally finished communicating with the server and you can finally get started.

In the beginning there was the triangle

The missions are shown on the map, including their progress and difficulty. The stages are adapted to the respective location. Source: PC Games Fighting game beginners are shown the basics of the controls and the gameplay in the tutorial. You will learn most of it in the missions, which introduce general concepts of fighting games and peculiarities of guilty gear like the novel Cancel (of which there are four different in Strive). Some techniques are so fundamental that you do not necessarily have to "complete" the mission, that is, you have to have carried it out successfully three out of five times. Because chasing after someone or pressing attack buttons is no longer part of the higher art of fighting.

Other tasks are much more difficult. Since you don't have to go through the individual mission chapters in the given order, you can simply choose what you need, be it a technique or a specific match-up. As a newbie you have to put in a lot of time, no question about it, but it's definitely worth it. You won't become a master too quickly, but if you have a few moves, it's fun to take them out on more or less harmless AI opponents and look pretty cool at the same time.

The big one , wide online world

You can customize your pixel avatar for the online lobby. To get new outfits, you have to fish. Source: PC Games Online you should only dare if you have already practiced. Once you feel ready, there are several ways to play with others. The tower works as a kind of ranked mode, in which players are assigned to one of the ten floors depending on their ability. From then on, you can fight other participants on your stick or above, should you be looking for a bigger challenge. But you can't go down to pull off a few newbies for easy wins. Only defeats can move you down, for wins you move up.

The park is free, so you can simply choose a sparring partner depending on the region. The impatient can skip the lobby by choosing Quick Start and training against an AI until the correct match. You don't have to worry about delay problems: The rollback netcode, which was already praised in the beta, ensures that lags are minimized and the fights run smoothly. If you prefer to play against someone on site, you can of course start a 1-on-1 power offline, here you don't have to mess with the lobby and other stuff.

Overdrives just look impressive and direct a lot of damage. Source: PC Games

Shut up or I'll slap you in the face

Before the actual match starts, the characters in offline mode are throwing their kisses after the short anime opening Sayings around you - or not. Impatient souls can skip the whole thing, but you should listen to a few of the interactions. The provocations and everything else spoken are only available in English or Japanese, but subtitles are also available in German. When it finally starts, your fight will be accompanied by an energetic rock soundtrack, as in previous parts.

In the best Arc-System-Works manner, everything looks stunningly good: beautiful anime graphics, Special effects that make the heart beat faster and, on top of that, detailed stages that even put their predecessors in the background. Character models also look more detailed than before, attacks have a real visual impact and with the respective overdrives you can look forward to the impressive cutscenes.

Guilty Gear Strive (buy now 59.99 €) splits with the changed ones Gatlings the fan base, for many these were part of the series. In our opinion, these and other innovations give the game and thus the series a breath of fresh air that it can really use. At the same time, the vision of Chief Creative Officer Daisuke Ishiwatari, to make the game accessible to beginners, seems to have succeeded. The developer has not yet revealed which new characters are waiting in future DLCs and when they will be released. However, it is known that five new fighters, two stages and additional story content will appear next.

Guilty Gear Strive has been available for PC, PS5 and PS4</a> since June 11, 2021.

My opinion

By Monika Himmelsbach

Author A wonderful beating Strive is not reinventing the fighting genre, but it does a lot of things right and brings good innovations with it. The more aggressive style of the whole thing is exactly mine, I think the changed Gatlings are good, but I've never been a professional either, they probably see it differently. I also loved trying out combos in training mode and seeing how cool the animations are. I'm excited to see which fighters will expand the roster. Maybe Happy Chaos is coming? Guilty Gear: Strive (PS5) 9/10

Graphics - Sound - Multiplayer - Pros & Cons Varied characters More beginner-friendly than other fighting games High damage creates tension Clear, lavish animations Groovy soundtrack Smooth online matches thanks to rollback Netcode Long Loading time at the beginning No interaction in story mode More pros & cons ... Conclusion Guilty Gear Strive is a fighting hit for veterans and newbies alike.