Thank you Arc System Works for sending us this game to review!

As a casual fighting game fan as well as one who enjoys anime, Guilty Gear is a series that I've kept my eye on for quite some time. When they were on deep discount I was able to pick up most of the older entries over the years, but I never got around to spending significant time with them. So when I was given the opportunity to review this game, I made sure to rectify that mistake!

Guilty Gear is a fairly unique fighting game series, in that it's a skillful blend of fighting games and anime - and the deep, complicated lore is certainly testament to that. You see, not only is there an interesting cast of characters to choose from while playing against your friends locally or online, but there is a full-blown anime built into the game, with an incredibly complex and deep lore. In order to prepare for playing this game, I watched a YouTube series, called 'GUILTY GEAR LORE: Heaven Or Hell' from WoolieVersus. (

Once you complete the nearly five hour story recap, you are left with an equally-long Story mode in Guilty Gear -Strive- itself. This story picks up where the events of Guilty Gear Xrd -Relevator- Rev. 2 left off. (Yes, the names get somewhat complicated.)

While most games might have cut scenes of various kinds, Guilty Gear -Strive- really takes it up a notch. Each character and environment is fully rendered in immaculate detail - to such an extent that you might not realize at first that it's actually not a hand-drawn anime that you're watching, but a fully-rendered anime universe. Yes, that means that as you increase the game's rendering resolution, everything looks sharper and sharper. It's like getting the HD Blu-ray version of an anime in the box, with the 4K or even 8K version being a video card or monitor upgrade away! I have never seen anime-style art look this sharp before. My wife would walk by and comment on how incredible this game looks, and I can't help but enthusiastically agree. And while in the combat portion of the title, rather than the story, the exact same models and sometimes set pieces are use - just from a different perspective. I have never seen anime art does this well in a game before, and this game sets the bar incredibly high.

Amazingly enough, the graphics do scale down fairly well with GPU power; if you need to run it at lower details on a weaker system, you absolutely can. I will say that the visual quality does suffer quite a bit though. Nothing comes for free. On even Intel integrated graphics, it can be made to be playable, and there is even the option to scale down to the hilarious looking 0% rendering resolution if you wish - it looks worse than a Game Boy Advance game at that point. What I found was that with the latest Intel drivers on my GPD Win Max I would have odd semi-random slowdowns during gameplay, no matter what the graphical setting. Despite that it was otherwise playable, but I would not recommend playing online without a dedicated graphics card. There is a known bug when playing at 4K that slows down the game for both players during a Counter; you wouldn't want behavior like this during other parts of the fight, too. It didn't work on a slower system, like my GPD Win 2, no matter the settings. Unofficial Linux support via Steam's Proton compatibility layer is almost there - it launches and seems to work, but currently crashes often. I suspect it may run quite well in the future once those bugs are figured out.

As for the battle mechanics themselves, I'll explain what I can, but this game is as deep as you want it to be, like these often are. To make a quick summary, there are five attack buttons: light punch and kick, medium and strong slash, and a unique dust attack. During combat, you can run, jump, dash, airdash, counter attack, and more. Each of these mechanics are well explained in the Mission mode, which I'll explain in more detail later. While I would love to expound on how each attack style works, I think I'll leave it to said Mission mode - there's just a whole lot to games like this, and Guilty Gear -Strive- is no exception.

As a side-by-side 2D (well technically 2.5D, as the characters are 3D rendered, but it's 2D as far as the action goes) fighter, you choose from one of fifteen warriors in one of several game modes, and fight against one of the other fifteen foes, hoping to defeat them in hand-to-hand (or weapon to weapon) combat. Game modes are separated into Offline, Network, and Story modes.

Story is the simplest to explain, as there isn't actually any gameplay; it's just the mode where you watch the story unfold before you in beautifully rendered glory. This mode looks fantastic, and is easily up to the quality of a modern anime. There is also a 'GG World' mode, where you can catch up on the 'Glossary', 'Correlation' or 'Chronology' of the Guilty Gear universe. It starts back in 1945 with the creation of the United Nations, continues through 1999 where electronics were banned and magic was discovered, and it goes through to 2187, which is when the plot of Guilty Gear -Strive- takes place.

The main Offline modes are where the single player and local multiplayer (two controllers) game types are. In '1-Player', there is an Arcade, VS CPU, and Survival mode. In all of these modes, you fight against a computer-controlled opponent. In Arcade, you choose once character to play as, and then keep fighting against on opponent after another until you beat all of the quasi-scripted opponents. The arcade mode is kind of basic here; there is a little bit of banter before and sometimes after fights, but really there isn't much; most of the story is in 'Story' mode, so it's pretty much just fight a bunch of guys, then credits. The VS CPU mode is fairly self-explanatory; you choose the parameters for the battle (Arcade is preset) like difficulty, number of rounds, and time limit, and choose your and the CPU's character. Survival mode is more or less what it sounds like; you pick a character, and keep fighting over and over against progressively more difficult enemies to get a high score on the online rankings.

The 2-Player mode is fairly self explanatory; you play against a friend sitting next to you with a second controller/fighting stick. (Keyboard is supported for one player, if you are masochistic enough to play this game that way.) It's not unlike the VS CPU mode noted above, except it's against a human player.

The Dojo has three useful training modes available. The first is fairly basic, and is the 'Tutorial' mode. It just walks you through the basics of combat, and leaves advanced techniques to the other modes like 'Mission'. As I mentioned before, this mode is where the game gives you specific techniques to train up and master before going on to the next one. There is a ton of content in just this section - they really want to make sure you understand how all of the mechanics work. This can be extremely helpful, and you can earn medals for your training completion. If you want to succeed against difficult opponents online, spending a lot of time here is highly recommended. The final Dojo is 'Training'; it's a fairly basic beat up the training dummy mode, where you can practice all of your attacks as much as you like.

If you have friends who love this game close by, then you may get plenty out of the Offline modes. If not, the Network modes are quite impressive, and likely to entertain you for quite some time. It helps a lot that the Guilty Gear community, but -Strive- in particular, is really active. There are hundreds (or even thousands!) of players right now soon after launch. And even better than that, this game uses a really intelligent ranking system to make sure that like-skilled players will enjoy their time playing.

When you start playing online, you create an online 'Avatar' that represents you in the lobby. Your character looks rather simple and blocky; some might say even voxel (or Minecraft) like. You can customize how they look, dress them up, and unlock more customizations via fishing that costs you W$ (in-game currency) that you can earn by playing online or by completing Missions in the Dojo. The results of fishing are random, and unlocking everything will likely take quite a long time.

Once you create your Avatar and join a region, you are then assigned to a Tower level. This level represents your skill level - basically some formula related to your win/loss ratio, as well as your opponent's skill level. You can always challenge those above you, but never below. This keeps the really skilled players from pounding us weaklings - though I imagine that could be gamed to an extent for a while, but not forever. Regardless, all of the battles I fought felt fair, and I won or lost on relatively close margins, except for one guy that I chose to stop fighting against after several attempts. You can just walk up to an avatar and challenge them, and they can choose to accept or deny their request. I found plenty of great opponents, and the netcode is truly excellent - as expected of the rather famous 'rollback' netcode that fighting game enthusiasts love so much. I now understand why - even though I found that several frames were rolled back while playing, it never felt unnatural - it was a great experience. Online on Guilty Gear -Strive- has a thriving community, plenty of reasons to come back for more, and excellent netcode. What more could you ask for?

On top of the excellent graphics, action/fighting gameplay, and netcode, there is also some pretty great music and voice acting. You can choose English or Japanese audio, and I recognized several of the English voice actors - they are all excellent. The music is typical Guilty Gear - that is to say, lots of hard rock and metal. Some has some gentler tunes and singing, with others having a fair amount of screams. Either way, it's all high quality, though perhaps not to everyone's tastes.

Morally, this series has some pitfalls, and some thematic elements to be aware of. For example, the tagline 'Heaven or Hell' is spoken before virtually every battle, and seems to imply a meaning for an uncertain future. Technology was generally eliminated from society, with various forms of magic replacing it, and eventually being used not only in the classical magic sense of special powers, but also as a form of energy replacement for technology. The idea of a 'Universal Will' is present, and though one may think it relates to some kind of god, it actually does not. (To get into any more detail would be spoilers.) 'God' used as a reference or expletive are both used, though. Both upper case and lower case 'g' is used depending on the context.

Gears are nearly immortal being created through genetic manipulation, and hold immense power. These creations play a large role throughout the current and past lore of the franchise. So does a quasi heaven-like place called the Backyard, which is almost like an abstraction of the universe that offers its inhabitants the ability to manipulate what goes on inside it. These intersections between the Backyard and the real, material world plays a major part in the ongoing story of Guilty Gear.

Violence is a given, both in the actual combat, as well as in the Story mode. There is some blood, especially in certain scenes in Story mode where a character is stabbed or shot, though it's appropriate to the scene. Weapons, both physical and magical are used often, including some of rather dark origins. A few characters are vampires, and have inhuman powers (and lifespan) as a result. Assassins and other less savory folk are a part of life in the 22nd century.

Typical PG-13 language is used, with words like the aforementioned 'h*ll' (sometimes used as a curse), 'sh*t', 'b*tch', 'p*ss', and 'd*mn', sometimes used in conjunction with god. (Almost always lower-case 'g' with used with 'd*mn'.) Humorously, one of the main characters, Sol Badguy (I absolutely love that name!) wears a bandanna that says 'Rock You', but the 'Ro' is usually covered up - so I wasn't quite sure what it said until I looked it up!

As for the female characters, their level or 'coverage' or sex appeal greatly varies per character. Some, like Millia, are covered just fine - though are certainly curvy. Others like May have shorts a bit shorter than this dad would prefer, but are otherwise also covered just fine. Others, like I-No and Giovanna expose significant amounts of busty 'assets' - with lots of cleavage on display. Some also show a fair amount of midriff. A couple of characters have love interests, but I don't recall anything too bad on that side of the house.

Guilty Gear -Strive-, if you haven't figured it out already, incredibly impressed me. It's graphically incredible, plays wonderfully, and continued to impress my entire time playing it. Other than the 4K counter slowdown bug mentioned earlier, the only goofy issue I experienced is common to everyone right now - that is to say that starting the game takes close to a minute sometimes, as connecting to the servers when first starting the game can take longer than I'd prefer. Beyond that? Barring appropriateness issues, this is certainly one of the biggest fighting game releases in recent memory - and one I can most enthusiastically recommend. If you really enjoy one-on-one fighting games, you really need to take a close look at Guilty Gear -Strive-. This one's something special.