BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is 2v2 tag team fighting game starring characters from 4 different franchises: BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena, Under Night In-Birth and RWBY. To be honest, ArcSys has done a great thing here; they have gathered multiple franchises and formed a big crossover fighting game. But is it good? Well… if you want detailed explanation, continue reading and if you just want the TLDR version, skip to the end.

The game's story is non-canon. Multiple characters from all of the franchises included in this game, suddenly find themselves in a strange place. A voice tells them that they are now in some kind of tournament and tasks them to take a certain item of theirs to the goal to be able to go back home. But in the process of doing so, they might get attacked by others and have to defend themselves by only using tag battles. To be honest, the story is not long, engaging or deep, but it's fun and enjoyable, has lots of references to other games, and also the English dub is back and it's very good! The only problem I have with the story, is the portraits they used for VN sections. I mean, I'm not saying the developers had to deliver BlazBlue quality for VN scenes of this game too, but couldn't they come up with a better way than using the very same pictures they used for advertising and character select screen, and adding different facial expressions to them? Couldn't they use the same portraits that were in UNIEL, BB and P4A? Sure, the styles for those portraits are different, but it would have been better that way. I simply don't like that for example, Hyde summons The Insulator while it's still in his hands.

Enough ranting about the story. Now about the characters. The choice of characters in this game is questionable. We have some characters nobody thought would be in this game (Nu instead of Lambda? Really?) and there are a lot of fan favorite characters missing (Where's Bang?). Needless to say, the DLCs in this game are not handled very well. Half of the roster is locked behind a paywall (only 20 characters can be used in the standard version) and what makes matters worse, is that some of the DLC characters like Kanji or Carmine are in the story mode! Other than that, I know I WILL get a lot of hate for this, but why RWBY? Why not Fate? Or Arcana Heart? Or Melty Blood? Or even Double Dragon? ArcSys owns DD now so why not? I would have bought this game day 1 if Billy, Jimmy, Marian or even Abobo & Skullmageddon were in it!
These new characters also make one of the game's flaws more visible: the sprite quality. Just start the game with a high screen resolution setting, go into a match against RWBY characters and you can clearly see what I mean. Except for RWBY characters, none of the character sprites in this game are new. So they don't look good at all and in case of BB characters, it gets worse.

Enough of that, let's talk about the gameplay. This time, the control scheme is nearly similar to the Stylish combat style from GGXRD and BBCF. Each character has 2 different combo strings by constantly tapping A or B button. You can also switch between the keys mid-combo, but the results don't change. The C button is used for "Clash"; an attack that has different properties for each character and upon contact, allows you (and your tag partner if available) to do a cinematic attack and cause a lot of damage to your enemy. It can also be used to perform powered up versions of your special attack which uses a bit of your energy bar. And finally, the D button is used to change your character, so your switched character has a chance to recover its red health. There's also a P button which is used to call your tag character to attack the opponent, and the type of attack differs depending on which direction you are holding while pressing the button.
I don't get into the details here, because there's a lot to talk about and I don't have a lot of time to spend writing. Overall, while the combat system is dumbed down and I know why they went this way with it, it surprisingly has a nice depth to it. There's a lot to do in this game. You can change characters in middle of a combo, you can use both characters to attack, you can do a Distortion move and then bring in your other character for a second one. The amount of stuff you can do in this game is surprising and watching the chaos unfold in front of your eyes, is very entertaining.
But while this chaos is entertaining, it lacks something big. This excitement and entertainment is only temporary, because the player is not the person in control, the player is not the person doing those amazing combos, it's mostly the game itself. We are just button mashing and all of the excitement after finding a big combo and performing extraordinary moves is gone. Therefore, even those who like simple controls might stop playing it after some time. What makes this worse is the way some mechanics are tweaked. Now, not only characters always run/dash while moving forward, but they also dash-in before performing a grab! Seriously, why there's a running sequence before grabbing the opponent? Why make them automated? Why eliminate even the simplest of challenges?

What makes the matter worse is the amount of content this game has. This game is very poor in terms of offline content and replay value. The game lacks a proper arcade mode and only features these modes: Episode (The story mode which is VERY short), Versus, Training, Survival, Tactics (Tutorials & Challenges) and Online. And guess what? If you're not planning to go online (which is region locked to your download server for some reason), you can finish every single player content this game has in FOUR HOURS!

Also, the money you get from the matches is only used to buy colors and multiplayer stuff (Lobby Avatars, Profile Icons, etc.) since Gallery does not have extra purchasable content in it (like unlockable arts and music tracks) and only consists of story pictures, character renders and opening/credits movies. A massive downgrade compared to other BlazBlue games.

In case you are reading this Shini, I'm so sorry, but I have to talk about this as well. The game might suffer from certain performance problems on some systems. For example, you might see a massive frame drop upon entering the character select screen (which also happened in Central Fiction and I believe that is because of character pictures) or the HUD "might" impact the performance by 10-20 fps on some systems. Also, you cannot set your desired fullscreen resolution in-game and have to download a mod in order to do it.


TL;DR
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is not a bad game; It's fast, fluid and entertaining. But in the end, enjoying it depends on players' taste. If this is your first time trying a fighting game or you don't want complex mechanics, then you will have a lot of fun. But if you prefer technical controls and the same amount of content and quality that was available in the past BlazBlue titles, you will be disappointed.

Note: I played the game during the EVO 2018 free weekend period.

"Updated on August 10. Reason: Slightly edited some parts & fixed some typos."
"Updated on August 15. Reason: Slightly edited some parts, provided some extra info about roster & added a new section about sprite quality."
"Updated on August 18. Reason: Fixed some typos and grammatical errors."
"Updated on August 31. Reason: Added a note about the region locked online mode."

[code] [url=https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades/] Follow my Steam Curator page for more game recommendations [/url] [/code] BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is 2v2 tag team fighting game starring characters from 4 different franchises: BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena, Under Night In-Birth and RWBY. To be honest, ArcSys has done a great thing here; they have gathered multiple franchises and formed a big crossover fighting game. But is it good? Well… if you want detailed explanation, continue reading and if you just want the TLDR version, skip to the end. The game's story is non-canon. Multiple characters from all of the franchises included in this game, suddenly find themselves in a strange place. A voice tells them that they are now in some kind of tournament and tasks them to take a certain item of theirs to the goal to be able to go back home. But in the process of doing so, they might get attacked by others and have to defend themselves by only using tag battles. To be honest, the story is not long, engaging or deep, but it's fun and enjoyable, has lots of references to other games, and also the English dub is back and it's very good! The only problem I have with the story, is the portraits they used for VN sections. I mean, I'm not saying the developers had to deliver BlazBlue quality for VN scenes of this game too, but couldn't they come up with a better way than using the very same pictures they used for advertising and character select screen, and adding different facial expressions to them? Couldn't they use the same portraits that were in UNIEL, BB and P4A? Sure, the styles for those portraits are different, but it would have been better that way. I simply don't like that for example, Hyde summons The Insulator while it's still in his hands. Enough ranting about the story. Now about the characters. The choice of characters in this game is questionable. We have some characters nobody thought would be in this game (Nu instead of Lambda? Really?) and there are a lot of fan favorite characters missing (Where's Bang?). Needless to say, the DLCs in this game are not handled very well. Half of the roster is locked behind a paywall (only 20 characters can be used in the standard version) and what makes matters worse, is that some of the DLC characters like Kanji or Carmine are in the story mode! Other than that, I know I WILL get a lot of hate for this, but why RWBY? Why not Fate? Or Arcana Heart? Or Melty Blood? Or even Double Dragon? ArcSys owns DD now so why not? I would have bought this game day 1 if Billy, Jimmy, Marian or even Abobo & Skullmageddon were in it! These new characters also make one of the game's flaws more visible: the sprite quality. Just start the game with a high screen resolution setting, go into a match against RWBY characters and you can clearly see what I mean. Except for RWBY characters, none of the character sprites in this game are new. So they don't look good at all and in case of BB characters, it gets worse. Enough of that, let's talk about the gameplay. This time, the control scheme is nearly similar to the Stylish combat style from GGXRD and BBCF. Each character has 2 different combo strings by constantly tapping A or B button. You can also switch between the keys mid-combo, but the results don't change. The C button is used for "Clash"; an attack that has different properties for each character and upon contact, allows you (and your tag partner if available) to do a cinematic attack and cause a lot of damage to your enemy. It can also be used to perform powered up versions of your special attack which uses a bit of your energy bar. And finally, the D button is used to change your character, so your switched character has a chance to recover its red health. There's also a P button which is used to call your tag character to attack the opponent, and the type of attack differs depending on which direction you are holding while pressing the button. I don't get into the details here, because there's a lot to talk about and I don't have a lot of time to spend writing. Overall, while the combat system is dumbed down and I know why they went this way with it, it surprisingly has a nice depth to it. There's a lot to do in this game. You can change characters in middle of a combo, you can use both characters to attack, you can do a Distortion move and then bring in your other character for a second one. The amount of stuff you can do in this game is surprising and watching the chaos unfold in front of your eyes, is very entertaining. But while this chaos is entertaining, it lacks something big. This excitement and entertainment is only temporary, because the player is not the person in control, the player is not the person doing those amazing combos, it's mostly the game itself. We are just button mashing and all of the excitement after finding a big combo and performing extraordinary moves is gone. Therefore, even those who like simple controls might stop playing it after some time. What makes this worse is the way some mechanics are tweaked. Now, not only characters always run/dash while moving forward, but they also dash-in before performing a grab! Seriously, why there's a running sequence before grabbing the opponent? Why make them automated? Why eliminate even the simplest of challenges? What makes the matter worse is the amount of content this game has. This game is very poor in terms of offline content and replay value. The game lacks a proper arcade mode and only features these modes: Episode (The story mode which is VERY short), Versus, Training, Survival, Tactics (Tutorials & Challenges) and Online. And guess what? If you're not planning to go online (which is region locked to your download server for some reason), you can finish every single player content this game has in [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aksrcv380GM] FOUR HOURS! [/url] Also, the money you get from the matches is only used to buy colors and multiplayer stuff (Lobby Avatars, Profile Icons, etc.) since Gallery does not have extra purchasable content in it (like unlockable arts and music tracks) and only consists of story pictures, character renders and opening/credits movies. A massive downgrade compared to other BlazBlue games. In case you are reading this Shini, I'm so sorry, but I have to talk about this as well. The game might suffer from certain performance problems on some systems. For example, you might see a massive frame drop upon entering the character select screen (which also happened in Central Fiction and I believe that is because of character pictures) or the HUD "might" impact the performance by 10-20 fps on some systems. Also, you cannot set your desired fullscreen resolution in-game and have to download a mod in order to do it. TL;DR BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is not a bad game; It's fast, fluid and entertaining. But in the end, enjoying it depends on players' taste. If this is your first time trying a fighting game or you don't want complex mechanics, then you will have a lot of fun. But if you prefer technical controls and the same amount of content and quality that was available in the past BlazBlue titles, you will be disappointed. Note: I played the game during the EVO 2018 free weekend period. "Updated on August 10. Reason: Slightly edited some parts & fixed some typos." "Updated on August 15. Reason: Slightly edited some parts, provided some extra info about roster & added a new section about sprite quality." "Updated on August 18. Reason: Fixed some typos and grammatical errors." "Updated on August 31. Reason: Added a note about the region locked online mode."