I got this game in the mail 12 hours ago and writing this review is literally the first time I've stopped playing it since. I'm also eating, something I've neglected to do for...huh, about 12 hours. Yes, this game is forget-to-eat good. Its a time travel game, where you start playing and the next time the clock catches your eye, hours have passed when it seemed like only one at most. This is due in part to the speed of the matches. Each round, or 'rebel' for some reason, packs a lot of fighting into it. The pace is frantic but never seems out of control.

The visuals are just as insane. Anime-style fighters doing fast, fluid battle in front of realistic backgrounds with details everywhere in both architecture and animation looks as cool as it sounds if not cooler. A lot of people say its like Guilty Gear. Well, I'm not a veteran of the series, but having played XX Accent Core, I would call BlazBlue a mix of it and Darkstalkers. In other words, its awesome.

If I have to make a complaint, its that not every character is pick up and play. Some have short range, some have drives that are more complex to use than a more basic attack, some are better in the air while others have a distinct disadvantage there. Its balancing and makes them more unique, but it takes some getting used to. Also, the story parts of story mode take kind of a long time and sometimes you can choose something you didn't want to while skipping over it.

Should you buy it? Yes. Oh, God yes. You're so close right now. In just a few clicks, all the goodness could be yours! I called it a time-travel game, but its more than that. Its an I-know-what-I'm-doing-tomorrow game.

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wow, great game. tight controls. amazing graphics. good for newbies or experienced players. great story mode and challenging players online. everything you would expect from a great 2-d fighting game.

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Is a great game and is NOT like Guilty Gear, is like Sengoku Basara for the PS2 made by Arc Systems for Capcom in Japan

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this game is so beautifully crafted. the characters are intriguing. the background is amazingly done in 3D. beats SF and Marvel vs. Capcom to the floor!

i do wish the supermoves were crazier thou.

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I have had this game for a bout a week now and all I can say is this game is FRESH. Its an awesome testament to 2D fighters and this game alone makes the point that 2D fighters are not fading out or going anywhere fast. I mean the sequel to this game was announced and is coming out this summer!

Now, I have been playing Street Fighter 4 since it was released and I needed a change from all those Ryu & Ken clones and frame counting. Street Fighters great and all but I missed the fast paced games that relied on reflex and knowing when to use your characters moves precisely. BlazBlue delivers on all fronts.

BlazBlue is a spiritual successor to Guilty Gear on the PS2. It feels familiar if you have played those games. The action is fast and unlike Street Fighter all the characters are UNIQUE and not one of them has the same move list. Now, theres a variety in character play styles but to let you know, there's only 12 characters. Not bad, but good thing the sequel is adding more characters. The characters are very memorable and I'm sure there's one every one will love.

The graphics are gorgeous!!! Theirs so many effects flying every where and seeing them in HD makes you go WOW! The 2D aspect is awesome to see because the animation for the characters are fluid. The characters look so awesome that you are going to want to try them all in training mode just to see how they move. Theres no complaints in the graphics.

Game play wise the game is great. This game can be picked up by non hardcore fighters and still be fun. Every character has about 5 to 8 special moves and they are very doable. You have a light,medium,heavy, and Drive attacks which are very unique to each character. You have 2 finishing moves and when pulled off have awesome effects. One finishing move does great damage while the other special KO's you completely. Now whats awesome about the excess ability of the special moves ( those would be like the fire balls & uppercuts is SF4) are assigned to the right control stick. You also have 1 finishing move assigned as well. So you have 1 Finishing move and 2 special attacks assigned to the right stick. Just move the direction of the stick (expl. right,left,up,or down) and perform the corresponding move. For the hardcore players there the normal tradition method of doing special attacks like Street Fighter which is good cause NOT ALL of the special attacks can be assigned to the right stick.

Online play is awesome. Theres ranked matches and player matches. You gain rank points not matter which type of match you play which is nice. Another cool feature is that you have the option to SAVE A REPLAY and upload it for all to see! You might have a question about lag. Almost non existent. I RARELY get lag and I play online a lot. I gave the fun factor 4 STARS because it involves the online play. The games has been out awhile so say your a beginner online so your ranked 1 it will be hard to find some one that has a low rank to fight against. This is happening in my case. I'm ranked 6 and I haven't played any one thats the same rank, every body has been higher ranked than me. Blaz Blue isn't an unbalanced fighter ( uh hum like SAGAT in SF4) so it really depends on how well you know your character and play with them. Thats really my only gripe.

If your a hardcore fighter or just a casual one with some interest in this game, I say GRAB IT! Its $30 now and its well worth the price for a 2D gem like this. Is it better than Street Fighter 4? Its a fresh experience and on a WHOLE OTHER LEVEL!!

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Well done game. Tight fighting system, responsive controls. Match lobby system could use a little work. If you like Guilty Gear (particularly XX, not Isuka), you'll really get into this game.

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This is great 2D fast paced fighting game. Those who likes fighting games will love this,especially if you're like Anime.

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I already reviewed the Limited Edition of this game but I believe this game is so great I had to review it again. First of all thank heavens for Street Fighter IV. Because of the success of that game, (yeah, go get that one too if you haven't already), the 2-D fighting genre has been revitalized. Anyway, back to the review, there are many elements to BlazBlue that make it such a great fighter. So if you wanna know why I gave this game 5 stars, read on!

First thing is the diverse cast of characters. Each character in BlazBlue plays completely different. In some games, if you've mastered one character, you've mastered half of them. This is not the case here. Aksys accomplishes this with an interesting mechanic called the Drive System. Each character's drive can be performed by simply pressing a button. This simple action opens up a wealth of possibilities. For one character, it enables you to freeze them. Another character's drive allows them to control the wind, giving you further control over your movements and even your projectiles movements. Yet another's character's will drain their opponents life and... well...you get the picture! You WILL find a character you fall in love with! I play mainly with the general who freezes and the kid vampire who controls wind. Which brings me to another point. Not only do the characters play differently they LOOK completely different too. The characters designs are completely over the top, thought not in a way which will repulse you. You do have some insane characters though. There is a scientist whose degenerated into a goo of insects, an asian doctor with huge boobs, a cat girl, and so on. Really the character designers had no problem thinking out of the box.

The second reason I love this game are the fighting mechanics themselves. BlazBlue does a couple of things to further differentiate itself from other games in it's genre. First, there is the combo system. Unlike SFIV, which to me felt like most of the combos were scripted, Blue's combo system encourages expirementation. Each combo relies on a stun value each hit produces. If you can get another move out before the character recovers, then you can create a combo. If you hit a character and create a "counter", which the game will announce, then the stun value is extended even more, letting you create some other combos not otherwise possible. Although there are some bread and butter combos, I was able to come up with some pretty awesome combos on my own, including some which takes more than half damage. I also enjoyed Blue's defense system. Instead of just holding back, you have the option of adding a barrier, which pushes back your opponents from you. You can also hit back at the moment an opponent attacks you. This gives you a shorter recovery time, allowing for some counters. And finally you have the barrier burst. The barrier burst drains all your barrier gauge, but stops any combo and pushes your opponent across the screen. This is very handy for stopping those insanely damaging combos, but leaves you in a "danger" state where you can no longer use your barrier, and you take about 25% more damage for the rest of the match.

The graphics in this game are simply phenomenal, and will appeal to those who appreciate anime and just great art in general. The characters are all high res 2-D sprites and beautifully animated. The backgrounds are combination of 2-D and 3-D and look great. As far as the music, many people have fallen in love with blue's soundtrack but apart from a few numbers, was mostly forgettable for me. As long as it didn't distract from the game, I was good. I did enjoy the sound effects though.

Finally, BlazBlue excels in it's online component. There is occasional lag but this is mostly limited to the introduction of each match. The actual matches themselves are almost flawless. Blue also lets you record your matches, and download other user's matches. A cool thing is that these are not huge video files. I believe it works by the game recording all the controller inputs, and then replaying them, thus effectively recreating the match. I'm not sure if this has been done before but I thought this was pretty clever, since this takes a minimal amount of space in your hard drive.

Wow, I could go on and on and on but I would easily double the length of this review. Blaz has multiple game modes, it looks great, and most importantly, it's just plain fun! Do yourself a favor and buy this game! Highly recommended!

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I stayed away from this game cause it was the same makers of the guilty gear seris and I played every one of them and have the blisters and headache to prove it. The first thing I notice is that the learning curve in Blazblu is based on the characters and not the AI. Also to pull off some of the more diffcult moves have been reduced greatly. And the action has been dialed all the way up. There has been some serious balance in the game. Bottomline is all the problems that made the gulity gear series hard to play or even hanging on to has been fixed in this game. And one thing that I notice that was a huge surprise was that when I was fighting the final character I didn't feel "cheated" the way I did in guilty gear. Look I'm not bashing guilty gear in no way if anything that series made me a better fighter in street fighter and KOF. But this title is what happens when you take what works and what doesn't and fix it. Not just repackage it with a few fixed bugs and paint job. Bottomline get this title you will not be disappointed in it. BTW! The reason I picked it up my cousin told me that it was alot better and after playing this title I feel this is a strong contender aganist SF4 in 2d fighters. KOF just fell off for me.

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This game is incredibly fun and rewarding if you take the time to master your character, will not go much into depth as the other reviews, but i will point one thing out the other reviewers left out, the online. Be prepared to get your ass handed to you as most of the players online just use 3 characters that are kinda unbalanced and cheap. One of them is a robot girl named V-13 which you can learn easily and just spam 3 moves over and over and over again, which is really annoying and really ruins the game for me sometimes because i have to resort to using a cheap character as well just to beat that character. I know I will be bashed for this but think about it, can you really beat v-13 or noel with hakumen?? I really like to see that, well anyways if you tend to play on a regular basis you will be okay, you been warned.

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I loved the Guilty Gear series more than any other fighting game franchise, and this is coming from someone who played Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown and others when they first came out, and as each series got a new title. Fighting is one of my two favorite genres of games (the other being puzzle), and even with the likes of Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Last Blade 2, Capcom vs SNK 2...Guilty Gear X2 is easily my favorite title. So when I found out that BlazBlue was to be the successor of that franchise, I got excited. The graphics were incredible, character designs looked great, gameplay was nearly identical to GG, and it had the same, deep story mode that the later GG games had. What was there to complain about? In short, nothing really, but BlazBlue just makes me wish Guilty Gear X3 had come out instead because of how similar it is.

BlazBlue plays wonderfully, and I was able to get right into the game. You have 4 standard attacks- light, medium and heavy attacks, along with the Drive attack. Drive is your main special move attack that can also be used for different regular special attacks (quarter circle motions and all that). It varies for each character, like freezing the opponent, controlling wind, shooting forward, magnetizing the opponent, etc. Barrier Bursts, like the Burst feature from Guilty Gear, are used to get out of tight situations. Say your opponent has you stuck in a huge combo- use the Burst and you'll break out of it, shoot them away, and have a chance to recover and get back to the action. Everyone has Distortion Drives too (again, like Overdrives in GG), and some of them are just plain gorgeous to see in motion. Instant Kills are here too, but you can't use them as freely as those in GG. See how similar this game is to Guilty Gear with how much I reference back to it? But the game's fun, and anyone with experience playing fighting games will more than likely love BlazBlue. You also gotta love the characters, like Taokaka, a kind of cat/human hybrid with a wacked out face, that only cares about food and has a great nickname for Litchi. You'll probably spend a couple of hours just enjoying seeing how the characters animate and fight. I know I did.

BlazBlue has a lot of different gameplay modes. You have the regular Arcade mode, where you go through the game as one character, taking out all the others with a little bit of story going on in the process. There's a Story mode that you can play through multiple paths with every character (kind of a Choose Your Own Adventure deal), and you'll need to play through each character's story multiple times in order to get 100%. There's also Score Attack, Training and Replay Theater...but then there's multiplayer. Trust me when I say that it's a thousand times better than the mess that was Guilty Gear X2 #Reload's online mode. You earn experience that ups your rank, and player cards show things like which character the player uses the most and more. I never had any problems with lag during gameplay but there is a little bit right before the match starts- the part when the fighters appear on-screen and when the announcer is saying her usual lines. Everything ran smooth immediately when the match started. And for trophy junkies, there are quite a few for BlazBlue, and a couple are very tricky to get.

So with all the great things in the game, why the 4 star rating? Honestly, this is more of a 4.5 star rating, but I had to round down in this case. BlazBlue is so similar to Guilty Gear, that is almost comes off as a rip-off of the series, despite being made by the same company. Many of the characters here are practically characters from GG but with different designs. Iron Tager = Potemkin, Jin = Ky, Ragna = Sol, Carl = Bridget, Arakune = Eddie, and so on. Heck, even a lot of their moves are nearly the same as their GG counterparts'. I respect them for making a new fighting game franchise, but if they had done things a bit differently, I wouldn't have felt so...well, I don't know how to describe how I feel. Again, don't get me wrong, because I love this game, but it's a little too close to GG for my tastes. But if you never played GG before, then that shouldn't be a problem.

And you know what? There's an upgraded BlazBlue title coming out in a few months, similar to Super Street Fighter 4 being the upgraded version of regular SF4. I'm hearing that it'll come out between July and October, but it's not official still. The game will feature a few more characters, re-balancing the cast, and probably a few more moves for everyone. But while BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is so cheap now, you really should pick it up so you can have a head start on the new version when that comes out. Hopefully if this franchise does well, we can get GGX3...and a true sequel for BlazBlue too :p.

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I really love this game. The graphic's are great, the voice acting is great, the onlineplay is great and the story mode is great. There is nothing bad I can say about this game. I play online on this game every day. This game never gets boring to me. I play people online and its very fun. Some of them cheat but I still have fun playing. My favorite characters in this game are Ragna, Noel and Jin. All the characters are Awsome but those are my favorite ones. If you don't have this game go and buy it. It's really worth it.

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aah, not my kind of game. Not much about this game that I liked. Even if it's quite (quite) the same, I still prefer Guilty Gear above Blazblue.

I'm quite sure that this is just my opinion and my opinion only. And that it rly should get better comments, but perhaps not from me. I'm too bitter :d And it's not fair to compare this game with a serie/game I truly favor!

Try this game and I rly hope you'll like it! And it's a very good chance that you will! My friends like Blazblue :) Have fun!

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Having grown up and playing the Street Fighter games as well as being introduced to the Guilty Gear games this newest game from the Aksys makers is simply incredible. If you've played the GG games than the basic game play and storylines for this game shouldn't come as to much of a surprise to you and while there might not be as many playable characters to choose from like Tekken 6 or Street Fighter IV the characters they do have are very entertaining to play as well as the special moves and combos you can unleash with them. The characters like Tekken 6 and SF Iv have their own stories you can unlock but for the most part it's mostly meant to be what it is a fighting game, the one thing I truly loved about this game is like SF IV you can have the characters voices either with the English actors/actresses or the Japanese voice cast to listen to which I truly appreciate since there are some games that while the original voice cast were probably very good the English voices turned out to be just awful to even listen too. The added extras are very decent and for the price of the game very reasonable as well so if you're a game fan of the Tekken or Street Fighter Universe and are looking for something new to play here's a very good choice to try out....

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