Each character is unique and has his/her own fighting system. I can't see any weak points in the game. Graphics, gameplay, story, characters, music... all top notch.

This is a very combo friendly game, that can be frustrating when you're first learning to play. Expert players will create long combos which are impossible/almost impossible to escape. One mistake and your opponent will unleash a furious combo. For players new to this style of game, it can be frustrating, but you'll soon get used to it.

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This is a fantastic game. The amount of care and attention that went into its creation is constantly evident. There are three main things rare among fighters that this game does enormously well:

1) The fighting style of each and every character is creative and meticulously crafted to be unique and fun;

2) Despite that, the game is somehow finely balanced;

3) The deeper aspects of the game do have a steep learning curve, but enough shortcuts are etched into that hill that newbies should keep up admirably and enjoy learning.

How it manages to pull off all these things so well is a mystery to me. I would place BlazBlue high on a list of examples of game design as art.

The downside of these balancing acts is the relatively small number of characters, but personally I'm fine with that. There's no question that the game delivers enough meat to sink one's teeth into, more than this and it might be difficult to chew. The music and graphics are also very high quality.

Some flaws/cons (mostly nitpicking):

1) Some of the character designs don't quite hold up to the level of originality you'll find in their gameplay. You've probably seen a lot of these designs before (Cat Girl, future military dudes with sword guns, massive-breasted slut-in-glasses, GooAlienMonster that spits/summons stuff, Goth Lolita, etc.), but A) that's anime for you, and B) they're particularly well done cliches, and none of this has anything to do with gameplay.

2) I'm a bit of a puritan when it comes to this stuff, but for me some of the defense mechanics are needlessly complicated, which I think is directly related to...

3) The combo system is firmly into the mad waters of Marvel Vs Capcom 2. By which I mean, you can combo virtually anything at any time with few limits, and can actually get infinite combos with a single repeated button press in a lot of situations (try it in training mode). HOWEVER, the aforementioned defense mechanics, in all their complexity, give the defender plenty of options to prevent that from happening. It just strikes me as an oddly sloppy and needlessly convoluted system.

Anyway, those cons really are quite nitpicky and shouldn't influence your opinion. I can't recommend the game enough to fans of fighters. I write reviews very rarely, and glowing reviews like this almost never, but I just had to rave about this one in public. In other words, this isn't just good, it's a truly exceptional game. It will be a terrible pity if it isn't as popular as it deserves to be, Guilty Gear isn't quite the same pedigree as the competition.

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I got Blazblue almost a year after the initial release. I'm fed up with Street Fighter 4. I'm tired of being torn to shreds online because of the precise timing combos require and how anyone with a fightstick can whoop me because they aren't using an XBox controller and have access to a turbo button. And because they've been using Ryu since they first played Street Fighter 2. Hadoken then Shoruken when I jump. I get it.

Blazblue is everything Street Fighter 4 isn't, but in the best way possible. It's 2D. It's got a clean, anime style that brings it 's twelve characters to life. Twelve may not seem like many, all the characters are brand new and there are NO clones. It does take a LOT of time to really know each individual character's best combos, however. Combos people will teach you over the great online mode. There's no "Create a Lobby" going on here. Search for a match, and you appear in everyone else's searches. Connections are good (unless indicated other wise), and as of this review (May 2010), the online community continues to see new faces, as well as many veterans.

It's got a story mode with some pretty great english voice acting and a cool plot that actually manages to be pretty funny and even touching sometimes. The music. Sweet justice, the music is phenomenal. I don't know who writes this stuff, but as of now, this is the first game that I actually CARED came with a 2-disc soundtrack. It's on my iPod. No other game music is.

Frankly, if you're someone who's peeved that Super SF 4 costs 40 bucks, forget that. Come join in this brand new series that's been taking off both here and oversees. If you enjoyed games like Marvel VS. Capcom 2 like I did (sorry, never played Guilty Gear or whatever else these guys made...)... definitely give this one a try.

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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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This is not street fighter, and I think the comparisons to it are unfair. Street fighter is a different game and requires very different strategies regardless of the fact that they're in the same genre.

The story mode and character design will bother you if you can't stand anime. If you can get past that though, you're in for a treat.

BlazBlue is about combos, more combos and beautiful finishers. Every character plays VERY differently, they all have their strengths and weaknesses but they're not obvious when you first start playing. The battle system is based around using combinations of single buttons with different directions and rotations to accomplish different moves, however unlike street fighter, there's only a weak, medium, strong, drive (special), and grabs rather than dividing up kicks and punches. Blocking can aid you, but only up to a point.

The graphics are amazing. It uses 2D sprites and brilliant hand drawn backgrounds to create a feast for the eyes. Although I've heard very good things about the music, I find it fitting, but not mind-blowing. The voice acting is better than I expected of a game translated from japanese, and for a fighting game really. Because the game is so story intensive this helps out a lot.

The story is very complex and the story mode has you examine it from 12 different perspectives, but only lets you progress through to the true ending by playing through all of them in whatever order you choose. It's very interesting, makes the single player experience very deep, and really gives a sense of the world and the characters' interrelationships.

Arcade mode is pretty standard, ten stages with the last one putting you up against a powered up version of one of the characters. It increases in difficulty well, and playing through with each character unlocks their astral finishers. Score attack functions like a survival mode, and since I have yet to beat it, I'm not sure what it results in, but it's a great mode for those looking for a challenge.

The online mode is excellent. It's lag free, allows for you to see everyone's rank, preferred characters, as well as including a leveling system to match you with people of (sometimes) equal skill.

BlazBlue has a lot of value, particularly at the prices I've seen for it recently. It has a deep and involving single player experience with a story you'll actually care about, as well as being great for multiplayer, either online or at home. If you have any interest in fighting games this game is a necessity for your collection.

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If you looking for a good fighting game, look some place else. I honestly would be more entertained with Street Fighter 2 for the Super Nintendo.....

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