BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger

“In the 13th Hierarchical City, Kagutsuchi, The Librarium regulates the amazing power of ‘Ars Magus’, a fusion of magic and technology. Currently they are after a wanted criminal named Ragna the Bloodedge, also known as the ‘Grim Reaper’, who wants to destroy The Librarium. Due to Ragna possessing a powerful form of Ars Magus known as the Azure Grimoire, people ar and wide are aft er not only his bounty, but his grimoire as well. This is where our story begins…”

The misspelling of “far” and extra space in “after” are the same as in the packaging for the game box in the Limited Edition. MS Word is also telling me that the second to last sentence is a sentence fragment. In either case it seems like a long-winded way of setting up “guy wants to destroy evil government; rival and random people want his bounty” for the back of the box.

One day my brother asked me how the powers for the game work. When I summed it up as a magic-technology mix he responded “Oh, so it’s like He-Man,” which probably wasn’t the reaction the developers wanted when they were designing the world.

The Wheel of Fate is Turning

In any case BlazBlue is a 2D fighter developed by Ark System Works, the makers of Guilty Gear. BlazBlue shares GG’s controlled-madness pace, where characters can perform long combo strings for big damage, backed by flashy Distortion Drive super moves and move-canceling Rebel Counters. Knowing good combos is as important as character spacing and other mechanics, especially when fighting some characters.

To prevent this from being a total offense fest all characters can perform Barrier Blocks, a block connected to a meter that pushes the opponent back and prevents chip damage, and Barrier Bursts, a “Get Out of Combo Free” card that leaves the user with worse defense an without the Barrier Block gauge. There are also Astral Finishes, instant-death kills that can only be done in the final match with 100% super meter with the opponent already at a position where getting one more combo in is preferable to risking everything on a uncomboable kill move.

Blazblue uses the same mechanics as Guilty Gear and just juggles them around. Barrier Defense has its own gauge instead of using super meter like GG’s Faultless Defense, while the Burst is a lot more risky than in GG. Throws are done by pressing B and C together instead of attacking extremely close. This allows players to do kara throw shenanigans and throw brakes (rather easily). On the plus side for some characters like Litchi you can do some major damage post-throw, so you can get a lot of damage out of the opponent failing to counter. While Negative Penalties still exist, you can’t just gain super from running at the opponent anymore. This coupled with the fact that the high tiers all have great zoning games makes BlazBlue more defense-minded than GG.

… Well, relative to Guilty Gear.

Drive Bys

The other major shift from Guilty Gear are character Drives. While most fighting games have a character or two with unorthodox techniques, ALL of BlazBlue’s characters have gimmicks. Ragna has low health but can regain it using his drive attacks, while Arakune uses insects that can curse the opponent so that Arakune can unleash MORE INSECTS. Half of the cast (Ragna, Jin, Noel, Bang, Taokaka, Haku-men, V-13) use drives for straightforward offense, while the other half (Tager, Carl, Litchi, Rachel, and Arakune) use drives to set up other strategies.

A next-gen version of a game I only played casually before, filled with characters with at least one unique feature for each, not to mention impeccable online play? Sounds like something to try out.

And yes: BlazBlue looks very pretty, but not on my White-Westinghouse TV/VHS combo set

We can’t all have expensive HD sets.