Fighting Games Friday: The Super Big Fighter News Roundup
For last week’s Fighting Games Friday entry, I skipped covering news to post an anniversary piece about The King of Fighters franchise. This means there’s a lot of news for me to cover this week. There’s no further need to ponder whether the normal fighting game news cycle has resumed following the massive glut at Evo.
Super Saiyan Blue (or Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan) Gogeta from the Dragon Ball Super: Broly film released in Dragon Ball FighterZ this week. The character was first announced alongside the canonical Broly from the same film when the second season was confirmed by publisher Bandai Namco in January. (Note that the non-canonical Broly is already included.) Gogeta has several attacks from the movie, but also has access to techniques from the considerably older Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn film. The latter is no shock considering that film’s main villain, Janemba, was added to the roster in July.
Broly should be shown and released soon, and will be the final character to arrive as part of this season. The game isn’t as popular as it was at its peak in 2018 given the number of fans participating in and watching matches and tournaments these days, but we’ll see if it’s still hot enough to receive a third season.
Dead or Alive 6 received the first DLC character since the King of Fighters guests arrived a few months ago: Momiji. Momiji was introduced in the newer Ninja Gaiden series, and first joined the DoA franchise with Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate. She’s now returned to DoA6 thanks to her popularity with Team Ninja’s fanbase. She arrived with several outfit options, some of which are what you’d expect for a female character in a DoA game. There was a small gap between the announcement and release of Momiji, a pattern that could hold for subsequent returning characters. Team Ninja presumably has more characters planned in the future, since several characters from the DoA5 games were left out of DoA6 at release.
I don’t have to go far to see comments about how disappointing the also-Team-Ninja-developed Dissidia Final Fantasy NT turned out, thanks to players who feel the three-on-three format didn’t work as well compared to the one-on-one fights the PSP games contained. They also mention that the online is dead, so it’s tough to play matches against other humans unless they’re planned with friends or communities beforehand. That’s why it’s surprising to see how Square Enix is still adding characters. The newest will be Judge Gabranth from Final Fantasy XII, previously included in the PSP titles. Like other returning faces, he’ll be a stripped-down version of his PSP iteration, but could still be fun to play. He’ll arrive on October 10th.
The final characters for Blazblue: Cross Tag Battle Version 2.0 have been revealed, and the choices are more rudimentary than expected — but not bad. Among them will be Cecilia A. Mercury and Susanoo from Blazblue: Central Fiction, Elizabeth and Tohru Adachi from the Persona 4 Arena games (and Persona 3 and Persona 4, respectively, by extension), and Hilda from the Under Night In-Birth series. They’re coming alongside Akatsuki and Blitztank from Akatsuki Blitzkampf, Neo Politan from RWBY, and Yumi from Senran Kagura: Estival Versus (now with her own gameplay video), who were announced alongside the update at Evo in August. It’s evident they revealed the biggest surprises first.
It’s a shame Arcana Heart and Senran Kagura will only have one representative in the game as of 2.0’s arrival on November 21st, but it’s possible more could come down the line. How much more work they’ll put into updating this game following 2.0 will depend on how large the community still is, and whether the team is busy with another project.
Another character was revealed for Arc System Works fighting game spinoff Granblue Fantasy: Versus: Metera. She’s a woman of the Erune race, similar to previously-revealed characters Ferry and Lowain, who primarily uses a magic bow to fight. But she can do more than shoot magic arrows with it; it’s also good for physical attacks and, uh, surfing — the latter of which also causes damage. She looks like another fun addition to the cast from the very brief trailer.
With her addition, there are only two more characters left to reveal for the initial cast, for a total of eleven characters. It’s sometimes good when games have low character counts, since it will be easier for Arc System Works to balance the game, and simpler for players to learn each character match-up. But this is an adaptation of a mobile RPG with a dizzying array of characters, meaning someone’s favorites are bound to be left out. Just think about the popular characters that aren’t already in the game with massive fanbases, and you might figure out the identities of the five DLC characters coming after its release. Some characters are popular enough that Arc System Works and Cygames know people will pay for them individually or through a season pass.
That’s it for this week’s little news glut, though there’s, of course, more on the horizon. The announcement of the awkwardly-named My Hero’s One Justice 2 was leaked through the newest Japanese issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, a sequel to the first My Hero Academia arena battle game. The official announcement should come sometime next week. A trailer for the new Guilty Gear title is also set to be shown at CEOTaku sometime this weekend — likely on Sunday. But ahead of that, Arc System Works posted the lyrics and sample for the short version of the main song, “Smell of the Game.” This will probably be another small glimpse (or smell) at the upcoming game, but hopefully Arc will provide a larger presentation before its playable appearance at the ArcREVO World Tour finals in mid-November.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
