Fighting Games Friday: Striving for Guilty Gear’s Closed Beta

As of this writing, a good number of Guilty Gear fans are enjoying themselves with the Guilty Gear -Strive- closed beta, after first receiving the codes to download it and play online earlier this week. And I mean “a good number.” This was the antithesis to a closed beta like Dragon Ball FighterZ’s, where it felt like only ten players received codes, and closer to the Granblue Fantasy: Versus one. This is ostensibly good, because it means more players can provide impressions of the game’s new systems, its balance thus far, and the online play.

As in, the players who remembered to enter in the first place, unlike yours truly. I want you to know that I am not jealous, thank you.

Unlike other closed betas, players won’t have to entirely fend for themselves with no guiding hand. Arc System Works provided a Starter Guide video series throughout the week to teach players fundamentals for every character playable in the beta. This started with Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske, and continued with May, Axl-Low, Chip Zanuff, Potemkin, and Faust. This is helpful thanks to the adjusted systems and character move sets compared to previous games, but it’s always good when fighting game developers lend assistance, something many of them still need to know. These are also a good way to see just how beautiful the game looks in motion, and how ridiculously high the damage is. And would you believe the main game has even more damaging combos? Wild.

As confirmed alongside the last reveal trailer, Millia Rage and Zato-1 are sadly not playable in the demo; it’s possible they weren’t in an entirely playable state by the time this beta was okayed, given the scant amount of footage for them in their reveal trailers.

This closed beta also differs from others for fighting games in how won’t provide an accurate test of the online play. This beta has delay-based netplay, the kind Arc System Works has used in previous fighting games, and planned to use again here until the fanbase loudly complained. Fortunately, they responded to the complaints and will include rollback-based netplay for the final game, which tends to provide stronger connections between players. It unfortunately wasn’t ready for this beta, so this is mainly a test to see what players think of the balance (and they have some colorful opinions) instead of determining if their online play can handle a load of players.

It’s possible they’ll want to properly test the online play in the future and provide balance readjustments given the absolutely ridiculous damage players can do, so this may not be the last beta. Here’s hoping it isn’t, so it will give us losers who forgot to enter this time around another chance to play it.

Guilty Gear -Strive- is still scheduled for a release this fall worldwide for PlayStation 4, though whether it will be exclusive or not is unknown. Don’t be surprised if it takes a slight delay due to COVID-19 affecting development.

Meanwhile, it would have been surprising if massive anime crossover title Jump Force didn’t receive a second season. The game sold surprisingly well when it released in the US last year, and was nominated for best fighting game at The Game Awards — despite the latter happening in the absence of new releases. This is why the reaction to Bandai Namco confirming a second slate of characters was largely along the lines of “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

The new season will consist of five characters and cost $17.99 for the whole package. First will be Shoto Todoroki from My Hero Academia, joining Izuku “Deku” Midoriya, All-Might, and Katsuki Bakugo from the same franchise. Subsequent characters will hail from Hunter x Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho, Bleach, and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, so feel free to make some guesses. I wouldn’t be surprised if the new Bleach character arrived alongside the anime’s return in 2021.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At1qTj-LWCc

In addition to this announcement: Jump Force Deluxe Edition is coming to Switch, and will include the base content and everything from the first DLC season. Both this port and the new season are scheduled to arrive sometime this year.

Cygames provided a trailer for Zooey in Granblue Fantasy: Versus, the final character in the first season. The characters, you might realize, came quicker for this season than most other fighters thanks to the incredibly fast release schedule. It’s possible several of these characters were completed before the base game released, but there’s no way to prove that. But they’ve all been fun to use despite some minor imbalance issues between them, and Zooey looks to continue that trend. The Granblue Fantasy Twitter account provided a better look at her techniques in a tweet thread. She’ll be available on April 28th, a week from next Tuesday.

The previously-announced second season will begin this fall, with Belial/Chaos Bringer being the first character. The characters that will be part of the season will likely release just as fast, but you still have a few months to get your guesses and bets in.

That’s all for this week. Hopefully everyone who received a code for the Guilty Gear -Strive- closed beta continues to enjoy it, while I’ll be here not being jealous. I’m sure they’ll hold another one.