Fighting Games Friday: Why Be In-Birth When You Can Be Melty?

It seemed easy to guess what French-Bread would do after releasing a handful of Under Night In-Birth versions over more than a seven-year period: A new Under Night In-Birth. They’d relied on the same sprites and backdrops since 2012, and their fanbase, which has spread well outside Japan in the time since (it became one of the main games at Evo 2019 for good reason), felt it was time for a new game with upgraded visuals. But they took the more unexpected route and have gone back to their previous series, Melty Blood, instead, with Melty Blood: Type Lumina. Perhaps this should have been easier to predict.

Type-Moon is gearing up for a promotional push of the Tsukihime visual novel remake, Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon, due for release on PlayStation 4 and Switch in Japan this summer. The new Melty Blood title will be heavily related to this installment. The memes of the older Melty Blood games, the latest version being Melty Blood Actress Again: Current Code (they love verbose, inscrutable names), being played in the bathrooms or on the pavement at tournaments spread like wildfire online, cementing its status as a true Poverty Game. This likely wasn’t lost on the development team despite how the meme has been thoroughly driven into the ground by now. The Tsukihime tie-in is the biggest reason why this new title exists, however.

Type Lumina is a brand-new Melty Blood installment, and as such will come with a new story, updated character designs, and a renewed presentation style that will involve new 2D sprites and backgrounds. The combat system has been redone, the biggest new feature revealed thus far being the “Rapid Beat” system that lets players execute combos with repeated presses of certain attack buttons. It’s a clever way of referring to auto combos, which have made their way into many anime fighting games released over the last decade to help ease newer players into what can be complicated fighting game systems. It’s necessary when anime fighting games can be even harder to learn than games with, uh, “normal” art styles.

In another new feature: Voiced lines will be uttered by characters during battle, something inspired by Arc System Works and Cygames’ Granblue Fantasy: Versus. This won’t have much use to most westerners considering the game is planned for release with only Japanese voices and English subtitles. Even if subtitles are available during matches (not recommended for a game with a busy UI — tradition for an anime fighter), it wouldn’t be practical to look at them while fighting.

The starting roster and the reasons for which characters will make the cut is already drawing contention for Melty Blood fans. The initial version will only have around ten characters, with Shiki Tohno, Arcueid Brunestud, Akiha Tohno, and Ciel being revealed thus far. There was no way this game would start with anywhere near as many characters as the latest Melty Blood version, a sizable count of 31, but Type Lumina will have a low roster count for even the first iteration of a new modern fighting game.

The primary reason for this involves its close ties to the new Tsukihime title, which means characters exclusive to older Melty Blood games that weren’t previously in Tsukihime won’t make the cut. This even includes Sion Eltnam Atlasia, previously the main heroine. Those characters could slowly return in the, oh, six versions they’ll make over the next eight years.

Those HD sprites are another reason why the roster count for the initial version was bound to be low. They’re made for at least close to a 1080p resolution,and clearly took a lot of time to draw. The fact that they’ve stuck with them when other developers have moved to 3D models thanks to polygons and animations being easier to assemble and program is appreciated, and the results look great in motion. But other developers moved to those other presentation formats for good reason.

What will truly make Type Lumina a modern fighting game is how it will have rollback netplay. I’ve harped on how necessary it is for fighting games to have the feature long enough. The best rollback connections feel much better to play in compared to delay-based netplay environments, the latter of which too many fighting game developers have depended on for far too long, especially those from Japan. After playing something like the Guilty Gear Strive open beta, it’s tough to go back to delay-based netplay. Hopefully French-Bread and their collaborators for this project have good engineers to ensure that it’s properly implemented.

Type Lumina is planned for a 2021 release worldwide for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch, perhaps simultaneously in every major territory. But it interestingly has not been announced for PC. It’s abnormal for a new fighting game not to arrive on the platform on day one, but it may not be too late for them to make plans for it.  The promotional campaign is just getting started, so expect plenty more previews from here.