BlazBlue Calamity Trigger was one of the many good fighting games to come out last year, and it retains its popularity even now. Ever since Street Fighter II got its assortment of Hyper Super Turbo Deluxe Tournament editions, it has been the tradition to release updates to popular fighting games with new characters, new moves, balance changes, and a bunch of other bonus content, and BlazBlue is no exception to this rule. The new edition of BlazBlue is called BlazBlue Continuum Shift, and it is now released in Japanese arcades. If you are obsessed enough and you look reeeeeeally hard, you might be able to find a Continuum Shift cabinet in an arcade somewhere here in the US. Out of sheer luck, I stumbled upon one in my arcade hopping journeys, and I immediately took the chance to give it a whirl. Some beers, several quarters, and many game losses later, I had come to mostly understand the changes and refinements made to the core gameplay mechanics. Once I sobered up, I decided to record my observations in this preview.

Before anything else, the first thing I noticed was a change to the Burst system. In the first BlazBlue, characters were able to perform something called a Barrier Burst to break an opponent’s combo. Doing so would remove their ability to use their barrier for the rest of the game, and would cause them to take increased damage. As a result, Barrier Bursts were used mostly as a last ditch effort when you were in danger of dying anyway. In Continuum Shift, barriers and bursting are disconnected. Instead, we now have the new Break Burst system. Each player starts with one burst stock, and gets another whenever they lose a match, to a maximum of two. When you burst, you use up one of these burst stocks, and your barrier remains unaffected. You can burst offensively or defensively, which feels a bit more like BlazBlue’s predecessor Guilty Gear. Bursting offensively produces a gold burst which pops the enemy high and defenseless into the air to be comboed at length, possibly to a KO. Bursting defensively produces the same “get the hell off me” burst that the first BlazBlue produced.

The Guard Libra from BlazBlue has also changed. Originally, it was a tug-of-war type meter that pushed and pulled based on how offensive or defensive you were playing. If the Guard Libra pushed all the way to one side, that character experienced a Guard Break, which was basically a prolonged period of vulnerability. BlazBlue Continuum Shift introduces a new guard system, the Guard Primer. The Guard Primer is a point based gauge that starts between 6 and 4 for most characters (except for Tager, he starts at a whopping 10.) Blocking certain attacks (or a burst) takes away points from the Guard Primer and if it hits zero, you experience a Guard Break. It automatically recovers based on how offensive or defensive you are being. Playing aggressively makes the guard primer restore quickly while being pressured and forced to block makes it restore slowly or in the worst cases not at all. Bursting also costs half of your Guard Primer and locks that half from recovering for the rest of the round.

Most of the other systems are similar to how they worked in the first BlazBlue. The barrier system (independent of bursting) is pretty much the same. You use it to reduce chip damage and put distance between you and your opponent while blocking. Your Barrier Gauge automatically restores itself over time when you aren’t using it, at a slightly faster clip than it did in Calamity Trigger. If you use it all up you go into “danger” status which causes you to take more damage which lasts until your Barrier restores itself halfway. The only new aspect to the barrier system is that you can spend a third of it to prevent a Guard Break. This is useful, but more often than not you’ll end up doing it without even realizing. It is a natural instinct to barrier against hard hitting moves, and hard hitting moves tend to reduce your Guard Primer. If your Guard Primer is low, you change your play-style a little, but not enough to counteract this instinct, and it’s this very instinct that triggers the barrier save versus a Guard Break.

The Heat Gauge is also pretty much the same. It is used for rapid cancels, Distortion Drives, and other nifty things just like it was before. It seems to fill a little quicker in Continuum Shift, and after you use heat for anything there is a short period of time when it increases automatically. It also increases automatically whenever you are below 20% health, but that is nothing new. All special gauges are now at the bottom of the screen, over the Heat Gauge, which makes them much easier to read. The Heat Gauge is broken up into slices of 50 and 100, since those are the only values you really need to be aware of. Also, the Heat Gauge is larger, sharper, and easier to see, and though this is a minor graphical edit, it certainly makes it easier to tell when you have a Distortion Drive on deck.

Astral Heat insta-kill maneuvers also return, and every character can use them from the start (unlike the first BlazBlue where they had to be unlocked). Originally, it had to be the last round of a match, you had to have 100% heat, and your opponent had to be at less than 20% life if you wanted to perform an Astral Heat. In Continuum Shift, however, performing them has become a little easier. Astral Heats still take 100% heat and they now have the added cost of one burst stock, but they can now be done in any round of the match when the opponent is at 35% health or less. Because these requirements are kind of hard to keep track of yourself, your character’s portrait will flash white when they are able to perform an Astral Heat.

There are a couple other tiny tweaks to the system as well. For example, certain counter hits are now counted as “fatal counters” which leave the opponent vulnerable for a longer period of time. Blocking an opponent’s string of moves for a long enough time (about six seconds) gives you a “guard bonus” which automatically instant blocks every following move in the move string. Players are now given a Negative Warning before they are issued a Negative Penalty, which causes them to take 1.5 times normal damage, and this happens a lot more than it did in Calamity Trigger so remember to stay aggressive. Like most fighting games with combo mechanics, specific hits weaken as the number of hits in the combo increases, however how much moves weaken is also dependent on character choice. Weird characters like Arakune weaken very little while hard hitters that could potentially combo you from 0 to death (like Tager) have a very significant power drop off. In addition, the arcade cabinet had a small section on it that described a “beginner” mode, which allowed one button to be basic attacks, one to be strong attacks, one to be all special moves, and one to be throws. I didn’t get a chance to try this mode myself, but the gamers around me said that it reduced the game to a simple direction+button input system, much like Super Smash Bros.

I didn’t get a chance to play with every character but according to the little arcade cabinet, each character has new special moves and Distortion Drives. From my observations, it appears as if the new moves were all designed to address specific character weaknesses. For example, Ragna now has a new move that acts as a re-launcher to extend his combos, while Tager has a new move that actually picks the opponent up off the ground and stands them in front of you. Also, the balance of the game has been tweaked extensively, and you can really feel it. On the whole, most characters feel weaker and slower (except for Hakumen, who feels unfairly overpowered in this one… just saying.) The hit boxes for most moves have been reduced in size, effectively nerfing most characters’ mid range game. Tager is also the victim of the weirdest balance change the game has to offer, and that is a sprite size reduction. Yes, Tager has become notably smaller in stature from the last game, which just feels weird.

There are two (or three if you want to be technical) new characters in BlazBlue Continuum Shift. Tsubaki, is a character who commands the power of light. She plays a lot like Order Sol from Guilty Gear. Her drive allows her to charge a meter which makes her special moves and Distortion Drives more powerful based on how full it is. Her moves are all holy based, and as far as I can tell she is really some sort of angel … or something. She is a strange combination of turtler and combo fiend. Tt seems to be correct to wait till her install gauge is filled, and then trap the opponent in a combo that takes off most of his life. I suck as playing her, so I don’t have much more to say. Hazama is the other new character, who’s drive allows him to make very Scorpion (Mortal Kombat) like harpoons out of chains. He can use these harpoons to either drag himself to the opponent, or the opponent to him. He is monstrously quick and has a spacing game like no other. Quite frankly, he is a power house and is probably one of the more powerful characters in the game. I also suck at playing him, but I can say that his hat, swanky suit, and funky walk make him look a little like Michael Jackson, which has earned him the awesome nickname “smooth criminal”. The third, sort of new, character is Lambda-11, a replacement for Nu-13. Unfortunately, she plays and looks exactly like Nu, except she is weaker and slower, much like every other character. Long story short, Lambda is a bit of a cop out.

Finally, I would like to comment on the art style, which has changed slightly. The story is still very anime, and trust me the plot of Continuum Shift reads like the worst (read: best) sci-fi fantasy fan-fiction crossover you have ever read, thus proudly continuing the BlazBlue tradition of far over the top writing. However, the art itself seems to have changed to a slightly darker, less anime, more subdued style. I’m not totally sold on the new style honestly, especially since the sprites remain as anime as they ever were. I hope that the next installment of the series goes back to the tried and true big eyes small mouth stereotypes we all love.

Overall, my first experiences with BlazBlue Continuum Shift were enjoyable, and I suggest all fans of the original to find an arcade with this new version and give it a try. An American console version is planned, and I can only expect that the refinements made when bringing this game from the arcade to the Xbox and PS3 will make the game even better. We will give you a full review, once the game officially releases.

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