… Holy hell I’m tired! I just got back from the four day long party known as Otakon and wow, am I exhausted! At least I am exhausted for good reason.! I spent the entire weekend going around to panels and events, getting the low down for you guys here at 30ninjas, and while there weren’t too many groundbreaking announcements, there is still plenty of stuff for me to tell you about. So
while I sit here and stave off post-con plague, feel free to read about my assorted adventures starting with the gaming room.

BlazBlue: Continuum Shift literally came out a day before we had to shove off to Baltimore for Otakon, so it’s not like I had much of a chance to play it … until Otakon that is. You see my base of operations at any convention is always the gaming room. It’s a great place to go to get off your feet and play a couple rounds of your favorite games with some new people. Lo and behold Otakon had plenty of big screen stations set up for BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, and the convention was nice enough to let me plow through all of the game’s new modes with all the geeks around me to create one big review.

For those of you who haven’t played the first BlazBlue, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift is a 2-D anime-style fighting game in the vein of Guilty Gear. It’s a four button system of weak, medium, and strong attacks, as well as a unique “drive” ability that each character has. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of mastering each character and their intricate systems individually.

BB:CS has all the modes that its predecessor, Calamity Trigger, had and more. Arcade, Versus, Training, and Story mode are all there, except the story mode is now even deeper and includes many full anime cutscenes. There is a Score Attack mode in which you fight against the computer in an attempt to get higher scores than your friends on the internet. There is Legion mode, which is the same map control mode from BlazBlue portable, a gallery and replay theater, and of course online play.

Online play has gotten quite the overhaul. While it was hard to find matches (probably because the game is so new) lag has been significantly reduced. Sure there are a few odd matches where you simply can’t DO anything about the button latency, but very many matches had little lag to no lag at all. Couple this all with arcade style queues where you can watch other players play and wait your turn, and of course voice chat, and you have a recipe for online success. In the end, it is one of the most competent online fighting game experiences yet.

BB:CS has also added a tutorial and challenge mode to its ranks, and these modes are a mixed bag of tricks. It is VERY important to include modes that teach you how to play, and BB:CS’s tutorial mode will certainly do that. It pushes you from beginner all the way up to expert, bombarding you with facts, from simple movement to rapid canceling and bursting. The tutorial mode does a good job of teaching you the game by having you practice the mechanics several times after it explains how they work.

BlazBlue is known for being a game in which no two characters operate the same, and you can only play as one character in the Tutorial mode, Ragna. Now, I am not a Ranga player, I am a Tager player, and it took me a good portion of the night to get past the “fatal counter” portion of the tutorial, just because it had you do a Ragna combo with timing that I couldn’t wrap my head around. Why? BECAUSE I’M NOT A RAGNA PLAYER!!! At least it does go into specific character strategies after the general tutorial, but by that point you have had Ragna hammered into your head so much it almost counteracts any good the tutorial did.

The challenge modes are more of the same. Half of the challenge combos are bread and butter combos you will be using in the middle of matches. The rest are obscure flashy combos with high damage potential that will rarely be used. It would have been nice if the tutorial extended into the challenge mode to tell new players which combos are which, but it doesn’t, and that can be frustrating, especially when combo timing has to be so spot on for some of these combos which I have never actually seen used in a professional BlazBlue match. The timing on some of these combos is so spectacularly hard, it actually feels as if the computer is cheating and teching out before it normally could just because you are doing them in challenge mode. I suppose if they were too easy it wouldn’t be a challenge, but still I would have rather seen the game actually teach you basic combo fundamentals rather than push you toward impractical but flashy combo setups.

The gameplay changes are very impressive. Each character has been rebalanced and re-tweaked for competitive play, and while some characters got the nerf bat harder than others (*cough Rachel cough*) most are pretty equal on the playing field. Each character also gets new moves added to their repertoire, further expanding your combo options. The game also introduces new characters, Tsubaki and Hazama from the arcade version, and Mu-12, a brand new character no one has had the chance to play with yet. New DLC characters will be coming soon, including Makoto, the squirrel girl, Platinum, one of the six heroes, and Valkenhayn, Rachel’s loyal butler.

The fact is, you should get BB:CS. Why? It’s only 40 dollars. It’s a whole 20 dollars cheaper than any other new game on the market right now, and it’s better than Calamity Trigger in every way. It’s a good buy, so go do it. NOW!!!

Stay tuned for a review of the new BB:CS downloadable content as it comes out.

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift — More Goodies
• A BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Review — Valkenhayn: Hungry Like the Wolf
• Makoto Nanaya — A BlazBlue DLC Review
• New BlazBlue Continuum Shift DLC Character Makoto Details Revealed
• Quick BlazBlue Update: BlazBlue Continuum Shift II
• BlazBlue Continuum Shift 2 Patch Gets Release Date and Price