The Fighting Game Diaries: We Do(n't) Know What We Are Doing
Me and my friend have once again been playing fighting games. We’ve been playing Strive as normal, and as always having fun. She has been sticking with Sol and make progress – she’s getting down some motion inputs. We have also found out I cannot play Millia in any capacity, and she likes me bringing out Baiken every once in a while. In addition to Strive, we have been playing some new fighting…
Some thoughts on my last Gamefly rental, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r](Switch version)from a filthy casual.
How do they come up with these titles? XP
Not sure how much I’ll talk about the technical stuff, I’m not a major fighting game player, so those types of details kind of go over my head(this page seems to explain the main/unique mechanics well). I will say though that the sprites and art look pretty nice, the former being animated well, and it runs well on the Switch.
I mostly wanted to play this after seeing a few of it’s characters in BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, but also because one character is a cameo from the older Melty Blood, Sion Eltnam Altasia, going by ‘Eltnum’ here(there’s also another cameo character, Akastsuki from Akatsuki Blitzkampf, but I literally never heard of him or his game before this and Cross Tag Battle)
There’s a mode called ‘Chronicles’ that has 23 visual novel-like Prologue stories to go through that detail events before the main story, with no choices or fights in them. Most of them are fairly long, having several chapters and can take probably about an hour or so to read in total, though a couple will only take a few minutes. It’ll probably take maybe ten or more hours to read through all of it, give or take.
There’s a few story scenes, different for each character, in Arcade Mode, but the majority of the game’s story is in the other mode.
One part in Linne’s Prologue story after she first meets Hyde, how he found out she was actually a girl and not a boy, felt really dumb and unneeded to me. Same for a similar part in Nanase’s Prologue story, which annoyingly carries over into and through her Arcade Mode story(though her being annoying like this seems to be intentional).
Eltnum’s Arcade mode is pretty fun, with her breaking the fourth wall constantly, making references to classic-Melty Blood and in-jokes about both it and her, some of which I did get, since I played classic-Melty Blood way back when(an early version, where the main antagonist was just Night of Wallachia), and have seen bits of Carnival Phantasm with Sion in it. It might not be the same game she’s from, but it’s pretty cool that we got the the newer Melty Blood game in English, and officially, too(the latest version of the original is actually available officially on Steam, as well).
Kind of a minor detail, but I like that, though some characters like Hilda and Merkava sound pretty much like what you’d expect them to from their designs, they sure don't fully act like you’d probably expect, especially Hilda(you’d probably not think she’d be the type of main antagonist that’d take a model train set to a bar and play with it there, but here we are).
Another little detail that wasn’t really needed but was neat to see is that, when someone wins a round but the fight’s not over, the loser will get up into a kneeling position before the screen fades out and the next round starts.
Aside from Arcade and Chronicles Mode, there the usual standard fighting game Modes, such Versus, Online, Training, Mission, etc..
There’s also a Gallery that lets you look at any story CGs you’ve seen and watch Movies for the game(both this and older versions), as well as promotional art, concept art, special voiced lines by the character's VAs, and more. A good amount of them you need to use in-game points from playing the various non-Chronicles modes to see, though.
Most of the characters I could play decently as, against a CPU anyway, but a few I didn’t really fully get the playstyle of, namely Hilda, Yuzuriha, Chaos and especially Seth. Didn’t help that The Drift™ started kicking in sometimes. ^^;
I usually like using speedier and quick-hitting characters in fighting games, but Waldstein, who has a fairly large sprite for a fighting game outside of some that have huge boss characters(like Apocalypse or Galactus), was pretty fun to play as, too.
Some I liked playing as the most were Hyde, Eltnum, Wagner, Londrekia, Phonon, Waldstein and Merkava.
I don’t know if there’ll be yet another updated version of the game in the future(probably), but it does feel like, after playing through everything, that there’s a good amount more story to tell for this series, as some plot points seem unresolved, and possibly more characters to make the jump to being playable.
Today's Stream - UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH II Sys:Celes
David @d-manaceattorney loves UNI and Exe:Late[st] was actually one of the first FGs I ever pressed buttons in. I'm gunna finally learn how to actually play it for real today
10 years ago today, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late was originally released at arcades at JP. It was developed by French-Bread/Ecole Software and published by Sega.
(Fun fact! The main melody at 0:43 and 2:00 is actually a reworked melody from the trailer for the prototype of the first version of the game, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late. That trailer dropped Feb. 08, 2011, and went MIA from all three versions of Under Night (Exe:Late, Exe:Late[st], and Exe:Late[cl-r]).)
(This character is actually the final boss and main antagonist of UNI2, and his theme... Sounds almost nothing like a theme for a final boss. Some folks agree that this track sounds almost more like a fanfare or a celebration, and may be the composer, Raito, giving thanks to the fans that played since the initial release in 2012 by reprising the first Under Night song fans heard!)
I just draw whatever and then put it here, but mostly fighting games, Touhou, TWEWY duology, Puyo Puyo, my ocs and more for now.
My tags are #Hyouibana.txt for regular posts, #Hyouibana.art for my art posts, #Astro's OCs for my original characters and world, #Astro's VA Stuff for various voice acting related things as well as the song covers I occasionally post and #Astro's Writings for whatever written works I publish.
[Now Live with UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH Exe:Late[cl-r]
Welp, I guess the dinosaurs are late, so we'll instead be playing UNIclr to ask ourselves: "wait, this game has HOW much lore?" And maybe get some matches in here and there. We'll see.