Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R (PC) Review

What's weird? The extendable limbs of Dhalsim from Street Fighter 2, the wooden multi-martial artist Mokujin from Tekken 3, or the fact that the opponents of Mai Shiranui from The King of Fighters can look her in the eyes? The answer is: none of the above, because the product at hand has a transvestite nun that uses toys as weapons, a girl covered in blood-soaked bandages that wields an enormous talking key, and a towering… something, that wears a business suit and a paper bag on its head.

Yup, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R (that's a mouthful) is strange, and when it's not it's as flamboyant and over the top as any testosterone-filled anime. Since this isn't an HD overhaul of any kind, the PS2-era visuals look a bit dated, with lots of pixellation and an unflattering 4:3 aspect ratio, yet despite all this, this remains an example of master craftsmanship, since everything is colourful, highly-detailed, and exceptionally animated - and all this sprinkled with a very good hard rock/heavy metal soundtrack.

The fifth revision of the definite Guilty Gear adds a large and diverse roster of characters, along with a couple of game modes, retweaks some HUD elements, and, most importantly, rebalances everything, although some rough edges have been left behind, life Kliff, a boss character that still feels somewhat overpowered. Furthermore, the Training mode remains simplistic, and won't really help get newcomers up to speed, which, given this title's highly complex nature, is not a good thing.

The controls are responsive, even with the - not exactly recommended - keyboard, and the basic four-button control scheme (punch, kick, slash, high slash, plus an aerial launcher button) makes it easy to pull off special moves, which, for the most part, are done through directional inputs full of quarter or semicircles. Even though some good ol' button-mashing is possible, the AI doesn't kid around, therefore, players ought to get much, much deeper into the game in order to have any chance in surviving.

Bear in mind that Guilty Gear XX was never supposed to be a simple plug-and-play fighter like most of its kind, and this update doesn't do much to ease beginners in. Those coming from the BlazBlue or Persona Arena games won't have any problems, since the Guilty Gear series is their spiritual predecessor, but the rest will have to do a lot of online digging in order to learn about weird terms like Roman Cancels, Dead Angle Attacks, Faultless Defences, et cetera, which, fortunately, are all very important, and not there just for show.

Those that will delve deeper - and like it - can have fun in various ways. Apart from the standard Arcade, Versus/Team Versus, and Survival, there is M.O.M, where the goal is to gather points by doing combos, and Mission, where players must complete challenges while being handicapped. Finally, there is Story, where, depending on one's choices, it's possible to see various endings for each character, although the plot itself, which deals with a war against the man-made biological weapons known as Gears, is only mildly interesting.

The incentive to keep on playing comes in the form of lots of artwork that can be unlocked. Then again, the real fun starts when competing with friends, which is also when most of the special mechanics begin to show their real value, especially the tension bar, which enables certain super moves, and fills up when hitting or approaching the opponent, encouraging an aggressive play style. Unfortunately, the online mode is disappointingly unstable and slow, to the point that it can take more than 20 minutes to start a match.

Ultimately, and even though this is a fantastic 2D fighter, there are many who won't appreciate it. Apart from those die-hard fans that "must" own every single iteration of GGXX, the rest will probably prefer trying something else instead of replaying a slightly different version of the same old game. Furthermore, those completely new in the franchise will either love its unique gameplay, or skip it for something far more accessible. In the end, Cubed3 recommends trying before buying.