BlazBlue has been a long-running fighting game franchise that has branched out to include an anime adaptation, as well as a few visual novels. Primarily focused on 1v1 fights, the series is generally well regarded for its striking art and gameplay, and incredibly complicated story. BlazBlue: Entropy Effect X takes a very unconventional path of somehow turning this into a platformer roguelike. Spoilers: it’s pretty good.
BlazBlue is known for its very distinct art style, with bright colours and attractive characters. It’s a series where the men look like Shonen protagonists and the women look like 10/10 models with gravity-defying assets held in by skimpy clothes. On top of this, BlazBlue is notable for its sprite work, which often involves over 1000 individually drawn frames for a character. Even here the sprites are really good, and it’s especially fun seeing some of the cameo characters converted to this style.
The original Entropy Effect was released on PC a few years ago, and while most of the core experience was there, it was rough around the edges. Many of the characters were only available as paid DLC, and while there was a story, it was BlazBlue in name only and had nothing to do with the franchise. Furthermore, players were in control of a robot that operated from a central base and it gave little coherence to the overall picture. This version includes all the previous DLC characters, along with some guest cameos like Icey and the Prisoner.
In BlazBlue: Entropy Effect X, the system has been overhauled completely. The developers have added an entire storyline on top of this, where you play as a scientist with four other scientists delving into this chaos from a centralised room. It adds some degree of plot and a reason that was desperately needed. As for the visuals, everything is drawn in a really attractive way, even including the characters at the central lab.
Gameplay is extremely involving. It starts with picking from one of the different characters. Each of them plays widely different from the start, such as short-range strikers to long-range fighters. Even from the beginning, most are very similar to their fighting game form, meaning a slew of various attacks, dodges and specials are commonplace. This only expands from there as upgrades get bestowed upon them. These can range from simple buffs of existing moves – like adding a damage effect to dashes – to unlocking new abilities specific to the character, such as new ranged attacks, or special stances or buffs.
Beyond this there’s an elemental upgrade as well. From typical elements like fire, ice and lighting, each of these has a skill tree that evolves into all sorts of crazy things. This can be from having a ring of fire, calling down lightning strikes, to spamming icicles at the enemy. They make each run widely different – even when playing as the same character. Additionally, after a run is over, some skills can be saved as an ‘avatar’ that can be inherited by the next run, meaning being able to always start with a few of these skills. The potential for meta-gaming is huge if desired.
As an example, one run was with a girl named Es who wields a sword twice her size. She is a good short/mid-range attacker but lacks long range. Using a previous avatar of Rachel who had some long-range moves allowed a shoring up of this weakness. During the run, Es randomly ended up with a build of summoning a bunch of attacking slimes that worked very effectively. After the run was over, this girl also became a selectable avatar to inherit (in this case) the oddly effective summoned slimes.
This game hits all the right notes for the genre. Between amazing art, attractive characters, and a really deep and fun gameplay loop, it’s rare to find something that fires on all cylinders as effectively as BlazBlue: Entropy Effect X. Anyone remotely interested in the genre or the source material should check it out; they won’t be disappointed.
