Welcome to our review of the the most ambitious crossover of the year! Avenge- no, wait. That’s wrong. Welcome to our review of BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle – The most ambitious anime-ish/fighting crossover of the year. I never heard of BlazBlue before, but I was intrigued by the artstyle when I received the code for the game. This looked like a full-on anime-fighting game. Boy, was I wrong.
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle (BCTB) is a game developed by Arc System Works and released on the 31th of may for the Nintendo Switch and on the 5th of June for both Steam and PS4. The crossover is a very logical choice, since Arc System Works developed most of the BlazBlue and Under Night In-Birth games (both popular fighting games), but also were in charge of the Guilty Gear and Double Dragon games. Most of the titles were released on the PlayStation (and sometimes Xbox and 3DS), and since I play Steam/Nintendo consoles mostly, it isn’t really strange I missed out on the BlazBlue franchise.
Gamestructure
Arc System Works describes the game as “an unrivaled clash of explosive proportions”. It combines the “beloved BlazBlue franchise Crosses universes, Tags in fan favorites, and Battles it out in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle! Created through an all-star collaboration between BlazBlue, Atlus’ Persona, French Bread’s Under Night In-Birth, and Rooster Teeth’s hugely popular RWBY web series, Cross Tag Battle celebrates the fighting genre for pros and newcomers alike!”. The only one I heard of was Persona, but after playing through the tutorial I did some research into the other franchises, since the stories and characters intrigued me. Skip ahead to me writing this review and I’m knee deep in BB, UNIB and Persona Wiki’s and found RWBY on Crunchyroll, so that will be my new binge watch anime, next to One Piece..
Gameplay mechanics
BCTB is a Tag-Battle fighting game, which means you always play in pairs. In the heat of the moment, you can switch between your first and second choice, or you partner combos to deal out even more damage. Before hopping into story mode or try out the online features, I highly recommend working your way through the extensive tutorial. It goes into full detail on all the movement patterns and fighting styles of the fighters you can control. If you complete the tutorial, you can even follow a tutorial for the individual fighters, to hone your skills, and yes, you should.
A total overview of all the fighters can be found in the table below – some are not available from the start, but will be released as free and paid DLC.
| BlazBlue | Persona 4 Arena | Under Night In-Birth | RWBY | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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But don’t worry, even if you can’t play with every one of them, the available fighters are enough to keep you busy for a while (total of 20 are available from the start)! Will you choose between the close combat style of Ragna the Bloodedge? Or will you go for a more hybrid style of shotgun-scythe with Ruby from RWBY. The only thing I can recommend is try out everyone, from every faction and then try to find a combination that works for you – which can, of course, be cross-franchise (Ruby-Rachel or Weiss-Ragna is a fun combination, but Hazama combined with Gordeau is also fun).
Storyline
Next to beating each other senseless in the online mode or VS-mode, you can always try your hand at the more episodic modus of BCTB. It features up to four storylines and a prologue, which all revolve around the same base idea. A singularity called the “Phantom Field” is mixing the reality of Blazblue with three other chosen universes, members of those worlds abruptly summoned while instructed by a “Phantom Field”, the mysterious voice itself that they must protect the keystone in order to return to their homes. But as the Keystone is divided into four among the groups, it results in a battle to acquire them. And you can guess that each faction has its own reasons for beating the other guys.
Since I’m not familiar with most of the franchises in the game, I’ll probably miss a lot of in-game references towards other games or in-game relations. Still, I really enjoyed the story mode, hence it gave me the chance to familiarize me with the characters from the other universes and was forced to play with other combinations then I would normally have made. It’s not a really beefy storyline though. Normally it shouldn’t take you more than four hours to complete it 100%, since most of them are completed after one run. After completing story mode you can hop into the online hub or play a game with your friends.
Artstyle
The art is lovely. Cutscenes look like a straight-up visual novel and the fight scenes are Hi-Bit art pieces (see the screenshots to see what I mean). Backgrounds are not spectacular, both reference the older games of the franchises, including themed music to match the chosen franchise. A really nice touch and they went the extra mile to put in everything an anime fan or beat-’em-up gamer could have wanted. The only annoying thing though, I couldn’t make any screenshots, nor video’s during the story mode – which sucks, since it had some mouth-dropping art scenes. Another lovely feature is the multi-language function of the game since I can’t stand hearing English dub – I switched the voices to Japanese, and so should you (check the trailer below).
Conclusion
If you are looking for a nicely done fighting game with some of your favorite franchises and anime, BCTB is the game for you. It took me back to the arcades I played during my holidays in foreign countries. Not knowing the language of the game, but still being able to have fun with others, while slapping buttons on a machine. The game really sucked me into the franchises. It really made me hope some of the earlier games or even new games making its way to the Switch. Personally, I’m really rooting for a Persona port. This way we can enjoy the magnificent world of this franchise. Or they can go ahead and make some anime about BlazBlue and Under Night-In Birth, that’s fine too! I’m rating this game with an 80%, which could have been even higher if I understood all the references. It’s out now on the Nintendo E-shop or physical at your local retailer.
