Blazblue: Continuum Shift Extend – Fighting with Style

I’ve always been a big fan of fighting games, and I just recently picked up the Blazblue series. Blazblue is considered the spiritual successor to the Guilty Gear series of fighting games, which were made by the same developer: Arc System Works.  Extend is the third expansion of Blazblue: Continuum Shift, which added one new characters and new game modes.  The developers could be accused of being money grubbers if you look at the first expansion, which required players to pay extra for DLC characters, more colors for characters and the “Unlimited” versions of the characters.  With Extend, these along with a huge amount of artwork and sound options, are unlockable in the Gallery.  Players earn points for the Gallery by playing through Arcade, Story and all the other modes, rewarding players for continued play instead of rewarding those who are willing to shell out extra money.

The character select screen with new character Relius Clover selected.

Like Guilty Gear, Blazblue is renowned for its diverse and colorful cast of characters.  Ragna the Bloodedge is the main protagonist, who wields the Azure Grimoire and is a bit of a hothead.  Jin Kisaragi is a major with the Novus Orbis Librarium (NOL) who wants to kill Ragna.  Noel Vermillion is a timid NOL officer who finds herself a target for the game’s antagonist.  Rachel Alucard is a vampire who is much older than she looks, and tries to steer the heroes of the story in the right directions.  Taokaka is a carefree and childish catgirl of the Kaka Clan, who’s obsessed with food and not very bright.  Carl Clover is a child vigilante who believes his Nox Nyctores, Nirvana, to be his sister.  Arakune is a man that was transformed into a slimy monster after a reckless experiment went awry.  Litchi Faye-Ling is a beautiful woman who runs a medical clinic in Kagusuchi’s Orient Town, and seeks a way to reverse Arakune’s transformation.  Iron Tager, also known as the Red Devil, is a robotic agent of Sector Seven’s Kokonoe, a scientist who transformed the formally human Tager into a robot when he was on the brink of death.  Bang Shishigami is a hot-headed and somewhat dense ninja who (loudly) claims to fight for love and justice.  Lambda-11 is another creation of Kokonoe, who she utilizes as another agent.  Hakumen is a mysterious warrior who follows his own idea of justice: he is one of the Six Heroes as well.

Hazama is a captain in the NOL, a man whose cool and calm behavior masks something darker.  Tsubaki Yayoi is a First Lieutenant in the NOL and Noel’s friend and former roommate, who is ordered to execute an assassination in Kagusuchi.   Makoto Nanaya is an NOL officer who reports to Hazama.  She is part of the beastkin race, and a friend of Noel and Tsubaki.  Valkenhayn R. Hellsing is Rachel Alucard’s aged butler who is part-werewolf.  Platinum the Trinity is a young girl whose body contains the consciousness of 3 individuals, one of which is in fact male.  Relius Clover is the newest playable character: Carl’s father and a polite yet cold-hearted scientist with the NOL.  Mu-12 is the embodiment of Kusanagi, whose only purpose is to destroy.

The characters’ playstyles are as varied as their personalities, each possessing a unique set of moves that are controlled with the “drive” input.  The drive input allows Carl to control Nirvana, Hazama to extend his chains around the field and for Rachel to exert her control over the wind.  This really simplifies the process of learning each character, making them easier to learn than one would think.  Players with any sort of familiarity with fighting games such as Street Fighter should have no problems hitting the correct inputs and advancing to an intermediate level of play.  The only control-related issue I ran into was with Carl.  In order to attack with Nirvana, you have to release the drive button and immediately put in another command with it.  I had a difficult time coordinating attacks between Carl himself and Nirvana as a result.  His father Relius has a similar weapon in Ignis, and he does a much better job of controlling it.  When it comes to high-level play, intimate understanding of the barrier and other defensive options are vital, and of course, knowledge of combos.  The fruits of working on such combos are easily seen in high-level matches, with players pulling off longer and more impressive combos on each other.  The game maintains a tight balance between offense and defense, with a wide variety of defensive options weighed against punishing players who run away too often.  Thus matches boast endless action and reward the truly skilled.  The super attacks, or Astral Heats, are also incredibly satisfying to land.

Relius attacks Ragna using Ignis. I did find him quite a lot of fun to play as.

This is not to say that you won’t run into some problems here or there.  I did every playthrough of Arcade and the Story mode on easy, but I still had some problems defeating certain opponents.  Arcade’s final boss found a way to be very tough even on easy.  They probably could have toned down his AI a bit.  Also, when first encountering the “Unlimited” versions of characters, newer players can be confused by their purposefully overpowered moveset changes and end up losing many times.

The Story picks up where Blazblue: Calamity Trigger left off, several days after Ragna the Bloodedge reportedly raided the Novus Orbis Librarium branch in the 13^th Hierarchical City “Kagutsuchi”.  As Ragna lies in wait, both old and new characters descend on Kagutsuchi in pursuit of their own goals.  What few of these warriors know is that the plans of a mysterious, evil being have already been set in motion: plans that will cover Kagutsuchi in darkness and threaten the entire world’s existence.  The game’s story is told in a visual novel format: each character having a brief storyline of their own.  Each storyline veers in a different path than the last, but they often intersect.  Some questions are answered, while others are left for the next installment.  Thankfully, Blazblue’s story doesn’t take that long to play through, unlike most visual novels.

While Blazblue’s story stands head and shoulders above that of pretty much any fighting game out there, there are plenty of clichés involved.  The legendary Six Heroes, who saved the world from being consumed 100 years prior, end up playing vital roles in the current story, and were not quite as “heroic” as they have been made out to be.  Nox Nyctores, powerful weapons that many playable characters possess, are known for having negative effects on the wielder’s psyche and senses over extended periods of use.  Said weapons directly influence many characters’ motivations and behavior patterns (most notably Jin Kisaragi’s).  Blazblue also loves time travel.  Both this game and Blazblue: Calamity Trigger deal with continuous time loops, and characters such as Rachel Alucard directly tamper with time: putting characters into “continuum shifts” they do not belong in.  Finally, the theme of tampering with things that should not be tampered with is used a lot in the storyline.  The character of Arakune is a monster, a living example of the dangers of tampering with The Boundry.  Despite the use of these cliches, Blazblue manages to have a deep and somewhat compelling story that can keep players hooked.  This is mostly thanks to the game’s varied and interesting cast of characters that drive the plot along, and the extra story segments that give players a bit more information about the Blazblue universe.

Yes Relius again. He makes everyone uncomfortable.

Extend boasts an extensive amount of game modes to keep players interested.  Aside from Arcade and Story, there is Tutorial mode: a series of exercises designed to teach new players about the game.  These very in-depth lessons are narrated by Rachel Alucard, and delve into general fighting game strategies as well as advanced techniques and individual character playstyles.  This does a very good job of getting newcomers up to speed regardless of how many fighters they’ve played before.  At the very beginning of the Tutorial, players are urged to use the “Stylish Layout” if they’re completely new to fighters.  This simplifies the inputs and allows players to easily execute combos, making the game accessible to players of all skill levels.  The other modes include standards like Score Attack alongside Unlimited Mars, which is only for more advanced players.  The Abyss mode is also a lot of fun, making characters’ attributes customizable as players make their way towards the final fight.  One thing I didn’t like is how some parts of Arcade and Story mode were left unchanged.  Some characters were kind of shoehorned into their final Arcade fight, having the same opponent as Ragna and company when it would have been more fitting for another Unlimited character to be their last fight.  As for Story, it felt awkward when fights against newer characters such as Relius were not added into older characters’ stories (Carl does not fight his father in his mode, but does fight Litchi).

The game looks and plays very smoothly.  The backgrounds are detailed and the character models have obviously had a lot of care put into them by a skilled team of artists.  It’s tough to not love the over-the-top Astral Heat animations too.  This is an anime-styled game, however, so some people might be turned off by the character designs (or the images and themes that push the game’s T rating).  The game’s story and arcade modes are fully voiced, and the actors do an amazing job of bringing the characters to life.  In the new story mode additions however, some of the actors have been changed.  Bang Shishigami in particular got a new and far less impressive actor.  And there are some moments where the audio messes up: either the characters say something different from the subtitles or say several lines in Japanese when their voice has been set to English.  Blazblue, like Guilty Gear, has amazing battle music that really hypes up matches, including many themes that play for matchups between certain related characters.  Some of the Story Mode tunes aren’t as memorable, but they’re still very high-quality songs.

The game can be tough at times and there are a few small issues, but Blazblue: Continuum Shift Extend is an immensely fun game that I highly recommend to fighting game fans, as long as they aren’t completely turned off by anime or visual novel-style games.

And then a magical girl gets Squirrel Punched.