PSone - Guilty Gear

Format
PSone
Publisher
Atlus
Developer
ARC works
Country of origin
Japan
Release date
1998
Genre
1 on 1 Fighter

Guilty Gear

By Eric
6th Oct 04

Chances are that only hardcore fans such as myself have ever even played this game, much less own it. More casual Guilty Gear fans might be wondering if the genesis to the whole saga is worth their hard-earned cash. Honestly, it's up to personal taste, but I'll do my best to get into the goods and bads of this quirky, risk-tasking release.

The game features 10 characters at the start. It's a bit thin, but the problem can be rectified by unlocked 3 more characters by meeting certain requirements in Arcade...oops, I mean "normal" mode. Mostof the characters play the same, although some have different designs from the redone versions in the sequel. I must complain about Justice, however, who may very well be the cheapest fighting game boss ever (Well, next to Leopaldon). Most of the time she'll KO you with block damage. Other than that, I didn't really find any balance issues.

The music isn't as clear as it is on the sequels, but this is a whole other system from a previous era, so I can overlook that. Even if it isn't exactly DVD-audio quality, it's still awesome. The sound effects are nice, but sound strangely muffled for some reason. It doesn't ruin the experience, as it's just a mere superficiality. I do wish they'd tweaked the sound engine a little, though. The graphics are decent at least (for its time), but not as bright and vibrant as the graphics in the X series. This isn't necessarily a bad thing unless you prefer bright colors. It's just a different art style.

But you don't care about all that, do you? It's the fighting you're interested in. Well, the action in this game is even more insane than in its sequels, for both good and bad reasons. I don't know if it's just me, but I had parries occur a lot more often in this game than with the others. It's not a bad thing. All it means is that when a parry happens, you must keep attacking until someone's blow gets through. That is a good thing. A not-so-good thing is the Chaos Meter used for super moves. It fills up entirely too fast. This may be a good thing for people who like to have quick access to them, but keep in mind that your CPU opponents have this advantage too. While the CPU generally provides a legitamite challenge, I found certain opponents (Millia and Justice come to mind) to use this advantage unfairly, flinging projectile chaos attacks at me up to three times in a row, cheaping me to death.

A feature that was later removed from the series is the ability to charge up certain special moves to make them more powerful. I'm not sure why they took this out, as it makes this game much more interesting. Gonna hold your defense, or risk getting hurt so you can get an attack that will put the hurtin' on your foe? Charges can easily be ended prematurely as well, should a sudden need to block or attack arise.

A feature that was tweaked is the Instant Kill. It's still in this game, but done differently. Rather than sacrificing your super move bar for one shot at landing an instant kill as was done in the other games, this one lets you attempt it whenever you want. You must first land an attack which will turn the screen blood red. Then you must perform a motion to destroy your opponent before your opponent performs the inverted version of that motion to escape. I'm glad that instant kills can be escaped, but as you can probably imagine, people are bound to use this cheaply. Not only that, but if you pull off a successful instant kill, it ends the match without regard to how many rounds you've fought. You could easily beat the first five or so opponents in a matter of seconds if you abuse instant kills, which you are bound to do sooner or later when you're losing. Shame on you. If there's one thing about the instant kills which keep the single-player experience from becoming a joke, it's that the higher level opponents will never be instant killed. They perform the escape far too fast for clumsy human hands to best.

The game has a lot to offer, and I was overjoyed to see that they actually had character endings in this game (unlike Guilty Gear X...). It's worth fighting through the hell that is Justice to see every single one. Sadly, Guilty Gear suffers from the same problem Guilty Gear X did: not enough modes of play. You won't find the robust survival and mission modes that were in X2. There isn't a multiple-ending story mode, either. If you buy it, you buy it for fighting matches and nothing more. Ultimately, whether or not you want this game is all up to preference. Most of Guilty Gear's features can be seen as blessings or curses, depending on your point of view. It's a fun game to play by yourself or with friends, but it's probably not something that should be played in serious tournaments.

Score: 7.75/10

-- Eric 6th Oct 04

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