2021 was the year that I finally got into Guilty Gear. I don’t mean in the sense of playing it for the first time; I had spent a lot of time playing XX #Reload on my PS2 back in high school, but it was only ever me playing all of the solo modes, as there was no competitive scene in my area. No, 2021 was when I actually got into Guilty Gear. Learning how to play the games on a competitive level (along with other fighters, but GG is the subject for today). Learning how match-ups worked. Learning to be more flexible in my playstyle. Learning how to do more than sit in the corner blocking forever until I fall for a mix-up and die over and over until I uninstall the game.
Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 (I will be shortening this to Rev 2 for the rest of the post) was my introduction to competitive Guilty Gear. A friend and I decided that There Has Never Been A Better Time to get into the series than now. Turns out, the two of us had a friend of a friend who would set up online lobbies for their Twitch streams every weekend. I dove head-first into a trial by fire, taking on people as new as me, and people who were most likely kicking my ass one-handed while wearing a blindfold. Truly, the best way to learn is to humble yourself in front of a double-digit number of strangers (this sounds like a joke but it’s not). I didn’t have a clue; had no idea how to even do a Force Shield, let alone know the right time to use it. Didn’t know the ins-and-outs of Roman Cancelling. Didn’t know any good combos, good follow ups to a Dust attack, didn’t know that you always want to get a hard knockdown on your opponent. I knew some special moves and what buttons did what, and I slowly picked things up from there. Then Strive came out that Summer and I never looked back, at least not until the rollback update that happened today. As fun as Rev 2 was, Strive didn’t have the nightmare of delay-based netcode and frequent desyncs.
Those were fun weekends. We would play a ton of Rev 2, then spend the rest of our nights either watching whatever was streaming on Outer Heaven, or episodes of mid-2000s Kamen Rider (which is much more homoerotic than my “hasn’t watched Tokusatsu since Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers as a kid” self expected). Unfortunately, those days are long gone now, and that sucks. My time with fighters these days is playing ranked mode all on my own, then getting my ass kicked a bunch and getting sad, or winning a bunch and then also getting sad.
As I had already mentioned, Rev 2 got a big update this morning: better netcode! I spent the wee hours of the morning, then a few hours this afternoon, getting back into the swing of Rev 2. Relearning all the mechanics and characters of a game I haven’t touched in nearly two years. After all that, I have to say: Goddamn, Rev 2 fucking kicks ass.
Guilty Gear, as a whole, is such a satisfying series to learn. A lot of other fighters have a degree of rigidness to them, an expectation that you have to play a certain way. Guilty Gear, by design, is much more free form. Character hitboxes are all different, take damage differently, have different speeds in which they get flung into the air or sent falling back down, so basic combos and techniques need to be adjusted on-the-fly depending on the match up or even the position you and your opponent are at in the level itself. As an example, you cannot rely on the same attacks you would use as Ky Kiske against Sol Badguy that you would a character like May, Potemkin, or I-No. Guilty Gear walks this fine line between the constant spontaneity and flying by the seat of your pants, while maintaining the strategy and calm thinking that is needed in a competitive environment like this. It is an An*me Fighter in every sense of the term.
Rev 2 is no different. It is immensely satisfying to land that shot that allows you to follow up and knock and opponent into the air, or push them into a corner, where you can then proceed to beat the fuck out of them. Also rewarding to be on defense, and find that perfect moment to shift the momentum your way, either winning the round or making your opponent sweat to get those last few hits on you. I’ve picked up Venom as my main, whose fighting style is “playing Pool.” Lots of fun setting up his magic cue balls after knocking down an opponent, and hitting said balls at weird angles, keeping my opponent on guard while I try and then break that guard with my physical attacks. I’ve come a long way from 2021.
training mode example
Fighting games are a hard genre to get into. They ask you to put in a lot of time and effort for a victory that you will only ever get 50% of the time. It’s a genre where you have nobody to blame but yourself for failure (unless you get into a match with a ping of 300, in which case it is absolutely not your fault (shout out to that Sol player I took on earlier. Fix your internet, bitch)). They can be merciless and cruel, and you may give up and take a break from them for a while, if not contemplate giving them up entirely. But when you’re in the groove, that moment when win or lose, you and your opponent have laid it all out on the line. The moment when you go beyond merely pressing buttons, when you find a way to play mind games that work on someone half a country or even half a world away. When you can say “good games” afterwards and actually mean it, not simply handwaving a complete and total loss while you keep your head down in defeat. That’s when fighting games are good. As far as I’m concerned, no other game speaks to that spirit like Guilty Gear. Thankful that Xrd is now in a much more playable format, and can now be enjoyed for many more years to come alongside it’s fellow definitive GG’s in Accent Core and Strive.
custom multiplayer titles are fun
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