CAN'T ESCAPE FROM CROSSING FATE!

You're going to hear this line before every fight. Combatants from four different worlds suddenly cross over into a mysterious arena. A strange voice tells them that they cannot escape until they fight each other in a tournament for the prize: a way back home. To win, each fighter is expected to fight for the Keystone, a mysterious crystal that acts as a symbol of heroism, and the world with the Keystone at the end of the tournament has their inhabitants go back home. But is there all that there is to it, or is there something much more sinister afoot? This is the premise for Arc System Works' new crossover fighting game BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle.

This is a new 2D fighting game with an emphasis on 2 vs 2 tag-team fights and characters from four different franchises: Arc System Works' own BlazBlue, French-Bread's 
Under Night In-Birth, Atlus' Persona 4 Arena, and Rooster Teeth's RWBY. As I mentioned earlier, each world has each of their select characters fight each other for the Keystone in order to escape from the Phantom Field. Each franchise has their story to tell, with each storytelling their side of events, but it's largely unimportant: it's simply an excuse to get all these characters to fight each other. Like with most Arc System Works games, the graphics are beautifully crisp and fluid and the soundtrack rocks.

Controls are simple: there's a light attack, a heavy attack, a cross attack, and a tag button. It's different from core BlazBlue games, so veterans will have to relearn their strategies. There are button combinations for throws and special moves too, but the button presses aren't too complex. Switching around your characters is a smart way to mix up your moves and to preserve life; when both fighters of a team lose all of their life, the match is over. There's no need to study up on the source material of each franchise, although it helps. The story mode contains a lot of banter between these characters, and it can be confusing or uninteresting for anyone who isn't familiar with the characters. And of course, you can play with a friend at home or on the Internet. In short, this is a standard fighting game. 

The game is on sale for $49.99. While that seems normal, the game comes with about half of the roster. To unlock the rest, you'll have to spend an additional $19.99 or buy the “deluxe” edition for $69.99. Locking away content that's already on the disc is fine if there was a way to unlock these characters through normal gameplay, but locking content behind a paywall is pretty brutal. While this isn't the worst DLC scheme to happen to a fighting game (that dishonor goes to Dead or Alive 5: Last Round), I really hope this isn't going to be a standard trend for future fighting games.


If you're interested in this game, check out this manga: RWBY , Rosario+Vampire , My Hero Academia , My Hero Academia: Vigilantes , Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign . 

by Ray n.