The game is worth getting just for Noel.
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is a 2D high-resolution fighter from the creators of the Guilty Gear series. It's one of those games that not many people have heard about, and even less have played. That's sad, because BlazBlue is a game everybody should check out, even if you're not a fan of fighters.
The game has a good story to it, something uncommonly found in fighting games. The game takes place in the 13th Hierarchical City of Kagutsuchi. Many years ago, a fiend called the Black Beast came from out of nowhere, and terrorized every living thing on the planet. Mankind fought to defeat it, but kept failing. Until one day, the Black Beast settled down. Scientists saw it as the calm before the storm, and took that time to develop the Ars Magus. They used the Ars Magus to defeat the Black Beast, and everything settled down. But after that war, the planet was covered in a gas called Sethir, which is dangerous to humans. And half of the planet's population was wiped out. Humans were forced to move to higher elevation places, and founded the Hierarchical cities.
Now, you can play as one of the 12 characters living there in the story mode. All of the characters are great. There's Ragna, a wanted criminal with a huge bounty on his head. Jin, Ragna's brother who has dreamed of killing his brother. Rachel, a girl child who is also a vampire. Noel, a ridiculously hot soldier from the Librarium, which watches over the Hiearchical cities. Toakaka, a half cat, half human who loves to eat and sleep, like any other cat. Litchi, a busty woman who has her own clinic. Bang, a ninja with a gigantic ego who loves with Litchi. And there's a bunch of others. Also, there's some side characters, like Noel's friends, Rachel's butler, Litchi's assistant, and two people who follow Bang around. I don't know what they are, friends, followers, stalkers, who knows? There are still a bunch of other characters, too.
The story mode is one of the many modes you can play in BlazBlue. You can choose from one of the characters, and play the story mode from their perspective. The story mode starts with dialogue, then more dialogue, then a battle. The lots of dialogue is ok though, cause as I said, the stories are good. There are about 5 or so battles for each character in their storyline. You can see different things happen if you win the battle, lose the battle, make a choice from a list when prompted, and when you Distortion Finish a battle.
Speaking of Distortion Finishes, I think it's time to talk about combat. The combat is great. It's engaging and fun, and if you master it, it is more fun and swifter. But the combat isn't so easy to master, because the controls are hard to figure out. See, the game is compatible with an Arcade Pad/Stick thingy, even though I heard absolutely nothing about it. So finding the S button and the Q button on your 360 controller isn't gonna happen. There is some guide in-game that tells you which button is which, but that was kinda hard to find, so I was stuck doing regular attacks for a while.
The graphics are beautiful. All 12 of the characters are in 2D and are hand drawn. The game has support for 1080i, and that looks amazing. Everything moves swiftly, and everything looks great. There's also 3D backgrounds, which combined with the 2D characters made me think of that movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The frame rate is completely steady throughout the whole game. The menus also look great, too.
Along with the story mode, there are also a number of other modes to play. In the story mode menu, you can watch 8 episodes of a pretty funny help video, called "Teach Me, Ms. Litchi!" (Also called "Teach me, Boobie Lady!") There's an Arcade mode, where you choose your character and fight against the 11 others, and get to watch a cutscene at the end. Then there's versus, something a fighter wouldn't be complete without. You choose your character, and then choose the CPU to fight against, or another player with a controller can play. Simple, but fun. There's a training mode where you, well, train. It's helpful for figuring out and getting used to controls, as well as mastering your techniques. Also, there's a gallery, which is pretty neat. Artwork, cutscenes, and music tracks collect here. You get stuff by completing various things in the game. If that's not enough for you, there's an online multiplayer mode. You get to face off against another player, and that's pretty much it. Once again, simple, but fun.
Hopefully you can deal with the sound of a guitar, cause you'll hear a lot of it in the soundtrack. Most soundtracks have a guitar in them, and some song start out like any normal track, and then BLAM! there's a guitar shredding away. Don't get me wrong though, there are some pretty good tracks, including one that I thought sounded like a Christmas song. But even that had a guitar in it. The soundtrack is good, but more variety in instruments would have been nice.
Positives
+Beautiful art style
+Terrific voice acting
+Fun, engaging combat
+Lots of stuff to do
+Great soundtrack
+Good story
+Great characters
+Noel!!! =D
Negatives
-Hard to figure out controls
-Not a lot of instrument variety in the soundtrack
So there you have it. BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is an amazing fighter, and an awesome game in general. If Noel doesn't convince you to get it, the art, combat, characters, voice acting, and soundtrack will.