A very stylish and creative fighting game and one of the most beautiful looking fighting games I have played.
The special moves for the characters are creative,because there's moves that allow a huge character named 'Iron Tager' to launch himself at opponents as if he's a giant bullet/shell or suck opponents towards him(which can be used to prevent faster characters who can shoot projectiles from simply quickly moving to the other side of the screen and shooting lots of projectiles at Iron Tager).Nu-13 is a character who can make rows of spikes move along the ground and even if you try to jump over them,he can shoot projectiles at you when he's in the air and when you're in midair and it requires careful timing to avoid this,but if you can get close to him he's quite vulnerable.There's a character who behaves like a Samurai in battle and his attack style/special moves are suited to using single but powerful strikes and his attacks have good reach.Jin can shoot some long-shaped and powerful projectiles and can unleash a rapid attack sword combo by pressing the circle button rapidly.Noel is an agile and fast moving female character who carries guns that create distortions in space,Ranga is an offensive specialist who can perform powerful sword combos/attacks and he has an attack similar to Street Fighter's 'Shoryuken' ,except he uses a sword for it.One of the character's looks like a creature made from goo,but it can stay in the air a long and perform some hectic aerial assaults on you that can be hard to defend against,as well as use projectiles against you.
You can try to overwhelm your opponent with speed(the fighting in the game is naturally fast-paced)or you can overwhelm them with good strategy or whatever advantages your character has(such as strength,reach etc).
When I said the characters have a good array of special moves,what I meant by that is no character is restricted to fighting purely as a Ken/Ryu clone or as a big,slow character character.For example,even though Jin can perform projectile attacks that are long-shaped and powerful(similar to Ryu's hadoken),he can perform a rapid sword attack by simply pressing circle rapidly and he can perform a ranged attack which makes objects appear out of nowhere on a certain area on the screen and can damage his opponent.Even though Iron Tager is huge and a bit slower and less agile than the other characters and relies on putting a lot of power into single hits/shorter combos,he still has a good amount of mobility(he can perform a move where he jumps high in the air and attacks his opponent from a distance of a few steps away from his opponent and the attack where he makes himself into the shape of a bullet/shell and launches himself over a distance at his opponent is a good way of attacking enemies from a distance and does a good amount of damage.
Just like in many other fighting games,the characters can do super attacks which do massive amounts of damage after they fill a certain gauge to a certain point.In Calamity Trigger,the super attacks are referred to as 'distortion drives' and they're extremely powerful and can remove most of a person's health and can allow you to win from seemingly almost unwinnable postions.
If I do have one criticism of Blazblue Calamity Trigger's gameplay,it's that the basic moves that are commonly used in other fighting games such as a leg sweep or aerial punch/kick are fairly weak/ineffective compared to those of other fighting games,in fact,special moves will easily overpower normal attacks and winning relies heavily on how fast you can perform or how well you can time special moves and being able to perform combos.For example,even though a basic aerial punch/kick attack doesn't do a lot of damage,you can follow it up with other attacks(do a combo attack)to do quite a bit of damage,but you'll need to learn how to do the combos and be able to time the button presses well.
On default difficulty(normal difficulty)the CPU opponents in Calamity Trigger are fairly easy to beat.But human players are often much more difficult to beat than many of the CPU opponents are to beat on hard or even Hell difficulty.You'll need to know how to use the numerous special moves the character you're using against a human opponent to your advantage,as well as how to position your character and when and when not to attack and which attack to use at what time,otherwise you'll be slaughtered by human opponents.
The game's online play has been a mixed experience for me.It hasn't been laggy at all.But the matchmaking options suck compared to the ones for other fighting games.It doesn't let you search for opponents who speak a certain language(in Street Fighter 4,I liked meeting Japanese players so I searched for players who choose a certain language as their language option).The custom match making tries to automatically find opponents who are a similar level to you,but I never found someone at a similar level to me(not the game's fault though).
Some of the online trophy requirements are silly.There's a trophy requirement for fighting 150 human opponents in player mode online,but I rarely find people to fight against in player mode.You get a trophy for reaching level 30,but if you lose a fight you will only get 10 points and if you want to reach another level,you might need 40 000 points! and if you win you might receive 30 000 points.Sure,the game is trying to make you win to earn your level ups,but I'm not very good at the game,despite the fact I spent over a week practicing because my reflexes are not as quick as other players(like I said,Calamity Trigger requires you to perform special moves/button combinations very quickly)and I would like it if the game gave you more points after a loss,because I've lost many close fights but received only 10 points for them and some people might easily get to level 30 if they play against many lesser-skilled players.
The single player modes include arcade mode(which is self-explainatory),story mode(which has a lot of story/visual novel style scenes before battles,score attack(which I haven't tried yet),
The story for the game is set in the year 2199 and it's set after ...
SPOILER BELOW
humanity was nearly wiped out from a seemingly unstoppable creature referred to as the 'Black Beast' and it turned living creatures into violent creatures and left a substance over much of the planet and caused the planet to be uninhabitable.The creature was eventually defeated with a blend of magic/science referred to as 'Ars Magus'.
END OF SPOILER
After the Calamity caused by the black beast,a new government was formed but it oppressed the people and executed people who oppressed them so civil wars broke out.Some of the characters are rebels fighting against the oppressive government,some work for it and some characters fight because of other reasons you can discover for yourself.
The game has lovely anime style graphics,including some beautiful scenes for some of the endings(the artwork for some of the ending scenes is extremely beautiful) and the fighting is well animated and I like the hand drawn style look of the characters.The story mode has lots of colorful,visual novel scenes.
The music suits the stylish,futuristic theme of the game and I like the Japanese voices for the fighting announcer(the female Japanese fighting announcer sounds cute when she talks)and I like how the game keeps the incorrect English that's said by the Japanese announcer(for example,she will say ''time up'' instead of ''Time is up or Time's up'')because it's cute.
Overall,Blazblue is a fun fighting game,it's very stylish and creative and has some of the most beautiful visuals I've seen for a fighting game,and the game shouldn't be missed by fighting game fans.