The best fighter on the DS...but that doesn't really mean too much.
The meat of the game, the fighting, isn't terribly deep. Now, I've only ever played one portable fighter before so I don't have much to compare it too, but it is better than said fighter (Mortal Kombat: Tournament Edition). There's specials and combos and all sorts of your typical fighter fare.
The game plays a LOT like Super Smash Brothers Melee, which is a good and a bad thing. While I'd much rather play a traditional 2D fighter, the 4 player, multi-tiered formula certainly lends itself to some fun matches.
Perhaps the biggest goof on the part of the developers was not putting in a single-card multiplayer mode. Fighters are about vs. matches, and not being able to play even a limited match with one card pretty much nixes the chance of...well, probably most people to get a 2 player game going.
The rest of the game, the mini-games and whatnot, are really forgettable. They're nothing more than ways to unlock new moves for Robot-Ky, but with 21 other characters to choose from, I'm not terribly worried about unlocking moves for one particular fighter.
Being my first experience with the Gulity Gear franchise, I'm sure that this isn't the best representation of it, but it's enough to pique my interest in the rest of the series, as well as to hold me over until someone does a proper fighter for the DS.