Guilty Gear X2 Review
Guilty Gear X2 is one of the most highly evolved 2D fighting games yet, and it's another clear sign that fighting games definitely have some life left in them.
The fighting game genre may be slowly making a comeback. Last year, the outstanding Virtua Fighter 4 met with critical acclaim, and later in the year, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance surprised everyone in what was a surprisingly good return to form for the classic series. And while the future of the genre will probably involve 3D graphics and online play, for now, it's great to see a game like Guilty Gear X2 show up on the horizon hot on the heels of these other great games. Similar to 2001's Guilty Gear X, this colorful and decidedly Japanese game features a large cast of more than 20 characters, dozens of cool moves and an equal number of weird ones, and traditional mechanics that anyone who's ever played a fighting game from Capcom or SNK should be able to quickly pick up. Guilty Gear X2 also features several new gameplay modes, improved character balance, and enough depth that fans of previous Guilty Gear games--or fans of 2D fighting games in general--should certainly enjoy it.
At its core, Guilty Gear X2 is a lot like its predecessor, which in turn was clearly inspired by countless other 2D fighting games from Capcom and SNK. It's the standard drill: You can engage in one-on-one, best-of-three-round bouts against the computer in numerous single-player modes or against a friend. Yet while the structure and basic design of Guilty Gear X2 may be conventional, its cast of characters is pretty exceptional, featuring everything from a pirate girl wielding an enormous anchor to a hunched-over white-clad doctor who seems to be wearing a brown grocery bag on his head. A good number of new characters join the fracas this time around, including a debonair vampire smoking a pipe, a scantily clad witch wielding an electric guitar, and an androgynous British lad who looks and sounds like a lass and fights with a yo-yo. You know we couldn't make this stuff up if we tried, and it's good to see that the designers decided to keep moving in the direction of "weird" rather than introduce more-conventional sorts of characters.
Like its predecessor, the game is brought to life with vibrant hand-drawn 2D character sprites and backgrounds, making Guilty Gear X2 look as much like an anime episode as a video game. In fact, the legions of fans of anime series like Dragon Ball Z and Yu-Gi-Oh! really ought to take notice of Guilty Gear X2, which has a similar sort of style and sensibility to it. Meanwhile, the presence of a hard-rocking electronic guitar soundtrack further helps set this game apart, and while the tracks may not sound drastically different from one to the next, it's great that the designers have given Guilty Gear X2 such a cohesive musical style.
In addition to the usual modes you'd expect from a fighting game, including arcade, versus, training, and survival, Guilty Gear X2 features a mission mode, a story mode, and a variation on the survival mode in which big combos earn you medals, some of which restore a little bit of your health. The story mode is unique to each character and consists of a scripted series of battles interspersed with verbal exchanges between your character and his or her next opponent. The speech is all in Japanese, a point that many of the game's fans will probably appreciate, and the story mode helps provide a better sense of all the game's various personalities. The stories for the characters can even branch off at particular points, depending on certain conditions of your performance during the battles. The story mode isn't terribly complex, but fans of the game's character design will definitely want to spend some time in it.
Guilty Gear X2 Quick Links
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- GameSpot Scoregreat
Player Reviews
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Great anime style graphics,fast weapon based combat and heavy electro rock music make the game so entertaining! Continue »
Critic Scores
- PSX Extreme 9 / 10
- IGN 9 / 10
- Gaming Age A
- Game Chronicles 9.6 / 10
- TechTV 5 / 5
- Game Rankings 76 / 100
- Worth Playing 8.5 / 10
- GameZone 9.2 / 10
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- Sammy Studios
- Arc System Works
- 2D Fighting
- Release: Feb 3, 2003 »
- ESRB: Teen
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