The King of 2D Fighters is on PSP!! What else can we ask for??
The gameplay looks simple but as you play more you will discover that there are lots of things to practice in Guilty Gear series. You have to change your gameplan according to the opponent that you are facing against so, you have to master different techniques for each character. Also, the playing style varies a lot according to the character that you use. As different from GG Reload this game contains two more characters, Order Sol and A.B.A. But most importantly the game balance is improved. All the characters in GGXX AC have their own unique playing style. It is not all about the faster one is weaker, the slow one is stronger type of stuff. The damage taken, the damage inflicted, how fast the super bar gets filled, combo variabilities, movement speed, how high your character can jump, cancels, jump cancels, weight, hit box also vary in addition to the special moves, supers etc. To learn more about the basics and gameplay you can visit www.dustloop.com.
The graphics look very sharp on the small screen, the musics are awesome which are more heavy metal oriented. There are different modes you can play. In story mode you take different paths for each character and learn their story as you progress. In M.O.M mode, it is more like survival but you collect the medals that drop from your opponents as you hit them. In team vs CPU mode, you make matches 3 on 3. The difficulty setting is variable. I played on "Maniac" and it was quite challenging.
The controls are pretty good. Especially the moves that require hitting 3 or 4 buttons at the same time work flawless which is usually a pain. You also have the option to assign those moves into one button and use "easy" option to make diagonal moves come out even easier. The game also supports the analog pad.
Loading times almost do not exist and the replay value depends on you. If you would try to master a character, it takes time to practice the "false roman cancels" and combos. Contributing all those different moves, cancels etc. into your game efficiently even requires more time. If you play the game as a casual gamer just to unlock all artwork, secret sounds, secret characters or clear all story modes etc. you can beat the whole game about in 10-20 hours or so but the actual beauty of this game is to challenge your friends and get better and better with your character, creating different strategies for different opponents and being unpredictable. The game gives enough room to innovate whoever you use.
In my opinion GGXX AC is the best fighting game on PSP in terms of gameplay and balance and I highly recommend it to every fighting game fan.