Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late(cl-r)

Genre: Fighting

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local), 2-8 Competitive (Online Tournament), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Under Night In-Birth is a Fighting Game from developers French-Bread and Ecole Software, likely best known for their previous work on the Melty Blood series of Fighting Games. Originally released in arcades in 2012, this game saw three major revisions, adding balancing changes, new characters, quality-of-life changes, and additional game modes. The latest version of the game as of this writing, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late(cl-r), was released on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2020, with the game being ported to PC and arcades later that same year.

Under Night is an original property, and as such most of the characters here are original creations, although this release does feature a few guest characters from Melty Blood and Akatsuki Blitzkampf, and a few of Under Night’s characters would in turn make guest appearances in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. As such, players shouldn’t expect to recognize most of the characters here, and the story is a typical absurd nonsensical anime-esque tale about superpowered teenagers fighting to control a great power. Yeah, you won’t be playing this game for its story.

The visuals here are pretty good, featuring highly-detailed, well-animated 2D pixel art characters in front of mostly unimpressive and uninspired backgrounds. It’s nothing compared to some of the best games in this genre, but it’s no slouch, either. These visuals are backed by a fast-paced soundtrack filled with lots of electric guitar, and plenty of characters shouting things in Japanese. Again, nothing that truly stands out within the genre, but everything here is generally solid.

When it comes to the gameplay, this is a solid fighting game with a reasonably varied roster of 21 characters and deep, extremely fast-paced and responsive combat. Despite this game’s somewhat technical nature, it’s still somewhat newbie-friendly, with a flexible combo system that allows you to chain together virtually any attacks as long as they don’t repeat, and combos that you can enable by repeatedly pressing the same button in certain contexts. There’s also an “assault” short hop that every character can use to quickly close the distance to an opponent, even in mid-jump, a “GRD” system that makes players progressively stronger the more attacks they land or successfully block, and a last-ditch “Infinite Worth” move that does massive damage but can only be activated when on low health. There’s a lot to dig into here, which could be somewhat intimidating for less-skilled players, but overall it’s still a game that players of varied skill levels should be able to enjoy.

While there’s a decent amount of both depth and accessibility here, what there unfortunately is not is proper competition – the online lobbies are deserted and I was unable to find anyone else to play against.

Still, if you’re looking for a good, fast-paced anime-style 2D Fighting Game, Under Night In-Birth is a solid choice. It looks good, plays well, and should be satisfying for players of various skill levels. There are definitely areas that could be improved, and the lack of an active online scene is really unfortunate, but overall this is a great addition to the game library of any Fighting Game fan.

tl;dr – Under Night In-Birth is a fast-paced anime-style Fighting Game with good variety and a decent mix of depth and accessibility, although newer players may find it just a bit intimidating. Overall though, it’s a solid entry in the genre, as long as you can overlook the completely abandoned online lobbies.

Grade: B

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