Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local), 2-6 Team Competitive (Online)

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Review:

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R is a game that started its life in 2002 arcades as Guilty Gear X2, the third game in the Guilty Gear Fighting game series (after Guilty Gear and Guilty Gear X). As time has gone on, this game has been re-released multiple times with additional content, features, presentation updates, and rebalancing. Compare it to Street Fighter II, with all of that game’s many versions over the years that had some wondering if Capcom knew how to count to three. In any case, this version was first released to PlayStation Vita in 2012, and marks the most updated version of what began as Guilty Gear X2.

As such, this game marks something of a final point for this phase of the Guilty Gear series, being the last Guilty Gear fighting game to use traditional sprite graphics – later games in the Guilty Gear series like Xrd and the upcoming Strive would bring the series into the realm of 3D cel-shaded visuals, while developer Arc System Works would continue making higher-fidelity sprite-based games in their BlazBlue series. With this being the case, when this game was finally released on the Nintendo Switch in 2019, many could see it as what is likely the last stop on a journey that lasted 17 years.

This game’s visuals feature some detailed, well-animated pixel art, and while it’s not quite up to the standards of what we’ve seen in the BlazBlue series, it is nonetheless still nice to look at. And its anime style is perfectly accentuated by its electric guitar-heavy soundtrack and Japanese-language vocal clips for its characters. This is not a game that’s likely to impress anyone in the current day, but it doesn’t look terribly dated either, even though it’s technically nearing twenty years old at this point.

In terms of gameplay, this game continues the series’ hallmarks of fast-paced gameplay and outlandish characters with wildly diverse and unusual move sets. However, with 25 characters here to choose from, players are sure to find at least a few characters they like. This game also has a wealth of content to play through, including the option to play the earlier Guilty Gear XX Accent Core version of the game before the “Plus R” changes made to the game.

I should mention that despite its high speed and bizarre roster of characters, the Guilty Gear series has always been a fairly technical fighting game series, and the lack of an actual tutorial to the game’s systems (there’s just a practice mode) means that this is a Fighting game that’ll likely seem daunting to newcomers.

However, if you’re a Fighting game die hard, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R will likely seem pretty ideal – it’s the definitive version of the end of a chapter in one of the most important 2D Fighting game series of the last few decades, and a solid game with a lot of good content. Definitely a solid addition to any serious Fighting game fan’s Nintendo Switch library.

tl;dr – Guilty Gear is XX Accent Core Plus R is the definitive version of an excellent, albeit slightly dated, 2D Fighting game. This may be a bit too technical for newer players, but genre fans should definitely give it a look.

Grade: B

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