BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle

Genre: Fighting Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local / Online)

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Review:

Before I begin, I should address the elephant in the room regarding this game. When BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle was first released, it stirred controversy by locking away roughly half of its characters behind paid DLC. Since a character roster is the life blood of a fighting game, this is pretty egregious, especially since the base game has only has 22 characters (including two free DLC characters). For a fighting game today, that’s pretty small, and it’s hard not to see this as a shameless cash grab, especially since now we are at more than a year after the game’s launch and the full release version of the game still sells for $50 on the eShop, with the Deluxe Edition going for $70.

Suffice it to say, if you want to get this game, wait for the Deluxe Edition to go on sale. This game is not worth the full price, and I will be docking it a full grade level for this.

So that you’re aware, the version of the game I’m reviewing is the Deluxe Edition, with all of the currently-released characters available.

Whew. Okay, now that all of that unpleasantness is out of the way…

BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is a 2D fighting game by Arc System Works, one of the masters of the genre. This time out, the big selling point is the “cross tag battle” in the title, as the game not only focuses on a 2v2 fighting system much like Capcom’s Vs series, but that also like that series this is a blending of multiple licensed properties – in this case, in addition to Arc System Work’s own BlazBlue, the game also includes characters from Persona 4 Arena, Under Night In-Birth, RWBY, and Arcana Heart (with characters from Senran Kagura and Akatsuki Blitzkampf being added later in 2019).

Visually, these characters are all wildly expressive, extremely well animated, and fully-voiced, making for a great presentation of each respective franchise, although the backgrounds themselves seem a bit on the generic side, as far as I can tell not coming from any particular franchise. Also, some of the sprites used for the characters are in low enough resolution that the jagged edges are a bit jarring, and this is a bit inconsistent among the cast.

As far as the gameplay goes, this is a simplified version of the BlazBlue series mechanics, in theory making this an ideal starting spot for series newcomers. In practice, there’s still quite a lot of mechanics to wrap your head around here, and newcomers may find themselves struggling with all of the different types of attacks, button combinations, and how they interact with each other. The game’s tutorial content does a good job of guiding you through all of it, but not so good at ensuring that players actually understand how all of it fits together.

At the very least, the game is not lacking for variety in how the characters play, and players are bound to find someone here they like, with characters whose mechanics wildly vary, and with a good enough selection in the Deluxe version of the game that there’s almost certain to be a pair of characters that works well for you.

Online play for this game was known to be problematic upon release, with lag issues and glitches if you skipped characters’ opening cut scenes, but it seems fine now. However, the online player count is now so low that you won’t find much variety in opponents.

In the end, BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is a solid fighting game marred by some terrible monetization and an attempt at catering to new players that doesn’t work as well as one might hope. It’s worth playing if you can get it at a good price, but otherwise you may be better off finding a different fighting game on the Switch.

tl;dr – BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is a good fighting game with a wonderful roster of characters that’s hurt by some pretty nasty monetization. Worth it if you can find a good deal on the Deluxe version, but otherwise you’re better off getting another one of the many fighting games on the Switch.

Grade: C+

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