Melty Blood: Type Lumina

Genre: Fighting Game

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

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Review:

Melty Blood: Type Lumina, released on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2021, is the fifth main installment in the Melty Blood Fighting Game series, and the first game in the franchise in over a decade. This game is set in the same universe as the Tsukihime visual novel, and features multiple characters from that story, as well as original characters and even guest characters from Tsukehime creator Type-Moon’s other well-known franchise, Fate/Stay Night.

However, perhaps even more than the franchises involved here, probably the strongest influence in Melty Blood: Type Lumina is series developer Soft Circle French-Bread (later simply renamed to French-Bread), whose other works include the Under-Night In-Birth series. Much as with those games, Melty Blood: Type Lumina features gorgeously-animated anime-style pixel art visuals, here joined by Japanese voicework for the characters and backed by a pretty excellent soundtrack, with catchy tunes like Resurrection Beat, Blooming, Mysterious Dusk, and What’s Next.

When it comes to the gameplay, my first impression of Melty Blood: Type Lumina’s gameplay is that it’s surprisingly smooth, with moves flowing into each other fairly effortlessly. This is because this game’s combo system is highly accessible, with players able to string together simple combos just by button-mashing the same attack button, or building more complex combos by ensuring they cycle between different buttons. Throws and more powerful moves are generally done by pressing two or more buttons at once, and in addition to standard blocks there’s also a shield button that can be leveraged into a counter.

The first of these combo mechanics is new to the Melty Blood series, called Rapid Beat (seriously, the names some of these Fighting Games come up with for their game mechanics are just silly…), with the other new mechanic for the series being this game’s New Moon system, a second gauge (in addition to a chargeable magic gauge) that can be used to power up devastating attacks.

This game’s roster features 22 playable characters including alternate versions of characters and the swappable Hisui & Kohaku in addition to those characters as individual fighters, overall making for a decent roster. I don’t think there’s quite as much variety here as you might find in the Under-Night and Guilty Gear series, but it’s still a good mix.

When it comes to multiplayer, this game makes use of rollback netcode for online play, and I was quite surprised to find that even four years later, there are still occasional challengers to play against online even today.

Overall, this is an excellent Fighting Game, and I would argue it’s one of the best traditional 2D Fighting Games I’ve encountered on Nintendo Switch. And while I do think there’s still room for improvement (I’ve mentioned a desire for greater fighter variety, and it’s nowhere near as technically impressive as Dragon Ball FighterZ), Melty Blood: Type Lumina should still be considered a must-have for Fighting Game fans on Nintendo Switch.

tl;dr – Melty Blood: Type Lumina is a Fighting Game set in the Tsukihime universe with 2D pixel art with wonderfully fluid animation, and gameplay that is similarly fluid and highly-accessible. I would have liked a bit more character variety, but overall this is a game that Fighting Game fans on Nintendo Switch should absolutely have in their game library.

Grade: B+

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