I am going to be completely honest with you all, even though it was announced at EVO 2018 when I first saw Guilty Gear Strive at TGS last year, I immediately thought “oh, yet another Guilty Gear, yay” in the most sarcastic of tones that I could possibly make as a human being. But since TGS there has been a slow trickle of information coming into the public about the game and I started gaining interest in the title. The visuals in the game absolutely sold it for me. When it comes to Guilty Gear, I’ve never been worried about the gameplay because Arc System Works does a fantastic job on this front, but with the advent of new technology and new animation styles, it seems that they completely overhauled the game from the ground up. Not to mention, there is also a PS5 version of the game coming too.
I haven’t played Guilty Gear for quite some time just because every game to me felt the same, and I’m not part of the FGC so I couldn’t give you all the fine details about what changed from version to version, but as a consumer, it was all the same to me. On Sunday, Arc System Works took to YouTube for a fairly lengthy two and a half-hour-long live stream outlining a bunch of new content coming to Guilty Gear Strive as well as to give a general update as to how the production of the title is coming along. With that, I was sold.
Throughout the live stream, we were shown real-time gameplay which looks absolutely gorgeous. It really does look like you’re playing an anime, it’s that good. There are a number of characters from the Guilty Gear universe such as Sol Badguy, Ky Kiske, Faust, Potempkin, and Zato-1 as well as newcomer Giovanna who was unveiled during the live stream yesterday. There are also five more characters being added to the game via DLC after launch.
Guilty Gear Strive will be launching on April 9th for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Steam for the Standard version with the Ultimate Edition and Deluxe Edition getting a little bit of Early Access treatment launching on September 6th, but with only offline modes available. Pre-orders will be starting today, October 12th.