Recent reviews by Crossbow Carl

Soda's pretty good

So upfront I just wanna say I absolutely love the Blazblue series and I have been playing the PS4 version of this particular title for a long time now ever since the Japanese release, so I maaaaaay be a bit biased here, keep that in mind.

First I'm gonna go over some Overall review stuff and after that I'm gonna focus on the Quality of the Port:

If you're looking for your typical "airdasher/anime fighter" you're gonna be right at home with the Blazblue Series.
While, yes I agree, that the balancing in previous titles was a bit questionable, I have to say that I am really happy with how Central Fiction turned out to be.
As always every character has a very unique playstyle and if you're like me then finding specific things that work and figuring out combos with each character is a freaking blast. The new character additions: Hibiki, Naoto, Nine, Izanami, Es, Susanoo and Mai each are extremely fun to play and look fancy ingame.
Having all of the old characters as well though means that you are going to see the rise in quality (mainly sprites and animation) with each generation. While the new characters are very fluent in motion, some of the old characters CAN look a little choppy at some points but they still all work great together.
Sadly this title lacks a bit in the "content" part compared to some previous games in the series. Which does not mean that it has no content besides battleing vs CPUs/Players or Online noooo far from it.

You have your typical modes like:
-Arcade (with 3 different ladders/acts depending on the character. Each tells a different part of their story)
-Versus (fight against the CPU or friends locally)
-Score Attack (fight against CPUs to get as much points as possible by doing different things)
-Training
-Challenge Mode (basically a given nowadays, lets you practice beginner-hard combos for every character)
-Tutorial Mode (explains the main mechanics of the game, duh)

About the Story...I'm not gonna spoil a thing I just wanna say it's a hit or miss wether you like it or not.
It is and has always been pretty much a visual novel with the occasional fight here and there and SOME choices which basically only change whether you progress in the story, get a bad ending or you might also see a joke ending...which I have to say are still freaking well done and pretty damn funny.
I personally really like the story however confusing it might be and I was really looking forward to seeing an actual ending. Only thing I'm gonna say is "I was not disappointed...only a little sad...NO IM NOT FKN CRYI-"

Blazblue also always had some fun bonus modes that you could look at like:
-Abyss Mode
This has been changed quite alot in the series...I actually like this one the least.
It basically is a mode where you fight on increasingly more difficult ladders and earn more stats and items for your character to power you up and defeat ridiculously powerful bosses.
One thing I have to say about this though is that the bosses may be frustrating but some of them are extremely interesting to fight and can teach you a thing or two.

-Speed Star
Now this is something new. Speed Star is an interesting thing. Basically you have different difficulty settings in this mode which decide how many enemies you are going to face and how hard they will be. In this mode you do not take damage. Instead you have pretty long match timer in the beginning and everytime you take damage time gets taken away from you. However everytime you do something good like damage the opponent or pull of Hypers or long combos you get more time added to your timer. The Goal of this mode is to keep your timer up during the entire ladder to finish it since time gets carried over to different fights. Pretty fun actually also rather challenging.

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Alright! Technical ♥♥♥♥ time!:

New Mechanics introduced:
Exceed Accel - basically a move that can only be done during overdrive by pressing all face buttons at once does around 2k normally and 4k with "Active Flow". If you do not have Active Flow while hitting this it will put you in Active Flow. Since these moves are safe and can punish you for just pressing a button they can be rather annoying especially considering that they deal 4k with Active Flow. They scale pretty hard in combos though. You can also simply hold down all face buttons while not in Overdrive to enter Overdrive and immediately do an Exceed Accel to piss of everyone on the face of the planet...or maybe just me, but the can be pretty handy as combo finishers since the will put you in Active Flow or can still deal a decent amount even in a combos during Active Flow. Finishing off an opponent with this counts as an Overdrive Finish. Now I mentioned Active Flow a ton so...what is it?

Active Flow - basically the opposite of Negative Penalty status. When you fight aggressively you enter Active Flow, which boosts damage and your recovery of the Burst Gauge. Active Flow is pretty hard not to notice since your character emblem in your side is gonna start glowing and the announcer will yell out "Active Flow!". If you have Active Flow but no burst gauge your empty burst gauge will glow instead. Also an Exceed Accel during active flow will always have a different animation then without AF.

Changes:
Same Move Proration - Now I only really think that there is one big change in Central Fiction and it's that "Same Move Proration" is removed. So basically you can have the same specials and normals loop multiple times in a combos but the damage is gonna scale pretty damn hard.

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Now let's talk about Online Play:
You have a couple of modes here: Ranked, Player Matches and Open lobbies.
Open lobbies are big lobbies you can join..each room holds around 32 players and there are multiple servers for each region. You can even customize a little avatar for yourself to run around in these lobbies. To get more stuff for your avatar you have to use ingame currency to play what is basically a slot machine.
In Player Lobbies you can even customize the entire room yourself which is pretty cool! You get a ton of options to choose from but most have to be drawn from the slot machine.

Netcode:
Now...I know the netcode is not perfect...far from it, but it is by no means horrible. When I play with people from Europe I have little to NO delay...it can however in rare instances freeze for a very short time.
The ingame "Delay" display is...pretty stupid...it doesn't tell you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ most of the time where it told me that I would have terrible delay in a match the match was so fkn smooth you could slide on that ♥♥♥♥ all day.
Maybe thats just for me but it's basically not a good indicator.

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OK! Now the thing that you all came here for! The Port!:
One good thing upfront..You get ALL THE DLC with this Port! that said...
I was really suprised with how bad it was at launch...it seemed rushed and unpolished compared to the great ports of the other titles.
Now don't get me wrong it's not horrible, in fact it is getting patched alot!
but there are still some issues that bug me a bit.
I gotta say I seem to be one of the lucky people that does not have any issues with Framerate whatsoever so if you're looking into that I can't really help you. I am playing on butter smooth 60fps all the time. No matter what happens in the game. (same goes for the guy I play with alot)
I am also not really "qualified" to talk about keyboard controls since...I don't hate myself so much that I would play on keyboard...I'm joking!....memes?...sorry.
Now what really really REALLY bugs me are the sprites and text and all that...they looks so...ew.
I know that they are going to fix this and I'll probably change this review if they do but right now everything is a LITTLE weird looking except for the character portraits and all that...that's the thing that bugs me the most.

SO overall I absolutely recommend it since the developers are still working on fixing everything. "Good" Port of a great Game!