I looooove this guilty gear so, so much.
Like, it might actually be my favorite one, unironically.
Where can I start.
Ok for starters. GG X on the go. Awesome. Why should I care in the year of Christ 2024? (happy new years eve btw :D)
Well maybe you should start by admiring the sheer ballsiness of it all. They wanted the arcade game on the go, and they published the (almost) arcade game on the go.
The movesets come straight up from the first X version, so no reload nor accent core stuff understandably. They got almost all their supers and instakills in, which, dare I say, pretty fucking impressive honestly
There were limitations, obviously. The gba couldn't render the same instakill explosion from Faust's, so they went and reimagined the entire move in character. Making a character be quirky in a 3 inch screen ain't easy, man
Now, a character such as Potemkin? He's so massively chunky he doesn't lose as much detail, he's still even got defined muscles and shit.
Now May?
She straight up loses her face
Like, 0 facial expressions. Zero, nothing, nada. A blank slate, as empty as a child's homework notebook past third grade.

And yet it fucking works man
By taking away those features, you start appreciating all the animations so much more for what they are. What they show of the character. These little guys don't even have voices, and yet even if you had never played a GG game before, you could get to know the characters just by how they move. You could learn that may is somewhat clumsy yet strong, learn that millia probably wants you dead quick and clean, learn how dizzy doesn't even want to fight you.
All without a face. neat.
The music? I love the music so much too...
They are the same arcade songs, played very rudimentarily with the gba chips. They are guitar songs being played without a guitar.
And idkw but I kinda fuck with that desire to keep stuff as true to the original vision as possible. Plus, I even like how they sound, they are different takes on songs I already love anyways, more is more.
The stages are a shell of their true versions, and yet it doesn't matter because they are not the main focus here. They even make the characters stand out more, which I think is good for a, again, 3 inch long screen.

Overall, I guess the main reason I like this, the reason I care about this so much is that the development team cared about this, too. A lot.
They tried so hard to make this good. It shows in every small detail: The custom character colors, the additional 3v3 mode original to this game, there being secret characters (!!)...
This is the most honest attempt to gba guilty gear they could make. It reminds me a lot of other indie games, mainly stickman games. Limited art style, limited music, limited SFX... And yet, with the potential to be incredible games.
Does the ai suck ass? Yes, a lot. They don't even push buttons half the time.
I don't care about the ai. I care about what this game represents. I care about how you can make something memorable, not perfect, but memorable, as long as you try so hard your love for it shows.
And I think that fucks.