good luck

In all honesty, as a sequel to Missing Link, I’m surprised this game isn’t talked about nearly as much as its predecessors or its successors. This game might as well be the next coming of christ as far as gameplay is concerned - next to missing link X is a massive improvement. There’s actual balance in the game, kinks that missing link had in its gameplay have been ironed out: chaos meter has been reworked into the tension system, instant kills have actually been balanced into the form you’re probably familiar with (they function the same in X as they do in XX and Xrd, sans Gold Instant Kill), the Guard Gauge makes its first appearance here, functioning essentially the same as it does in later versions of X and XX, and Roman Cancels make their first appearance here! The amount of influence X had on the series as a whole is undeniable, and turning the broken mess of Missing Link into this is a genuinely impressive feat and I’d say that this was the much needed sequel that Missing Link needed, and you can tell that Daisuke’s vision was definitely achieved in some regards at least when compared to its predecessor. Elements introduced in X would eventually be expanded upon in the XX series of games, but X provided the incredibly solid foundation for those games to work upon. The roster is also amazing, X adds such amazing characters to the roster - Venom, Jam, Johnny, Anji and Dizzy are all incredibly well designed characters with impressive variety between the five of them. Characters have also been reworked: practically every character gains new moves that are essential to how they function and existing moves have been reworked to fit the rebalanced game in place of their Missing Link incarnations.

How about the visual presentation? No longer confined to the visual and audio limitations of the PS1, Guilty Gear X is free to take full advantage of the hardware. The new spritework is amazing as all-hell (reused all the way up to AC+R!), with an insane amount of detail rendered in them along with exuding the character’s personality and style perfectly. Background stages are also beautiful in this one, reflecting the tone of the game and feel of the world of Guilty Gear perfectly. What about the UI? An element I am again surprised isn’t brought up at all is how spectacular the visual layout of this game is. It rocks so hard - the lowercase phrases scattered throughout the game combined with a robotic voice echo the heavy metal feel the game loves to flash are simply epic. Often undermined as low-quality or simply overshadowed by XX’s themes (practically every theme from X is reused in XX), X’s soundtrack is really damn good. Transitional tracks like Go! bang alongside new and reworked character themes, my favorite of which being May’s new theme Blue Water Blue Sky which might actually be my favorite Guilty Gear track in general? The Skid Row influence is insane and I love everything about it, I may actually prefer every track in X’s soundtrack to their XX counterparts. If you played this game on the Dreamcast, the sound quality was cut significantly. It’s got a charming feel to it and I wouldn’t actually say it detracts from the tracks that much, I’m mainly just a sucker for compressed audio.

At the end of the day, while certainly overshadowed by its sequels, GGX manages to serve as a competent base for the rest of the franchise to build upon. There are some flaws for sure (no story mode in the base game), but I’d certainly recommend it to any fan of the franchise to experience what is probably the most important game to the franchise in improving from its predecessors.

I love you Daisuke.