Arc System Works really knows how to make a competent anime fighter, but Guilty Gear especially just has some great setplay and okizeme (for those who don't play fighters, basically setting up attacks after knocking down your opponent) as well as interesting neutral game that's very unique. Most of the characters are really fun to play, with particular setplay dynamics ranging from Venom's pool ball setups to Kum's moving ball setup to Millia's loops. Roman cancels are also still in and while they aren't perfect (YRC slowing down time is shit) they add another dimension to meter management and decisionmaking that's just incredibly deep and fun to play around with.

The music is also great, giving a huge metal power to each character with their themes and just being kickass to listen to while fighting. And even if you don't approve of the new soundtrack, you can queue up tracks of old like Guilty Gear XX's. The character designs are anime as hell and they're great as well, it is an aesthetic feat to watch even if you can't get into the base gameplay.

The only real issues are more personal, as in setplay is cool for a solid 20-30 hours and then not so cool when that's all neutral becomes at times. Also the netcode is some real trash to work with, and Danger Time is still a terrible mechanic. It's a great fighting game and I highly recommend trying it even if you're not a big fan of anime fighters. (8/10)

After playing a lot of Guilty Gear Strive and out of excitement for Jack-O's reveal as a DLC character, I decided to give Xrd Rev 2 a full re-play to see what I thought of it now. And to my surprise, it is genuinely one of the best fighting games I have ever played.

I play a lot of fighting games, I go out of my way to play as many as I can to see what games do to stand out from one another. Guilty Gear has always excelled at being a unique and incredible splash of style. The games developers want to do something amazing, which is tell a genuinely entertaining story through its story mode and arcade mode cutscenes, which is something most fighting games throw by the wayside. At the time of Rev 2's release and popularity, I was playing Street Fighter 5, a game that at the time, was causing me more heartache than anything. But still, I didn't mesh with Xrd that well. I played it a bit but ultimately I didn't find a groove with it. I would play it on and off up until Strive's release. In this time as well, I went around and played as many Guilty Gear games as I could get my hands on, and promptly came to find that even though I was never very competent at the gameplay, I loved the series for what it did.

Now after playing fighting games more seriously since 2017, I can say I love Xrd for its story, its style and importantly its gameplay mechanics. The roster is great, with a lot of interesting characters. Some rely too heavily on gimmicks in my opinion, but overall there is enough variety here for it to not matter. The roman cancel system is a great tool to make the game feel very open to what you want to do next, and sometimes its fun to just see what happens next after you decide to do it without a real plan. Experiencing the character stories in arcade mode is a sight to behold, with multiple cutscenes and dialogue exchanges between this games eccentric cast of amazing characters unique to each characters arcade mode route. It's one of the few fighting games that makes arcade mode actually feel like a storytelling experience, and it all preludes this games really great anime-styled story mode. This games arcade mode blows Strive's out of the water, I was so disappointed to see Strive had hardly any unique cutscenes to develop each character through the arcade mode. I also think the game is graphically stunning. The 3D models and the environments as well as the soundtrack create a presentation that is far superior to what many modern fighting games set out to present. In areas where it felt KoF 14 and Street Fighter 5 barely made the cut, Guilty Gear Xrd excelled and created a lovingly crafted fighting game that feels like a world being built around you.

I'm grateful that Strive has finally allowed the Guilty Gear series to make waves, and hopefully after its run is over, I can look back on it with as much love as I do Xrd. And also, here's hoping one of my favorite fighting game characters of all time, Baiken, makes her way in as DLC. Let's Rock.

Technically started playing this game way after it came out, but this series of GG games laid the groundwork for so many future FGC titles like DBFZ, Granblue, DNF duel, Strive, and so many more in the future. The graphics were literally spider verse before spider verse (2014 was when Xrd Sign came out). The OST is the OST of a GG game which means it's likely going to be godly (it is). It's also probably one of the best fighting games I've played in terms of mechanics, movement, and control. Character designs are top tier and the initial trailer for Xrd Sign is a masterclass in showcasing a returning long dormant franchise. To cap it off this game is a perfect example of innovating and creating something new yet familiar to bust back into the scene after another franchise (Blazblue) stole your thunder while you were dormant.

Giving this a great rating before it actually deserves it; as it stands netcode in my experience is not not functional in the slightest (can’t even join player lobbies or connect to an opponent, been forced to use steam remote play, if anyone has any ideas/solutions on how to fix/improve the experience away from steam remote play, please reply with them, that would be awesome) and without the confirmation that rollback is coming this would have a much worse score. That being said, with what I’ve played against some friends via more unconventional online methods it’s really fun! I don’t have too much to say due to everything just being really solid. Movement feels good, not too loose like ACR was for me, mechanics are generally really sound, and the game looks and sounds great. Only flaw with the sound design really is that I wish there was a harsher noise on inputting an overdrive, they kinda feel weightless in this game and it feels like they just “happen” rather than being a big moment. I dunno what my relationship with this one is really gonna be, if it'll be closer to the way I play strive (Striving to get better in a more serious manner) or if it'll just be more of a “chill with friends” game like ACR is to me, but right now I just know I’m loving it.

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Here’s where you want to stop reading if you don’t care about me venting my frustrations when it comes to fighting game communities. To put it bluntly, the mindset that gatekeeping is a good thing is not only wrong, but toxic and obnoxious. Reason I’m putting this under my Xrd review is specifically because I’ve made the mistake more than a couple times of going onto twitter and seeing people share that sentiment. Even then this isn’t just an Xrd problem. I’ve seen this regarding Smash as well, specifically between Melee and Ultimate, which leads me to believe this is more of a universal problem in fighting games in general. As someone that’s really enjoying Xrd, seeing clips and tweets of people saying “lol go back to strive” after beating someone that likely has a pretty small (especially comparatively to the person winning who likely has at least a couple years of experience) amount of hours in the game is making me doubt not only if I want to actually start practicing and trying out Xrd for real, but if I want to play fighting games in general. Talking down to players like this achieves nothing except crushing someone that likely genuinely wants to learn how to play your favorite fighting game, and making your player numbers dwindle after a second chance and resurgence in popularity. It’s nothing but selfish, toxic behavior. There’s a gigantic difference between disliking Strive, which for the record I can totally see the reasons why people do, and making fun of new people getting into your game from Strive. I said this already and I'm going to reiterate; this is not just a problem with Guilty Gear. So to every FGC out there; is it so hard to be welcoming and encouraging of new players to your game to improve? It really shouldn’t be.

The first traditional (as traditional airdashers can be) fighting game I tried to learn, and my favorite even after trying pretty much every single other popular franchise under the sun.

Straight up, the only moderately bad thing this game has is the random Danger Time mechanic in which characters get hitstunned for ages and take so much damage I don't even have an adjective to describe it, and I emphasize the "moderately" because danger time can be mostly funny.

Visually the game is great, really sells the "2D but actually no" style the developer came up with. Animations have lots of impact and good effects which look cool and keeps things understandable, despite preferring the art style from Guilty Gear Strive, this game does have a rivaling end result.

OST is great, character and rivalry themes didn't stick to me as much as the Guilty Gear XX ones, but are still great, and the extra songs are simply incredible, Storyteller, Dice and Big Blast Sonic got me looping them.

Playing the game is extremely satisfying, fast and hard hitting, with extremely varied characters and great offensive and defensive mechanics that reward extreme aggression, with a resource meter that resets after a round, so you're encouraged to always use it. Roman Cancels can immediately stop any attack you use and return your character to a neutral state, so you can keep on going or choose another option at the cost of some meter; Bursts get you out of combos, or can be used offensively to give yourself full meter or higher damage on supers; Blitz can negate an opponent's attack into a huge recovery animation, or make them lose a bit of their Burst... This game has a lot of mechanics in place that can be intimidating at first, but are really satisfying once you learn them.

Since this game is getting its online fixed, it is a game that definitely should be played. It is not on Strive levels of simplicity, nor Accent Core Plus R levels of complexity and execution, Xrd is on a strange sweetspot that I learned to like a lot.

Also, obligatory praise to the Dustloop Wiki editors for the best in-depth wiki on the FG space.

After originally finding Sign to be really boring because none of the characters clicked and the single player content sucked i skipped the Rev games on release.
I decided to give the Xrd games a second chance with the rollback announcement, now with more experience in fighters and in +R in patricular aaaaand...
I still hated it. Nobody felt good, not even Potemkin who i fucking love playing in +R. Most characters i just didn't like or felt a LOT better in +R making me lose motivation (Strive does the same to me), but i really wanted to get into it wich resulted in switching mains many times and eventually just dropping it.

And then like two weeks ago i woke up feeling the NEED to play Sol, i never even played Sol before in my life but i woke up really wanting to. I decide to try him in Rev2 and boom! I'm finally having fun in an Xrd game! It just took... years!

I still like +R a lot more but hey this is an extra game i can play now i guess