I'm going to make a proper way better review for this when I put in 100+ more hours and try out more characters other than my disgusting C-Nanaya RPS you until you cry, but in the meantime.

Raw kino goat swag holy fuck does it feel good to play a fighting game with air footsies that are like, ACTUALLY air footsies. Having so much of the screen that you can control overall is almost overwhelming, balanced by how easy it is to really pick up characters and throw their buttons out. Absolutely mental, would play out of a trash can with my pals any day. I've seen the light.

(Note: This is a review of the Community Version. Buy the official release to support French Bread, but use the Community Version if you wanna actually find a match online)

Now, I've never read Tsukihime. I know absolutely nothing about the Nasuverse or Fates or whatever the hell a TATARI is. What I do know is what makes a good fighting game, and Melty Blood is a damn good fighting game.

Melty Blood's allure lies in the options it provides the player. When you pick a character, you can choose between 3 moon types: Crescent, Half, and Full. Crescent is balanced with tons of control over your meter, Half is for a more aggressive playstyle with less meter control, and Full emphasizes big damage with less combo potential. With 3 Moon types per character and 31 playable characters, the roster effectively caps out at a whopping 93 characters, meaning you’re guaranteed to find someone with the playstyle just for you.

The other draw to Melty Blood is its focus on aerial combat. The amount of maneuverability options at any given moment is staggering. Regular jumps that can be ever so subtly influenced, super jumps that can bound across the stage, an air dash that can be inserted before or after your double jump and depending on your Moon type, a dedicated dodge that works both on the ground and midair. The gameplay really shines when you and the opponent stop flying around the screen and you've managed to launch them into the air and pull off that sick air combo you've been labbing in practice mode for the past few hours!

The online is phenomenal as well. I'm from the Southern US and I had a match with someone from Europe, and it was so smooth I almost forgot I was playing online! You're gonna have to join the community Discord if you wanna match up with randos online, but with netcode this smooth you'll have no problem finding a game.

On the downside, there's not a whole lot of single player content outside of Arcade and Training Mode, so if you're not looking to play online, you're shit outta luck. But overall, Melty Blood is just so much god damn fun, and I already know I'm still gonna be putting in hours after this review.

Maybe it's just me but local play with someone similarly skilled was good, not the best FG experience I had but a lot of things I recognized was top-rate stuff, and then netplay was like getting schmixed eight ways to hell and back without any clear tells of what the fuck I was supposed to react with another than to hold that shit. Like, it's one thing to have a game with C-Roa or Arc Earth, it's another thing to have that also be a game where you have Seikufu, Kohaku, the twins, Chaos, etc. I know it's rich for a former marvel player and gundam player to bitch about top-tiers, but IDK if I'll ever have my life open up to the point where labbing defensive options and consciousness-raising of how to deal with certain characters, on top of exploring my own characters, will be a compelling prospect to me.

I will say that this game has that spectator sport magic like all the other GOAT FGs out there; I haven't recently but there'll be a point in my life where just having some a-cho vids of MBAACC in the background is really just the vibe. But IDK, maybe I'm just projecting my general disillusionment with fighting games onto MBAACC, its around when I picked this up when I started to feel 'sick' of fighting games honestly.

One of the best and most fun fighting games I've ever played, insane depth and variety to the combat and cast of characters, incredibly detailed sprite work, stylish attack animations and absolutely banging OST. I really don't know what more you could want from a fighting game. Even if you know very little about Tsukihime or aren't the best at fighting games, it's still more than worth a play simply due to the sheer amount of depth and detail within the game which is worthy of appreciation alone and who knows, maybe you'll end up liking it enough that you want to dive down the Tsukihime/Nasuverse rabbit hole.