I enjoy playing this game.
it's the best fighting game I played with a keyboard until now.
yes, I don't have control, plus I don't care to have one,
and I love most character cast from indie Japanese games,
I will say all of them if shovel Knight, most of them I didn't know about beside cave story and aaaaaa shovel Knight,
I search for some of them and man they are hidden jewels games, this one specifically Umihara Kawase Shun it's the weirdest puzzle platform game I played, I highly recommend it but it's little hard,
the only problem I have with Blade Strangers it's don't let me play with all characters story from the beginning, it's open little bit little bit after you complete one character story after another,
because of this I complete the game 100%,
I don't lie I kinda enjoy it but some character was trash to play with, I think most people played the game know what character I mean

Not bad for a small developer, but it lacks spice. I had fun with it playing the story mode.

The first impression was weak, i didn't care about the roster, the UI is boring, the gameplay is basic, and it looks kinda ugly. After a while i started finding it fun to play though.

The roster also grew on me, Ali and Liongate sold me on Code of Princess. Master T was also a nice char. I knew most of the other characters, i've played their games or have them on my backlog. Wasn't really hyped for any of them.

The OG character Lina i did like, she's cute and fun to play.

The story mode was ok, i didn't get any possible fanservice but like i said i enjoyed those chars i mentioned.

Something weird about it is that Shovel Knight, Isaac, Gunvolt and Quote only appear in their own story modes, they never appear in cutscenes for other characters (Aiden, Summer Kawase and Piaa don't appear either but they were added later with an update). This turns the story mode into "Code of Princess vs Umihara Kawase feat. Curly"

It's probably related to licensing bullshit or something but it does suck.

So me and some friends made a massive list of “B-List Fighting Games” and I think it’s about time to start chipping away at it.

Blade Strangers after playing it for way too long…Is super mid to be honest. Graphically it looks like store brand Guilty Gear Xrd and that is not a compliment. Music is extremely hit or miss. It doesn’t feel as sluggish as it used to pre patch but still feels a little slower then it should and The combo system feels just as arbitrary as Strive. Like there’s stuff that feels like it should work but doesn’t for no reason like why can’t I use a special move after a sweep and why don't the different heavy attacks combo together. The light attack auto combo also feels unneeded as it just feels like it’s there to pad out the combo time.

I’m not a fan of simplified Inputs as they tend to limit the movepool a character can have (looking at you DNF Duel) but as far as simple input games go they do a pretty good job with giving the characters a bunch of tools to work with. Well at least they did with Gunvolt. The cast here is whatever. Basically carried by Cave Story and the guest characters with an overall weak crossover appeal. Basically you’re here for Swole Shovel Knight, Isaac, and Gunvolt.

The game’s tutorial is pretty bad as it explains how the game works in the blandest most surface level way possible and even leaves stuff out like I only learned that Lina has an air dash by complete accident. The combo trial mode would be okayish if it weren’t for the fact that they made the same mistake UMVC3 did of not including a sample video for each combo which can lead to quite a bit of frustration when it comes to figuring out some of the timings and the story seems like it could be somewhat interesting for about 10 seconds before it devolves into a tournament arc like always and the character interactions being pretty bland most likely due to flanderization and short interactions. There’s a couple decent moments but nothing worth writing home about.

Overall the game is the definition of a mid fighting game and to be honest I’m not sure how much better it could have been. Because it’s not terrible it’s more than functional and was occasionally fun at times during the 7 story runs I did but nothing compared to what I consider the best in the genre.

Least this makes a pretty decent baseline to go into the rest of the list with.

Got the game on sale since I was intrigued by the Isaac and Cave Story cameos, but it's just another shovelware anime fighter with over-simplified controls in a well-intentioned but poorly thought-out attempt to appeal to casuals (failing to understand that one of the main appeals of the genre is the process of learning the controls) and a dead online scene, a la DNF Duel. And that's without even mentioning how the game is ugly as sin and has one of the lamest character rosters I've ever seen in a fighting game, save for those aforementioned cameos.

Thank God for Steam's liberal refund policy.