This is one of those games where if I have gotten it on release and paid full price for this game. This game would suck and be heavily disappointed this is the 1st 3D Guilty Gear game.
Looking at it in 2024 where the game is $4 on steam a lot. The license battles they had to face makes for the lack of characters from the series seen. Those very license battles would create another goated series, Blazblue. Xrd and Strive came out and GG is successful it’s ever been. I think this game is decent!

I love how the game as legitimate boss battles even if a few are more “woah” factor to any actual gameplay intensive. Which the gameplay I feel mix about, you can do combos and do some wild stuff. Or you can button mash and get the same results on playthroughs. Abusing the I-frames from some of the tension moves leads to some interesting set ups and dodging. As blocking and dodging/side stepping in this game is awful. It’s better to use a tension move to get out of something than to try to block something.

I love early 2000s games mood and this game is no exception. Give it a try! Campaign is a few hours long and playing the other modes with characters non playable in the story are cool.

(This game added in Valentine and she’s adorable along with the other Valentines. So the game rating gets a bonus point.)

(This review is written from the perspective as someone whos only played this games story mode)

I actually really like this game, i thought that it'd be much less of a product than i was getting when i first bought it. The first seven missions are some of the least fun ive had in my entire life, with weird enemies that arent to fight and a zone control game mode that turns it from an action game to a strategy game which i wasnt a fan of, although after the first seven missions it doesnt make another appearance except for another mission where its a much more enjoyable time,

The controls are similar to the dmc games in how you lock on and then use simple directional inputs like back or forward to determine what moves you use, the combat can be very fun and for the most part it is, but, the combat is too clunky, a lot of moves dont flow together very well (atleast on sol who you play as most of the story), the worst case of the clunky combat is how long you arent really able to move after you input some moves, you do the move and then youre left sitting there for much longer than you should be, although i think if this game were made today my issues listed might not even exist.

This games music is phenomenal and of the entries that i've played (strive,xrd2 and +r) it is very easily my favourite soundtrack and the designs are top notch at virtually every corner (ky's sucks), sol, sin, izuna, paradigm, valentine its banger after banger after banger with these things and the art style is amazing especially of the sprites with sol and sin's being my favourites.

I actually ended up liking the story quite a bit, the characters have some very fun interactions and even some well written scenes i feel, Sol and That Man's interactions making for some of the best, Valentine falls flat for me but makes up with it for her significance to sol.

The most surprising thing to me when playing this game was the voice acting, i think that just about every character is given great voice actors (especially sin and that man with yuri lowenthal) that deliver amazing performances.

This game also houses some amazing boss fights with amazing scores, the three best being Sin,That Man and Valentine's second boss fight, withh Valentine mark 2 being one of my favourite fights not just in its music but in spectacle aswell, truly a great game and i would love to see a game like this return as a future (spinoff) title

On my quest to become fully immersed in every crumb of Guilty Gear lore I could find, I did actually play this game, and boy it was something. What used to be a top of the line fighting game flipped right into an RTS Musou with no explanation? It goes about as well as you'd think. The gameplay tutorials were so extensive and confusing, and there were so many moving parts that I basically just had to figure out everything as I went.

However, it was short enough that I didn't honestly mind it too much. Played the whole thing in 1 sitting and it took almost exactly 5 hours, which was a perfectly acceptable amount for what it is. Because when it comes down to it, I was in it for the lore, and the holy light of Daisuke's Vision even reaches these depths. The story is a solid entry to the series, the art is pretty sick, and of course, the soundtrack is Guilty Gear-tier, which makes the game much more bearable than it otherwise would be.

Overall, if you're as lore-crazed as I am, you should probably give it a try. But please just spare yourself the pain and look up guides on your way through the gameplay, especially for the dreadful lost-and-found mission.

Approaching from a context in which we have gotten multiple Guilty Gear fighting games after this, approaching GG2 is a fascinating novelty that rises above its dubious reputation.
I think that the concepts at play here are solid, but not refined. A sequel to this would really rise up to be a fairly solid game that I can recommend to a specific kind of person. However, in its current state, this is a game for sickos like me who love Guilty Gear and need as much of it as you can get.

They really messed up the voice acting so bad, I have no idea how they managed that. It's abhorrent. Just terrible. So glad they didn't stick with these VAs moving forward. All the voice talent is great too, they got a lot of staple folks who did great in Persona, but it's so poorly directed and just does not fit the characters at all.

genuinely do not understand the hate. yeah the gameplay is a bit clunky and takes some getting used to but it's fine (even fun) once you finally do. that aside, story characters and music are about as good as you can expect from guilty gear- that is to say amazing. some of my favorite scenes in the series are from this, and introducing sin and the valentines is great for both this game and the rest of the series. only major issues are that the pc port kinda sucks ass and that it does take a bit of time to get used to but i think it's totally worth playing

It's awful. The gameplay is janky and clunky as all fuck, there's weird running/superspeed sections, and oh my fucking god some of the English voice acting is absolutely unbearable (Izuna namely)

Just read the wiki for the story if you want the lore, it's not even worth listening to, let alone playing.

This is not worth suffering. Save yourself.