There's a certain joy to the fighting game that is completely broken in just the right way. A game where trying to take it remotely seriously is a terrible idea, where every character has an infinite or multiple yet is still wildy imbalanced and has some absurdly swingy mechanics that feel like they were made without much care or thought because this game is basically an ascended college project that's a bonus for buying Daisuke Ishiwatari's rock Album.
Guilty Gear isn't just busted, it's blatantly busted. Spend 2 minutes with any character in training mode and you'll probably find something stupid. Be it the weird instant kill mechanic, some moves doing obscene amounts of damage for no good reason, or Sol's DP being an infinite in the corner. LIke, how could you not notice that?
And I think the thing is, approaching guilty gear from the perspective of it trying to be an actually good fighting game is the wrong way of getting any fun out of it. Guilty Gear is way too focused on being the epitomy of rule of cool to care about anything else. The character designs are sick and they all feel great to play - the music is incredible, it has some of the best sprite work on the PS1 and the act of pressing buttons and doing all the dumb shit has a great feel to it all.
There's a great interview i've read from 1998, where Daisuke Ishiwatari and Hideyuki Anbe - who legitimately seem to have a huge chunk of the work on GG1 by themselves - and they talk casually and enthusiastically about things that don't work, that they were adding random bullshit to the game even in it's final stages of development, and it all sounds like they were basically throwing every idea they had in it. And I think that creative enthusiasm and Laissez-Faire attitude really comes across in the final product.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to play Guilty Gear against anyone that knows what they're doing. Basically every guilty gear fighting game afterwards would improve on it and is just outright better. But the pure slice of creative kusoge that is GG1 is a great arcade mode playthrough, and a fantastic game to revel in the stupidity of everything going on. Sol Badguy may have 4 ways of infinite-ing me, but I'll have a smile on my face whilst he does it.
Guilty Gear isn't just busted, it's blatantly busted. Spend 2 minutes with any character in training mode and you'll probably find something stupid. Be it the weird instant kill mechanic, some moves doing obscene amounts of damage for no good reason, or Sol's DP being an infinite in the corner. LIke, how could you not notice that?
And I think the thing is, approaching guilty gear from the perspective of it trying to be an actually good fighting game is the wrong way of getting any fun out of it. Guilty Gear is way too focused on being the epitomy of rule of cool to care about anything else. The character designs are sick and they all feel great to play - the music is incredible, it has some of the best sprite work on the PS1 and the act of pressing buttons and doing all the dumb shit has a great feel to it all.
There's a great interview i've read from 1998, where Daisuke Ishiwatari and Hideyuki Anbe - who legitimately seem to have a huge chunk of the work on GG1 by themselves - and they talk casually and enthusiastically about things that don't work, that they were adding random bullshit to the game even in it's final stages of development, and it all sounds like they were basically throwing every idea they had in it. And I think that creative enthusiasm and Laissez-Faire attitude really comes across in the final product.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to play Guilty Gear against anyone that knows what they're doing. Basically every guilty gear fighting game afterwards would improve on it and is just outright better. But the pure slice of creative kusoge that is GG1 is a great arcade mode playthrough, and a fantastic game to revel in the stupidity of everything going on. Sol Badguy may have 4 ways of infinite-ing me, but I'll have a smile on my face whilst he does it.