The Gamer's Quarter

[xvs07]

For those who have heard of this series but not played it, for those who thought about pre-ordering but were discouraged by the prohibitive $65 asking price, for those who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, I have news: Melty Blood: Act Cadenza won't break sales records or top any charts, and certain aspects of its presentation may leave you wanting more shiny, but you ought to play it anyways, new now or used later on, because it's charming, thoughtful, and fresh in ways I am about to describe. Those of you who are familiar with Melty Blood will know most of this, but I suspect there'll be a few new bits for everyone.

What's vital to know is this: MB:AC doesn't do away with special moves, but it does homogenize them greatly, such that 98% of all specials employ one of four basic motions plus one button. Even the high-powered bar-using moves use them. This means that once I grasp these four basic motions, I have a decent foothold into picking up any character I like, which makes it conceivable that someone who isn't deeply invested in fighting games might still be able to play and enjoy this one. This is the kind of sea change that could revitalize and repopularize the genre. (Interestingly enough, the game still incorporates one of my least favorite motions ever for Kohaku: 1632143, a motion that originated as Geese Howard's Raging Storm.)

The MB series has never been able to front the pixel counts to keep up with the big names, and the effects and music are pretty but forgettable, but the animation is exceptionally fluid, and the frames are expressive and beautiful despite the lower resolution. Animation, voices, and even playstyles seem to have been deliberately harmonized to create the sense of a unique persona in each cast member. Given the balance and input homogeneity, I found that choosing which character I would train with first (Miyako Arima, for the curious) was a matter of figuring out who I most identified with. Which is awesome.

Last but not quite least, a few finishing touches with which I would like to familiarize you. Each of MB:AC's characters has 24 different palette swaps available from the start, easily outnumbering any other fighter's outfits, and providing an overtone of paper-doll fetishism to a game deeply ensconced in understated loliconity. Speaking of understatement, I never thought I'd see a co-ed fighter without at least one gal fighting in lingerie, but the MB cast all seem to have clothes in full compliment.

In other news, training mode has a feature I've never seen before. A few trainers I've seen will log your button presses, MB:AC times the length of those presses and outputs a number beside each of them (in frames, I think) to let you know how fast you are. This is the kind of thing that could keep me up nights, but I'm probably weird.

I haven't bought this game yet because I don't have the cash, but I plan to support creators TYPEMOON and French-Bread when I can. I feel $65 is a bit steep for the content, but I'm a bit of a miser and I feel that way about any game these days. It seems much cheaper when I think of it as 10% of a PS3..


Edit: Oh yeah. Right. Completely forgot to mention cast additions: Aoko Aozaki and Kishima Kouma are playable from the start, and Neko-Arcueid and Neko-Nrvnqsr are unlockable.

[GSL]

When you look at the prices of normal Japanese PS2 releases--especially ones based off of popular PC franchises (i.e. the upcoming Fate/stay night port), the $65 asking price for MB:AC is about par.

I haven't had the chance to pick up a copy of MB:ReAct, so I've just been using the original release; do the additions and changes to Act Cadenza help balance things out a little better? The series has the potential to become one of my favorite fighters through complexity and sheer speed alone, but there were some characters in that first release that were just ridiculously unbalanced.

And just a not/personal gripe: The biggest criticism I hear about the series on various message boards I frequent (aside from the lack of balance) is the character sprites. People complain about the pixellated characters looking horrible ("MB series has never been able to front the pixel counts to keep up with the big names"), but the fact is that everyone's missing the point. Melty Blood was a doujin series based off of a doujin visual novel, and the emphasis was never on having hi-res sprites like you'd find in Street Fighter 3: Third Strike or the Guilty Gear series. As the series goes onto its third revision (more if you count the various patches), you'd think that if having crystal-sharp sprites was something French Bread wanted, they would have done so by now. It just bugs me to hear people complain about the character sprites as though it's an aspect of the game that just didn't turn out the way it was supposed to--rather than being a conscious design decision. I mean, hell, you don't hear anybody griping about how pixellated Cave Story is.

But, uh, anyways: xvs07, you say you haven't bought the game yet; does this mean you're familiar with the arcade original, or that you, ah, aquired it through more illicit means? I ask only because I heard there were some glaring bugs in the arcade version, and I was wondering if they were fixed for the PS2 port. I'll probably end up picking up a copy myself, after I get a slightly more reliable import solution than the slide card trick.

[xvs07]

[Persona-sama]

Greatstlou:
The series has changed a lot for the better since its initial release. Act Cadenza is probably the most balanced the game has been so far, which still isn't saying much because every character can be ridiculously cheap if you know how to use them. It's just not as insanely cheap and bug-ridden as the original game is, so don't fret. (And you should've patched that game by now anyhow. There's been free patches for the original game that fix a lot of problems and they've been around forever!)

I'm very impressed at how Ecole handled the arcade/PS2 port. When the first news of the arcade game being made was spread about and reports came in, I heard a lot of problems with lag, dropped frames, and other technical problems that left me feeling hopeless. Two years later, playing the game on my PS2, I can see that they handled everything really well. They even got support from French Bread and Type Moon to make this an authentic sequel/expansion to Melty Blood complete with new scenario. It's pretty awesome.

I've literally spent this week playing this game. My friend and I had epic 40+ battles every night, ending usually at 7-8 AM. There hasn't been a game in a long, long while that's been able to do that, so I can attest that Melty Blood is pretty amazing.

It's a fun game and can be pretty easily picked up by moderate fighter fans. It's pretty combo friendly so even button mashers can do well if they try (but not to the absurd level of Tekken). The characters are all interesting and there's a lot of charm in all their animation. If anything, this game will definitely be a gateway drug to the series it's based off of, Tsukihime, and the other great works Type Moon has produced. With the translation for the original Tsukihime game coming out soon, everyone should get into Melty Blood so that they can get familiar with its world and enjoy the Tsukihime series as a whole!



Also, on the matter of French Bread's choice for sprites:
You're right, StLouis. It is a conscious design choice and it was the sign of pretty much all the fighters French Bread was doing back before it changed its name from Watanabe Productions. Now they have more Flash-like animated character games like Ragnarok Battle Offline and Glove on Fight, but they still use classic low-res sprites for a lot of their work. It's stylish and nice and looks impressive as hell when some of those sprites start zooming into the screen.
_________________

[GSL]

[Lestrade]

I am... awaiting delivery of this game right now, in one form or another. I want to try it out, certainly. I'm very, very excited about it, actually, especially after reading this info; I'm looking forward to a cute, pick-up-and-play fighting game that allows for some out-and-out fun. I'm getting a bit tired of all the cock-wagging fighting purists lately, so something that my wife might actually enjoy is very appealing.

I'll join in on posting impressions as soon as I can play it.

[friedchicken]

So on a whim I ordered this yesterday. That's one thing I'll miss about the east coast-- one day UPS ground shipping from NCS!

While I wait forever for it to get here, is there a demo version that I can download for MB: Re Act? Just wanted to chck it out to se if my pennies are wasted.

EDIT: I think I was indelicate (without meaning to be) by asking about a demo-- I'll just hold off until my copy arrives.

[GSL]

Ask, and ye shall recieve: http://www.revolve-trans.org/. Demos for both the original Melty Blood and MB:ReAct can be found in the Downloads section, under Main. Revolve has been working on an English translation of Melty Blood as well as assisting the group Mirror Moon in translating Tsukihime, the visual novel that MB is a sequel to. Apparently the translations for both MB and ReAct are finished and in the editing phase, and will most likely be released after the Tsukihime patch is finished.

[xvs07]

[friedchicken]

[Lestrade]

I have Melty Blood! So far it's a lot of fun. I'm just learning the mechanics. Can't wait to try out all the characters!

[friedchicken]

...and I played the demos about as much as I could with a total of three characters! Thanks again for the link, GSL!

It's an awful lot of fun. Very intuitive, and not so ridiculously technical that it takes years to seem like you know what you're doing. I can't wait!

[OtakupunkX]

The subject line of this thread reminds me of this bizzarely unhumiliating match of Street Fighter Alpha 3 I played about a month ago with my friend Lauren, whose prior videogame experience consisted only of Tetris and Crash Bandicoot (that I know of).

She destroyed me, if you hadn't figured that out by now. I think she ended up beating everyone in the room that had the guts to challenge her.

Melty Blood sounds like it would be a good game to play with people who don't play games. I'll have to try it out soon.

[GSL]

You're welcome for the link. Yeah, the demos don't have much (okay, anything) in the way of story mode, but the 1-player and training modes should be enough to give you a feel for the game. And yeah, it's totally one of those titles where you can have just as much fun pushing the joystick in the direction of your opponent and mashing buttons as you do counting frames for the proper millisecond to chain that next devastating move.

[Lestrade]

It's nearly 8 in the morning, and I'd rather stay at home and play Melty Blood than go to work. It's that good.

[xvs07]

Ditto... but I feel that way about most games and jobs.

So who's going to write the article?

[friedchicken]

I'd love to write it, but I can't write for shit. But I'll provide the art for whoever writes it! Well, unless it's you Lestrade, in which case you're on your own.

It really says something that I'm still interested in the demo. I keep finding one more combo or one more cancel. Wow, I hadn't expected this out of fan-made game. These guys really know their shit.

[Lestrade]

Shit, I was hoping to do art too! Well, I could always do a cover, or some incidental art. Cute anime girls fighting each other = easy = send-me-my-million-dollar-cheque-Shaper-thanks.

[GSL]

I don't have a copy of Act Cadenza, but I'd certainly be willing to hammer something out concerning the first two installments/the series in general. Unless Act Cadenza should be the main focus? It's a while to issue 8, which would give me time to pick it up...

[friedchicken]

[Lestrade]

Collaboration is good. We could always each draw a few characters and then the layout artist could intersperse them in the article.

[friedchicken]

My point exactly. I didn't say I'd win if we fought it out!

Well, I'll see what I can produce, and we'll go from there. I call the mecha maid girl though!

[GSL]

Mecha-Hisui. And somebody TOTALLY needs to do Neco-Arc.