Recent reviews by StrawberryEclair

I found it kind of hard at first, even as someone that has experience in MMOs. But with some practice on Cute mode I really started to get into it! The combat is fun to improve at, and the class design packs a lot of depth into a deceptively simple package. Love the art and music too. Had a great time with friends, and I'm looking forward to trying some solo runs later.

It really just felt like every other crafting/survival game out there. I haven't played much but it definitely hasn't inspired any desire to continue

A truly fun game in a surprisingly rare genre!! I can't stop playing it, despite some weapon balance issues and a very bare-bones multiplayer mode. AC6 feels a bit like a throwback to older games, for both good and ill.

Tinkering with your AC is super interesting and fun, to the point where it's a bit easy to stumble upon a setup that invalidates most of the game's challenge. Either way, it feels great to pilot your custom designs, complete with a fairly robust image editor to really put personal touches on your work. Combat itself feels phenomenal; snappy and quick but with just enough weight to convey the enormity of the craft you pilot. The story had me surprisingly invested in the end too, even if the presentation is minimal.

I'd love to see some more Multiplayer Mode support like map/weapon/part banning, 2v2 modes, a ranked leaderboard, connection indicators, and background music selection!

Fun, interesting meditation on esports from the perspective of players. If you're currently competing in anything or did in the past, the intense feelings that arise from putting yourself on the line will be easy to feel in the characters.

If you don't know anything about Starcraft (I didn't!), you might feel a little lost in the terminology occasionally, but it's insightful from a Fighting Game player's perspective to get a feeling for what skills must be honed in a completely different genre.

GGXRD is a great game that lands in-between the complexity of Accent Core +R and Strive, this is the one that really got me into fighting games! It's what kicked off Arcsys' now iconic style of 3D action, and even compared to GGST, XRD has its own charm style and charm in that emulates anime in every way, low frame counts and all.

✨✨✨

On release Xrd had a mixed reception, but it's become a bit of a classic today. The game finds a nice sweet spot between classic and modern fighting game design trends, sanding away some of the edges from ACPR (1~3f FRCs, Slashback, no input buffer etc.) and removes a few mechanics that arguably bloated previous games such as Force Break. A few additions are made to make up for the removals, each significantly relaxing the execution requirement for playing the game.

For all the changes it made to GG to make it more approachable, some may feel it goes too far, while others might argue it doesn't go far enough. Each character having a unique wakeup timing is a holdover from previous games that doesn't have many fans, as well as needing to mash buttons to recover in midair instead of a hold-to-tech system implemented in many games of this era.

YRC is also a polarizing mechanic that seems to make or break people's enjoyment of the game. Being able to cancel anything in a very generous window with only 25 meter creates powerful neutral skip tools, offense, and option selects that give the game a tense, offensive, swingy quality. This resembles the fun of FRCs from previous games without the difficult execution requirement, however the resulting screen freeze from YRC can give the game a "choppy" feeling, the flow of a match halting for a split second often as players YRC back and forth. Because of the strength of YRC, the player who has more meter often has the advantage, regardless of how much health they have remaining. PRC and RRC can achieve the same effect, but for double the meter cost, making it a powerful but costly option for correcting mistakes or applying offense.


Overall: In Xrd you'll find a super satisfying fighting game from the 09'er era that isn't quite as arcane as older GG's and not quite as toned down as Strive!

- If you tried other GG games and felt totally overwhelmed this one is a lot more deliberate, focused, and more invested in decision making than execution. It looks amazing and the OST is great, the new RC mechanic is incredible, the pace is more fluid and quick with the reduction in hard knockdown setplay. Overall a super interesting game that I'm excited to watch develop over time!

- If you really loved the older GG games you may have some reservations with this one since it's kind of a reboot of the game's mechanics and tones a lot of stuff down. If you're open to that idea you'll probably have a lot of fun though.

- The netcode is great, but the lobbies are cumbersome and are currently barely working properly. It can be somewhat frustrating to get into games. The game takes forever to connect to the server for some reason, so even turning it on takes like 3 minutes of waiting. It sorta tries to do a CFN type thing by introducing a social media esque system of following other players but it takes so long to view another player's profile that it's kinda impossible to use. There is no hitbox viewer or frame data, so you'll need to look that stuff up online. The replay system is a bit lackluster compared to ACPR's and they bug out and desync quite a bit at the moment.

(Please buff Ky's Dragon Install!!!)

This is one of the /the/ quintessential Guilty Gear games, it has so much to offer even if you've poured way too many hours into Xrd. The OST is timeless, the pace is fast and fluid, the mechanics are tight (maybe a little too tight lol), and best of all it has rollback netcode that is currently being continuously updated!

+ Fast/fluid pace
+ Endless depth
+ Extremely high skill ceiling
+ 10/10 OST
+ Super unique characters
+ Rollback netcode
+ Robust training features

With updates the game has really only become better, if you tried Strive and liked it but wanted more complexity or insane stuff I really recommend this. It's usually on sale for the price of a coffee so just get it and give it a try.

This has been the pretty much the only game i've played over a long period of time since it's release, I like it so much I bought it three times. While it might be a little light on content for people uninterested in fighting game competition, there's more than enough to enjoy at the price of 30$. I would definitely reccommend Xrd to any figthing game fan, and those that are even remotely interested in it's art style/music!

The netplay for the PC port has been very strange compared to my experience on PSN. Occasionally the game will play matches in slow motion or at an accelerated speed, even though the frame delay looks fine. It's hard to tell exactly what the connection will be like coming into a game, as mostly every connection reads as 0 bars, even if in-game it plays great at 3f of delay.