Guilty Gear 2: Overture

May the box art not scare you away.

Guilty Gear 2 : Overture : Some kind of bizarre attempt to create a new kind of strategy game.

Story : So thousands of years ago there was this big war between humans and this race of monsters that may or may not have relevance in the later plot, but probably does since the game shoves this backstory down our throats some two or three times in the opening sequence. From what I was able to gather, there are beings from an alternate dimension that are causing chaos and series mascot Sol Badguy is somehow destined to deal with all this, and the dimension that spawned these beings is the same dimension that channels magic by way of monitoring the laws of the universe….if none of this makes sense, you’re not alone. Why the developers felt need to invent some kind of bizarre laws of magic other than to try and put over the universe as more unique than other sci-fi/fantasy realms (and much more contrived too), I don’t know. What I can tell you is that the story is: poorly written, repeated to the player over and over again, slowly talked to by each character, and TERRIBLY voiced.

To illustrate many, many points, I will try to explain the gameplay of Guilty Gear 2: Overture in the following, italicized paragraph. If you get lost, just skip it and move on; you’ll help prove my point.

A battle in Guilty Gear 2: Overture consists of two fighters on opposite ends of an arena. Each fighter has a masterghost on their end – a representation of their soul. These masterghosts automatically summon orb creatures that can be used to capture giant posts stationed throughout the level called ghosts. These ghosts supply the mana necessary to summon servants. These servants are AI controlled characters that can do your bidding, as assigned from the Organ menu. You and your opponent compete to capture the ghosts and ultimately destroy the rival’s masterghost, of which is surrounded by a barrier that one needs the servants to destroy.

The first point I’d like to make is this; why is there such a need to conjure up such bizarre terminology? Why must a unit summoning menu be labeled the “Organ”? Why is the main headquarters the “masterghost”? Why do so many Japanese games do this, come up with needlessly abstract names that only serve to confuse players before they get used to hearing them used in a sentence? I know a lot of American online games can be guilty of reusing generic terms like “respawning”, “cooldown”, and “buffering” but at least these terms have become universal, resemble what they’re describing, and don’t come off as the game trying to be hip. Why must a checkpoint be labeled a “ghost”? I guess this is all part of the “Gambit Syndrome” (I’m making that up right now, named after Final Fantasy 12’s odd choice to name AI movement patterns “gambits”), where naming conventions need to be toyed with both in the name of trying to be stylish and to make the game seem more complex than it actually is (or should be.)

If all of this sounds very complicated, well, don’t worry. You have not one but TWO modes designed to try to explain all of this. The campaign slowly (and I mean slowly!) tries to break the player into the finer aspects of the game. Well, it progresses slowly in the regard of explaining how to move and jump, and then throws at you a large volume of text relating to attack properties, character attributes and the stuff that would actually need a hands-on explanation instead of a lengthy cutscene, including the two characters having dialogue in a vague attempt to lead into a tutorial about how to freaking walk. The campaign is set up to break players into all of these complex mechanics, but the downright slow pace of the story sequences kills any interest one may have in trying to learn. “Free mission” mode also offers a few tutorials as well, and while a game like this needs all the help it can get to explain itself, that any game needs this much time explaining itself should’ve had designers questioning the very nature of the game they were trying to make.

And I can best sum up the game they were trying to make like this: one on one Battlefield 1942. The big difference is that you and your opponent are more powerful than everyone else, who happen to be AI controlled. Now, the game is functional enough that you can’t just barge into enemy territory and claim a victory, but if there’s a strategic element to this game, then I can’t be made to find it. My attempts at fighting online typically resulted in stalemates where me and my opponent kept alternating between the same ghost points and dying a lot. The whole point of these online waypoint-based shooters is the co-operative element; you and your allies work together to take out enemy points and win through proper planning. That aspect is altogether lost here, and the resulting game just feels like a bad, poorly designed God of War, except with static maps and really bad collision detection..

I love the Guilty Gear fighting games. They threw subtlety to the wind and unleashed a caffeine-infused, post-apocalyptic, Dragonball Z-esque, heavy metal, sexually confused explosion onto the eyes of players bold enough to even look at the screen. The fighters fly all over the arena throwing lightning-fast attacks in a game engine that was not only not broken but surprisingly deep. Every move name was some kind of obscure heavy metal reference, and every fighter was a stroke of genius, from the metrosexual possessed dude in spandex who’s attacks come from the ghost from The Grudge to the schoolgirl (who was actually a boy) fighting with his yo-yo and teddy bear of death. It was a gloriously bizarre breath of fresh air in the otherwise slow and plodding fighting game genre at its time. The last Guilty Gear fighter, X2, is still being re-released over and over again ala Street Fighter 2: Turbo and its like.

Only two characters from the fighting games are present here, and while they’re arguably the main characters (Sol and Ky Kiske), they’re also the least interesting of the bunch. So as far as fan service goes, this game has one strike down. The game has five playable characters, but they all handle more or less the same way, so the only difference is in the design of your troops, which at least live up to the series’ standard of weirdness and volume (Sol’s masterghost is a motorcycle engine). However, the number of menu bars and explosions will keep you from appreciating the foot soldier women wearing gas masks and other potentially interesting details.

The final verdict on Guilty Gear 2: Overture probably doesn’t matter to most people that read this. The box art alone should’ve been enough to scare away most people that aren’t interested in cross-dressing anime characters, and even the Guilty Gear crew seem to be a little too “experimental” for most anime fans. On top of that, the swarm of major video game releases will be enough for this game to be long forgotten. Which leaves us Guilty Gear fans… well, if you absolutely must find out how the story advances, then that’s the only circumstance I could possibly recommend this mess of a game to you. But I tend to hope that nobody plays Guilty Gear for the storyline.

Pros : The traditional Guilty Gear heavy metal-influenced soundtrack is in full effect here.

Cons : Wikipedia tells me that the inspiration for this game was a mod from Warcraft 3. Those mods tend to be fun for like 2 minutes when you need a break from the regular game, but a $60 game? Oh, and you can’t hit enemies while they’re down – why?

2 stars

To be fair, the Guilty Gear fighters have a similar issue with bizarre terminology. I don’t quite understand what a “roman cancel” is supposed to be myself.