New sequel to BlazBlue series introduces three new fighters and overdrive system, location tests in session until August 12.
Arc System Works announced a new sequel to the BlazBlue series during last week's Super Battle Opera Tougeki 2012 tournament held in Japan.
Titled BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma, the latest addition to the 2D fighting game series will feature three new characters: the muscular pugilist Azrael, the effeminate male Amane Nishiki who attacks with his plumage, and the female mercenary Bullet whose fighting style is similar to BlazBlue's Makoto. Existing fighters in the series will have new animation sprites and new moves to their repertoire.
In addition, the game will feature a new overdrive system. Any character who activates overdrive mode in the middle of battle will gain specific battle properties that last for a set amount of time. Examples include Noel's overdrive which increases the speed of her drive attacks and Arakune's overdrive which lengthens the duration of his curses. Players can also perform a guard crush attack by expending a quarter of their drive gauge; the move will instantly break through an opponent's block.
The sequel will be out in Japan arcades this winter, with location tests happening right now until August 12 across the country. No console versions have been announced at this point in time. For more information on the previous BlazBlue installment, check out GameSpot's coverage of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift.
Born and raised from a jungle-laden village in Sarawak, Malaysia, Jonathan Toyad has been playing games since the early 90s. He favors fighting games, RPGs, and rhythm titles above every other genre, and occasionally spaces out like Pavlov's dog to video game music on his iPod.
Well, I'm excited for it, I'm guessing summer 2013 for a US console release. I'm loving Noel's new outfit (Why would you continue to wear an organization's uniform after leaving said organization? So makes sense to me.) The lack of characters people have been asking for is a little worrisome, although Kokonoe was featured rather prominently in the last few still images in the video. ASW has yet to disappoint me, so definitely looking forward to this.
3 Like
Lol I honestly don't wanna know how you feel about Street Fighter 4 if you think this is boring.
i want that arcade machine in my house !!!! and i will give them twenty dollars for it cause thats all i can afford !!!!
Oh JP. You never fail me in making the skirts and the girls so sexy. Keep hatin West!
Too bad the game looks and plays like generic animu. :)
@pcty ASW just loves their traps, don't they? First Bridgette, now Amane. I'm surprised Hard Corps: Uprising didn't have any, now that I think about it.
Sweet, I'll have to throw Rachel and Litchi back into the field. Haven't played in months, I'll have to get back on the wagon.
wait a minute. where is v11 or mu12? it will be a huge disappointment if they omitted those two characters cause a lot of people are into them. my friend is already of fire. apart from that the new stages seem a bit less detailed and polished than the previous ones as if their kind of graphic is different. all in all, i'm glad they have announced a seemingly full sequal to the series.cant wait to experiment with Carl and Rachel.
@abccba0 Wouldn't be slightly surprised if they1) Make a new character that just inherits Lambda's gameplay
2) Make some bullshit story excuse to resurrect Lambda (it's a fighter! who cares!)
3) Really do remove mu-12 (what a fucking terrible addition to game I hope she burns in hell)
I would be disappointed in Lambda-11 actually did disappear though. I don't think they'll do that though. At the end of CSE's story I think something is mentioned about Hazama/Relius finding Lambda's body which leads us to suspect they'll use their villainous mad-experiment track record to resurrect her.
@Falru This is just a trailer I think we can safely assume its not showing us everything
Interesting timing with how P4A just about came out. Supposedly it beat out SFxT and BB in its first week in Japan. I have high hopes for P4A but I'm a huge fan of BB ugh at least this isnt til winter..
Please tell me that they're holding out on us with this trailer. Is Jubei/ and perhaps Kokonoe ever going to be playable? Plus, no glimpse of the imperator in this trailer.
@Sojiro_Blue There is a player profile for the Imperitor/Saya, but no image of her being playable and as I can't read japanese i dunno what the profile said lol. Plus they called her Mikado....So im clueless XD
@TwinSnakes1989 I personally don't mind DLC characters being added (within reason) and if they did go with DLC characters again, Jubei and Kokonoe make much more sense as DLC then completely new characters. People are much more likely to buy Jubei/Kokonoe DLC instead of completely new characters no one even knows about.
@Falru If there is dlc characters which im sure their will be ill wait tell the extended version.
@Sojiro_Blue They already stated that there done with the series and they won't make anymore.
@xSagez Isn't GGACR coming out? No new characters, but it'll have online battles. That's what I've been waiting for from that series.
@blackwing55 No, they said they will make a new GG after they're done with BB. For all we know they could be starting with it after they release BBCP.
i hope this time around they introduce more characters rather than just amane, bullet and azrael because bbcs extend only had a few new contents like relius, dlc characters i already paid for in previous game ,a remastered story mode and abyss mode and it still felt like they were raping my wallet. perhaps they were hanging around with Capcom and EA.
well i am glad to see new moves on characters like bang, hazama and litchi. i hope that the console version will have exclusive characters just like the console version of continuum shift
1 Like @corteztheg no not really if they do it right.....and besides, most anime is convoluted :D
@The_Mercenary i will too, but i am kind of glad they changed it. it means that they are making significant changes to the original cast after three installations rather than tweaks only noticeable to tournament Pros
Why don't I have a console ?!?!
And ( slightly less frustrated ) why don't they make BlazBlue games for PC ?
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7 Like As a hardcore competitive BlazBlue player I still have to say Extend should have just been Continuum Shift v1.05 with Relius as another DLC character.
This however is definitely the new BlazBlue we've all been waiting for since CT. New system mechanics, new stages, new BGMs, completely new moves/move tweaks, everything a new game needs in short.
I am glad they are not abandoning their principle of making each character completely unique. If you rate a fighter solely based on how large it's roster is than there's something seriously wrong with you.
@Falru The roster always seemed quite large to me. Games that have huge roosters typical merge with other fighting games (capcom) and each character in blazblue is very different which is enjoyable to play and watch
The word "Chrono" should not be allowed in the title of any game not related to Chrono Trigger. I am disappointed.
@mrboone01 actually the chrono is just a prefix/suffix indicating time like chronology, chronometer or anachronistic
@corteztheg I know. I'm just jonesing for a new Chrono RPG, so everytime I see a game with "Chrono" in it, I get a bit excited. lol I mean geez, it's been how many years since Chrono Cross released back on PS1? It's time, dammit. XD
I'm so hype for this. I skipped out on BBCSEX because I thought that was just bullshit, but I'm excited to jump back into the BB universe.
Pretty interesting, but sadly I have to get the first and then catch up with the sequels after first.
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@ABEzilla116 Huh, I found the story in Blazblue alot easier to follow than the one in Xenogears, so I have to disagree with you about it being convoluted. As for it being slapped together? Maybe a little, it can seem rather... awkward at times.
2 Like @ABEzilla116 I'll agree to disagree. It's one of my favorite stories in any fighting game series once you know what is going on. I also think you don't know what slapped on means. If it was slapped on it would be there just because without any love put into it, but the series has proven otherwise.
1 Like Hopefully, Arc System Works add a few extra new things if they don't have set release dates for console system yet, like some requested characters and voice announcers...
Console version to include two new playable characters.
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