Guilty Gear X Advance Edition

"Great game hindered utter lack of difficulty"

This movie is painful to play. It's like being the #1 Olympic contender watching the Olympics from the audience due to a broken leg.

Not exactly in a bad way. I'll tell you why in a minute. Review goes as follows:

Gameplay, Graphics, Sound. After all that, rating for the whole package.

Gameplay- 7/10

I'm going to assume, to be better able to tag down this review of the video game, that you've played at least one of the Guilty Gear games(all three on the Playstation 2 game console. Unaware of any others, but if they exist, go ahead and tell me about it).

Right. Now, since you've played those, I can safely tell you that you will feel VERY satisfied with the ability of this game to emulate the others very well. Guilty Gear, if you're unfamiliar with the series, is a high-quality 2D fighting game, made very well I might add, with flashy graphics and a great array of characters that would make Street Fighter sweat in its sleep. Seriously.

The techniques and basically the entire way the game is played is captured very well in the Gameboy Advance game, and each player plays very much like their Playstation 2 counterparts. The buttons are assigned as follows- D-pad moves, B button kicks, A button slashes. The shoulder buttons control the other two fighting moves, L is for punch and R is for hyperslash(basically just a variant of slash, every character carries something resembling a weapon). Works pretty well, but the shoulder buttons are kind of difficult to use as a normal attack button. But overall it's nice to know that the characters work the same as on the original.

Now, although some of the flashy effects and graphical prettiness has been toned down to fit the thing on the cartridge, but really, everything continues to look nice in action. It's fun, elaborate, a very good fighting game that really goes out of it's way to be a portable version of the original. Well, who'd have guessed, but I think they've done a pretty good job.

Oh, the characters. If you've played the other games, you'd be happy to know that the wide array of beautifully crafted and very creative characters are all in tact. You're probably going to find several you like. And all of them are something to look at, and every single one is interesting. Moves are unique, and you'll really have fun with each one.

Only one problem though: on the actual console version of the game, you play the arcade version of the game, and you might actually find yourself having a difficult time on a normal difficulty setting trying to climb through the levels. Not so on this game. Yes, set it on Very Hard mode, the highest difficulty setting, and still retain the ability to fly through arcade mode. You probably won't even lose once. And I'm not exactly a fighting game master, here. Average Joe flying through arcade mode without a problem in the world, not losing once. You can honestly beat the very last opponent on arcade mode by using simple techniques. You may have loved flying around, being technical and making big flashes in the other games, but it's honestly been toned down VERY far.

It's to the point where it's far from fun to play after a long period of time. No kidding. It's a real shame, considering how good the stupid game is. Also note that changing the difficulty seems to do absolutely nothing. Probably a result of either a fault in programming or just an honest disability to figure out how things translate to another medium and preferring to tone it down for the kiddies. To be honest it spoils what the game could be, but leaves it great in small doses.

Graphics- 9/10

The graphics are fantastic in this game. If you've played the PS2 version, you know that although its 2D, each is well-drawn, animated, and all look expertly crafted by someone with a lot of imagination.

The backgrounds look nice too, but a bit simplified and pushed to the back. But, they are backgrounds. I guess that works nicely.

Point is everything looks nice. Some animation was toned down for our lovely little handheld transition, though. But nothing to worry about. A nice little tidbit as well is that inside of the game, you can tweak with the character model's color pallettes. Very cool extra. Just a tad time consuming.

Sound- 7/10

Yeesh. This is a tad unfortunate, considering most of the game's package. Nothing too astounding, but I can't say it's awful. Beepy and Blippy, and a tad more annoying than I could have hoped, but not terribly intrusive.

Overall- 8/10

Excellent transition, plays like the lovely game in essence, but pulls punches with a difficulty you can't do anything about. Dies a horrible dead due to the extremity of it. Plays like an easy mode would on very hard. Looks nice. I would advise getting the actual version instead. Could have been so much better, but a bit better than decent as is. Shame.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/31/05