Guilty Gear Strive Review (Switch) - A Miraculous Port of the Modern Macabre Masterpiece

Guilty Gear Strive has been embraced by fans as one of the beloved series’ most stylish and polished titles, with an absolutely meteoric skill ceiling as demonstrated in the game’s elite tournaments. When a Switch port was announced, I was skeptical - were we going to get another Mortal Kombat: 1 situation? I derided that port, but it was rushed to market, and subsequent updates have improved it immensely. This one has had a lot of time in the oven, and I’m delighted to report that Arc System Works has done it again. They’ve brought their magic to Nintendo’s now-ancient tablet with the most minimal of sacrifices. 

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. For the uninitiated, the basic gist is, Guilty Gear Strive, like its predecessors, is a precision 2.5D fighting game with a colorful cast of fighters, rockin’ tunes, and a striking glam-rock meets manga aesthetic. Guilty Gear’s timing windows and hitboxes are carefully-realized with impeccable hand-drawn animation, and the fundamental gameplay, which includes complex attacks, counters, and air dashes, differentiates itself from Capcom’s efforts enough to allow the franchise to hold its own, which it’s done ever since the very first Guilty Gear in 1998. 

A Painful But Necessary Back-to-Basics Approach

But while Guilty Gear has always delivered for its niche audience, Arc System Works felt it was time to get back to basics and expand the series’ player base, so Strive changes up the formula, adding options such as defensive instants that can get you out of a death trap when popped at just the right time, and in Season 3, equalizing all characters’ weights, which makes combos more universal. In a controversial move, the franchise’s signature Instant Kills are nowhere to be seen. But the balance helps a more casual Guilty Gear player like me a lot, as new characters no longer feel so difficult to learn. I cut my teeth on Guilty Gear Accent Core XX on the PS2, and felt right home here. 

My mains, May, Testament, and Elphelt Valentine, are all pretty fun to play this time around, so that’s another plus. The roster features four new characters and brings back a lot of older ones, although the Guilty Gear series has such a huge roster that we definitely won’t get everyone back. Can anyone put in a good word for Zappa and Jam Kuradoberi, please?

Guitly Gear Strive may be challenging to get into, but it does try to help the player as much as possible with a variety of modes to help you hone your skills. Training Mode is detailed and robust, with bots that you can customize to help with combos. Mission Mode tasks you with completing certain inputs and gets stricter and more difficult the more you progress. Here you can learn universal combos, but for character-specific combos, you’ll have to do extra homework. Thankfully, there are also modes for “Combo Recipes”, which involve creating custom combos that you can practice. In addition to creating your own recipes, you can also share them online and access others’ recipes for endless practice sessions. This feature was not present at the original release of Strive and was only added later on, so I’m very grateful that it’s available from the get-go.

Loads of local and online options… but no crossplay

In addition to the standard Arcade and Versus modes, there’s a full-fledged story mode, with about 5 hours of cutscenes. The performance of this mode is slightly inferior on Switch, but it’s only really noticeable if you hold it up against the other versions closely to scrutinize. In fact, performance-wise, Guilty Gear Strive is comparable to the Switch’s DragonBall Z: FighterZ port a few years back, and that’s about as high of a bar as one can expect on the Switch. Some slight background details may be blurred, but that’s a small price to pay for such excellent performance on this system. 

As for the online, from all reports, it is decent, and there’s a decent amount of players to be found. While Guilty Gear Strive does mercifully have rollback netcode, it unfortunately does not feature any crossplay, which will definitely limit the already limited pool of players on Switch. The saving grace of this version is that it’s portable, although you probably won’t want to attempt playing this with the standard Joy-Cons. I would recommend the Hori Split Pad at the very least for playing on the go, but obviously a full joystick is the way to go here. 

The Switch version retails at a full price of $60, but considering that the game comes with all of the Seasons 1-3 DLC and the first Season 4 character, you get a total of 28 characters. This is a steal, especially if you don’t already own Strive.

A worthy contender for the crown of best Switch fighting game

As far as 2D fighting games go, we’ve seen some bangers on Switch. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and DragonBall FighterZ stand out, as do the three excellent Capcom Fighting Collection titles, but for old-school 2D fanatics, Guilty Gear Strive might just take the crown. Guilty Gear Strive is not only a miraculous 60fps port that makes the most minimal of sacrifices, keeping the 2021 masterpiece’s crisp animated effects and characters, but they managed to bring over every one of the game’s features to the aging Nintendo Switch with minimal loading times. If that’s not an impressive feat of software engineering, I don’t know what is. If you’ve ever enjoyed the Guilty Gear games, or are a lapsed fan who wants to see how far they’ve come, dash, don’t walk, to grab this title. Arc System Works has done an excellent job.

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Verdict: 4.5 / 5 (Fantastic)

PROS

• Incredible port that runs flawlessly with minimal sacrifices and fast loading

• Rollback netcode

• includes all of the Seasons 1-3 DLC characters and the first Season 4 character

CONS

• No crossplay with other versions of the game

• Backgrounds and some parts of story mode are slightly blurrier

What I’ve Played 

• 6+ hours of offline brawling via Arcade Mode

• Finished nearly all Missions

• Completed Story Mode

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