Pro-level Guilty Gear Strive matches shown at JAEPO2020 along with panel talks of changing the interface, difficulty and more
The developers are taking in as much feedback as they can
Guilty Gear Strive has the potential to be the biggest fighting game to launch in 2020 though the new flagship Arc System Works title still has a bunch of questions it needs to answer or make clear first.
During the 2020 Japan Amusement Expo this weekend, series creator Daisuke Ishiwatari and Strive battle director Akira Katano took to the stage to run exhibition matches with Japanese pro Guilty Gear players and discuss with them their current thoughts on the upcoming fighter.
EVO Japan 2019 Guilty Gear champion Samitto (who plays Chipp), FAB (Potemkin), Roy (Sol) and Ain (Ky) ran best of three sets in Strive with their Xrd mains to showcase how early matches look with pros behind the stick.
Strive's different feel and design compared to Xrd appears to throw off some of the players at first, but they all adapt to the new mechanics with Sammito and Roy shining in particular.
Those two reveal more of the pay off of neutral play into big damage / combos along with the wall splat / break and the brand new mechanic that some in the community are calling Drift Roman Cancels — in which the characters flash purple and can "drift" in to extend combos / continue pressure or burn meter to make riskier moves more safe by drifting out.
Following the four player exhibition, Daisuke and Akira spent an hour talking with the pros on stage to gauge their feelings about the current state of Strive plus what the developers' intentions are with their latest creation.
The full thing was streamed in Japanese without subtitles, but luckily Shinjin of the Swedish GG community stepped up to summarize the key discussion points in a larger blog post.
Here, the devs confirm that the clean-looking user interface is currently still a placeholder and are working to change it for the final release. Pro player Ain also comments that looks more like pop than rock right now which Ishiwatari feels is a problem.
Multiple players also note they feel that air dashing is actually too strong in the demo, as it's difficult to effectively counter due to the different timings and angles it can be performed at. This is something ArcSys says its still experimenting with.
When asked about what Guilty Gear means to them in terms of gameplay, the directors reveal one of their internal keywords for the series roughly translates to "mischief."
Daisuke notes that these matches revealed some of that mischief found in Strive, but that there's much more lurking within that players haven't seen or discovered yet.
Katano, who was also once a top Guilty Gear competitor, also apparently said he'd refuse to make Strive if it didn't have depth.
Guilty Gear Strive is currently scheduled to hit PlayStation 4 at some point in late 2020.
You can check out the full two-hour Guilty Gear panel below to check out the gameplay, and we also recommend reading Shinjin's full breakdown of the event where the devs and players also discussed balance, jumping, Oki characters and difficulty — though no notes were made about netplay.
Sent in by SethGravijah and SolxBaiken.
