BlayzBloo for DSiWare flips the traditional premise of BlazBlue on its head.
Instead of technical prowess and hi-res 2D sprites that the series prides itself on, along comes a game that is something you can play on the go without practicing for 20 hours a day.
BlayzBloo is a four-on-four 3D arena fighter in the vein of Power Stone. There are weapons, power-ups, and everything you’d come to expect from a standard fighter of this style.
Each round has a different setting. Some are fights to death, and some are to see who has the most points at the end of a match. While the game only offers a few diverse styles of gameplay and limited character selection, I’d say it’s worth the 500 Nintendo Points. The novelty of playing with cute BlazBlue characters and thwapping them on the head instead of learning combos simply feels right on the handheld.
Arc System Works has released portable iterations of their fighters on handhelds before, and they never really sat well with me. Guilty Gear Dust Strikers was god-awful, and all the Guilty Gear games on the PSP suffered from poor console design which is no fault of Arc System Works.
I can safely say that the developers finally got a four player handheld game right. Instead of trying too hard to be like its counterpart, it did something different. No, not something too different like in Guilty Gear Isuka or Dust Strikers. The game is not nearly as off-putting as those two.
Instead, one can find themselves picking up and playing this game with friends and just having fun. The game brings back the innocence of old arcade brawlers and mixes it with the atmosphere of games like Super Smash Bros. It’s not a serious game. There’s no story and there’s no gimmicks. For anyone looking for a guiltless novelty title with a few of your favorite deformed BlazBlue characters, I definitely recommend you pick this one up.
