BlazBlue: ChronoPhantasma Extend (& New game announced)

[Zevox]

Well, these threads tend not to last long, but guess I may as well try anyway.

So, the new version BlazBlue came out today, and I of course picked it up. So far I've mostly played around in challenge and training mode, but I also took my badly-out-of-practice Platinum online to try that out. Thankfully, it does seem like the netcode is improved over the vanilla version of the game - I didn't experience nearly as much frustration with that as I recall. Unfortunately, finding matches is still a pain, and not just because of the game's small community. Never been a fan of ArcSys' new online matchmaking system, and I'm still not.

I do have to say that I like both of the new characters so far - Lambda and Celica. Of course, Lambda's not entirely new, but she has undergone some substantial changes, and I like what I see (in stark contrast to Nu becoming a stance character in the vanilla version making her basically unplayable for me), and will probably be trying to play her some. I wasn't expecting to have much interest in Celica, and to be fair I still might not end up liking her since all I've done is some challenge mode with her, but my first impressions are that she seems worth trying out, which is more than I expected. Maybe between them and trying out the changes to another character or two I can actually find a secondary character this time around.

Haven't touched the new story content, obviously, but I'm looking forward to that. Probably won't get to it until I finish Batman: Arkham Knight, though.

So, anyone else playing this?

[Fargazer]

I finally got to this after skipping ChronoPhantasma because I didn't want to buy the DLC and I had only gotten Continuum Shift fairly recently.

I've mostly been messing around with challenge mode as well. Having glanced at it I still don't know the actual differences between Lambda and Mu, so that extend character doesn't seem all that interesting. Celica seems pretty simple to learn though, her drive doesn't seem that involved. Her astral heat is fun. I'm curious how useful that healing distortion drive will actually be.

ts old news now I'm sure, but I do like the story structure in this game. I also still find it funny poor Carl just can't seem to be relevent despite being one of the original cast.

[Zevox]

I finally got to this after skipping ChronoPhantasma because I didn't want to buy the DLC and I had only gotten Continuum Shift fairly recently.
:smallconfused: You wouldn't need to buy the DLC if you didn't want to. It was just one character, Kokonoe. I didn't get her. Still haven't really played around with her in Extend, either, actually.


I've mostly been messing around with challenge mode as well. Having glanced at it I still don't know the actual differences between Lambda and Mu, so that extend character doesn't seem all that interesting.
You mean Nu? I just played around with her, and while they're definitely the most similar characters in the game, there's notable differences. Lambda's drives automatically do both parts of the move with one button press rather than the second one being a follow-up from hitting D a second time, for example. Nu no longer has the 236A/B/C moves, only Lambda, and their 236Ds (the buzz saw) work very differently, with Nu's being a quick ground-based projectile and Lambda's being a slow multi-hit move. Nu has also picked up the ability to cancel some of her specials into 214A/B/C (Gravity Seed), which Lambda lacks. Nu still has their old 5B and 6B, but no longer has their standing overhead (formerly 4B), while Lambda has their old 6B for her 5B and now has the overhead as her 6B. Nu also still has a couple of ways to alter her 214D (Spike Chaser), while Lambda no longer does. And that's just what I can tell without looking at frame data (which, apparently, the wiki doesn't have for the new version as yet, since everything there warns that it's from the vanilla version of the game).

In general, my first impression is that Nu is the more zoning oriented of the two, while Lambda has better tools for pressure and mixups. I could be wrong, but Nu losing her overhead and Lambda getting the multi-hit version of the buzz-saw while losing the variations on Spike Chaser make me think that's the intention, at least. Lambda also feels a bit easier to use due to the automatic two-hit drive - trying to do her drive combos feels less like you're just mashing D and hoping you get the timing on the direction presses right than it did before.


Celica seems pretty simple to learn though, her drive doesn't seem that involved. Her astral heat is fun. I'm curious how useful that healing distortion drive will actually be.
I'm going to have to give a serious try at learning Celica now. I unlocked her extra colors, and it turns out that her color #15 is Rise Kujikawa, my main from Persona 4 Arena :smallbiggrin: . (Also, I'm pretty sure that color #14 is supposed to be Nine, which is nice too. I wonder when we're going to get her to actually be playable?)

But yeah, the healing super I kinda doubt is usable. It seems so slow that you'd need some amazing setup to not get punished for using it, and even if such a thing exists I kinda suspect you'd be better off capitalizing on all that time to extend your combo or apply a mixup instead. On the up side, her C super seems great - fast and powerful, covers a lot of space.

Also, I found a great midscreen throw combo with her: throw, 214C (charged), 6C, 214C (charged), 6B, 5D, 5D, 2/6D (2 for knockdown, 6 for corner carry). Right around 3.7k for either ender. I've got a 3.9k meterless corner combo for her off 5B, too, and she gets pretty good midscreen damage of a simple combo into 3C followed by drive. Makes me kinda jealous - Platinum struggles to get above 3k meterless even in the corner.


ts old news now I'm sure, but I do like the story structure in this game. I also still find it funny poor Carl just can't seem to be relevent despite being one of the original cast.
Yeah, I'm glad they did away with forcing fights to occur every so often, and only put them in when it makes sense now. It does get a bit frustrating how long they can go between fights sometimes, but it's much nicer to have the story mode focused on the story and not throw in fights based on misunderstandings or the like just to have them.

And yeah, some of the cast don't really do much, Carl being a big one. The series is really about Ragna, Jin, Noel, their friends, the major villains, and to a lesser extent the Six Heroes, Rachel, and Kokonoe. Everyone else kinda gets stuck with bit roles.

[Gettles]

As someone who had a 360 and thus missed out on ChronoPhantasma, can you fill me in on how a few of the newer characters(especially the ones that seem very similar to ones from older versions) such as Lamda/Nu Terumi/Hazama Carl/Regulus?

[Zevox]

As someone who had a 360 and thus missed out on ChronoPhantasma, can you fill me in on how a few of the newer characters(especially the ones that seem very similar to ones from older versions) such as Lamda/Nu Terumi/Hazama Carl/Regulus?
In case it matters, with CP Extend the series is back on both companies' systems - just only the X-Box One on Microsoft's side. Apparently the reason for no 360 version was that it wouldn't fit on one disc for that system.

Anyway, characters. I gave what I know about Lambda and Nu's differences in my previous post. I haven't played with them enough to say more, and would honestly want to see frame data to get a better idea how similar they really are. At a glance though, they're the first case of an almost Ryu/Ken style pair of characters in BlazBlue, where similarities are pretty numerous even if their differences are meaningful once you understand them both.

Terumi and Relius are very different from Hazama and Carl, though. Terumi steals some of Hazama's animations for a few moves, but has far more unique to him, and crucially does not have Hazama's Ouroborous D-moves. He's a total rushdown/pressure character, with no ranged combat capability at all. His drives build him an insane amount of meter, and he has more supers than other characters, and he can even cancel those supers into each other, so he's built around using meter more often than anyone else. A lot of his moves are either very short-range or very slow, though, which can make him awkward to use. He gets annoying online however - his 6C is a forward-moving attack that covers a ton of space and he can convert off of into a combo on counter-hit or air hit, and while it's very punishable on block, lag can make it both harder to react to and harder to punish.

Relius meanwhile doesn't take anything from Carl besides the fact that he has a doll, Ignis. She controls very differently from Carl's, more like something in between that and Personas from the Persona Arena titles, which makes Relius much easier to use than Carl (I could never play Carl, but I did try to play Relius for a while, when CS Extend came out). Positioning Ignis isn't a concern - when summoned, she follows him automatically. She does need to be dismissed to regain her personal meter (which is required to use her moves), and is automatically dismissed when Relius gets hit, and Relius is more vulnerable without her since he can't access several moves. So managing Ignis' meter and finding times to bring her out after dismissing her or taking a hit is a big part of Relius' game. His gameplan can best be described as pressuring his opponent until they mess up, since Ignis' presence gives him great pressure, but his mixup tools aren't actually great.

In case you weren't aware, the other new character in CP Extend, Celica Mercury, is also a doll-user, technically. But she has nothing in common with Carl or Relius, since her doll, Minerva, does not control separately from her. The two act as one character, with Minerva doing most of the actual attacking, since Celica herself is not really a fighter. She's deliberately designed as an easy-to-use beginner character, and has a jack-of-all-trades combat style.

Edit: Oh, and for the other new characters, I can't give much on several of them, but:
Amane - Think Dhalsim from Street Fighter, but with drill specials that do a bunch of chip damage.
Bullet - Fast rushdown character with command grabs. I find her kinda tricky to fight against, but don't really understand her that well myself.
Azrael - Big bruiser who's good at pressure and mixups. His dash is actually a short-range teleport, which he can use for crossup mixups. His combos feel very different from other characters' - more link-based, I think.
Izayoi - Sort of a mix of Tusbaki and Jin, with a few unique tricks of her own. She's a stance character: in her default stance she builds her special meter whenever her specials hit or are blocked, in her second stance she can spend that meter on D versions of her specials or on D-button follow-ups to those specials which extend her combos. Her second stance also turns her dash into a low, rising air dash, like Morrigan in Marvel vs Capcom, and changes a few of her normals around. She has big combo potential in her second stance, but it requires a preparation period in her first, and probably spending some of her special meter on pressure or mixups to get to those combos. She's also one of the only characters in the game with a true teleport move: by default she can teleport in place, a set distance forward, or a set distance back, but in her second stance she gets a D version of the teleport which always puts her directly behind her opponent as well. All of these can be used in combos too, not just to try and mess with your opponent, since she cancel numerous specials into them - she can even cancel her main super into the D version. (She's the only one of the four I've put serious effort into learning, hence why I can say more about her than the other three.)

[Zevox]

Well, sorry to double-post, but I want to at least try to get this out there: the next full new title of the series has been announced and given a trailer. BlazBlue: Central Fiction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxXGVJSINHk). There's little in the way of details - just "coming soon" with no release window mentioned, and technically no consoles were listed, but given the series' history, PS4 and X-Box One seems the logical assumption. And I can't really say if anything is mentioned story-wise, since I don't speak Japanese.

But! The trailer does show off every character from the previous games (unless I missed someone, but I don't think I did), most of them with new moves shown at least briefly. Plus there's two new characters announced: a boy that looks like a young NOL soldier named Hibiki Kohaku, who seems to fight with two swords and be able to project a second image of himself with some moves, and a young man named Naoto Kurogane, who seems to be an unarmed fighter with darkness-type magic effects that look similar to Ragna's. Also, while technically not officially announced, the trailer all but reveals in the last seconds a third new playable character: Nine, the sorceress of the Six Heroes. A very brief frame shows what is probably her fight intro against Ragna, as it very clearly looks like an in-battle screenshot, with Ragna in a kneeling position that I think we see in one of his intros and Nine's hat appearing to catch fire.

So that's pretty awesome, at least. I don't know about the two new kids yet, but Nine I'll definitely look forward to checking out. And maybe they'll finally round out the full Six Heroes by adding Jubei as well? I can only hope. :smallbiggrin: