Continuing where they left off their character reveals in December, Arc System Works has released the sixth character introduction trailer for the upcoming BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle. The reveal came during the February ArcNama stream, along with a host of other interesting information.
As usual, the trailer shows off three characters: BlazBlue’s resident magical girl Platinum the Trinity, Under Night In-Birth’s rapier-wielding high school student Orie, and Persona 4 Arena’s primary grappler Kanji Tatsumi. The full reveals and some gameplay for each can be seen below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJNrP9rQJqs
All three of the new characters will be part of the first set of DLC characters. After the trailer, the stream went on to show off the first substantial look at how RWBY’s Blake Belladonna will play in BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle. She appears to be some type of rekka character, focused primarily on putting pressure on the opponent with follow-ups to her special moves. She can also use different types of shadow clones to create traps for her opponent, such as an earth clone that takes an attack before breaking; a clone that, when hit, disperses into a fog cloud that partially hides Blake for a few seconds; and a fire clone that hurts the opponent when hit. Just watching her slightly reminded me of Byakuya from Under Night In-Birth, but who knows how she plays hands-on.
The stream concluded their BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle segment with some concrete announcements about the DLC and release, primarily concerning pricing, expanding on Mori’s vague comments about how much it all will cost. The prices for different versions, including tax, are as follows:
- Limited Edition: 10,584 yen ($99 USD)
- Physical game: 6,264 yen ($59 USD)
- Digital game: 5,800 yen ($54 USD)
- Digital deluxe edition (includes DLC character pass): 7,800 yen ($73 USD)
7,800 yen is in line with regular pricing for newly-released games in Japan, with many games running just over 8,000 yen with tax included. The stream also announced the DLC prices. The character pass alone will cost 2,400 yen ($22 USD), and will include all 20 DLC characters. Blake and Yang, who will be available individually with Blake releasing alongside the game, will both be free. Each of the six three-character packs will cost 600 yen ($5.60 USD) apiece, but the first one (with Platinum, Kanji, and Orie) will be available for free for anyone who picks up an early copy of the game.
It still remains to be seen what the game will run for in the west, but if the Japanese pricing model is any indication then it should be close to regular full price. We’ll likely be hearing soon what we’ll be dealing with when the game launches on PS4, Switch, and Steam on May 31 in Japan and Asia, and June 5 worldwide.
