It’s a good thing that the gameplay is fun, since BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle doesn’t have much else going on. Aside from Training, Tactics (tutorial and challenges) and vs. AI, the only singleplayer modes are Survival and Episode modes, where the story lives. Strangely there’s no arcade mode, although it’s understandable considering how Arc System Works uses arcade mode for individual stories. Since the combat is 2v2, it would be difficult to use an arcade mode for individual stories. However, there’s also not anything else. There’s no Abyss, Score Attack or Unlimited Mars modes from previous games either. How much this matters ultimately depends on what you want out of a fighting game; if you’re mostly here to learn the game and play with others, then the lack of singleplayer content won’t be much of an issue to you. The story mode is short, too; even completing all four scenarios took me under ten hours. They’re still enjoyable, though, and watching the characters from different series interact with each other is always fun, although it uses character select artwork with changing expressions as dialogue sprites instead of making new ones, which looks weird. There’s also a plethora of unique interactions in combat, with several pairs having unique match intros, endings, and results screen interactions.
The music is mostly taken from BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena, Under Night In-Birth, and to some extent RWBY. The returning themes are mostly character themes and some VS themes, as well as Persona 4’s openings “Pursuing My True Self” and “Shadow World”, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st]’s opening theme, and RWBY’s first opening “This Will Be The Day”. The only original music to speak of is the game’s main theme “Crossing Fates”, with a different version remixed by each series’ main composer, as well as unique music for each RWBY character made up of a mashup of their musical themes from the series. It’s a pretty solid soundtrack, considering the quality of music from each series, with each series having its own distinct sound that shines through in the soundtrack. BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle is also fully dubbed in English, with the BlazBlue actors reprising their roles for the first time since Chronophantasma Extend as well as entirely new voices for the Under Night In-Birth characters. I don’t have any particular gripe with any of the voices, and some of the new voice actors do their roles really well, with Kyle McCarley as Hyde and Ian Sinclair as Gordeau standing out to me in particular. There’s also full dual audio, and in-battle voice language can be set individually for each character, although unfortunately you can’t do that with story or results screen voices.
The sprites in BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle are all taken from the older games, although with minor tweaks to make them fit visually with each other. Unfortunately, however, none of the minor tweaks involved raising their resolution. It’s hard to see in-game, but in screenshots it’s very apparent that the RWBY sprites were the only ones made for the PS4, while the others have just been upscaled from the PS3 and older arcade hardware. The RWBY sprites have sharper and cleaner lines, overall giving them a slightly different look from the others when in motion. Also, the character select screen retains the poor design it’s had since the start, with characters divided by series and arranged horizontally so you can scroll through them.
Unfortunately, since I was playing before release, I wasn’t able to find many online matches. However, I played several games during the beta, both on PS4 and on Switch. The connection and netcode seemed solid on both, even considering Switch online was limited to only playing on Wi-Fi. While the connection in general seems better than in Centralfiction, I would have liked if it displayed the frame delay in-game. I only encountered a small number of matches with serious delay, even against non-local players. Also, a side note for Switch players, the Joy-Cons are far from ideal for this game, even if it is designed to be easily playable on a pad without a need for an arcade stick. They’re still usable, if you can get used to them, but I would recommend a different controller if possible.
Tactics Mode is fine as a tutorial. It outlines some of the stranger mechanics, further reinforcing them in missions. It’s not as thorough or well-put-together as the one in Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st], but it serves its purpose. There’s also challenges for each character, teaching a few solo combos for each character, some unique attacks and specials, and generally how to build your own combos. Training mode allows you to set counterattack options for the training dummy, where they perform an attack after blocking or recovering, a feature that was unfortunately absent from previous BlazBlue games and makes testing certain things much easier. At the same time, there’s seemingly no way to have the dummy block after the first attack while also having guard switching enabled, which seems like an odd thing to not include. It just seems like two steps forward, one step back to me.
In the end, what you get out of BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle depends on what you want from it. Gameplay is energetic and fast-paced, and while the controls and inputs are simplified that doesn’t mean that the game lacks depth. Each character feels different, and it’s not difficult to work with any team you want to use. That being said, it’s still got its drawbacks; it feels light on content, both in terms of single-player modes and playable characters. I can’t see why all 30 characters who appear in story mode aren’t part of the base roster, especially considering that both Blake and the first pack of DLC characters seem to be day 1 DLC. Fortunately the price is somewhat reasonable at $50 USD for the base game and $20 for the full set of characters, while Blake and Yang are each free. It’s a practice that shouldn’t be encouraged, but at the same time I enjoyed BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle too much to justify not recommending it. If you’re on the fence, I suggest you check out the demo, but I’m aware that if you’re already against the game due to its DLC then nothing I say will change your impression of it. That being said, if you’re a fan of any of the series involved and are fine with the light singleplayer content, I strongly recommend BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle.
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Review code provided by publisher.
