Following the BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle grand finals at EVO 2019, series creator Toshimichi Mori took to the stage to present a trailer showing off an upcoming major update to the game, complete with a slew of new DLC characters coming alongside the update.
You can see the trailer here:
The first new character shown off is from the sixth fate teased at EVO Japan earlier this year, Yumi from the Senran Kagura series, specifically as she appears in Senran Kagura Estival Versus. It shows off her ice-based moves, similar to those used by Jin and Weiss, along with being the second character to use fans as a weapon after Yukiko. Yumi was also leaked through a datamine back before the game fully released, but when the fifth fate was revealed to be Arcana Heart it seemed like the voice lines people found regarding Asuka and Yumi were perhaps just leftovers from early development, when it was still undecided what series would make appearances in the game.
The second and third new characters both come as more of a surprise, with the addition of a seventh fate: SUBTLE STYLE‘s doujin fighter Akatsuki Blitzkampf. The first character from the series is Akatsuki, who will be familiar to anyone who played Under Night In-Birth, where he was present as a guest character. He’s a standard shoto-style character, the general Ryu archetype, with a fireball, an invincible uppercut, and an advancing series of kicks. He comes alongside Blitztank, who is indeed an actual tank, and is about as big on the screen as you’d expect a tank to be, even bigger than the current big-body grapplers Iron Tager and Waldstein.
The fourth character comes as a surprise ending to the video, as the RWBY characters have tended to in previous BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle trailers leading up to release: it’s Neopolitan, Roman Torchwick’s sidekick and bodyguard from the early volumes of the show. She fights with acrobatic martial arts and her parasol, and has a whiff-punish teleport for when your opponent gets too comfortable keeping you out with ranged moves and long-reaching attacks.
The new characters are part of a major update to the game called version 2.0, which will also include a full rebalance of the roster, a new story, a slick redesigned UI, new character interactions (as shown in the trailer with Naoto Kurogane and Ragna), and new colors. The patch will be released for free alongside nine new characters, five of which are still unrevealed, on November 21, 2019. The new DLC will bring the roster up to a total of 53 spread across seven series, possibly more with all the unrevealed characters.
[UPDATE] In their announcement page, Arc System Works has released more details about how the update and new content will be distributed. There will be a version 2.0 update and balance patch delivered for free to all players. The majority of the new content, including the nine new characters, the new colors, the new scenario, and the new interactions will be released as the “Ver. 2.0 Expansion Pack”, which will be available for $24.99 USD on November 21, 2019.
