In a Japanese ArcNama and English ArcLive stream, Arc System Works revealed the five remaining characters who will be coming to BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle with version 2.0 on November 21. The five characters are: BlazBlue’s Celica A. Mercury and Susanoo, Persona’s Elizabeth and Tohru Adachi, and Under Night In-Birth’s Hilda.
You can see the trailer here:
The first character to be shown off is Celica from the BlazBlue series. She fights alongside her automaton Minerva as she does in her home series, with it being the main force behind her attacks. Like in the BlazBlue series, Celica can use her magic to heal herself. Her B auto-combo is the same as her Drive strings, ending with healing part of her recoverable health. She also has an EX special that heals past her recoverable health.
The second character is Persona 3’s Elizabeth, as she appeared in the Persona 4 Arena games, fighting alongside the Persona Thanatos. She retains the Awakeninc mechanic from her home series – unlike the rest of the Persona characters – and it changes the properties of her special moves, allowing her to get combo extensions from them that she can’t get when she’s at full health. She also has Mind Charge as a Distortion Skill to put herself into Awakening state and restore her Skill Gauge, as well as Dia as a special move to heal herself while retaining Awakening. Hama does not instantly kill, functioning as a regular special move, triggering when the opponent touches it to lock them down whether they get hit or block. She can use Mind Charge in the middle of a combo, as well as using Dia during a Cross Combo to heal herself in relative safety.
The third character is Persona 4’s Tohru Adachi with Magatsu Izanagi, whose moves have been changed somewhat from his appearance in Persona 4 Ultimax. Some of his previous SP Skills have been repurposed as special moves, namely Heat Riser and Magatsu Mandala. He also has a new move as one of his Distortion Skills: a copy of Yu Narukami’s Cross Slash.
The fourth character is Under Night In-Birth’s main antagonist, Hilda. She retains many of her moves from that series, although they’ve been changed to account for the more limited movesets of characters in Cross Tag Battle. Her Skewer special is now her B normal attack, as well as several of her other special moves with more unique inputs being shuffled around to new inputs.
The final character to be shown is Susanoo from the BlazBlue series. He no longer needs to unlock his special moves as he does in Centralfiction, instead having his full selection of moves from the start of the match. Blade of Judgement and the command grab Splintering Thrust (known to players as God Press) are EX special moves, with the command grab carrying all the way to the corner from anywhere on the screen for a combo extension.
After the trailer, the stream continued showing off each of the nine characters’ moves and abilities. Blitztank is similar to how he is in Akatsuki Blitzkampf; low mobility and nonexistent air game, but incredibly high damage, high health, super armor on his attacks, and the ability to attack while moving. Akatsuki is more similar to his Under Night In-Birth appearance; he’s a straightforward shoto character with high damage, as well as a new Distortion Skill that allows him to continue a combo. RWBY’s Neopolitan is a tricky character, with numerous moves that create clones, mix up her movement, and parry attacks, as well as an ambiguous command grab Distortion Skill. Senran Kagura’s Yumi uses her ice powers to freeze her opponents, can use her EX specials to launch opponents into an Aerial Rave, and uses multi-part rekka-style special moves to mix up opponents.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle version 2.0 will be releasing on November 21. There will be a patch with balance and mechanics changes released for free to all players on that day. In addition, the “Ver. 2.0 Expansion Pack” will be available, which includes the nine new characters along with new story elements, new interactions, and new color palettes, for $24.99 USD.
