As usual for the monthly stream, the April ArcNama provided a new character introduction trailer for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, revealing the third set of DLC characters, as well as some other information about the game and the first footage of the fourth RWBY character, Yang Xiao Long.
First thing’s first, you can see the trailer below:
The trailer reveals Persona 4’s detective prince Naoto Shirogane, Under Night In-Birth’s sleepy android Vatista, and BlazBlue’s Hakumen of the Six Heroes. As usual, there was brief gameplay for each, such as Hakumen still having his signature parries and Vatista keeping her usual strong zoning game, although there’s still not much to be figured out from what was shown.
After the trailer, the stream went on to give us the first look at Yang after her announcement back in January, and you can see the footage starting at 27:23 in the livestream VOD. As one might expect, Yang looks fast and aggressive, with speed, a projectile special, and attacks that launch her forward to make up for her relatively small normal attacks. She has an air projectile that lets her retain her forward momentum, something that’s somewhat unusual for fighting games with air projectiles, allowing her to cover her own approach without slowing down. She also has a unique mechanic where her Semblance activates when she’s at low health, adding an explosive effect to her attacks and likely giving a boost to her damage output.
In addition to new footage some other new announcements were made. One was that all of the characters revealed so far, including the first three character packs as well and Blake and Yang, will be available before EVO 2018 starting on August 3. This means that 31 characters will be available at EVO, with the other three releasing afterwards. The details were also announced for the Japanese beta test for the game; for those who pre-order the game on PS4, the beta will run from May 9-14, while everyone else gets access starting on May 12. There will also be a beta test on Switch from May 11-14. The beta will have all 20 base characters, casual lobby, tactics mode, and offline VS. After the period ends the beta will remain active as a demo of sorts, and players with pre-orders will retain access to all 20 characters, while everyone else has their cast reduced to Ragna, Narukami, Hyde, and Ruby. The beta is Japan-only – although neither PS4 nor Switch is region locked, meaning that all you need to access it is Japanese accounts – but Arc System Works America has teased that something similar may be coming to North America as well. The stream also showed off more of the online lobbies, and some of the avatars and emotes players will have access to.
This Wednesday there was also the regular weekly Arc Live stream from Arc System Works America, this time featuring BlazBlue player and YouTuber Koefficient. He asked a few questions about BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, getting some new minor information for fans. According to his questions: the game will not have legacy controller support at the moment; the GameStop kiosk demos will be available until July; the netcode will be largely based on that of previous BlazBlue games, with some improvements; the awkward pauses present in the English-dubbed match intros are a result of having recorded them four months ago without knowledge of characters’ animations at the time, so fixing them would not be a possibility; the lack of an arcade version means that balance patches will be easier to send out, based on feedback from the community; and the English and Japanese voice settings will be global. Nothing huge, but some interesting information in there.
It’s another deluge of news about BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle as the game gets closer to its release in Japan on May 31 and North America on June 5, for PS4, Switch and Steam. Between the weekly Arc Live streams, the game’s presence at events and the GameStop demos, it’s not difficult to find footage or check the game out if you’re interested, even more so when the beta starts up next month.
