Recent reviews by BEAENKES

Everyone said in the first beta that 66L would be a problem. It went unchanged in the second beta, where everyone continued to say that it would be a problem. Then the game releases. Lo and behold, 66L is a problem.
Nobody asked for you to turn the ground based footsies fighter into an airdasher without airdashes.
But can we patch the game? No, of course not, we've gotta wait until after Arc World Tour because we care about esports. We can barely hit over 1,000 players on the weekend, but those esports are everything man. Can't fix the game because those esports are so important.

I hate playing against every character in this game except my character, because my character is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ free.

Man, what's wrong with the balance in this game?
Katano adamantly refuses to get over his PTSD so any character who ever made Pot struggle in any prior Guilty Gear is doomed to never rise above C tier. Meanwhile there's a whole cast of characters that can do everything for free with no downsides and will only continue to get buffed (as per usual).
I don't think I've seen a single person who's played Strive for even a moderate amount of time that has not groaned over the balance in this game, unless they themselves play the broken characters.
The game isn't even fun for me to watch anymore, what's the point? It's just going to be a Happy Chaos/Ram/Nago top 8 with Leo thrown in if they're playing on PS4. Why bother? None of those matchups are fun to watch.

What a lovely little game. The art design is fantastic, and the gameplay is incredibly addictive. It evokes a lot of Diner Dash nostalgia, but with the twist of you having to buy or harvest all your own ingredients.
The English patch is a bit buggy in some places but for the most part works, which is crucial because you need to freestyle some characters' orders based on their preferences. From what I gather, it wasn't quite ready for a full release, but considering its still being worked on, and considering it works enough to make the game enjoyable, I'll more than accept the state of the English patch as-is. It's been many months since I felt genuine joy from playing a game, but I certainly won't complain when it does happen.

After a very rocky launch, the game is finally out of its paid public beta test.
It feels like Kamone created the most complex fighting game of the generation completely by accident.

I wouldn't recommend this game to anybody.
This game has some of the worst balance in any game that I have EVER seen, to the point where having one character is a requirement to winning. The only exceptions are if NOBODY is playing that character (And with how broken she is, fat chance of that ever happening), or the person who's left at the end of it all has a fatal seizure in the middle of their game (and even then, the odds are still in their favor). There is no way to gain the free currency required to buy characters outside of achievements, and if you were to get EVERY achievement, You would almost be able to buy a character. Not being able to gain currency from playing the game is a cardinal sin on the level of Raid: Shadow Legends' entire existence.
Even if they were to fix the balance and allow you to buy characters without spending cash, this game would still suffer from being a mix of Aeon of Strife styled Fortress Assault game going on two sides, and battle royale. No more sinister match could be made in all the bowels of hell.

I have to say, despite trying absolutely everything in the book to make me not like the game: Tiny roster, Expensive, Day 1 DLC, No mobage codes on PC, delay based netcode, all of which are dealbreakers for lots of people, they managed to put out a game that I not only enjoy, but enjoy coming back to, enjoy watching, and enjoy playing. Solely on the basis of making a standout game: Simple, super effective, they managed to hit a grand slam, land a chaos dunk, and score a 90 pluser all in one. They deserve every ounce of support they can get. Good show.