i wanna start by saying this is not just a soulless tie-in, instead it's mostly one.

this game has almost nothing to actually do with blazblue, the characters are just a vessel for the gameplay to break up the bits of not very interesting story where floating wall-e robots talk about a fairly generic cyberpunk conspiracy (at least that's as far as i got), there's no actual reference to anything blazblue at all. your player character has some very sassy dialogue options which is kinda fun though.

the gameplay has some interesting ideas with the entropy system and the way it does progression (through tactics which are small generic talents and potentials which are big character-specific talents), but the combat itself feels like somebody wanted dead cells without understanding it. all the chaos of dead cells without any of the maneuverability your player character needs to navigate it effectively (enjoy getting clipped by random enemies while you're in an attack animation). you really are controlling a fighting game character in this game, which if it were designed with that in mind may have made for a clever adaptation, but i don't think it works for the game they actually made. when you have enough potentials, you can actually start doing some cool anime stuff, but getting there is an unenjoyable slog.

the most charming parts of this game are probably the visuals, which the art direction is legitimately gorgeous, and the music, which adds some very nice ambience to the game, but neither of these things can make up for what's fundamentally just not fun combat and a not interesting story or characters.

it really does feel like this was going to be a unique ip until they got the license for blazblue and decided to use it to sell the game. i'll give them the benefit of the doubt since it's an early access game, so maybe it'll be worth checking in on a year or two from now, but as it is i don't think this is really worth your time if you're not a diehard fan of sidescrolling roguelites.

i wanna start by saying this is not just a soulless tie-in, instead it's mostly one. this game has almost nothing to actually do with blazblue, the characters are just a vessel for the gameplay to break up the bits of not very interesting story where floating wall-e robots talk about a fairly generic cyberpunk conspiracy (at least that's as far as i got), there's no actual reference to anything blazblue at all. your player character has some very sassy dialogue options which is kinda fun though. the gameplay has some interesting ideas with the entropy system and the way it does progression (through tactics which are small generic talents and potentials which are big character-specific talents), but the combat itself feels like somebody wanted dead cells without understanding it. all the chaos of dead cells without any of the maneuverability your player character needs to navigate it effectively (enjoy getting clipped by random enemies while you're in an attack animation). you really are controlling a fighting game character in this game, which if it were designed with that in mind may have made for a clever adaptation, but i don't think it works for the game they actually made. when you have enough potentials, you can actually start doing some cool anime stuff, but getting there is an unenjoyable slog. the most charming parts of this game are probably the visuals, which the art direction is legitimately gorgeous, and the music, which adds some very nice ambience to the game, but neither of these things can make up for what's fundamentally just not fun combat and a not interesting story or characters. it really does feel like this was going to be a unique ip until they got the license for blazblue and decided to use it to sell the game. i'll give them the benefit of the doubt since it's an early access game, so maybe it'll be worth checking in on a year or two from now, but as it is i don't think this is really worth your time if you're not a diehard fan of sidescrolling roguelites.