Over the past few months, Arc System Works has been travelling the globe and showing off its next fighting game, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. Competitors have had a chance to try out the game before its May 31 release, which also means they have had a chance to produce footage where they abuse the upcoming title’s mechanics.
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, like many of its genre contemporaries, features a comeback mechanic; here it’s known as Resonance Blaze. After losing one member of their two-character team, players are able to put their remaining fighter into a special mode that, among other things, builds meter consistently and allows them to store more than the default five bars. A character in Resonance Blaze has access to more powered up special moves and supers than normal.
This all came into play at Sakura Fight Festa, a fighting game tournament held in London earlier this month. During casual BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle matches on the pre-show broadcast, one player was able to use this mechanic to pull off a supremely dumb comeback where he only used one move: Yu Narukami’s screen-filling Ziodyne.
On the ropes against a team comprised of Under Night In-Birth grappler Waldstein and RWBY protagonist Ruby, the Narukami player entered Resonance Blaze as a last-ditch survival effort. With meter slowly building, they were content to stand at the opposite side of the screen and launch Ziodyne after Ziodyne at their opponent’s near full-health duo, slowly whittling away Ruby’s life with both chip damage (i.e. the reduced damage dealt to blocking opponents) and a final, successful hit when she whiffed a move of her own.
As Waldstein entered the fight and activated his own Resonance Blaze, Narukami resumed his Ziodyne assault. At one point, it appeared as if Narukami got too cocky, approaching the bulky brawler for some close-range offence, but a last second backdash tricked Waldstein into attacking. Just outside of range, Narukami shot off one last Ziodyne and sealed his own victory.
Newcomers often bemoan such tactics as “spamming” or “cheap,” assuming that long-range play in fighting games is simple due to their limited knowledge of the genre, but a repeated super assault was probably the Narukami player’s best option in that situation.
We’re still more than a month out from the BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle launch so, for now, folks should just appreciate this comeback for what it is: one player exploiting another’s inability to deal with projectiles and achieving a silly victory.
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