Jul 28, 2014

Under Night in-Birth Exe: Late Has Hit Iowa

I don't recall seeing this much interest in an anime fighter in Iowa in quite some time. With the console release of UNIEL, many of Iowa's players are currently grinding it right now including myself. Here's the quick rundown.

NGamer3k - Hyde

BlankM - Vatista, Nanase

Travis "Klaige" - Byakuya

Curtis "TopHat" - Chaos

Justin Hines - Gordeau

Greg "GQDang" - Gordeau

The game has been on my radar for a while since Blank and our good friend Sam "pbjmixxa" are such prominent anime players in my circle. Having never seen much footage of the game beforehand, from playing it and having the mechanics unfold before me, I can say that I really like how the game was designed from a gameplay perspective. Virtually every mechanic the game has was well thought out and I can get behind them easily. My main criticism of the game so far is that the characters themselves are not too interesting. This is somewhat expected given that most of the games characters are either direct take offs or parodies of similar characters in other games.

Going a bit in-depth, this game has an ST like quality with it's emphasis on a ground game and big damage associated with simple hits like dragon punches and fireballs. I find this quite enjoyable and a change of pace from most anime fighters where extended combos are generally needed to do notable damage. With this game, one can zone, play footsies and dominate an opponent on solid fighting game fundamentals.

The game's "Grind Grid" system rewards both offense and defense which means that a variety of styles can be prevalent. Depending on which player the grid favors at the time, only then can that player gain access to the ubiquitous cancel mechanic in the game (called "Change Shift"). It will be interesting to see how the game evolves.

Myself along with Blank will be entering tournaments for this game at least for the immediate future. Stay tuned possible match footage and articles.

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