BlazBlue: Entropy Effect Review
In the near future an event happens that drives humanity almost to extinction. A group of scientists have devised one way to save people, it is through a system called ACE. You will find yourself as a robot called ACER, and it will be through your actions that you will reveal the secrets both good and bad in BlazBlue: Entropy Effect. You will be spending most of your time going through simulations, battling enemies of all varieties and collecting data for the overseer of the system. There is more than the overseer wants you to know, but it is up to you to decide what to do with this knowledge.
There definitely is a behind the scenes story going on in this game but 95% of this game is going to be a side-scrolling platformer where you’re going to try to navigate through 5 different areas (each run) with one of 10 different characters. In those runs you’re going to face anywhere from 1 to 7 bosses, it all depends on how well your run is going. In my opinion one of the highlights is the fact that you’re not guaranteed to have to face off against the same bosses every single run. Another positive twist is the fact that when you complete a run a copy of your character is retained with some of the power up choices you made, as well as a special attack of theirs. You can gain the ability to have two of those retained characters added to your current character to help further enhance your stats for that run.
To be honest, this game kind of unravels, ever so slightly, when you get to the later stages of the story. The quests you’re given feel like they are just making you extend your stay, there doesn’t feel like it’s done to progress a story. Speaking of story, as I mentioned previously there is something else going on and you’re going to run into a white orb that will task you with collecting things called phenomena, when you collect enough to unlock more of the story of what happened to the humans, but I will warn you that it is very easy to accidentally complete the game and not be able to unlock all of the phenomena. Once you’ve completed the story portion of the game you will be given a chance to start a New Game+, the story elements and phenomena will be reset, but you’ll be able to retain the characters that you’ve unlocked, the copies you’ve retained from previous runs.
In the end this is a game jam-packed with action, bright lights, and enemies willing to throw themselves at you. I was a little sad that the story created in this game has nothing to do with the BlazBlue universe already in existence, but at least it has a story, so there’s that. I believe I got my runs down to about 30 minutes each time, so if you’re looking for a game where you can accomplish a good amount in 30 minute bite size chunks, this might be for you. I would say that there were definitely characters that I used once and really didn’t want to use again, but that’s the beauty of 10 characters, you’ve got choices.