 How's it going everybody? DatoDoy here and I am very excited to be making a video today on the next Arc System Works game, aka Grand Blue Fantasy Versus. Now the reason I'm making this video now and not when the game was initially released is because they just dropped a whole ton of gameplay footage on us out of nowhere. The other reason I'm so excited to be talking about it now is that they're actually holding a closed beta relatively soon and I want as many people that are interested to be able to hop in on that and see how the game plays. So I'm sure somewhere down in the description or maybe the pinned comment I'll have some instructions on how to do that, but this video is more focused around what Grand Blue Fantasy Versus is so far and what we got out of this gameplay footage. Boiler Alert by the way, I was overall pleasantly surprised by what I saw, but that might be getting ahead of myself. Let's start off by talking about the overview we got of the five playable characters in this beta state of the game. At first they introduced us to Gron who has turned out to be the balanced character of the game, you know, as the main character, he's sort of real like in the sense that he doesn't do anything too particularly well and he doesn't do anything too particularly difficult. Characters like this usually serve as somebody that you pick up during your beginning time with the game and as you play them you kind of learn these different facets of stuff so you usually have a fireball so you learn the projectile game. Sure you can type move which I think they show off here for him, just teaches you invincible moves, what can you do with this, so even if you end up not sticking with that character, many will, you don't have to essentially start over with whoever you pick next. They even say here that they're designed philosophy for creating Gron as he's a straightforward character designed with easy to control and straightforward skills. They do make a point however that Gron is a character that gets a lot more out of being closer to his opponent and this point is what mainly separates him from the second character they talked to us about, Catalina. Catalina much like Gron is another character that just does everything super well, just a character that can really handle a lot of different situations and again really the only thing we learn about her that separates her from Gron is that her weapon is a bit longer and she has more charging skills. These are just things that will allow players that aren't really feeling the close range style of a basic character to switch to something that's more of a mid range style of fighting. In contrast to these two standard characters, up next they introduced us to Charlotte who is a very strange character, she serves the role of being that small speedy character. They also say that she does insane damage when she does land these hits. Other mechanics that make her unique are the fact that she's able to counter normals and that she has an almost demon flip like ability and from what I see land a grab, go for a low or just start an overhead attack, so that's very Akuma like those that have played Akuma and other street fighter games in the past. I'm sure it will feel very similar. They don't show off too much of it here, but later on when the pros actually play against each other, this is a move they abuse a lot. Similar to Charlotte in one way is Lancelot who is also described as being a speedy type character, but is made distinct by the fact that he focuses more on mix ups. This is one of those characters that they don't describe in too much detail here, but watching the gameplay, it really does look like Lancelot is going to be a problem of character. He really is just so fast and can get around you so easily, especially using some of the other mechanics the game has to offer, which we will talk about later. Before that though, we have to talk about the fifth and final character discussed here, Vary. This is a character that has been labeled as the Zoner of the Bunch. She also has the longest reaching normals, which contributes to why she's able to zone so effectively, but they also mentioned that her pets, aka her special moves, help us discover the reason why she's able to keep these opponents across the screen so well. Out of the bunch, just visually she does look like the most technical character to play, but obviously along with that comes some very good stuff. Keeping your opponent across the screen in a 2D fighting game is very annoying, as I'm sure a lot of us have experienced, and that's just because it's so good. Regardless, that is actually where they wrap up the character discussions for this small beta, and then they move into talking about some mechanics and describing ways in which this game is aiming to be a little more accessible, while also maintaining those aspects of a fighting game that, you know, more hardcore players and players that have been playing fighting games for a very long time really love. One of the things that I would say fits this category is special move inputs. This is something I've heard a lot of casual players complain, you know, is it really necessary? And New Age fighting game developers have been moving in a direction where, you know, we'll try cooldown stuff, and that is what they've implemented here, but they've done something that I really like in the fact that, you know, they have cooldowns for these special moves, obviously, if you can activate them with one button, that's something you have to do, but if you do them with an input command, it shortens the skill cooldown. I know it sounds super nerdy, but to me this is super interesting, because in some areas of the game, it's going to be more beneficial to, you know, eat the longer cooldown, just activate the skill, maybe you don't want to give away the information that, you know, you're crouching and you're going for a fireball, obviously, you see that crouch, they input at the command a little slow, they're going for a fireball, maybe they're going for a sure you can, but if you do it with a button, you really don't have to give away any of those signs, so maybe you're playing neutral, you need an ability fast, boom, you eat the longer cooldown, it's whatever, but if you're just playing normally, you want to maximize your efficiency, then you got to go ahead and use those special move inputs, and I feel like that rewards skill, while also not essentially condemning casual players to be, you know, inefficient. If a player would want to, I'm sure you'd be more than able to never touch special moves in your entire career playing this game, and you would probably still be able to get quite a few wins under your belt. Continuing on with what they've done with special moves, they've also made it so that you can still EX these special moves, the cooldown will just be a lot longer than usual. Also an interesting note, when you EX a special move normally in fighting games, that consumes a little bit of meter, that's kind of the trade-off there, but in this game, I think they just want the trade-off to be that longer cooldown, as you can see the meter does not move an inch when they EX their special moves, so that meter on top is 100% just for supers. While we're on the topic of supers, they really haven't changed the supers format too much, you can unleash a skybound art when your gauge reaches 100%, but if your HP is low enough 30% or lower, then you get a super skybound art, which is basically an you can think of that as an ultra attack and the skybound art as a super attack, but I kind of want to get back to mechanics that kind of make an effort to bridge that accessibility gap between casuals and hardcore players, so I really want to talk about what they've done with blocking in this game. Normally when you block, you just hold back to block standing attacks and overheads, things like that sort, and then to block lows, you hold down back away from your opponent. In this game, you can still do exactly that, it works perfectly normal, but for newer players, they also have a block button. This is a mechanic that personally I'm very happy isn't the only way you can block, something about the way I play fighting games, I just I hate block buttons so much for some reason, it really doesn't jive with me, but I know a lot of players like it because it's just a lot simpler and it makes more sense to have such an important action dedicated to a button on its own. Mechanics wise, usually a block button entails that you're just going to be able to block anything, cross-ups even, no matter what, as long as you're holding the button, no matter what side they attack you on, you're blocking it, but in this game the block button doesn't actually have that property from what I can see, so you're just holding the block button, it's pretty much just a stop gap, also if somebody tries to throw you while you're holding this block button, even if you do tech the throw, it'll count as a late tech, which in this game means you take a little bit of damage anyway, because you didn't tech perfectly on time. Still not as bad as getting thrown down to the ground, but it definitely sucks to have to eat that little bit of damage anyway. To summarize my thoughts on this block button thing, I think it's a great way to give players that like that format of blocking a way to do it, while also still opening them up to other aspects of the game, like cross-ups and things of that sort. So in my books this is just another win in terms of accessibility design. As far as other mechanics linked with Guarding Go, there is also an invasive move in this game that allows you to move through your opponent. I don't know how much this mechanic is going to affect high-level play or even just casual play, because they don't show it off too much in the matches, but it is an interesting mechanic for sure. Other than everything I've discussed here they really don't go into detail on too much else, so I'm super hoping I get into that close bandit and mess around with everything. But other interesting things that I saw were some insane looking supers like Ferries here, who throws out this orb that the opponent has to block while also worrying about you coming in for mix-ups and pressure. That alone was very cool to me, but also seeing that chip damage does take place in this game is something I've missed in a lot of fighting games. Chip damage is kind of going extinct these days. People do not like chip damage. Part of me is super nostalgic for it though. I love the fact that you can get killed by blocking. It just makes comebacks all the sweeter. That being said, whether or not chip damage is only regulated to some supers, only supers or every move isn't known by me yet, so I don't want to speak on that, but just the fact that chip damage at all is in the game is super cool. Now I just kind of want to talk over some gameplay from the professionals here and why the gameplay itself got me super excited more so than I was before, and that's because in general the game looks a lot faster than what I expected it to be. I mean just look at this clip here. He lands a fireball on a jumping opponent, gets to speed in, go for a combo, get the knockdown, teleport above his opponent, land behind, and then eventually he loses because he gets run in on and gets hit by an overhead. That is just pure fighting games. That's the stuff I really love, but I'm also a huge fan of how that's not everything this game is. You know, a lot of fighting games these days kind of pick something, pick or choose, you know, you know, let's say dragon ball fighters as a game. As an experience it's really focused around aggression and how good you can handle aggression, and I love it for that. It's a lot of fun. I love aggressive fighting games, but I also kind of miss games that can handle both. Like look at this clip here of the speedy small character, Charlotte, trying to get it on fairy. Both players are kind of backing up. The fairy is doing a good job of trying to keep that space with those long-range normals. Throwing out fireballs, angled fireballs, things like that, and just watching this exchange, this back and forth between, you know, a character like Charlotte who's really small and speedy. What this really screams to me is it's kind of like a street fighter experience, you know, slower, more grounded, but it also has that visual flair from Arxis that I've really come to appreciate, and it's why a lot of their games are some of my favorite fighting game experiences that I've had in the past couple years. Not to say it's the first anime game to go for a more grounded style. Unist pulls that off with a lot of grace as well, but to be honest, Unist is a very weird game to put it. It's not exactly super easy to sit down, look at the UI of Unist and say, okay, I understand what this game is. I kind of understand all the systems at play, and I'm ready to go. I'm ready to play some Unist. No, it's kind of a game you have to go through the tutorial. While this is super simplistic, you got the special moves up there showing you the cooldowns, both visually and mechanically. This is a game that I think is making some strides at being super viewer friendly. Like somebody clicks on twitch and they see this, and right away they can understand that's the super bar, that's the health bar, and those are their super moves. Now let's see what a fighting game is, and I think this game does that super well. So yeah guys, those are my thoughts on this gameplay look we got at Grand Blue Versus. It went from being on my radar definitely, but very low, wasn't too interested in it. Didn't really care too much, but now all of a sudden it's become my most anticipated fighting game of the year just because of a few minutes of gameplay. I don't know how they did it, but this was a great, great trailer in a way, I guess. A great look at their game, honestly, and I couldn't be more excited. Hopefully you guys can let me know your thoughts down below, whether or not you think they're going too far with accessibility, not far enough, or if they've hit that sweet spot, and if you're going to sign up for the beta, or if you already have, and whether or not you're looking forward to it, because I definitely am. Hopefully I see you guys down in the comments, like I said, but while you're down there, if you liked the video and the channel, make sure to hit the like button and subscribe for all sorts of fighting game videos. You know, we do dragon ball fighters here, Mortal Kombat, all sorts of stuff like that. So if any of that sounds good to you, make sure to subscribe. I also got some of those videos I was talking about right there on your screen, so give those a watch if any of them catch your eye. I'm Dr. Doe. Thanks again for watching this video, and I will see you in the next one.