Being the fighting fan that I am, I’ve always wanted to play a Guilty Gear game. The only problem is that I’ve never had a system or arcade that supported the game. But finally Sammy has solved this problem by porting their 2D fighter over to the GBA. So when I saw this game in a store, I decided to give it a ride in my GBA and see if it lives up to the great things I’ve heard about it.

    The first thing I noticed when after getting this game home and into my Gameboy, was the large number of fighters you could choose from. You start out with 14 characters, each with their own distinctive weapon. All with varying styles based around that characters weapon of choice. After completing the game, you unlock two additional characters. With so many characters to choose from, you’re bound to find a few that will fight your style. It has all the typical types: big, slow, and strong, mediocre everything, and then the small, fast, and weak. Like many of the 2D fighters that come out today, Guilty Gear’s gameplay is centered on fast action while trying to rack up that combo. Having weapons thrown in there just makes it that much more frantic. Even though it’s only the GBA, the fighting is still considerably fast paced.

    Players used to the Street Fighter style of games will have to spend some time adapting to the different style. Many of the special moves are similar to SF’s, so players will have something to fall back on while learning the styles of the characters. But to master the more advanced techniques, practice is going to be needed. Dust Attack and Dead-Angle Attack are two of the easier moves and shouldn’t take that long to learn. But moves like Instant Kill will require more time. Mastery all of these moves is what takes this game to a different level then other 2D fighters.

    One of the nicest qualities about this game is that it has a great deal of gameplay modes. Ranging from Arcade, which is your basic mode, to 2v2 and 3v3 modes. I’ve seen fighting games on regular consoles with fewer options. One of the features that I wanted to, but couldn’t try out is the Vs mode. Here you can play against someone else who has the game via the link cable.

    While some of the artwork of the characters looks cool, the actual in game models needed some work. It looks like the developers gave each character a nice amount of detail, but the characters are too small to be appreciated. The backgrounds are all nicely done and each is quite unique. I was really expecting more out of the graphics then this than tiny characters and strange backgrounds. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have a GBA SP yet and like many of the early GBA games, even though this isn’t one of the earlier games this one is dark. And like these other dark games, it’s really only enjoyable under direct light. Otherwise you might find the characters hard to see.

     Some may not enjoy listening to GGX for very long. The game gets an A for effort when it comes to music, but it can’t follow through. The tunes really go all out and try to rock. Sadly with the small size of the cartridge not much can be done to make these attempts successful. If you enjoy the music form the 16bit era, then you might like the music GGX has to offer. Other wise, it might be best to conserve the batteries lifetime by turning the volume down.

    Guilty Gear X: Advanced Edition isn’t anything special. The $10 price that it can be found with at a few places might make this a tempting offer for the casual gamer, but the semi difficult gameplay will be a definite turn off. I still say get it. GGX will add a great deal of variety to your GBA fighting library. The nice artwork and depth of the gameplay, along with all those modes to play make it worth every cent of those ten dollars.