Guilty Gear X was a blessing for Dreamcast and PS2 owners looking for a new take on played-out 2D fighters. All sorts of wacky attacks and strange new techniques that nobody had ever seen were introduced, leading a reasonable number of people to call it the greatest fighting game ever made. Outlandish opinions aside, the same excitement didn't seem to make the jump to pocket-size very well.
GGX borrows a bit of the Samurai Shodown mentality in its gameplay, but not really in a good way. There's plenty of strategy involving speed and strengths of different weapon-based attacks, and the advanced moves (Roman Cancels, in particular) make some pretty crazy combos possible. Yet, the characters aren't very balanced at all. Potempkin, for example, can smash an opponent with only three quick moves; Chipp Zanuff has the ability to teleport instantly to nearly anywhere on the screen, triple jump, Gattling Combo into a potentially infinite string of crouching Heavy Slashes, and pump an Overdrive (Super) move into his enemy while they're flat on the ground. Ouch.
The good news: players can recover in mid-air to prevent being juggled infinitely in a corner. The bad news: if they don't, it's extremely easy to keep popping an enemy up as long as you'd like. Sure, their health stops decreasing after the first five hits, but they'll still become dizzied after a while, allowing for an effortless repeat or a freebie Overdrive beating. I can't count how many times I've kept the CPU opponents in the air for over 40 hits using a simple launch->jump kick->launch pattern.
At least we've got a few different modes to choose from. If you're sick of the same old Arcade and Survival modes (both included), Tag Match and 3-on-3 challenges are available for team play. It's a bit weird, though -- tagging out actually spends a third of your character's Tension Meter, and it's impossible to switch your team's order in 3-on-3 between matches. Booooring.
