My Relationship with Fighting Games, ARMs and Guilty Gear

For the longest time, my only experience with fighting games was those big names, y'know, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Street Fighter IV, Tekken 7, the like. I was never too entrenched in the competitive FGC, and only picked up these games on recommendations from friends, or because they were the only game in a bargain bin that I could recognize the name of as a teen. Around 15 or so, I wanted to get into fighting games because, well, they look so cool! When I see the big combo exhibitions or the hugest EVO matches it always gets me pumped up, and I would always think "Yeah! I can do this too!" but when I got into the thick of it, I just bounced off of these games. Either they had too high a skill floor, or it just wasn't the thing for me and still isn't, but most of the time it was simply due to me being too impatient to put in the work to being decent.

In August of 2017, I had landed a shitty job at McDonald's which I really hated, but it meant I was finally able to get the funds to buy myself a shiny new Nintendo Switch. This was still in the space where there wasn't many big-name games for the console, I had already gotten The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on my old Wii U, and Super Mario Odyssey was still a few months out. To be honest, I got a Switch solely for Mario and Splatoon 2, and I had to hop on Splatoon soon so I didn't get left in the dust in the lame old previous game, obviously! When I got some spare funds and needed a game to play in the sad, lonely corner of the cafeteria during I sat by myself during school lunch, Splatoon couldn't cut it anymore due to a lack of internet. So, I decided on the game I really enjoyed the visuals of, ARMs.

Now, I'm not about to say ARMs is a good game or anything. ARMs kinda sucks, actually. It has an extreme lack of content, the game itself feels like a puddle worth of depth in the high level, and it simply wasn't something seen as fun to most people. But for me, this game's very bare approach to fighting games nearly revolutionized how I viewed fighting games as a whole. When I was in a match and started picking up on how my opponent moved to avoid one attack, and swerved my second hit to catch their dodge, it was like a lightbulb clicked in my head. Oh my god! This is what fighting games are all about!! It isn't just a exhibition of executing combo strings and tricky inputs, but instead it's a game of reading into your opponent, finding flaws in their strategy and picking up on them, mixing up your own gameplay to keep them on their toes! This is fun! It wasn't enough to get me back into more traditional fighting games yet, however. I understood the core of fighting another person and reading them, but combos and inputs still eluded me, and missing the extra dimension of movement in games like Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 made me feel almost choked out in options of how to evade and get in.

Fast forward to say, around the back half of 2020, and I was talking with one of my friends when she brought up Guilty Gear. It was a game I had been curious on but never cared much to look into, but she was adamant in wanting me to try it, seeing as a new entry was coming out next year. She had bought me Guilty Gear Xrd- Revelator on Steam, and this game blew my ass off. So stylish, so over-the-top, so unabashedly campy and full of energy, this was the kinda shit I loved. What I didn't expect, however, was that I would get way more into trying to learn the game than previous fighting games like it. Something about that initial draw, the fun character designs, the crazy kickass music pulled me in long enough to really genuinely learn and enjoy a very traditional 2D fighter.

I became totally entrenched in Guilty Gear, buying Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R, and eventually grabbing Guilty Gear -Strive- the day it launched (and finally getting to play it after an intensive 48-hour game jam that coincidentally happened the day it came out!). Now, Guilty Gear has cemented itself in my mind as one of my favourite game series as could probably be evident from my whole layout. Everything it does from it's story, to it's artistic direction to it's character and environment designs to it's music I love so dearly, and more than anything else, it finally made me get fighting games.