Everyone is really hammering on this guy for using "Beat em Ups" but back when games and genres weren't as concrete, the two definitely overlapped. He might be showing his age, but he's not wrongly labeling anything here. They were even called "Brawlers" at one point!
The heat in the comments section is palpable lol let's add some degrees then: Beat' em up: it's like Streets of Rage, you go from left to right punching and kicking hordes of generic goons to death, it goes on like this through several stages. Fighting Game: KUMITE! KUMITE! KUMITE! (Van Damme's Spinning Kick in slow motion)
I'm dipping 3 times ...1 digital copy ( Nintendo Switch ) and a two physical copies ..1 for NS and 1 for PS4 : so what like 120$ before taxes 😂...I can't wait for this to drop on Oct. 17th
Thanks for your review! I get the release window was tough due to DBZ’s release, but I’m still going to pick up the physical to support devs. They’ve worked hard on this and are releasing free DLC moving fwd. Hopefully they can fix the odd training mode and being able to turn the background interactions off.
Thank you for the lovely comment. It does appear that the devs are planning to support Blazing Strike with updates and I'm looking forward to testing them when they're released.
@@JHTshowsame thank you! I’ll have to check out your channel more! I appreciate actual insight and gameplay. For the titles big corporations don’t care about. Gained a sub!
@@AH-tj5xkthank you. As a smaller channel we typically only get pre-release access to indies and smaller games so it's nice to know someone appreciates our coverage. Your comment has made my day.
Holy hell the interactive stage elements look even jankier than the rest of the stuff. How the hell are you supposed to know the moose’s in the BACKground would hurt you?
They definitely caught me out on my first fight on that stage. They do have a tell though as they flash red momentarily before dealing damage. I'm not sure how accurately that portrays real moose behavior. I'm not a zoologist.
I remember this game was announced back in 2021. It's now 2024, they had 3 years to developed this game yet the final product feels like it still wasn't polish enough. Maybe they need an extra 2 years before they could release this. I had a feeling the Nintendo Switch version could be super jank, they may as well cancelled that version and wait for Switch 2 instead. It would be a few months until we see the Switch successor.
Dude I remember seeing an article for this game in an issue of game informer back in 2018!!! Six years and it’s still just mediocre and jank lol, plus that $40 price tag isn’t helping
I mean, the guy who created one of the first beat-em-ups (Takashi Nishiyama, the creator of Kung Fu Master), also went on to create Street Fighter, one of the first fighting games, so....................................
@@JHTshow Takashi Nishiyama eventually left Capcom for SNK, as SNK gave him a job offer, and Nishiyama felt he had no creative freedom in Capcom. So he did, and went on to make Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, and the aforementioned King of Fighters.
It seems to be common for British game reviewers to blur the genres like 30 years ago in magazines, but I kinda like that they are playing into the mista- history lesson.
You know this dude plays every game but fighting games. I wouldn’t review something if I didn’t know what to properly call it. Y’all get mad whenever smash isn’t called a fighting game yet you do this. I have no respect
Played it earlier this week, so its nice to finally see an actual review and different set of opinion. Personally speaking, there is little to nothing that i liked about my experience with the game. You hit it on the nose in regards to the game's Story mode. Its so bad and poorly executed, it may as well not even exist in its current form. That said, Just about every aspect of this game feels bland, unpolished and/or downright incomplete. UI menus feel lifeless and are for whatever reason laggy and unresponsive when navigating. Training mode is an absolute disgrace as your have to preset your training options before character selection and CANNOT be changed or modified during gameplay. Perhaps the worst training mode implementation ever for a fighting game i ever seen. Loadtimes are inexcusable considering the shallow scope of the game. Alternate color Palettes for some characters look absolutely horrid and rushed as if they were quickly color edited with any lack of experience. Gameplay is SO unpolished, everything feels like its moving in slow motion and not even in a fluid sense. Collision feels nearly non-existent on many attacks. Jump arcs feel identical across the roster. I'm actually shocked that Acsys Games decided to publish (let alone release) this game in such a state. I've played Alpha builds of video games that felt more complete than this. I was very disappointed with Blazing Strike. I was really hoping the game wouls deliver even in the most basic sense of the word. Never have i played a retail release game that felt unpolished as this game.
Really interesting to read your take on Blazing Strike. The set up for training mode is definitely unusual and clunky but hopefully this is something that can be rectified post launch. The colour palettes for the alternate costumes is subjective and I liked some of them but not all of them. I definitely would have preferred completely different alternative costumes although that may have been asking too much with the small score of Blazing Strike. I reviewed Blazing Strike on PS5 and didn't experience any issues with loading screens and everything felt quite snappy. Admittedly this was with the Day One patch installed so maybe earlier versions could be slower.
@JHTshow Training mode feels like it needs a complete overhaul. Its just very counterintuitive and barebones. No re-centering option. Training options menu only accessible outside of gameplay. It just doesn't make any sense. Pre-patch, you couldn't even re-select your character from the pause menu in Training. What on earth...? Perhaps. But some current examples are absolutely unacceptable. HK button color on the main Shoto character (forgot his name already) his color Palette looks insanely oversaturated and some of his edge pixels on him aren't even colored in at all. The male character with the sword, all of his color palettes change instantly during his standard throw animation before going back to normal again. This is basic level stuff (post patch btw) that shouldn't exist as they currently are. I got it on PS4. And I'm sorry but there is nothing about this game that a stock PS4 hardware (or any 6th gen console for that matter) can't feasibly handle with zero effort. Loadtimes as they currently stand are inexcusable. Even more shocked that this game runs on Unity. I actually did play the game pre patch and it was downright unplayable with certain characters. After I got the current patch (which btw crashed my console upon installing) things changed but the difference was negligible overall. Current patch is a mere band-aid to more serious technical problems that the game suffers from that need to be addressed immediately. Audio is of very poor and inconsistent quality (certain effects and voices are super low pitch while others are far too high). Standard stuff like screen scrolling isn't properly implemented (far too much visual tearing and pixel crawling constantly happening everywhere onscreen any time anything remotely happens onscreen). This game was just FAR too much of an undertaking for just one person at the helm even after countless delays it went thru. I really hope that it can salvaged. But this game is not worth $40. I don't believe its even worth half of that I'm afraid. Thank you for posting a review for it tho.
@@CDagesThanks for sharing your extended thoughts, I'm waiting to hear what people think about the Switch version but suspect it will be similar. If the loading times are poor, I'll have to pass till there is an improvement and have no shortage of Arcade Archives to play in the meantime. How long roughly does an average match take to load on PS4?
@@thelastgogeta Roughly about 10 seconds on PS4, which is a very long time for a 2D fighter lmo. I suspect it may be worse on Switch but thats just a guess. Everything about this game release feel awfully un-optimized. The more I go back to it, the more bugs I find that bring the game to screeching halt.
@@bobbylucas13 You're not wrong there. Pixel art is hard to get right and Blazing Strike is made by one dev and features a lots of stages and 16 playable characters. That's a lot of colourful squares!
"Lazy" is one of the most abused terms in relation to game development. If we took one frame of basically any of the characters, they would possibly fit into a crazy ambitious MUGEN at least and possibly a peak SNK/Capcom fighter at best. I suspect that the project could have used better direction and support from the publisher since great art is only one part of a fighting game and arguably less necessary than good sound.
I'm gonna support it because you know what game released in a worse state than this is but grew into something AMAZING when players still supported it and let the developers cook? Power Rangers: Batrle for the Grid.
@@JHTshow From what I hear the game was (allegedly) developed by a single guy who managed to find a backer. Yeah this game doesn't look perfect or measure up to it's inspirations but it's an indie game. Why would anybody expect it to? Examples like Skullgirls are a rarity. It CAN become something as grand as that or Power Rangers, but only IF it gets support early on. From what I hear the only bad part about it is the story presentation and that's not the reason we're playing this game to begin with. I hope it gets better but I bought this for the fighting and the cool character designs.
@mf_dva absolutely nailed it and that was what I tried to convey in my review. You're right, Blazing Strike was almost entirely developed by one guy, which is an incredible achievement. I hope they take all the constructive feedback on board and manage to polish the game up post launch, and people give it a chance as a new 2D pixel art fighting game is a rare thing indeed.
@@JHTshow I appreciate you because so far you're the only reviewer I saw that didn't come with unrealistic expectations. I'm not oblivious to the game needing some work and points other people brought up aren't completely invalid. Still I have walked away from every other review wondering why people are harling on this one person developed fighting game for not being of the same quality as a Capcom or SNK. Even if it was more than one guy, this is an indie game that doesn't have the budget to do that.
