Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R

There's still no Fanny in this portable outing for the Guilty Gear fighting game series. This would have been the perfect time to bring the so-far Guilty Gear Petit-exclusive star out of retirement.

But, sadly, it isn't meant to be with Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R for the Vita. Shame, as it needs a hook.

Pronounced "gax-ac-par", GGXXACPR is the latest in a long line of revisions to Guilty Gear XX, the third entry in the main series. It's a superb, but stripped back, game that's as polished as it is pointless. It has almost no reason to exist, but its existence is a thing of beauty.

"Sol Badguy"

GGXXACPR is a tip-top brawler in its fundamentals, as you might expect from any premium fighting series. Only years of play will determine whether this release is better balanced for high-level players than the last, but each match I fought was interesting to play, and often went down to the last few points of health.

It's combo-heavy stuff, much like Arc System Works's other Vita release BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend, and the fighting can get fairly frantic. As you might expect from a 2D fighter, it's special move-based, with quarter-turns aplenty. The down, down-forward, forward plus a button combinations are handled beautifully by the Vita's clicky D-Pad.

The art-style is pure anime: cataclysmic backgrounds, spiked hair, large-breasted women, and giant weapons, accompanied by a blues-influenced classic rock soundtrack. Strikes connect with a satisfying aural intensity, too - though this only serves to highlight how grainy the speech samples during conversations are.

There's an attempt at a larger story here, and while it has the potential to be engaging it squanders this with dialogue so overly dramatic that it borders on the childish. It's truly a pity, because the characters are wonderfully bizarre, with the lanky insanity that is Faust remaining one of the best creations in 2D scrap-'em-ups history.

I... no

The biggest problem GGXXACPR has is its uncertainty over who its target audience is. Which is to say that it doesn't really have one.

This is the fifth revision of the core GGXX game, and if you're not a top-level player it's doubtful the tweaks to character moves or minimal additional content will be worth the price of admission if you own a copy on another platform.

If you're totally new to the series, or to fighting games in general, then this isn't a good place to start. There's no tutorial, and the game doesn't bother to explain itself. If you don't already know what an Instant Kill is, you'll have real trouble on the very first stage of the Mission mode that requires you to beat your opponent using one. The learning curve is practically vertical from the off.

If you've been with the series since the beginning then you might be tempted, but here's a kicker for you: there's no online multiplayer - only local ad-hoc.

So who's left to buy it? If you're a Guilty Gear fan, or a very confident fighting game player, but you're yet to pick up a version of GGXX, and you want to play it on your Vita, then this is a great purchase.

All seven of you should go get it immediately.