Human and Gear survive together!

Okay, this should be the last part.  I hope so at least.

So yeah.  Time to cover all the spinoffs, from ho-hum Isuka to the horrific Dust Strikers and then end it on a somber note with Judgment.

Lets rock.

Guilty Gear Isuka
2004 - Arcade, PS2 and the Xbawks (Japan only)

Characters introduced:  A.B.A. (technically her first apperance), Robo-Ky mk.II and Leopaldon

Story: Nada
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Isuka.  The much divided game, either you like it, or you don't.  Unfortunately for all of you, I actually liked it so that leads to me having meterial to talk about.

Isuka is something of a Super Smash Bros. game, mixed with actual fighting mechanics and GG's cast.  Four characters can fight at a time, each with about two lives worth of health and fight on two plains of the arena (foreground and the background) ala Final Fight, except it doesn't run that smoothly (not that it ever ran smoothly).

Since you're going to have enemies around you, to turn around you have to hti the L1 button, which seems to be where the unnessary hate stems from because you will get to doing that pretty fast (I personally found jumping between the foreground and background to be the annoyance).

For the main portion of the game, you have to fight a large sum of battles until you reach Level 100.  You don't go through 100 levels, but you gain them sort of like a RPG.  Except I never really figured out how you do gain levels, it just happen during all the madness.  Once you hit Level 100, you wind up in Antartica and take on the reletivly hard boss, Leopladon.

The other modes of play is Boost mode, which is a forgetable side scrolling beat 'em-up that paved the way to the much better Judgment that comes down the road a bit later.  Theres no real plot, and the bosses are a buffed up Sol and Ky.

Another feature is the Robo-Ky Factory, where you can customize a Robo-Ky to mimic moves of other characters.  Personally, I didn't **** around with this.

The graphics for the game are rather nice.  Though all the characters have their sprites carried over from The Midnight Carnival (which are carried over from By Your Side), they're given a different colour pallet, adding more depth to them and I think they look really good this way.  The backgrounds are some of the best, but generally lack anything animated sadly, but their designs are quite awe inspiring, such as Wilderness Gravestone, Kingdom Cemetary and China, which reappears later in Accent Core as Jams new stage (her old one having to unlocked).

The music's probably the best aspect.  Due to the fact characters share stages now, the music is dedicated to a particular stage rather than characters, but it still fits the locations like a glove.

I don't know whether to recommend it or not.  While I personally like it, it's not for everyone.  But if you go in with a open mind, it shouldn't be too bad, ya dig?

CHARACTERS
A.B.A. technically appears in this game first, but I listed her profile with Accent Core so check there for details on her.

LEOPALDON
Theme song:
Kill DOG as a Sacrifice to DOG (Isuka)




The boss of Isuka.  There is absolutely no information on him, other than it's a man who has found a active Gear and has taken command of it with his dog.  The Gear is a female, judging from the mark on it's arm.

ROBO-KY Mk. II
Theme song:
Holy Orders? (Isuka)




A Robo-Ky that is loyal to a mystery scientist, rather than the P.W.A.B..  He can use custom moves, rather than immitations of Ky's or that of the rouge Roby-Ky appearing in #RELOAD.

Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers
2006 - DS

Characters introduced: Gig

Plot: Despite a storymode, I couldn't find a plot.
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Someone at Arc System Works* was determind to get Isuka's four player brawl deal done correctly, as this is clearly inspired but decided the DS of all things would be the best way to continue with that formula.  And thus, this pile was born.

Dust Strikers can be summed up in two words: A Mess.

As I said, it has the four fighters thing ala Isuka, but now has a vertical playing field with Donkey Kong platforms to jump on.  Despite the DS having enough buttons for a Guilty Gear game, the fighting system is dumbed down for the dumb audiance who thinks the DS is the second coming of Christ with special moves not really requiring much in terms of input to pull off (Hell, I think you can do quite a few by just pushing the A button).

Instead of having a button to turn around like in Isuka, the characters automatically do it, and not very well.  It takes a few moments for your idiot to register that they're being raped from the otherside.  Occasionally, objects for whatever reason appear on the battlefield and their not too useful.

Theres other modes of play rather than the main attraction.  Theres a storymode, but theres not really a story.  The characters say and do things they normally wouldn't, with everyone getting into fights for the sheer Hell of it, and even then, whoever was forced to write this "plot" isn't actually aware of who anyone is, since Bridget is now a girl.  Here's a sample of typical dialog featured in the game. 

This is about four lines into I-No's storymode:

A fight starts over May thinking I-No wants Johnny, despite Johnny not having to do with anything, ever.


I-No more or less just says "Hi" to Baiken, and then suddenly everyone wants her dead.


Slayer, acting like someone on a message board when I-No mentions she's hunting monsters.


I've only beaten it once (as Bridget of all people) when the game came out and I really don't know what the boss of it, Gig, a giant flying insect with a angel on its tail, has to do with anything.  Its just sort of there.  There's also spelling and grammar issues which make these articles look like A+ English meterial.

Theres also minigames you can play.  Just the typical trite BS you can find in a Mario Party game.  Move along.

Positives?  The character sprites look pretty decent, I prefer the pixel art version of the Isuka portraits over the original stuff, Kingdom Cemetary is a arena (hey, I like that place) and the music mostly interesting remixes of older titles (live guitars too, a rarity on the DS).

But still, I don't recommend this game.  Period.  If you want to play Guilty Gear on the go, but don't have a PSP, I highly suggest you hunt down Guilty Gear X: A.E.  It's AI maybe nonexistent, but it's much more superior to this.

Now lets talk something positive!

Characters

GIG - A giant insect (a Gear?) with a angel for a tail.  Just sort of floats up and down, hoping for you to put it out of it's misery.

*To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure if this was developed by Arc System Works.

GUILTY GEAR JUDGMENT
2006 - PSP


Characters introduced:  Raymond, Inus and Judgment

Plot: A week passes with no communication from the island of Isene, but when refugees are found, the world learns of the shocking experiments a scientist named Raymond is preforming with the islands inhabitants.

The world nations quickly post a bounty on his head for anyone who can stop him.
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Ahh, Guilty Gear Judgment.  First I want to state that it's retarded that Japans version comes with SLASH, while we're stuck with another copy of #RELOAD. But oh well, lets focus on the star attraction.

Isuka seems to have inspired the portable games a lot.  Where the Dust Strikers team decided to try, and failed at, expanding Isuka's main gameplay, Judgment's development crew saw potential in Boost Mode, that side scrolling beat 'em-up, and decided to expand that.

And while it's not the best beat 'em-up in the world, they sure did make a damn awesome game!

At first, you're only given about four characters to play as, but you'll unlock more along the rest of the crew along through your playthroughs as you encounter the other characters who've came to Isene for their own reasons (it must be kind of awkward after awhile, bumping into the same 20-something amount of people all the time, around the world).

Each character has their set own of special moves taken directly from the fighters, pulled off through the specific button inputs ala the normal games.  While roaming levels, you'll find items to heal you, gain more points, or to fill up your tension gauge.

I can't remember the specific amount of stages off the top of my head, but each stage is divided into four parts, with a boss at the end.  They're not the most inspired locations in the world of Guilty Gear, but they get the job done.

The enemies though do look pretty sweet, even if you do encounter simple sprite edits of the same lizard men for the most of the game.  Bosses look absolutely sinister, and are the highlights of the enemy designs.

The game is sort of difficult.  It starts out fairly innocuous but around the third or forth level, I was hurting.  Thankfully the game allows you to pick any section of the levels so as long as you've reached the area, so it's a bit forgiving (note that only if you've gotten there with a specific character.  You cant just quit at level 4-2 as Sol, then jump to there as Ky.  You'd have to start from the beginning with him).

Judgment should be easy to find, and I really recommend it.  If anything, for #RELOAD if you want to play the fighting games on the go but at least give the main focus a shot.  At least you'll get a better beat 'em-up than Boost Mode anda better fighting game than Isuka!

CHARACTERS
Inus
The king of Hell, Raymond has enslaved him for his experiments.  Inus gets his revenge on Raymond by devouring him when the player encounters the two, but this was part of Raymonds plan so that when Inus is slained by the player, Raymond could gain Inus' power and becoming Judgment.

Raymond/Judgment
A scientist who wishes to create a bioweapon more powerful than the Gears, while believing he is doing this in God's favor (while ironicly standing against the Holy Order).  To do this, he fuses humans with demons from Hell, and seems to have been powerful enough to even enslave the King of Hell, Inus, himself.  He eventually gets eaten by Inus, but when the player kills the demon, Raymond takes Inus' power to himself and becomes Judgment.

PHEW!!  I believe I'm now all done.  Of course I didn't cover all the spin offs, such as the Petite titles and Raid of Arms, and I didn't touch apon Guilty Gear 2: Overture, but I'm incredibly tired right now and even then, I haven't played those (except for the former) so I can't give you my opinion.

Anyways, this was rather fun to do.  Maybe I'll find something Capcom related I like to go on and on about next.