Due to me having gone to arcades for more oftenly, I have played lots of the available machines (except SSF4, too many pros), blazblue:continuum shift being one of them. Since I owned the console version of the game itself, I pretty much knew what to expect, and yes, what I played was what I thought it would be. It didnt take me long to finish my experiences with the machine to think up of a possible verdict, so here it is. Like most fighting games BB:CS only comes up to the cost of 1 token. This is, of course, good, and kinda expected at the same time. With fighting games having superior graphics such as SSF4 or tekken 6 costing only 1 token, a game using 2D animations and sprites couldnt hope to cost twice as much as those. Still, the game is worth, probably the most cost-worthy fightning game machine in the scene. The game provides 10 full stages, compared to many other game's 7 or 8, BB:CS gives players alot of play time, same as its predussecor, BB:CT. . The fighting game engine for BB:CS is kinda hard to grasp, for beginners, they will be struggling quite alot. Of course, like any other fighting game, the game is button mashable, but it wont get a player very far. If those familiar to the 1st game were to play this, they would find that its mostly unchanged, expect for the bursting crap, everything else is the same. You pick a character and start duking it out. Every character has a super bar, which is calculated to 100, 50 points of a bar allows the use of a super. Everything else, from health to the button attack functions, are self-explanatory, all of which, light,medium,heavy and drive attacks. Light, medium and heavy are kinda "just there", but drive attack vary in huge differences for each character. .

There are 2 characters that are new to the game, hazama and tsubaki, the rest are from the previous game. Needless to say the old characters play exactly the same, but along with hazama and tsubaki, they vary differently from each other. Hazama plays as an anchor character, and is able to close in gaps between his opponents, tsubaki charges to give different effects to her respective moves, be it increasing range or damage. The old characters have thier own special attributes as well, such as taokaka being able to zip around the field really quick, noel being able to chain her attacks into an unstoppable string, or hakumen being able to counter attacks, everyone is special in thier own way. And playing through the arcade with your favourite character always feels great.


BB:CS on the arcade moves and feels great, it is a blast to play. But seriously, its basically BB:CT ver 1.5, with 2 new characters. Make no mistake, they are great additions, but having only 14 characters in a fighting game roster is seriously lacking. Also, with much of the in-game terms being very complex and hard to understand, begeinners will have hard time grasping even the basics of the game concept.


BB:CS on the arcade is a great game, just that without the great modes that the console version hard, it doesnt deserve that much of a score for just its arcade mode. Its still a great fighting game though, no arguments there.


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(+)Pros


-Good varied roster

-Worth your 1 token's play

-Excellent control scheme

-Great visuals and sprite animation


(-)Cons


-Only 14 characters

-Abit tough for beginners




My Score:8.0

Happy gaming.