While the sheer amount of depth to BlazBlue may seem intimidating at first, limited edition copies also include a tutorial DVD, featuring expert players teaching you not only the basic engine features, but also giving you a quick look at their character of choice. And if you end up not getting a limited edition copy (later print runs, for example)... well, Youtube has most of them, it seems. Mike Z’s Tager tutorial in particular is both hilarious and useful, though the others give you good starting points as well. This does a lot to bridge the gap between new players and veterans, or at least give newcomers a good start on learning how to defend themselves against the incredible combos that fighting game experts will throw out with seemingly casual ease.

Honestly, my only real complaint is some significant disparity between the ’top tier’ characters and a few of the weaker ones. While most of the roster is reasonably well balanced, there are a few problems. Namely, Carl’s game plan revolves almost completely around landing one very long combo between him and his puppet companion, while Tager has some serious gaps in his attacks that make most matches very difficult (not impossible, just very hard) to win. On the flip-side, v-13 ("Nu-13") has decent close combat abilities in addition to being able to constantly pelt you with projectiles from every which angle, and even if you learn how to deal with them it’s just not any fun to do so. There are reports many of these issues may be fixed in an upcoming balance patch, and I truly hope so; it would take what is a good game and make it into an excellent one.

Ultimately, the small character roster shouldn’t fool you. BlazBlue was clearly a labor of love by its developers, with a lot of thought going into the game engine, character design, music, story, and really every other aspect you can think of. I think it justifies its full retail price, and a few tweaks could easily make it a true classic in the fighting game genre; let’s hope they happen.

Next: A few quick post-review thoughts.