The original Guilty Gear Xrd arrived a year earlier on Japanese consoles, with a Western release following a few months later. It was a strong addition to the series, though not without rough edges, and it never quite built the audience a modern fighting game needs to stay relevant outside Japan. Arc System Works gave the game a second chance with an updated version titled Guilty Gear Xrd 2, already available in Japanese arcades and set for release in the West on May 26th.
Japanese fighting-game sequels typically work differently from their Western counterparts. Rather than a fully new installment with a new story, mechanics, visuals and cast — the way a “Mortal Kombat” follows a “Mortal Kombat X” — Japanese developers tend to re-release the same game rebalanced around fan feedback, with extra content bolted on. It is not a universal pattern (the “Super Smash Bros.” series changes radically each entry), but “Street Fighter” has had numerous editions, “Marvel vs Capcom 3” became “Ultimate MvC3,” “Persona 4 Arena” became “Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax,” and franchises like “BlazBlue” and “King of Fighters” have followed the same model, as have Japan-only series such as “Bleach: Heat the Soul.” Guilty Gear Xrd 2 follows the same principle: it carries over all of the original Guilty Gear Xrd content plus a handful of additions.
Those additions include an overall roster rebalance, new moves for every character, and new story episodes for fighters who previously lacked them. The headline additions, though, are two new playable characters: Baiken, a veteran samurai fighter, and Answer, an office-worker-turned-ninja. The update is a fairly modest one for existing owners — priced at $20 for those who already own the original Guilty Gear Xrd, or $40 for newcomers. For anyone who has never played Guilty Gear Xrd, Xrd 2 is the definitive version and a reasonable entry point; for existing owners unmoved by the two new characters, waiting for a price drop is a fair call.