Why do you play this game?

[Frogster88]

Legitimate question as an outsider looking in, why do you play this game? What makes it fun? I find myself watching Strive sometimes and concluding "this game is hot garbage and is clearly a downgrade from Xrd," yet other times I think "this game stands on its own and has a well-built system and characters for the system."

 

Personally, I abandoned the game partway through Season 2 partially because of roundstart Gold Burst and partially because of the Large and Very Large counters seeming very prevalent amongst other issues, but I never fully stopped following the game. I want to like it, but something about it just feels... unruly(?), I don't know, to me and I can't pin down what.

 

If anyone could make a case study on why the game is "objectively good" or "objectively bad" or whatever, I'd appreciate it. I'd also like it if we mostly looked at it in isolation, since there's a bunch of things about it that make no sense in context of +R or Xrd.

[whatgoat]

I kind of just pick it up every now and then just because it's a gear-adjacent thing that is popular and some people play. 2.0 definitely feels like the best state the game's been in as a casual dabbler.

I much prefer xrd and +r overall, and outright avoid other "simple" FGs like Granblue VS Rising because they just remind me too much of season 1-2 strive on a metatextual level

[Frogster88]

Makes sense, playing for popularity. Out of curiosity, what "metatextual level"s do you think the "simple" games come across as?

[whatgoat]

On 5/14/2026 at 11:53 PM, Frogster88 said:

Makes sense, playing for popularity. Out of curiosity, what "metatextual level"s do you think the "simple" games come across as?

 

Restrictive movement options in an anime aesthetic game with a lot of the offensive threat being centralized and homogenized, leaning towards simple strike/throw that has massive reward. A lot of design around very weighted RPS situations at all levels of play.

 

It comes out feeling like a lot of characters play too similarly for my taste so gameplay variety suffers a bit.

[GooieTheGreen]

I feel a lot more relaxed playing Strive than +R. I can integrate a combo in a day or two, what I can do is always obvious, execution is almost non-existent, yet there's still some meat for me to chew on whenever I wanna. When I wanna do cool shit and play a wild game, I play +R; when I wanna both play a FG and feel chiil, I play Strive.

[rtl42]

WHY DO YOU FIGHT

[Vlachya]

I got into Guilty Gear because it was described to me as being similar to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (everything being a music pop culture reference). I love music, so I wanted to see how many references I could spot. My first game was Guilty Gear Accent Core +R for the Vita. Straight away I knew I was going to love the series, because everything from its presentation to its characters and music were amazing. Once I realized there was a vampire on the roster, I was sold.

 

As for Strive specifically, I play it simply because it is the current title and has the most players playing. Its not as Metal nor as fast paced as previous titles, but its still fun for me.