Alright, time to review.
As already mentioned, game has amazing boobies galore. Entry also has a thing for heavy turbulance jiggle, best demonstrated with Mai's Astral Finish and Nine's Flame Punisher stiletto heel beam.
But anyway, Central Fiction continues to have top notch gameplay courtesy of ArcSys standard base mechanical design, where I'd say the Drive system adds one delicious final layer of character uniqueness. The new mechanics are Active Flow, which is essentially the opposite of ArcSys staple Negative Penalty and provides a boost to damage and Burge Gauge build-up, and Exceed Accel which is an Overdrive super that can either be activated as part of Overdrive by holding the input or later by using the Overdrive input while Overdrive is active. Exceed Accel is also unique in that the drive attack has additional attack animations (ergo, more damage) when done while in Active Flow. Overall the addition of Exceed Accel serves to put more incentive for players to start learning how they can use their Overdrive in various ways and otherwise learn the finer mechanics according to their ability, thanks to the fact Exceed Accel is the most basic distortion drive that can be used but also shares the same gauge with Overdrive and Break Burst. A minor thing of note is that Central Fiction does not have Unlimited characters beyond unplayable Unlimited boss fight versions of Ragna, Izanami and Nine in Arcade mode.
Which is a good time to bring up that in the days where Street Fighter spits in the face of consumers and has no Arcade mode, Central Fiction has *THREE* arcade modes per character, covering each of the ACT versions released in arcades. In addition to an extremely robust arcade mode, there's Grim of the Abyss (Abyss mode with new additions like grimoires!), Score Attack (self explanatory), and Speed Star (time attack where damage done to you is done to your time limit instead). I've heard some rumours that it's possible to fight Highlander: Take-Mikazuchi in Central Fiction as well, but can't confirm. And of course, the gigantic story mode, but more on the story later.
Out of the new characters, the most standout in terms of gameplay are Naoto, who is probably the most aggressive rush down oriented fighting game character around. His Drive, Bloodedge, is essentially a chargeable pseudo-projectile but the real quality of the Drive is that any of those charges that can be dash canceled which ties in with his secondary ability Enhancer which changes the properties of all his special moves if they are done while dashing or from a dash cancel. Additionally worth noting that Naoto fights with punches and kicks instead of having weapons. The second and even more interesting case is Nine, whose moveset is based around her Abyss Diver drive, where each of her basic attacks stores one elemental charge of one of three elements, which can then be used with the Drive button to cast one of *twenty* spells based on element combination stored, giving Nine one of the largest special move selections ever. To add to her spell variety, one of her normal special moves lets her swap between a stored inactive set of elemental charges and her current active slots. I haven't tried out the other new characters enough to say much about them, and before I wander off on too much of a tangent on individual characters I think it's time to head to the main question when it comes to everyone's favourite fighting game visual novel.
Long story short, the story mode in Central Fiction is enormous even by the series standards. Took me around 30-40 hours to get through it (I stopped counting after the third six hour session). And it's fucking great from start to finish. While I think Chronophantasma had a mistep compared to Continuum Shift in the format the story chapters were presented in (as it was often more difficult to follow the three lines that happened often at different times), in Central Fiction the story is instead presented in a single linear (well, narratively linear, given that this is BlazBlue it's obviously not linear in space-time terms) fashion of episodes that are then divided into chapters, which then can possess a number of optional sub-chapters that flesh out events that aren't as critical to the plot. It's by far the easiest BlazBlue game to grasp the events of because there are absolutely no questions regarding when something is happening relative to other events (Chronophantasma), and there are no contradictory narratives (Continuum Shift). And even when keeping the package much more tighter, the story mode does by far the best job in the series of getting the entire cast involved on some level or another. Additionally the presentation of the story, while not quite REVELATOR level because it still follows the same base as before (but I'd say the story modes in GG have a major flaw in not having any matches in them, I mean the antagonist in REVELATOR isn't even a playable character!), has improved in subtle ways for significant gain, building up from Chronophantasma Extend's use of various distances between characters and close-ups by redrawing the story sprites at higher resolution for crisper closeups and adding new ones for characters, of particular note being front profile and back viewpoint shots for many of the major characters. This allows for more varied positioning of characters and these minor touches to the visual presentation of the story amount to a significant improvement in conveying the scene, whether it be for serious business like the time Hazama gets Ragna REALLY FUCKING PISSED or more humorously when Naoto accidentally lands on heavanz. The animated cutscenes produced by Production IG are decent enough to look at, but oftentimes I see that the artwork slides manage to achieve much more despite their simplicity, a big tip of my hat there going to the stellar quality of the still artwork and the great job the voice actors do from start to finish. Another minor improvement is that the translation now makes much wider use of parenthesis when characters are talking about things, which does actually make it easier to comprehend that they are suggesting at more than just the face value word when concepts are discussed.
When it comes to the content of the story itself Central Fiction does probably the best job at wrapping things up when it comes to vidya gaems, resolving almost every single plot thread and even those being left open are instead progressed to a point where resolution acts as a starting point to something else as a sequel hook (most notable example of this being Carl, who follows in his father's footsteps). And when it comes to the main story, it's one hell of a ending to things. Question marks are answered and revelations are made, and characters get lots of introspection. We get to learn what the hell was the deal behind the Calamity Trigger timeloop, what exactly are the Black Beast or Master Unit, what's the deal with Prime Field Interface Devices and when did all that happen, what are the real reasons for Hakumen's and Jin's obsession with Ragna, why and when was Takamagahara System built, and WHO or WHAT is Terumi really. All the while the action itself ramps up to a high stakes rollercoaster when the time comes to have a last showdown with Izanami and Terumi. And the very personal finale to the lead family unit is genuinely touching in its bittersweetness. It's been a great time watching Ragna develop as a character from the angry and foolhardy delinquent to someone who's gained a great deal of wisdom and responsibility from what he's gone through and learned, even if his reward at the end of things seems all too meager for everything he's done and will do for others. Or, it's the only reward he ever really wanted. Manly tears have been shed, which is about the highest praise for any sort of fiction I can give when it can create such a genuine emotional and philosophical connection. I'll definately mention BlazBlue whenever talking about the best storytelling done in videogame medium from now on, no doubt left about that anymore.
Makes you wonder how the hacks at Bioware or elsewhere feel about being so throughoutly outdone demolished by a non-AAA FIGHTING GAME. Very hilarious if you think about how half-assed Mass Effect 3 was as a finale, considering that in summary Central Fiction is one of the best trilogy/quadrilogy (depends on if you count Calamity Trigger and Continuum Shift as being two stories or two games with a single story entry like I do) finales ever in gaming.
, it's ArcWaifuWorks indeed.
