Vaarna_Aarne
Notorious Internet Vandal
So it's out now in Europe as well. Though it's really of major interest only to storyfags and weirdoes who play fighting games online, but I'm a giant storyfag and a fan of the series by now so what am I gonna do?
Anyway, played through the remake of the Calamity Trigger story yesterday, it's around ~6 hours long, but doesn't feature branching paths. Note that vast majority of that is dialogue. Still, it all pays off really. I care way more about any member of the roster of BlazBlue (including supporting characters) than any other fighting game roster, since the characters have, well, actual character and stuff happening to them (+ inter-connectedness). It's not like goddamn Tekken or Street Fighter, which struggle to give anything beyond surface paint to their rosters.
But still, while it has hands-down the most extensive amount of single-player content among fighting games, it's still also the best around today overall when you account for all things, even if King of Fighters XIII had more characters and better tournament gameplay.
My personal favourite aspect though is the fact that despite the game probably having a lower budget than just the hype budget of a Capcom fighting game, it still has way superior graphics and cutscenes.