Review #217: Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late

 Bicycle chair in the water lot: Early.... I think my title is better.

 The title makes no sense, the story makes no sense and the game is as Japanese as it gets... and I haven't had this much fun with a fighting game since Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late, which I'll call UNIEL henceforth, is French-Bread's pseudo successor to Melty Blood, a Dojin Fighting game based on the Tsukihime franchise. Unlike Melty Blood, this is an entirely original ordeal, and as much as it borrows from the former title, it also comes with new gameplay mechanics.

 The story..... The story is a mess. It might make sense, but the game doesn't convey enough information to you, the player, neither in-game nor with the instruction booklet. If you expect to make heads and tails of the story, it's a requirement to look on the net for an explanation of all the terms the game loves to throw around, as if it expects you to know what an 'in-birth' or a 'rebirth' means in the world of UNIEL. I don't play fighting games for their story, although when done right it can be a plus(Look at Mortal Kombat or Injustice, and even Tekken to a lesser degree), so I didn't care to look for what they meant. And even then, the writing is pretty poor, besides lacking any sort of exposition, it also tries to be edgy and throw 'bitch' or sort around. It comes out as forced and needless, and it suffers for it. The setting not withstanding, I love the fact that we get an entirely new cast of characters. This generation had very few new IPS, sure we had Persona 4 Arena or Aquaplus, but those are based on existing franchises, so having a completely new IP is a breath of fresh air. Initially the characters seemed pretty dull, and they kinda are, their motivations and archetypes are disgustingly cliched, with very generic drives and motives of many other characters from Japanese media, but at least they look alright in-game and I grew to really enjoy a few, like Orie and Carmine. Plus, there's little to no fanservice, excepting that one Japanese gamer with too much free time on his hands that decided to slow down various frames of animations from the female fighters, which is incredible of a Japanese game, in a good way. The game offers 16 different characters, with no headswaps or paletteswaps, and two guest characters: Akatsuki from Indie fighting game Akatsuki Blitzkampf and Eltnam(In the form of Eltnum) from Melty Blood. Having Akatsuki in the game is both amusing and great, while Eltnum's storyline is simply hilarious.

 In UNIEL you get: Arcade(Which doubles as Story Mode for each character), VS Player(Offline and Online), VS CPU, Time Attack, Score Attack, Survival and Training, all which are pretty much self explanatory. As with every ArkSys game(Either developed or publish, such as in this case), there's a Gallery Mode, with a few images to unlock by fulfilling certain conditions or buying them with in-game points.,, or you could also spend this in the Customization menu, to customize your Title and Icon, or unlock extra colors for your fighters! Each character starts with 10 colors, and you can unlock another 10. Pretty neat! I only had one tiny little issue with the game... there's no tutorial mode. Granted, it took me about 10 minutes on the Training Mode to get a grasp of the game's system, aided by the instruction booklet, but someone who's a bit less familiar with fighting games might very well be overwhelmed by the many gauges or mechanics employed in the game.

 As for UNIEL's specific mechanics... where to start with? Let's see... There's only four buttons used, A, B and C which stand for Weak, Medium and Strong attack respectively, and D which is used for a couple of secondary functions. Now then, there's three different gauges, the Health bars on top of the screen, and the EXS and GRD gauges below. EXS is basically the energy bar, it goes from 0 to 200, and is increased by dealing or receiving damage. Then there's the GRD gauge which is a bit harder to explain... Doing certain actions, mostly aggressive actions, like dashing towards the enemy or dealing damage, teching throws or blocking(These two are a bit more defensive in nature, kinda) makes it increase, while backdashing or getting hit makes it decrease. In the middle of both GRD gauges(Yours and the enemy's) is a circle that slowly fills, and when it's filled, whoever has the most GRD gets the Vorpal Buff, which grants the wearer a 10% damage boost, but it also lets you use Chain Shift by double tapping D, which either stops whatever your enemy is doing or resets you to neutral if you are mid-combo, effectively acting as a cancel, letting you extend your combo. Doing this transforms all your GRD into EXS and cancels the Vorpal Buff. One thing to keep in mind is that the GRD circle's loop never stops, even after one gets the Vorpal Buff, so if your enemy manages to gain more GRD by the time it fills again, they will gain the buff, so the tide can change at any moment!

 And that's barely scratching the surface of what UNIEL offers. There's a few more mechanics which involve GRD, namely holding D to trade EXS for GRD and pressing B+C performs a character unique move, could be anything from a defensive evasion move or a wall bouncing attack, that consumes one GRD segment. Before moving on to the EXS gauge, there's a few more basic actions left to mention, for instance, mashing Neutral A will perform 'Smart Stear', which is a fancy way of saying Autocombo. I dislike this mechanic a lot, and many fighting games seem to be implementing it, but at least it's a very simple combo that ends in a Super Move if you've the EXS necessary. As with most 2D fighters, every character has motion Special Moves, that vary in strength depending on which button you used, but in this game 'Super' Moves(I'll be using a Hybrid KOF/SF notation system, since it's easier to understand) are not done by using complex motions, no, instead, by using a Special Move with the C button(Strong attack) you'll use the EXS consuming(100), Super version of said Special Move. It gets even simpler, there's also.... 'Ultra' moves, which consume 200 EXS and use an universal half-circle motion+D input for every character. And there's another tier, which I'll call 'Desperation Moves', which can only be used when you've less than 30% health left and consume 200 EXS, and are activated by simply pressing all four buttons together. The last use of the EXS gauge is to enter 'Veil Off', it requires at least 100 EXS, and you enter it by pressing all four buttons, which gives you more attack power and lets you use any Super move(Makes it deplte faster) until it ends.

 It sounds like a lot to take in, and it is, until you get your hands on it and you realize how simple it all is! It sounds overwhelming, but getting the hang of it is very simple, even with the lack of a tutorial mode.... at least for someone with a modicum experience. If there's one thing that 'anime fighters' are known for it's the air combos, and you'd be wrong to expect the same of this game! Jumping is a death sentence, as there is no air blocking, which makes the game a bit more Street Fighter-ish, since your ground game, footsies and pokes, is what will matter the most. Still, it's way faster than any other Street Fighter game, and with some characters, it even lets you chain weak attacks(A) from strong attacks(C)! It's an interesting game, easy to get into, hard to master. Which is probably why I liked it so much. I just can't stop playing it! And for as much as I dislike the Autocombo, it lets others do flashy stuff by just mashing a button, and it's a very simple combo at that, so no unfair advantages.

 As far as visual goes, it uses a rather simple and somewhat cutesy style. Characters have slim, delicate limbs, with huge eyes and simple mouths. Which makes it all the more hilarious when they start cussing around, or talking about killing and the such. It's very, very anime, so if you can't stand it... tread carefully. Animation was fairly good, I didn't find any particularly ugly animation. But if something disappointed me, it was the stages, they are dull and lifeless. Even by now I'd be hard pressed to remember most of them. It makes sense for the stages to be so lifeless, as the game's setting demands it, but they could've liven them up a bit more, add graffiti to the walls, flapping banners on top of the houses, I dunno, something! The music is nothing short of excellent, with each character getting their own tune, and they are all very, very good. Voice Acting is Japanese only, and you might recognize a lot of the voices.

 UNIEL is amazing, plain and simple. Sure, the characters are as cliched and unoriginal as they get, but what Japanese character isn't? No, really. Besides, it's a fighting game, who cares about the story? The gameplay is where it's at, and they knocked it out of the park, with a simple control scheme and a generous combo system, with its fair share of underlying mechanics if you wish to delve deeper into it, makes for a game that is very easy to get into, but hard to master. As much as I'd love to score it a 10, there's a few shortcomings, mostly in the explanation, or lack thereof, department. It needed a proper tutorial, maybe even individual character challenges so that you could get a feel for the characters outside of fumbling around Training mode,  it needed a way to convey more information to the players regarding the story(As uninterested as I was, I'm sure some people care), even adding an in-game encyclopedia would've gone a long way into making the story clearer. Still, most of these didn't really affect me, but there's no denying that it could've done slightly more for the player.
 9.0 out of 10