Granblue Fantasy Versus - developed by Arc Systems Works

Yasunori Nishiki (composer for Octopath Traveler) is working on the soundtrack for GBVS.

He already worked on the GBF anime apparently so this isn't that big of a leap, can't wait to see how his arrangements and compositions for this turn out

Edited by Nouct on May 29th 2019 at 11:44:31 AM

Alright, had some time with the beta, gonna post my impressions:

• This is most definitely not a typical ASW games in terms of pacing. Not only is there no air dashing, the combo system is way stricter than any other ASW game to date. You can only do chains if your opponent is up close; far away normals can't be chained and can only be special canceled. Basically you have to think of it as less of a Guilty Gear-like gane and more like a more anime take on Street Fighter. Game is VERY dependent on pokes and footsies. Scratch Damage can kill in this game, even if it isn't from a Super.
• Characters I played the most are Katarina and Ferry. Katarina is definitely the most standard Shotoclone in the game—found a lot of success just playing her like I play Ryu in Street Fighter games, zone out with fireballs, poke with her Medium attacks into Thrust, DP every once in a while if my opponent is getting too button-heavy. She also basically has a Focus Attack in her unique action, though unfortunately there's a moment between the shield and the attack where she can get stuffed.
• Ferry is by far the most popular character in the beta. She's got all the typical strengths and weaknesses you usually associate with her character archetype. Her ground movement is pretty slow, her only reversals are her EX DP and her Super Skybound Art, and they all have a dead zone above her head, but she's got the best ranged normals out of the whole cast and is one of the most annoying characters to fight at a distance. 2M into tossing Geegee is the bread and butter for playing this character, and her regular Skybound Art doesn't go away if Ferry is hit, forcing the opponent to deal with it even if they manage to hit her. Her other SBA is kinda like Juri's Feng Shui Engine and allows her to chain any normals, working off of a Reverse Beat system similar to Melty Blood or Under Night In-Birth.
• I tried Gran a couple of times but could never quite get the hang of him. Might've been because I was playing him more like a Street Fighter shoto than an ASW shoto. His light projectile is standard, but his medium projectile is a two-part one that has Gran thrust his sword surrounding it with energy that can eat up other projectiles. Kept doing it when I wanted to zone out which threw me off. His unique action lets him do some really nasty frame traps and will probably let him play super aggressively.
• Charlotta is weird. She's the only character in the beta with charge inputs and I could never quite tell what the timing window was for them. Her jump is really fast and kinda reminds me of Fox from Smash. Definitely a slippery character, it's extremely hard to punish her specials including her invulnerable reversal move. But she's also got super stubby range, so she might struggle if she gets outpoked.
• Didn't try Lancelot at all, but from what I saw of him he's going to be a nightmare to fight when people get good. He's got some nasty mixup options and mobility tools. Only issue is of course that his only reversal options are limited to EX and SB As, and his range is kinda pathetic. You have to really be in your opponent's face to play this character well.
• Lobby system has a ton of setups similar to Xrd. Didn't have too many lagging issues when I played thankfully, but I'm also on a wired internet connection.

So uh... how are Ferry's armpits in glorious ArcSys 3D?

L-lewd.

My, oh my... As expected.

(Nap giving a thorough breakdown on the game)

(Everyone else acting like freaks)

any of the girls fight barefoot

Seriously though all the footage I have seen on twitter and the like makes this game look tight.

No Ladiva? I always try the grapplers in these first before I move on.

Lancelot or the chef guy would probably be my second choices after her.

Ladiva and Lowain were unavailable to play in this beta unfortunately.

Anyone who knows of a detailed explanation on the information/text being displayed on the corner of the screen? I've only been watching streams and YouTube vids so I can't exactly tell the difference when "Punish!", "Counter!" and "Crush!" appear on the screen. I also don't have that much deep knowledge into FGC jargon to quickly differentiate the 3 terms at first glance...

I think explanations on the terms might help just in case they get mentioned when we would add tropes to the pages.

P.S.: Is it too early to add memes and most-used characters given that the game only had its Closed Beta recently? I've been seeing several Ferry memes when I watched livestreams and vids, even the in-game Threads frickin' memed Ferry's armpits on the 1st day of the Beta! Of course, this also applied to the online FGC and Granblue communities/social media platforms as well.

Edited by DanteVin on Jun 3rd 2019 at 2:24:26 AM

A punish is what we call a whiff punish being called out in game for once - I don't know if that does anything extra mechanically here, but in general when someone does something risky and fails to connect with it, the opponent can rush in and start a combo or get a hit in. The match I'm watching between a Katalina and a Lancelot has the latter punish the former's uppercut a lot. Counters are hitting someone in the middle of their attack animation, which is like a whiff punish but it's usually rewarded mechanically: you get extra damage, your move's properties change for the better, etc.

I'm going to guess a Crush would be a guard crush, or hitting someone who blocks too much often enough that you open them up for an instance, but I haven't seen one yet.

Edited by Hashil on Jun 2nd 2019 at 12:55:11 PM

The amount of different interactions with the roster is pretty impressive so far, if there's a repeated line, it's probably from Vyrn as far as I can tell. This guy's channel has all the interactions from the beta recorded.

I really like how they incorporated Charlotta's upgraded Noble Execution with the extra attack being the finishing blow rather than the sword beam.

It's not just whiff punishes that result in a notification, block punishes do too. Crush is a bit more ambiguous but I think it's to indicate that a move has attribute invulnerability and allowed the move to avoid the opponent's—for instance, the universal overhead attack has foot invulnerability and thus will beat attacks that hit low to the ground like sweeps. But I've heard conflicting reports about that.

I'll post the notifications besides Crush and what they mean:

• "Good!" as speculated is the indication that you used the manual input for specials/supers rather than the skill button. Performing a regular skill with the manual input has virtually no cooldown, while performing a heavy variant of a skill (often called EX) or a super will always have a cooldown, but performing the manual way will always make the cooldown shorter. In the case of supers, particularly cinematic ones, the animation will usually outlast the cooldown if it hits.
• "Just!" indicates a Just Guard. According to reports Just Guard in this game results in better meter gain and reduced chip damage (and potentially negating chip kills?), but it doesn't result in shorter blockstun like it does in other ASW titles.
• "Invincible!" means a move is fully invincible. Some actions like spotdodge and evade have partial invincibility (both lose to throws and evade loses to foot moves) but those won't have this notification.
• "Punish!" means that you hit your opponent while they're in the recovery frames of their attack, either from you blocking their move or they made a bad whiff. "Counter!" means that you hit your opponent during the startup or active frames of their attack, usually resulting in more hitstun and, in the case of air counter hits, a knockdown. Because this game is more Street Fighter-esque and a lot of moves have rather ambiguous safety, this is to help you distinguish whether your hit was during the recovery of their attack or they simply pressed another button afterwards and got stuffed.
• There is a combo limit in this game, and if you hit it the game will tell you so with a "Combo Limit!" notification. We're still a little unsure of what the conditions are, but speculation is there's a Street Fighter style juggle points system that we'll have to figure out in training.

Edited by Nap1100 on Jun 2nd 2019 at 6:46:03 AM

I could see a meta forming around using inputs for specials and immediately following up with the shortcut versions to make combos happen that would be impossible otherwise.

Ehhh...the only characters I could see that happening for are charge characters like Charlotta, and even then I doubt it. I didn't get much time with her but I don't think the charge time was so long that comboing one charge move into another charge move would require usage of the shortcut version.

Granblue Fantasy Versus will appear at E3 2019.

Edited by DanteVin on Jun 8th 2019 at 2:01:55 AM

Was initially surprised that Cygames reached out to a partner for handling release in the west, but this actually is pretty in line with prior products.

Versus getting a PC port definitely seems much more likely with Xseed handling things.

New interview from Anime Expo

UI tweaks to be implemented based on feedback for the beta

No Guest Fighter (for this one anyway, they seem to leave it open for future games)

their GBF panel is today so something will probably get announced later on.

Sorry for the triple post, nothing big was announced but the next trailer is currently being edited, most likely for the mini-event this month or next month.

The AX panel covered a little bit of Lowain and Ladiva's gameplay since they weren't in the first demo.

“[Lowain's] Skybound Art summons the bros and puts him into HPA, and for his SSA he summons Yggy. Both of his arts are transformations, so you have normal, HPA, and Yggdrasil, all with different move sets.”

Ladiva is a grappler but is not slow. She will not be helpless even if you are not in throw range.

Man where the hell are their noses?

Dub confirmed, gonna be handled by CyGames rather than XSEED.

Good. I remember people where wondering for far too long whether Dragon Ball Fighterz had a dub despite it having such famous english voices.

Edited by LordVatek on Jul 25th 2019 at 2:12:08 PM

ngl I was hoping for Ayer after his update this month to be like Ladiva as a hint for more content but oh well

The Yuisis speculation (there's an upcoming GBF stream and her VA is the only one whose character isn't in Versus yet) seems pretty likely for the August reveal, since Percy's the character reveal for this month's GBF Fest I guess.

"Petrified" ha I got the thing

well Percy's X-Seele seems to have made it in, judging by that move at 0:30

Edited by Nouct on Jul 25th 2019 at 11:28:55 AM

Offscreen footage of Percival gameplay.

They really just gave Sol Badguy a big boy sword huh.