The New Classics #70: Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late [cl-r]

 

The Backstory: Here is a game that’s been tweaked, updated and rereleased on a slew of platforms since its arcade debut in 2012 — leading to that stupidly long title, no doubt. It seems to come from the same mold as Guilty Gear and BlazBlue: a 2D fighting game / visual novel hybrid, featuring a crap ton of impossibly stylish characters with outlandish backstories that beg to be uncovered as you kick butts. My Samurai Showdown days left me with a soft spot for fancy characters and not-too-technical fighting, and I fully expected to have a field day with UNIB (there’s no way I’m typing that darn title again, ever). 

 

 

The Game: Endless tweaking of UNIB brought more than a barely writable title, fortunately. The amount of playing mode is staggering, and guarantees that you can punch it your way no matter what. Local online, worldwide online, offline; score attack, time attack, training mode, regular arcade mode with story, single match in a selected location — you just have it all, and the playing possibilities are virtually endless. 

 

 

And that’s without even factoring in the whole posse of fighters, folks! Of course, they all look drop-dead gorgeous, and they all come with their own unique set of skills, strengths and weaknesses — and glorious fighting poses and animations to boot. You can bet your arse I’m gonna try and master every single one of them, just like I did with the Samurai Shodown IV roster back in the days. 

 

 

Shameless eye-candy is all well and good, but how does the butt-kicking fare? Pretty darn well indeed. UNIB is obviously designed for casual players, who want to enjoy some frantic ass-kicking without spending hours mastering the technicalities of a fighting system. I have no doubt that UNIB fights can get pretty deep and technical in the right hands; but they also work perfectly at base level — read: in the lazy hands of a fighting game noob like me playing in easy mode against the CPU.

 

 

The Verdict: No surprise here, we have a New Classic! I’m sad no more UNIB games exist; on the other hand, BlazBlue is waiting, with a crap ton of games released on systems I own. Happy butt-kicking days ahead, yay!