Guilty Gear Strive looks like a Game Boy Advance game with potato mod
Pixel art system works.
What if Guilty Gear Strive was a Game Boy Advance game? It might look a bit like this.
Modder FGCdraft created a Potato Low Spec mod for Arc System Works' wonderful anime fighting game to help people get it running on underpowered hardware, and in the process created a pixel art aesthetic I'm very much on board with.
FGCdraft's video, below, shows off the potato mod in all its glory. The download instructions are in the video description.
With Strive running in a retro 640x400 resolution, with 25 percent resolution scale and all graphics settings on low, FGCdraft further improved performance by making a number of key changes.
First up, FGCdraft removed stage assets, then the eagle flying out of the window cutscene you see before any match, and then character portraits to use less memory. With all this enabled, 60 frames per second was achieved.
It's clear Strive's stage assets are causing a bit of bother more generally. In an update pushed live yesterday, Arc System Works reduced the graphics load for the L'oro Di Illyria stage.
The update also made a couple of network fixes, including one that sorts out an issue where the search ID function in Player Match rooms was not working properly.
Based on my time with the game today, Strive still takes what feels like an age to connect to the servers upon boot. Once you do get a game, though, it's super smooth.