Melty Blood: Actress Again

But to suggest Actress Again is centred around defence game would be misleading, as the offensive mechanics are just as numerous. Indeed, the combat system is definitely more BlazBlue than Street Fighter IV, with simple combos rapidly sending the hit counter well past 20. Even a basic standing medium, crouching medium, standing fierce, crouching fierce to super can do around a third of full damage, although damage scaling does prevent anything too broken. Each character also has around four or five special attacks which, in addition to their light and medium flavours, can be fired off in EX-Edge variations at the cost of 100 per cent super. These sound like the EX specials from Street Fighter but in effect work more like supers.

And that's before we get to the "Arc-Drive" supers which are performed during the game's super-saiyan styled "Heat" modes. These aren't easy to explain but suffice to say that with 100 per cent super the player can press all three attack buttons to enter Heat mode. Whilst heated, the super gauge will gradually deplete and you'll have access to the Arc-Drive and health regeneration. But if you instead wait for the super gauge to reach 300 per cent, you'll automatically enter Max mode. From Max mode you can enter Blood Heat where you'll briefly have unlimited EX-Edges and a more powerful Arc-Drive. But the true purpose of Blood Heat is to land an EX-Shield. Do this to witness your character's ultimate Last-Arc super.

So far then Actress Again comes off as a deep fighter that's overflowing with different play mechanics. For every EX-Edge, Arc-Drive or Blood Heat combo, there's a defensive EX-Guard or EX-Shield counter. But the most significant change from Act Cadenza is the new style-selection system. Players get a celestial choice of Crescent Moon, Half Moon or Full Moon after picking their character. Crescent Moon is the standard speed style and works much the same as Act Cadenza. Comparatively, Half Moon is the simplest option with the super meter only rising to 200 per cent and no Blood Heat, EX-Shielding or EX-Guarding. Finally, Full Moon focuses on power and limits combo potential, but allows for some Guilty Get styled cancelling when in Max mode. Personally, I get most of my kicks in Crescent Moon.

With so much work having gone into the new Moon styles, we can forgive Type-Moon for being a tad slack with the available options, especially considering the last-gen platform. But what players get is a fairly robust selection of arcade, versus, training and survival. Each character in arcade mode has a fully-voiced story which develops as they edge closer to the final round. Sadly there isn't an English sub or dub option, but most of the menus, including those in the excellent practice mode, are in English, so turning on counter hits or finding the auto-save feature isn't a problem.

In summary, Actress Again is an astounding fighter which is easily on par with the likes of BlazBlue in terms of rigidity and depth. Its continued dedication to big pixels and classic mechanics, in addition to its manga-heavy presentation, partly reflects why Melty Blood has never seen a commercial Western release, but any fighter fan who knows their stuff will appreciate the seamless animation and mechanical beauty.