Arc System Works’ Akira Katano published the fifth volume of Guilty Gear Strive Developer Backyard. After sharing results from the open beta test survey in the latest blog post, Katano revealed that the company is also planning to hold a second open beta test. However, the exact dates have not been confirmed yet. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
The survey result announcements began with character-related polls. The top five most used character ranking was filled with the same characters—Sol Badguy, Ky Kiske, Ramlethal Valentine, Giovanna, and Nagoriyuki—albeit with varying orders in each region. Ramlethal was the most favorite character across all regions, even though she was noted to have a different play style from her debut in the Guilty Gear Xrd series.
While most modes and features received positive ratings in general, the Network Mode’s online lobby was very poorly received. It had only around 25% of positive votes and over 50% negative, with around 25% choosing “Very Bad” to describe it. When Arc System Works announced that Guilty Gear Strive was delayed to June 2021, it specifically mentioned the online lobby and server stability would be improved further.
Katano also revealed more improvements that the development team plan to enact based on the feedback. In the online lobby, it will add a rematch choice and have the winner stay in a battle-ready state unless there is a rating change. The team will also address some concerns related to the battle system, such as jumping attacks being too strong or the meter gain system not allowing much freedom to use Roman Cancels. The second open beta test will commence after these improvements have been applied.
Guilty Gear Strive will be officially available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC on June 11, 2021. The Ultimate and Deluxe Editions released three days earlier on PlayStation platforms on June 8, 2021, will let you access every launch content through an Early Access version.
