Originally posted on July 17, 2017 on Bit Cultures.
After announcing the best-looking Dragon Ball game in a long while, you’d think that Arc System Works would be taking it easy and working on promoting that title alone. After all, this is the kind of game anyone can coast on.
Well, they weren’t quite done yet, as evidenced by a surprise announcement they dropped at EVO 2017.
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is just as it sounds-a crossover, tag-team fighter starring characters from a variety of different fighting game franchises. We’ve got some good representation here; BlazBlue is the obvious one, but we got The Money Printer Persona 4 Arena, also from ArcSys, and the more obscure but still beloved Under Night In-Birth by Melty Blood developers French Bread and Ecole Software. The battle system seems to be a mix of the traditional ArcSys fighting game and something more akin to the King of Fighters series, with two characters swapping places back and forth. We’ve also got what looks like an all-out frenzy in the titular Crossover Tag Battle system, with every character duking it out at once on-screen.
This seems like an interesting title! These are well-established franchises with recent releases propelling them into the public eye, so that should make for a-
…wait, what?
Now this is an interesting twist. People have been clamoring for a RWBY fighting game for quite some time, even saying that ArcSys would be the perfect people to do it (especially after their showing with FighterZ), but it always seemed like wishful thinking. Given RWBY’s popularity over in Japan, however, it’s one of the best choices they could have made-and it opens a lot of opportunities for other franchises to get in on the action in the future. Between this and FighterZ, and the updated Guilty Gear Xrd releases on the way, ArcSys is making a strong showing going into the next year.
BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle releases in 2018. Systems are yet to be confirmed. Check out some more screenshots below!
