Guilty Gear -Strive- Nintendo Switch Edition

It's not often I'll write a review for my Amazon purchases, primarily because I purchase from the site so often that reviewing everything would take forever. I reserve reviews for something that makes an extreme impression whether that be positive or negative. Boy, does Guilty Gear Strive for Nintendo Switch fall into the former category. It leaves quite an impression... five stars to be exact. :-)Game releases as of late have been a mixed bag. So late in this generation you kind of expect a game to be good-looking, control well and offer gameplay that justifies the dollars you've spent. I haven't been GREATLY disappointed, but needless to say that it's very hard to stand out among the flood of high profile releases. This is especially true with Nintendo Switch. As much as I love the console, 8 years later we've all come to know and respect the limitations of the aging hardware. It's even harder to be surprised by what it can accomplish seemingly beyond those limitations (with Nintendo first-party efforts usually being the exception). So when I booted up Guilty Gear Strive first and foremost I expected a long download of content not on the cartridge as is the norm for the companies skimping out on higher capacity carts. Annnnnd.... nope. One small download. Small enough that I'm sure it wasn't the other 50% of game assets they didn't include. Surely this couldn't be content-complete! With seasons of characters, multiple modes, stages, the rich sountrack... There has to be a catch; and yet there was no catch.I was greeted with lengthy user agreements and once getting through those there was the menu and all it's options. I jumped right into practice vs the AI the get an idea of what I was dealing with. Yup, all of the characters released thus far were there, except for Queen Dizzy which is coming soon via a free update. I selected fan-fave Sol Badguy and jumped into a match. My eyes were wide with surprise. It was beautiful! The big, beautifully animated characters were there. The music, rich and appropriately fight-worthy was there. The backgrounds.... eh, they were good enough. There was a slight but lack of visual fidelity as I'm sure that concessions were made. This is usually how things go with these impossible Switch ports. I can say though that it doesn't feel as neutered as DNF Duel on Switch felt. I'm not hating on that game, as I really enjoyed it as well. It's just that I expected that to be the standard of what shoehorning an Arc System fighter onto Switch would result and with Strive my expectations were surpassed.Portable mode impresses, as well, especially on the OLED Switch model. Performance remains consistent and the colors absolutely pop on the screen! I did not play using the Joycons for obvious reasons when it comes to Switch fighters. I actually used tabletop mode with my trusty Pro controller and it was pretty much what you would expect: all of Guilty Gear's beautiful and frenetic action, only in portable form. It does look a tad sharper being displayed on the smaller screen of the system. Still, I always prefer my Switch games docked for the most part.There's not much to say in the control department, but of course any Switch fan knows you won't be using the joycons for this game. You had better pull out the ole Pro Controller for this one. Otherwise, expect to be frustrated with missed commands and unintentional inputs. The joycon's segmented directional pads and tiny buttons just don't cut if for extreme fighters. With a traditional controller you can expect snappy, responsive controls and a lack of desire to throw your Switch at a wall.As of writing this I have yet to test the games online mode so I can't comment on that, but reviews that have recently been published say the rollback netcode works without a hitch. I only hope the audience for this game on Switch is present so that I can experience it.To summarize, Guilty Gear Strive for Nintendo Switch lands squarely in the "impossible ports" category on the system; but unlike games like Doom, Wolfenstein, or even Witcher 3, you could be fooled into thinking this was actually running on more powerful hardware. If you're a Guilty Gear fan or just a fighting game fan in general who owns a Switch, I highly recommend this game. Go buy it now!

Great game came quick

Muy bueno 👌

Finally, a platform I can run Strive on. I won't bring my personal opinion on Strive into it, but it works, runs fine, comes with everything but the most recent Dizzy add on (but it has been promised for free.) A little bit of frame funniness, but I have no idea how they crammed this version of Unreal into the Switch.

Guilty Gear -Strive- Nintendo Switch Edition is good I would recommend it to anyone who likes fighting games