UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH Exe:Late[cl-r]

I went in half-skeptical, mostly because the title reads like a firmware update and the anime aesthetic gives zero hints about what kind of fighter is hiding underneath. Turns out UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH Exe:Late[cl-r] is one of the more thoughtfully constructed 2D fighters on PC, rooted in a three-button attack scheme - light, medium, heavy - plus a Universal Mechanic button that handles air-dashes, the Concentrate state, and a good chunk of the game's resource management. The controls sit closer to the measured ground-based style of Persona 4 Arena than the airborne chaos of Guilty Gear, so if fast-fall pressure loops are what burned you before, you'll find this considerably more readable. The game's signature wrinkle is the GRD (Grind Grid), a shared tug-of-war gauge at the bottom of the screen that rewards aggression and punishes turtling. Controlling GRD lets you enter Vorpal state, which buffs your damage output and feeds into the EXS super meter. Spend two full bars of EXS and you access EX-enhanced specials; get cornered with a full bar and under 30% health and you can blow the entire thing on an Infinite Worth EXS move to claw your way back into the round. Stacked on top of that is Veil Off, a mode that temporarily spends your EXS to enable combo extensions and Cross-Cast Veil Off for even nastier follow-ups. It sounds like a lot, and reading it back, it is a lot, but the tutorial infrastructure is genuinely some of the best in the genre. There are 179 individual tutorial lessons that walk through every system at whatever depth you want, from basic quarter-circle motions up to fuzzy guards and whiff punishes. Newcomers can skip most of the advanced theory and still compete in Arcade mode. The roster sits at 21 fighters once you include Londrekia, the cl-r addition whose ice-based chain attacks play very differently from the rest of the cast. Character variety is real: grapplers, zoners, puppet characters, and a few outright weirdos like Merkava, whose long-range limb attacks are unlike anything else in the game. Each character's combo routing is also unusually forgiving because the game allows you to freely chain between attack weights as long as you don't repeat the same button twice in a sequence. Messing up your intended combo still usually lands something, which is a small but meaningful quality-of-life touch for anyone who is still building muscle memory. The Chronicle story mode adds a visual novel layer that ranges from genuinely interesting character beats to dense lore that reads like it never got a final proofread. There is also only Japanese voice acting, which is fine for most of the fanbase but worth knowing upfront. The main area where the PC version earns caveats is online play. Netcode complaints have followed the series across platforms, and while the worst matches are playable rather than unplayable, latency is noticeable enough to affect timing on tighter combos. The offline content - Arcade, Chronicle, Mission mode, and a deep tutorial suite - is genuinely robust, so players who mostly grind solo before jumping online will still get their hours. The unlock system, using IP earned from matches to buy alternate palettes and artwork, gives a slow but satisfying drip of cosmetic reward. For a certain kind of fighting game fan - one who wants real mechanical depth without the punishing execution gates of Guilty Gear Xrd, and who appreciates a roster where every character actually plays differently - this sits near the top of the anime fighter pile on PC. The story mode is a verbose slog if you're not into visual novels, and the online experience is inconsistent, but the core fighting system is sharp enough that those are manageable trade-offs rather than dealbreakers.

Alex · Scout Team

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