Guilty Gear Isuka

I went in hoping Guilty Gear Isuka would be the hidden gem the series deserved on PC. What I found instead was an ambitious but awkward detour that explains, pretty clearly, why the mainline games never tried this again. The core fighter underneath is recognisably Guilty Gear: four attack buttons (punch, kick, slash, high slash), a 23-character roster that includes returning favourites like Sol Badguy, Ky Kiske, Millia Rage, and Chipp Zanuff, plus newcomers A.B.A and Robo-Ky Mk. II, whose gimmick lets you mix-and-match moves from other fighters into a custom-built nightmare. The sprite art still holds up, and the Daisuke Ishiwatari-led soundtrack is hard-rock gold, arguably the best reason to own the game outright. The problems all trace back to the same design decision: building every mode around four-player simultaneous fights meant changing things that did not need changing. Your character no longer auto-turns when an opponent crosses to your other side. Instead, you press a dedicated turn button, which sounds manageable until you are in a live match and someone flanks you mid-combo. Fights also take place on two planes, foreground and background, and you can switch between them or throw attacks that cross the gap. In theory this adds a layer of spatial thinking. In practice, four characters with screen-filling special moves all overlapping on two planes turns matches into a blurry mess where it is genuinely hard to track who is hitting whom. The manual turn mechanic and dual-plane switching both drew criticism at the original console launch, and they remain just as disorienting here. The mode selection is uneven. The four-player simultaneous battles are the headline feature, but they require three other people physically in the room and controllers to match, since there is no online play whatsoever. The GG Boost Mode swaps fighting for a side-scrolling brawler, letting you punch and slash through waves of enemies solo or with one partner, but it feels like a bonus mode that ran out of budget before it reached a satisfying length. Arcade Mode operates more like a survival gauntlet than a traditional ladder, which will surprise and frustrate anyone expecting the standard structure. Reviewers at launch and Steam users alike flagged the removal of a proper story mode and a conventional arcade progression as real losses, not minor omissions. The PC port itself does not do the game any favors. The configuration screen still shows PlayStation button symbols, the graphical presentation is a barebones conversion, and the overall feel is of something ported to minimum viable spec rather than prepared for a new audience. If you are brand new to Guilty Gear, this is not the starting point. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R on the same platform is a dramatically better introduction to what the series actually does well. Isuka is worth a look only if you have a group of friends ready to suffer through the learning curve together, or if you are a series completionist who needs to tick every entry off the list. The soundtrack alone is bundled in, so at least your ears will be satisfied while the rest of the experience makes you question your life choices.

Alex · Scout Team

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