Guilty Gear Strive has undoubtedly fallen out of favour a bit with the arrival of Street Fighter 6, and with upcoming titles like Mortal Kombat 1 and Tekken 8 sucking up a lot of hype. But Arc System Works is nowhere near done with Sol Badguy and the gang, deciding to address the game's future in its latest developer blog post.
The previously announced Season 3 is still in the works, and the next step for Strive is a "large-scale" update that's set to release this summer. This will apparently be the first of multiple patches that will essentially change how the game is played.
Naturally, Season 3 will push several new characters (please be Slayer), but the aforementioned updates will bring a lot of seemingly major gameplay adjustments. The blog post mentions "balance changes for the entire cast, new battle mechanics, and new special moves for some of the characters". Network improvements are also incoming.
It's assumed that we'll be hearing much more about Season 3 at Evo 2023, which is happening this weekend. Arc System Works has a panel during the event on Friday.
We're still big fans of Guilty Gear Strive, so we'd be happy to see it bounce back into the spotlight with a slew of positive updates. Hopefully everything goes smoothly for the development team over the next few weeks.
What are your thoughts on Guilty Gear Strive these days? Are you looking forward to seeing what Season 3 has in store? Break the stage wall in the comments section below.
[source guiltygear.com]
Comments 14
Very excited - each major patch has increased mechanical depth for the game and I'm particularly interested to see what changes they'll make now that one of the big dogs of the fgc is back in stronger form than ever.
Looking forward to Evo this year, hopefully we'll have some great top 8s and announcements.
I seriously need to continue playing this to learn how to play Jack O, but god damn she is hard.
@KaijuKaiser Strive was huge for its first year or so then its popularity gradually started to taper off. From my perspective, the competitive scene got a bit stale, and it didn't help that the online modes had some pretty big issues (both technical and weird hacking) for quite some time.
Strive's still doing pretty well all things considered, but the overall interest has definitely dropped off in the last... six months or so. Street Fighter 6 has helped end any momentum it had, too.
If ASW play Season 3 right, though, it could see a bit of a resurgence. And it's still a main game at Evo this year, with a suitably huge tournament in terms of entrant numbers.
But yeah, it needs a shot in the arm to get back to where it was.
@KaijuKaiser @ShogunRok The big issues earlier this year definitely killed some of its momentum and SF6's launch didn't help either but it's already starting to come back a little.
I guess EVO hype might be part of it, summer vacation another part (a lot of GG players are young people) but the competitive scene is doing visibly better now than it did 3-6 months ago, some players that left to play SF6 are already back, and the beginning of Season 3 will definitely bring a lot more back, even if just for a while. It's still the 2nd biggest game at EVO and other North American tournaments (Europe's always been more about Tekken). It's doing fine.
That said, GG has never been remotely as big as SF, Tekken or Mortal Kombat so with new ones coming out for each of those, it's quite understandable that you hear about them way more.
@Voltan True, I hope Strive has a really entertaining Evo and the Season 3 announcements are hype. With a good showing, it could definitely bounce back in a big way.
The Season 3 characters might play an important role here. If ASW get them right, that's such a huge hype driver. Like you say though, if the momentum is already starting to return, then surely the only way is up beyond Evo.
Removed - trolling/baiting
Need more characters and a new ranking system
OK I guess they're changing Bridget's pronoun again?
@SweetSummerShunv Sure, why not? If the story supports it well then there's not too much of an issue. The loss of representation with it would be unfortunate though.
@Cloud7794 I'm just joking dw. I'm pro-trans myself.
Hi there fellow gamers. Guilty Gear Strive is still my most played fighting game on my PS5. Heck I even play the game on my Series X because of Game Pass.
It is true that Street Fighter 6 has taken the spotlight and it deserves, it is an amazing fighting game. And there are quite a few FGs coming around like MK1, Tekken8 and GBFVR wich I played the open beta and really enjoyed it.
But I am quite optimistic for GGS Season 3.
Not only I hope they improve some characters, like my main Chipp, but also dlc characters like Slayer, Jam and maybe some new or guest characters, wich would be a first.
This years EVO is going to be very interesting.
Cheers everyone and happy gaming to us all
I’m extremely excited for Season 3 of GGST. That and KOFXV will almost certainly wring a 20$ bill or something out of me this weekend at EVO with their DLC hahahah.
@SweetSummerShunv Hey no worries, I'm always just a bit cautious because I don't want the GG community turning out like the Smash community lol.
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