So I suddenly want to rewatch Gundam 00, but Bandai's taken all but ten of the videos off of their youtube channel. The episodes they do have are in Japanese with English subtitles, which is fine except I'm used to the English cast for Gundam 00. Guess I'll just wait until the complete collection comes out...
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"Carl's story: one-hundred percent complete. Oh yeah, now onto arcade mode."

Ten stages shouldn't be that hard, right? Even though I was told that Nu-13 is even harder in arcade mode, I can still win, right? I'll eventually be able to pull off a victory on stage eight, right?

Of course not!

With a few blips along the way (and the fight against Litchi, that was annoying), I was actually able to bumble through arcade mode with Carl the other day. Then I got to stage eight: Hakumen. Here's a poorly organized picture to show how well my fights against Hakumen go (the "second panel" is in the bottom left).



He pretty much tosses me around like a worn-out rag doll. It doesn't help that it's Unlimited Hakumen, so his Heat gauge is... unlimited. Also, I'm pretty sure Hakumen can also dish out some pretty mean counters (whether for Distortion or Astral Heats I'm not sure), so I'm kind of scared to attempt any specials at times.

Have I gotten better at playing BlazBlue? Think so.
Have I gotten great at BlazBlue? Not a chance.

I've yet to try playing as any other character, but I'm thinking of playing as either Bang or Ragna. Each character has a pretty unique fighting style, so I'll probably have to head into training mode each time I try out a new character. For example, Carl uses Nirvana in battle, and he's the only character that uses anything like her in battle. Litchi, on the other hand, has a pole that can be placed on the battlefield. This pole can then be used to launch Litchi into the opponent or... do whatever her other attacks are. Then there's Arakune, who can float across the battlefield, turn invisible (you can still see a blur where he is though), and do other weird things.

Yeah, pretty diverse.

I'm the kind of person who enjoys seeing subtle, but neat, touches in games. BlazBlue includes some nice bits of character specific interaction in battle in the form of in-battle quotes. Jin Kisaragi will call Ragna "brother" in battle, something he obviously wouldn't call any other character. Bang, Carl's self-proclaimed mentor, occasionally shouts "You have a long way to go Carl!" when fighting the young puppeteer. In truth, it's really nothing much but I find it incredibly cool.

That's all I have to say on BlazBlue right now. It's a good game, but some of the moves are difficult for me to pull off ("Half circle back, foward, C! Aghh! C'mon! Half circle back, foward, C! Why won't my Distortion Heat work?!"). Until next time, happy gaming.

Next time on I've Been Playing for 40 Hours: The Legend of Zelda Twilight Pincess