We’ll see about that but I doubt it. Easily the worst marketing I’ve ever seen for a fighting game. Like you said, they missed their window when they didn’t release the year before Street Fighter 6 and MK1 came out.
@@d-roc1576 Yeah at this point, we can't trust anything said from anyone on the game. It's either put up or shut up, and they've shut up for a really long time. Show actual content.
Nice a Kevin Ryan main. Seriously one underrated character in Mark of the wolves. He'll poke you to death lol. Didn't know the online pvp community still exist.
As a commentator who did an ad read for Blazing Strike last year, I was dumbfounded by the fact that after I read that I never heard about the game again. Now I know why, and I'm infuriated.
Yeah that's another thing; info on the game is weirdly hard to even search for. It seems like a lot of it is still stuck in the backlog of 2019 kickstarter posts
Shoutouts to TFH for also getting absolutely fucked over by their publisher (Maximum entertainment). They really did lay off the entire dev team except for three people at christmastime, of which two of those three aren’t with the company anymore, and then turned around and said “yeah we had a good year anyway we’re making two more fighting games”. PocoQuinn has a vid talking about how it got massively fucked over so bad it makes me furious. Edit: well this is what I get for commenting before finishing the video.
@@GohLow TFH was really the first fighting game I got into. I stopped enjoying it eventually but it still holds a special place in my heart as a genuinely interesting fighting game there is. So when I learned that those devs got laid off by Maximum, who proceeded to say “fuck yeah now let’s make the worst decisions ever”, it reminds me why I’m a damn commie. Also cmon those guys were PERFECT for avatar Shanty already looks sick, Tianhuo is awesome, Texas? Amazing! In terms of visual 2d fighting game effects I can’t think of an fg that comes CLOSE to TFH. And then you laid them off. Sure okay do whatever I’m definitely not furious about it.
Your passion has reached me. Subscribed. Also hoping Blazing Strike exists at a competitive price w/ Rollback, Crossplay, Single Player Content and fully functional at release. Anything less in this market is an early grave.
This is a game I've been hype for for literal years now, and the fact that we don't hear anything on it is just...it's so weird. I still get curious about it every few months and see if anything new's come out and I'm always disappointed.
I think it needs to drop with a huge amount of single player content now. That might go some way towards justifying the higher price, and makes it a lower risk purchase because even if there’s nobody to play online you can still have a few hours of fun. I feel bad for the dev, aksys seems to have done very little for the game and will still take a chunk of the revenue. What it seems the dev needed was a collaborator, not a hands-off publisher like this
Yeah, that's really true. Pardon the pun but it seems like the dev got left to the wolves while Aksys took advantage of someone who really wanted to bring their game to life. They gave him control of nothing, it seems. RareBreed was the first person I contacted about wanting to do a sponsorship sorta thing, and he told me he wasn't at the liberty to make that decisions so I had to contact Aksys. If he's not allowed to say "Sure, I'll give you a free game key and we'll work something out," for a game it seems he's solo-devving, what the fuck power does he even have? It seems like a shit situation all around. You've gotta think Aksys has given the dev very little if they think they can make their return on investment doing no promo.
I appreciate your respect for the indie scene in fighting games. And yeah, some friends and I have also felt frustrated about Blazing Strike for awhile. I already have Skullgirls so I'm not really hurting for a great new fighter but I also love seeing what comes out of the scene and love trying out others. I'm sad this game AND TFH as you mentioned have been handled so poorly. I hope both can have a nice turnaround.
Yeah I love the indies. Indie Fighter Fest last year was the first time I really dove into the space and all the devs whose games I covered were very supportive, so I always try to tell people about the great fighters that might fly under the radar.
I've been looking forward to Blazing Strike also, it has a really sick graphic style. Probably the dev's are working on it along side other day jobs which would significantly slow down development time. Publisher's like Aksys aren't going to provide much upfront developer costs for an indie fighter the consumer expects to pay $20 for. These types of deals often involve the publisher supplying advertising costs or porting the game to other consoles but none of the development costs.
In that case, I could see this as a situation where Aksys could be growing frustrated with the developer given the multiple release dates given over the years that the game has failed to meet; potentially being told "It's done" then having the dev backtrack sometime later and say "Wait, no it isn't". Just speculation.
Yeah you could easily argue that a lot of indie games are undercutting themselves. Like I think Duelists Of Eden is potentially selling itself short at only $4.99. I get that it might have to work a little harder because Card Game + Fighting Game might be a tough sell and it wants to get a solid playerbase early on, but I think it could sell for 10-15 bucks easily.
@GohLow It sucks because after Steam takes its giant 30% cut, and other fees come out, a dev gets maybe 50-60 cents for every dollar that you pay, less if they are splitting that with a publisher or collaborators. Duelists is probably making good money anyway because they can expect to sell a big volume, they have a big fan base from their previous game, but I was a little surprised that it wasn't at least $10. Definitely a good deal. Also, I forgot to say this earlier, but thanks for the shout out to Mega Knockdown, of course.
@@dhamstervidya Yeah of course! Y'all were the first people to give me a game for free and it's a ton of fun to play. I'm gonna shout it out whenever I talk about indie fighters. It's a great addition to the genre!
While not Nicalis vs Yatagarasu levels of "shit fuck", it does suck that Blazing Strike (something I've watched from afar too) is having this situation with its publisher.
I know someone who was one of the animators that was let go. 2D sprite based animation is a declining (sadly) and specific art form to get correct due to the tedious amount of work that goes into each frame. I can only assume they're having a hard time finding artist that can do the job with the budget they have. The amount of people experienced in 2D sprite based animation is dwindling. It's like trying to find a traditional 2D Disney animator to animate a feature film for you but even more rare than that given this animation was popularized in a small frame of 10 - 15 years. Sprite based animation peaked in the 2000s and there's a small group of diehard fans that picked it up as a hobby that kept it alive through things like Mugen and other fan based projects. The very last mainstream fighting game to utilize it was SNK with The King of Fighter XII and XIII. People who know the story of KOF XII know the amount of time and money that went into ONE character was a monumental task for SNK that was so costly that KOF XII served more as a prelude for XIII.
Ok, that makes sense; loss of talent, budgeting constraints, more work for less people, less replacement options for a now-niche animation styling leading to delay, that seems reasonable. If that's been the cause of this hold-up, I wish someone associated with the game would just come out and say as much.
fun fact about 30th anniversary: from what i heard it DID have rollback netcode apparently. it was just really bad rollback netcode. make you see it in a new light. (i know you never said it had delay based i just wanted to bring this up because MY GOD! HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!)
@@GohLowwhat boggles me most is that they excluded alpha 2 of all games for online. I don't think a lot of people would play the first 2 versions of sf3 or the first version of super and the other SF2 versions and SF1. But Alpha2 is more popular than alpha3 in some places and imo is way more iconic. I'm not saying they should've excluded alpha 3 and put alpha 2 instead but if they where gonna excluded some games from online at least have alpha 2 with the game you can play online
@@Jayjay0829Fortunately, Capcom did deliver with local and online multiplayer and trading for all of the Battle Network games since it easily could have been a similar disaster. There are six core games with most of them having separate versions like Pokemon. The last game (Megaman BN6) is the most competitive but there is a lot of love for 3 and 5 as well, besides people who would like to see how the metas differ even for BN1 or BN4. It should be a requirement for games with online to provide it for all modes or included games in the collection.
The dev said May. Aksys hasn't given a date more specific than Summer, so there is a chance that what the dev is saying is more wishful thinking on his part than a set-in-stone date.
I had been hype for Blazing Strike since it got picked up by a publisher. The constant delays and basically zero news have taken their toll on said hype. The saddest part is that i would still drop $40 on it because there are no new fighting games with an art style like it, which emulates the peak of what 2d sprites have to offer.
Yeah that's really the only thing that sets it apart still; there's no game on the market - indie or otherwise - that's doing that retro style of pixel graphics from that period.
The fact that Blazing Strike was so non-advertised that I only found out about the game because I follow the guy who did the art for the game's cover on twitter.
Definitely was looking super forward to this one...yeah, kinda faded into the background for me, with the passage of time and nothing new really about it. Especially now that I've got T8/Uni2 and my own hype building for City of the Wolves and the "leaked" VF supposedly coming. I'll still pick up, if it ever comes out.
I just watched the trailer and I'm interested! I noticed that in screenshots, character names are visible during gameplay, but in the trailer they aren't. I hope they are in the final version, for the benefit of spectators who aren't familiar with the game... which is all of them, because it's a new IP!
Glad I got you to check out the trailer. I agree, stuff like that can make it a lot easier on an uninformed person checking out footage of the game for the first time.
Wish there was footage of the game in question. I love Garou, but if I can't vizualize what Blazing Strike is, even with the grievances you have, there's a disconnect since I'm not even aware of what it is.
This whole time i thought the game was being solo developed by a passionate fighting game player. But it has a publisher and has been pushed back for two years and priced at double A quality for a retro styled game? It better be insanely good, if not, I hope the money they made from the publisher was worth it.
Finally got around to checking this vid out and damn, this deserves the attention it’s gotten. As usual your passion shines through. I’d never heard of this game (though I’m well outside the demographic for it), and maybe would not have if not for this video. They should be taking advantage of that!
Yeah that's a good point. If you're Aksys and you see this video popping off, getting more views than their most recent uploaded video for the game, drop some news. I just gave them a bit of a prime position to.
As of 29/05 according to SSMQ, crossplay was reconfirmed though it may not be in the initial launch, translations are done and PS5 cert had just been passed. All of this is positive but the lack of a Steam page or any presence to wishlist the game digitally is still bizarre.
At this point, it looks like they might be waiting for EVO to drop anything because I can't think of any other obvious event to make a big announcement at, short of this month's Nintendo Direct. Either way, it feels like they're gonna get creamed. All the concerns I laid out in this video have just gotten worse; the market's gotten even more flooded by big reveals and now even SF6 is going on sale for lower than Blazing Strike's base price.
@@GohLow A Nintendo Direct or Nindie Showcase seems like a good pick if they can secure the spot, but they missed a lot of decent alternatives like Best Indie Games Summer Showcase 2024 ( this channel regularly covers indie fighting games and has been tracking its progress for years but had almost nothing to report) which would be in the same month. On the note of EVO, the plan couldn't be a new trailer in mid-July then releasing it almost immediately when almost every main stage game may have a big announcement like crossplay, a new season etc (KOFXV confirmed a "Special DLC character" announcement is on the way already) plus deep sales. Taking attention away from fighting game gods and royalty during their exalting or coronating ceremonies is a big ask without a real plan. They won't be the only ones there with an in-person demo and/or with an online demo.
Yeah there's no good option for when to ramp things up. If they start doing promotion for it now, they're gonna get sloshed by major announcements that are basically raining down weekly. If they wait for the fall, DBZ Sparkling Zero comes out at the start of October, the Guilty Gear anime's probably gonna be in full swing, we'll only be about 6 months away from City Of The Wolves, and that's to say nothing of major DLC announcements. Wait for Dec-Feb and now you're actually competing with City Of The Wolves' prime marketing period along with HxH's fighting game, more news on the ATLA fighter from Maximum, Diesel Legacy, and more DLC news. This is to say nothing of the VF or SamSho rumors which, if true, good god... And while some might say it's not fair to compare Blazing Strike to all those major games, Blazing Strike itself forces you to because of its $40 pricetag. I've had indie fighter TOs say "That's a wait-for-a-sale price" whenever I bring this up. If they aren't gonna be running the game & the people who TO major fighting games are gonna have more AAA fighters than at any point in history, who is gonna run events for this game? It really needs to be a $20 digital title. $40 for the physical version is fine as like a premium offering, but they're gonna need to undercut the price of the major titles if they wanna have a serious userbase and potentially make their money back.
The funny thing about Mega Knockdown for me is that I was able to actually get that for free because the developers themselves were actually giving away code in a discord dedicated to indie fighting games. I was one of those who claimed the codes.
My criticism isn't iron-clad. I'm assuming this is the fault of the publisher, but with some of the interactions I've had in these comments, it's opened my eyes to it being pretty possible that this could be a developer issue.
Sucks that they didn't strike while the iron was blazing, huh? But srsly it's sad that this game didn't come out back when it had a better chance to succeed... also kinda sucks that the marketing is near-nonexistent. I looked up the game on here after watching this partly to see if I might've liked it and partly to see if literally any gameplay footage was available, and... I only found years-old gameplay, but from what I saw, I might've been interested in it if it had come out back in 22. Not any more, I saw Justin Wong playing City of the Wolves this week (the trailers were cool, but he explained the mechanics better than the trailers did and that did a lot more to get me interested/excited) and that reignited the part of me that wanted to get into Mark of the Wolves years ago (and COTW next year), but still, it might've had a shot once.
You bring up Justin Wong and like, that could be a whole other point in itself. With all these massive games coming out, what big youtubers/content creators/streamers are gonna even have the time in their day to make a video about Blazing Strike even if Aksys does try to approach them?
Hey I’m in college taking game design courses. MARKETING IS ONE OF THE FIRST TOPICS IVE EVER LEARNED ABOUT. If this is true that there’s no marketing even though the game is on its way to releasing, Axis Games haven’t taken a single college course on game design because there’s no way you fumble THIS badly of trying to get people hyped for a release.
13:31 This entire section is the phrase "let me cook" on video form. Awesome energy dude, you got me signed for whatever i s in store for this channel.
I think the reason it may have said December is because most places default to a release date of December 31st if there's not one already set. I know amazon does this sort of thing
🎉We got Mochizuki gameplay! We got a release date! October 17th 2024! They announced it at Anime Expo 24 - which was probably a better choice than EVO. I still have some concerns about marketing and the game but to focus on what they had to show with this trailer. The release date was buried in the description with the trailer only having a release window. The trailer had no game sound effects or voice over. It also didn’t do the best job of selling mechanics since only Pink looked interesting. All of that aside, we have a bit of time to see they shape up or consider a demo. Unfortunately, I may not be able to play it early if it releases in the month of Sparking Zero/Metaphor/Sonic X Shadow but we got a commitment to a date at least.
Another fucking delay after they said it would release in Summer of this year back in March of this year, and the trailer gave us nothing. I just can't with this game's marketing, my fucking god...
@@GohLow Maybe I've been too cynical for too long but I'm semi-unironically happy to see the closest thing to a commitment since the end date for the Kickstarter (we've only had loose windows since). At a glance, the trailer shows nothing new (control schemes/, characters/mechanics/command list) but even seeing the timer moving properly and basically everyone in motion feels big. I'll bet on it coming out and work on some material around the game.
Yeah I don't have any misconceptions about how difficult game dev can be. That's why I tried to not throw any stones at the developer in this video. I'd hope if it is the case that they're not fit to handle such a project, the publisher would give them some resources and people who do have that experience to help them in completing the game.
With all the issue SkullGirls had, they were able to push out more than 1 revision to the game and all were received with relatively positive results. At some point lack of know-how is nothing more than excuse.
I remember seeing the trailer for blazing strike and was like yeah this looks cool looking forward to it. Then forgot all about it cause it got delayed haha
Kind of funny hearing even a passing positive comment about the handling of Them's Fightin' Herds, considering what happened to it over the last five months. Owner sold the game to a new publisher, who promptly fired the dev team, cancelled the rest of the long promised story mode, released the final two DLC characters (that had already been sold through the Season Pass) in a legitimately game-breaking unfinished state, allegedly were banning people on the official Discord for complaining, but it was also proudly announced that they'd partnered with Paramount to make an Avatar The Last Airbender fighting game.
I backed it so I will still be getting and playing it when it comes out, especially since I don't need online to enjoy fighting games. The delay was super detrimental to Blazing Strike, and I have to wonder what caused the delay, between either the planned story mode, the ghost trained AI or (my personal wish) they got another character from an Aksys IP, especially since we know that there are a certain amount of characters and we've seen all but one. The only other thing i can think of is that during the crowdfunding they said about other costumes for characters which is also absurd for a sprite based fighting game. $40 is insane for an asking price though and while I'd have gotten it anyways because I'm an addict not many people will, and Aksys have shot themselves in the foot unless the marketing is insane by letting the big fgc content creators show it off.
Yeah you and me both are diehards; we're gonna get this game regardless. I totally hope it's them working out something with a guest character. That seems like the easiest way to get the game some instant publicity and attempt to justify its price. But unless they managed to get a huge character inclusion like Baiken or Kazuya or Akuma, I can't think of a character that would really push this game into the marketing stratosphere it really needs rn.
Man during the part where you talk about indie fighter pricing all I can think about is UNI 2's release wish it was like $20 or so, we'd have so many more players that way Not just that, but Arcsys didn't put in regional pricing so it's actually much worse in third world countries
@@GohLow truthfully I have been excited since hearing about it when it first got announced years back and I've been bummed out that it went dormant for so long. Today I was at GameStop and I saw the disc case with cover art and I brought it to the counter and the lady asked if I wanted to pre-order it. I asked when it would be released and she said at the end of June. I then found out there is a special edition that came with an art book, an OST and special card???! I'm a huge fighting game fan since the original street fighter game back in 87 and ever since I try to own as many fighters as I can. Truthfully I was kind of shocked at the regular edition game was priced at $49.99 CDN and the special edition at $70 CDN. I know that's over priced but this game has peaked my interest as much as phantom breaker omnia did back in the day.
That game's physics still look wack... I backed the kickstarter thinking it would look better with full development, but frankly looking at characters get hit and knocked around, I don't think people will like this even if it does come out.
I remember hearing about the game ages ago. Before clicking this, I thought the game came out without me noticing. The actual reality of the situation is worse.
Yeah 40 dollars is a lot to ask for something you just don't know will be any good, i think when you price yourself correctly you're a lot more likely for have people take a punt, like chaos code for example, that shit was like 15 bucks and i loved that game and purchased every update, 40 bucks you're far less likely to so i'll give it a go
Ah, the sequel to "Yatagarasu is yanking my chain". Aksys seem to be masters of marketing sabotage with this one but Nicalis had experience... Blazing Strike seemed neat to me for the spritework, but I was ultimately left waiting for the second bullet point of why I should be interested - not to say price isn't a barrier but I play my share of smaller games and Blazing Strike is being failed by marketing/development in too many ways to count... but here's a few. No demo. Unpolished stages. Rough audio (SFX and voices) Strangely flat trailers which make ArcSys blush (early FighterZ and DNF Duel) Repeating a trailer after a year of waiting (Square Enix did this once with a big game and couldn't catch a break) No clear lore/story (the website has typos and is bland in how it explains the world/characters - one skill is just called "blue arm" and another character has a key appeal being "an orphan") Timer at 00, infinite and 99 for all of the footage. Numerous characters without clear gameplay. No music uploads despite it being a notable selling point in the trailers. Basically no unedited match footage which shows off the game in a well rounded way. Has had a release window in at least 4 separate years (it makes it hard to believe it will really come out). No side tournament appearances. I literally found a game which I never heard of while looking things not to critique which gets most of this right. FrostFire has footage of a semifinal on their channel (you can find a full side tournament if you want), a demo (through Patreon) and functional timer through a search for more information. Rollback is also actively promoted while you need to look for old tweets or the OG Kickstarter to find mentions of this for Blazing Strike (crossplay is only a vague maybe in a tweet as the reason for the last delay). To put it briefly, I started off just thinking about how I'm that guy who would pay $40 for a dead game without online if it gave me good vibes but now I'm unfortunately convinced that this game is video essay material whether it somehow turns out fantastic due to changes, releases with few changes or anything in between.
Fantastic breakdown of what's been going wrong with the promotion. I remember working on the video where I first examined Blazing Strike's issues a few months ago, and had to go onto the developer's unadvertised instagram to find footage of a character I wanted to show off, and all I got was one combo. I don't see how this game makes its return on investment in the slightest.
@@GohLow It is all quite strange and unfortunate... What kind of fighting game has no command list for any character or clear system breakdown but has a limited edition complete with a 112 page artbook, CD and cards coming out from a notable publisher in just a few months in both America and Europe despite showing nothing new in like a year... Even the limited edition was supposed to come out two years ago. On a further look, some of the typos seem to be inherited from the Kickstarter and the shop listings do read better than the YT video descriptions if only slightly. That said, the Kickstarter explains that standing still blocks like in Tekken but also breaks normal throws like in Fantasy Strike which is sorta interesting but never communicated where it matters. Then there's the Patreon (still active sorta) which mentions multiple demo builds behind locked updates which are pre-Kickstarter as well and I've seen other things while doomscrolling including for Yatagarasu that I forgot... I'm like you though. I still hope for this to turn out well and know that sprite based indie fighting game development/publishing is one of the last places to make a quick buck. They want to make something cool and I want to be here for them.
I did not know about those mechanics, and I'm interested to see how the broader playerbase will respond to that style of grab-breaking. I remember people being very critical of it in Fantasy Strike. I've only briefly skimmed the kickstarter because I wasn't expecting it to have more than what the official website had, and you're so right in that it's fucking nuts how little public info there is about the game despite there being these higher-priced special editions. It's like they're expecting us to buy it blind. The fact I can't look up the special moves for all of the characters on the website is a joke.
@@GohLow Personally, I don't mind the idea of throw breaking by pressing nothing though I barely played Fantasy Strike, I do remember CoreAGaming making a case for Yomi Counter as an alternative approach in the fighting game space. That said, I don't think anyone is asking for that design in more traditional games. The majority seem happy with a dedicated throw input (two buttons, single button or forward + button) which can be answered by pressing the same input. To talk about more Kickstarter curiosities, the music for the game has been deleted from the sound director's Soundcloud and the only place it was shared from what I can tell is the Kickstarter. The artist, lead dev and sound director are still credited based on the limited edition and website naming them but only the lead dev is talking about the game to any notable degree. I'm not sure what's up but I hope all of them are doing okay behind the scenes. I would have liked to appreciate the music at least.
God Dang this video hit hard. The passion in his voice, those steely eyes, with the soul of undying fighting spirit. Man I totally relate with this guy Goh Low. Subscribed.
I spent alot of time playing 3rd strike on fightcade this past year for sure. I've been following blazing strike for years and never understood why it just went missing.
@GohLow The people who were going to play it until the present day all bought it. That was a shit ton of us. Also, people are still selling codes for it to this day iirc. They're higher than giraffe pussy, but it's still an option. Then there's that other "option"...
I’m just trying to figure out when the hell blazing strike is gonna launch. Lool. I don’t mind the monetary or production drama as long as it launches before hunter x hunter does
That should be a given but it isn't. Plus there's the new DBZ Budokai reboot happening soon. The fighting game space is getting filled from all angles really fast.
Wait wait wait... The game had 3 release dates in a span of 3 years AND THERE IS NO FOOTAGE AT ALL??? HOW THE FU- Edit: Oh, forget it. There's is 2 trailers and some teasers. But still, barely any footage. This game has less marketing then a local bakery.
To put things in perspective, Aksys uploaded a new trailer for it in 2022 that got over 300K views. They re-uploaded that same trailer in February of this year and it's at 5K views.
Yeah been following it. The footage is hit-and-miss imo too. With the release date only being less than a month away, I'd expect more footage but there's not nearly enough with the date being so close.
Sry to comment again but here are my thoughts : 1. 40$!? that's a tough ask, even 30$ is not a sure price to shell out as we learned from the ill fated Lawbreakers (yes, different type of game but we're talking about price point here). This is more so since this is a Fighting Game! 2. Blazing strike would absolutely lose if they fight directly against City of the Wolves, god forbid the game got delayed again near 2XKO cuz we all know that's a death window right there. RELEASE DATES MATTER FOR THESE THINGS! We all know so many games could survive and/or thrive if it weren't getting overshadowed especially by another game IN THE SAME GENRE!
i've been dumbfounded by he handling of that game for so long i'd given up. when i first heard about it years ago i thought i was finally going to get a modern retro fgc centered game that hit all the right buttons, but at this point i've lost faith. i have to assume its been abandoned until i see more than literally nothing.
Well new player can just play granblue fantasy rising for FREEE with 1 always free char and 3 free rotating characters every week, and getting all content except chapter 2-3 story mode and private lobby
I'm the only one dedicated enough to give a shit, purely because Mochizuki is a character I'm dying to try out. The plight of having a character fascination 😂
Blazing Strike is cool and all, but it's a niche game, it was never gonna be as popular as the big fighting games no matter when it was released or how it was priced.
Yeah no chance it gets as big as the big 3 or even Guilty Gear pre-Strive, but being 5th amongst modern fighters still would have let it turn a pretty profit. People forget how starved the fighting game scene was before the wave of big new releases. Strive was the only thing injecting a spark into things and everyone was getting pissed at the lack of rollback in major titles, especially during the pandemic.
I like mocking Yatagarasu as much as the next guy since I was hyped for the cancelled 3DS release, but there are at least 9 functional versions of the game from 2009 to 2024 with all of them being on Steam. I'd even call 2015 release fun even if barebones and it had a demo.
This was a fighting game i was looking forward to at least to see a playable demo at evo seeing some of the characters look amazing. Years of no news or gameplay trailers I was curious for Hanas gameplay cause i want to main her. Hopefully they don't break that promise or damn at least have a update of all the characters they have
I wanted a Mochizuki clip for the first video I talked about blazing strike in, and the only place I could find one was on the dev's instagram from like 3 years ago.
@@cirro51 Trajes Fatais had a bit of an issue, the lead director was basically a perfectionist and constantly had the team keep redoing the game over and over again until it was perfect, so the team had left him, also add on the fact that apparently someone on the dev team stole a big part of the money that was raised during a crowdfunding.
I was interested I'm blazing strike when I first saw it but over time I just forgot about it. Really sucks for the devs. Anyways who is the tizoc player? He's pretty good
I’ve been following the development of this game myself(for what little was available) but as time went on I genuinely lost interest. I’m still curious enough to see the final product upon release.
@@GohLow It was on Steam. Also it is a small budget game. And I would not be surprised that they want to concentrate marketing when they will be sure that all ports are ready.
@@kordelas2514 It hasn't had a steam page in at least a year, despite those being free to put up. I can't think of any reason to not have a steam page up, especially with dev himself saying the game is gonna come out in May.
@@GohLow There was a steam page for it in greenlight program long time ago. It was before the dev had a contract with any publisher. It could be that Aksys is responsible only for console versions and they licensed a publishing right to Numskull Games for some regions (mainly Europe). If the dev is going to self publish a PC version, then they are likely limited by publishing contract. BTW the more recent screenshots from the game are on Numskull website.
I remember reading reviews of the new Yata that said "This game was 10 years out of date when it released" and that feels like what's gonna happen with Blazing Strike now. Everything that it was using as a way to appeal to players are now givens in even indie games, and you could even argue it's now lacking standard features given how fast the new wave of fighters has progressed things from the biggest games to the smallest games.
It isn't a question of whether chasing fans of 3s is a problem, but if they are remotely in the same sphere of polish (very high bar) or have decent marketing (not impossible). Yatagarasu actually had a good run on paper, but between Nicalis doing the Legend of Raven thing, unfulfilled crowdfunding goals, a release on PC which is very far from looking final as far as UI, story, online and backgrounds are concerned, no rollback even in a version which just came out and has new issues with random screenshots as you play. It doesn't matter if they have Max as a commentator or numerous FGC figures. I think Yatagarasu still looks nice, is mechanically sound, has cool trial sharing features long before GG Strive but too many things are stacked against it. I could buy almost any BlazBlue or Guilty Gear for less including all of the content. It doesn't help when modern ports of their inspirations get online/rollback and the improvement of Fightcade.
I was on the games discord, did it get taken down? I feel like one day it just wasnt on my list of discords anymore. As a big tfh fan this shit has hurt me so bad i dont know if i can even hop in the ring with this kinda vibe when if does come out lol, red flag
Nah the discord's still up. This video caused the most discussion there's been in there in ages. Most of the time it's just people talking about other stuff since the game itself gives them nothing to talk about.
@@GohLowTo be honest, most of my thoughts on the opposite end is hot air and cynicism since I'm looking for balance and seen at least one other relationship go south seemingly due to the dev. I do apologise if I'm being uncharitable to devs here since unlike that example which I won't name as RareBreed is not a developer known for anything going wrong and I can't say I've seen anything negative about the composer or artist who have been part of the project since the beginning. By comparison, I generally like Aksys but both the FGC (BlazBlue CF - no dub for slightly earlier release) and Otome (localisation - many VNs) bases have reasons to dislike them... That said, everything seems a bit too strange as this is very uncharacteristic for a publisher and developer relationship. It could be an odd ball producer or publishing team with absent/corrupt management who don't recognise how to support the release - but why promote a limited edition in stores for over a year rather than rush the game towards a release like BlazBlue (at least aim for early access digitally first if it is on the cards). I don't think RareBreed is holding Aksys hostage either while making money on Patreon for something, but it is just unusual all around. When I said "also the opposite", I meant that both parties are getting a really bad deal and may have made some mistakes even if we can only see the results with. Aksys embarrasing themselves big time for the entire promotional cycle and RareBreed not getting the promotion cycle that you'd expect from a publisher or even a small TH-camr.
That seems to be the general sentiment in the comments. I've single-handedly reminded at least 40 people that Blazing Strike is a thing, and that's just people who bothered to comment telling me as much
Man, I feel like it's rare to hear you legit angry like in this video. Really hope Aksys gets off their ass, this game and the people excited for it deserve better than what they're getting from them.
Yeah I usually don't like to cover stuff I don't have something good to say about, but this close to the release, I started writing and this whole script came out
Lack of communication is exactly why ppl get so frustrated with projects such as Blazing Strike, like is it THAT FUCKING HARD for y'all to regularly remind ppl that the game is still being worked on and that it hasn't been turned into a tax write-off or some shit???
Seriously, this is how you get people to fall off the bandwagon; months and months and months of just dead silence from party involved. Like I can't imagine the publisher would smite the dev for talking more on Twitter about some of the characters in the game or some of the systems or the story or something. Give me some Tweet Threads on a character's playstyle, their moves, something.
Update: The Blazing Strike dev has seen the video, and says we'll be getting "updates and announcements very very soon".
i hope
We’ll see about that but I doubt it. Easily the worst marketing I’ve ever seen for a fighting game. Like you said, they missed their window when they didn’t release the year before Street Fighter 6 and MK1 came out.
@@d-roc1576 Yeah at this point, we can't trust anything said from anyone on the game. It's either put up or shut up, and they've shut up for a really long time. Show actual content.
Nice a Kevin Ryan main. Seriously one underrated character in Mark of the wolves. He'll poke you to death lol. Didn't know the online pvp community still exist.
The COTW announcement's caused a lot more people to check it out on Fightcade recently
As a commentator who did an ad read for Blazing Strike last year, I was dumbfounded by the fact that after I read that I never heard about the game again. Now I know why, and I'm infuriated.
The fact that this was my first exposure to the game *at all* says so much.
I completely forgot about blazing strike, looked promising it’s a shame it’ll never come out
I've been in the FGC trenches for years but I've NEVER even heard of this game wtf.
It was advertised a few times in 2022 at tournaments. If you didn't see it then, you haven't seen it since.
Well you haven't been deep enough 😂
Man, I should have asked Sega to sponsor me in my Virtua Fighter video
Sega sponsoring people like you or GriffyBones for some VF vids would be sick!
@@GohLowI agree!
They can't show me Alexander and NOT give us more news about the game. IDK what the fuck is going on, but we need answers from AKSYS NOW!
Same, but for Mochizuki. The character designs in the game are sick; just wish I knew what the fuck the characters did beyond the shortest of clips.
Dang dude you just told me more info than i could find on this game. Seen nobody talking about it so glad you gave us an update
Yeah that's another thing; info on the game is weirdly hard to even search for. It seems like a lot of it is still stuck in the backlog of 2019 kickstarter posts
I can't believe you just said Guilty Gear: Sir'd.
You have shook me to my core.
Have... Have I been saying it wrong this whole time😬
@@GohLowto my knowledge, most people either say "exird", or how the announcer says it, "exard"
@@GohLow lol yea, the announcer says "Egg-zard"
@@GohLownah doesnt matter, sird, ex erd, eggz erd, eks ard everything is fine
shook you to your Accent Core?
Shoutouts to TFH for also getting absolutely fucked over by their publisher (Maximum entertainment). They really did lay off the entire dev team except for three people at christmastime, of which two of those three aren’t with the company anymore, and then turned around and said “yeah we had a good year anyway we’re making two more fighting games”. PocoQuinn has a vid talking about how it got massively fucked over so bad it makes me furious.
Edit: well this is what I get for commenting before finishing the video.
We could have had the TFH team making the ATLA fighter. We were so fucking close. It would have been incredible!
@@GohLow TFH was really the first fighting game I got into. I stopped enjoying it eventually but it still holds a special place in my heart as a genuinely interesting fighting game there is. So when I learned that those devs got laid off by Maximum, who proceeded to say “fuck yeah now let’s make the worst decisions ever”, it reminds me why I’m a damn commie.
Also cmon those guys were PERFECT for avatar Shanty already looks sick, Tianhuo is awesome, Texas? Amazing! In terms of visual 2d fighting game effects I can’t think of an fg that comes CLOSE to TFH. And then you laid them off. Sure okay do whatever I’m definitely not furious about it.
@@GohLowwhat!! That sounds awesome!! Whyyyy...
@@calfriedman6981 Because the heads of Maximum Entertainment are bastards
Your passion for the game really shone through here, I remember the earlier video you made on it. Sucks to see a promising game mishandled so badly.
Cheers, thank you!
Your passion has reached me. Subscribed. Also hoping Blazing Strike exists at a competitive price w/ Rollback, Crossplay, Single Player Content and fully functional at release. Anything less in this market is an early grave.
It has rollback, that we know for sure. Crossplay and single-player though, is completely up in the air.
This is a game I've been hype for for literal years now, and the fact that we don't hear anything on it is just...it's so weird. I still get curious about it every few months and see if anything new's come out and I'm always disappointed.
I think it needs to drop with a huge amount of single player content now. That might go some way towards justifying the higher price, and makes it a lower risk purchase because even if there’s nobody to play online you can still have a few hours of fun. I feel bad for the dev, aksys seems to have done very little for the game and will still take a chunk of the revenue. What it seems the dev needed was a collaborator, not a hands-off publisher like this
Yeah, that's really true. Pardon the pun but it seems like the dev got left to the wolves while Aksys took advantage of someone who really wanted to bring their game to life. They gave him control of nothing, it seems. RareBreed was the first person I contacted about wanting to do a sponsorship sorta thing, and he told me he wasn't at the liberty to make that decisions so I had to contact Aksys. If he's not allowed to say "Sure, I'll give you a free game key and we'll work something out," for a game it seems he's solo-devving, what the fuck power does he even have? It seems like a shit situation all around. You've gotta think Aksys has given the dev very little if they think they can make their return on investment doing no promo.
I appreciate your respect for the indie scene in fighting games. And yeah, some friends and I have also felt frustrated about Blazing Strike for awhile. I already have Skullgirls so I'm not really hurting for a great new fighter but I also love seeing what comes out of the scene and love trying out others. I'm sad this game AND TFH as you mentioned have been handled so poorly. I hope both can have a nice turnaround.
Yeah I love the indies. Indie Fighter Fest last year was the first time I really dove into the space and all the devs whose games I covered were very supportive, so I always try to tell people about the great fighters that might fly under the radar.
I've been looking forward to Blazing Strike also, it has a really sick graphic style. Probably the dev's are working on it along side other day jobs which would significantly slow down development time. Publisher's like Aksys aren't going to provide much upfront developer costs for an indie fighter the consumer expects to pay $20 for. These types of deals often involve the publisher supplying advertising costs or porting the game to other consoles but none of the development costs.
In that case, I could see this as a situation where Aksys could be growing frustrated with the developer given the multiple release dates given over the years that the game has failed to meet; potentially being told "It's done" then having the dev backtrack sometime later and say "Wait, no it isn't". Just speculation.
This really is the first i hear of blazing strike in months
Although I don't like how there's a race to the bottom with the pricing of indie games, especially fighters.. $40 is probably too high.
Like, I probably would have expected blazing strike to price itself at $20 given the current market!
Yeah you could easily argue that a lot of indie games are undercutting themselves. Like I think Duelists Of Eden is potentially selling itself short at only $4.99. I get that it might have to work a little harder because Card Game + Fighting Game might be a tough sell and it wants to get a solid playerbase early on, but I think it could sell for 10-15 bucks easily.
@GohLow It sucks because after Steam takes its giant 30% cut, and other fees come out, a dev gets maybe 50-60 cents for every dollar that you pay, less if they are splitting that with a publisher or collaborators. Duelists is probably making good money anyway because they can expect to sell a big volume, they have a big fan base from their previous game, but I was a little surprised that it wasn't at least $10. Definitely a good deal.
Also, I forgot to say this earlier, but thanks for the shout out to Mega Knockdown, of course.
@@dhamstervidya Yeah of course! Y'all were the first people to give me a game for free and it's a ton of fun to play. I'm gonna shout it out whenever I talk about indie fighters. It's a great addition to the genre!
@@GohLow I'm sure I won't be the last! I saw early on that you were making good stuff.
While not Nicalis vs Yatagarasu levels of "shit fuck", it does suck that Blazing Strike (something I've watched from afar too) is having this situation with its publisher.
I know someone who was one of the animators that was let go. 2D sprite based animation is a declining (sadly) and specific art form to get correct due to the tedious amount of work that goes into each frame. I can only assume they're having a hard time finding artist that can do the job with the budget they have. The amount of people experienced in 2D sprite based animation is dwindling. It's like trying to find a traditional 2D Disney animator to animate a feature film for you but even more rare than that given this animation was popularized in a small frame of 10 - 15 years. Sprite based animation peaked in the 2000s and there's a small group of diehard fans that picked it up as a hobby that kept it alive through things like Mugen and other fan based projects. The very last mainstream fighting game to utilize it was SNK with The King of Fighter XII and XIII. People who know the story of KOF XII know the amount of time and money that went into ONE character was a monumental task for SNK that was so costly that KOF XII served more as a prelude for XIII.
Ok, that makes sense; loss of talent, budgeting constraints, more work for less people, less replacement options for a now-niche animation styling leading to delay, that seems reasonable. If that's been the cause of this hold-up, I wish someone associated with the game would just come out and say as much.
fun fact about 30th anniversary: from what i heard it DID have rollback netcode apparently. it was just really bad rollback netcode. make you see it in a new light.
(i know you never said it had delay based i just wanted to bring this up because MY GOD! HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!)
And the netcode aside, them only letting you play 4 of the games online was fucking stupid.
@@GohLowwhat boggles me most is that they excluded alpha 2 of all games for online. I don't think a lot of people would play the first 2 versions of sf3 or the first version of super and the other SF2 versions and SF1. But Alpha2 is more popular than alpha3 in some places and imo is way more iconic. I'm not saying they should've excluded alpha 3 and put alpha 2 instead but if they where gonna excluded some games from online at least have alpha 2 with the game you can play online
@@Jayjay0829Fortunately, Capcom did deliver with local and online multiplayer and trading for all of the Battle Network games since it easily could have been a similar disaster.
There are six core games with most of them having separate versions like Pokemon. The last game (Megaman BN6) is the most competitive but there is a lot of love for 3 and 5 as well, besides people who would like to see how the metas differ even for BN1 or BN4.
It should be a requirement for games with online to provide it for all modes or included games in the collection.
For me, the online was fine. Never understood how it was bad for other peeps
Backed the game for a long time, even somewhere in it as a sprite. All I know its coming out somewhere in May and hopefully its worth the wait.
The dev said May. Aksys hasn't given a date more specific than Summer, so there is a chance that what the dev is saying is more wishful thinking on his part than a set-in-stone date.
I remember the trailer for this game, the music invoked 3rd strike feels, but that's it. Was wondering when the game would pop out
I had been hype for Blazing Strike since it got picked up by a publisher. The constant delays and basically zero news have taken their toll on said hype. The saddest part is that i would still drop $40 on it because there are no new fighting games with an art style like it, which emulates the peak of what 2d sprites have to offer.
Yeah that's really the only thing that sets it apart still; there's no game on the market - indie or otherwise - that's doing that retro style of pixel graphics from that period.
Imma play City of the Wolf.
The fact that Blazing Strike was so non-advertised that I only found out about the game because I follow the guy who did the art for the game's cover on twitter.
Definitely was looking super forward to this one...yeah, kinda faded into the background for me, with the passage of time and nothing new really about it. Especially now that I've got T8/Uni2 and my own hype building for City of the Wolves and the "leaked" VF supposedly coming.
I'll still pick up, if it ever comes out.
I stopped caring about Aksys Games when they decided not to dub Blazblue Central Fiction.
I just watched the trailer and I'm interested!
I noticed that in screenshots, character names are visible during gameplay, but in the trailer they aren't. I hope they are in the final version, for the benefit of spectators who aren't familiar with the game... which is all of them, because it's a new IP!
Glad I got you to check out the trailer. I agree, stuff like that can make it a lot easier on an uninformed person checking out footage of the game for the first time.
Wish there was footage of the game in question. I love Garou, but if I can't vizualize what Blazing Strike is, even with the grievances you have, there's a disconnect since I'm not even aware of what it is.
Yeah I get that. Not gonna fault you if you stopped watching a few minutes in because of that.
This whole time i thought the game was being solo developed by a passionate fighting game player.
But it has a publisher and has been pushed back for two years and priced at double A quality for a retro styled game?
It better be insanely good, if not,
I hope the money they made from the publisher was worth it.
Finally got around to checking this vid out and damn, this deserves the attention it’s gotten. As usual your passion shines through. I’d never heard of this game (though I’m well outside the demographic for it), and maybe would not have if not for this video. They should be taking advantage of that!
Yeah that's a good point. If you're Aksys and you see this video popping off, getting more views than their most recent uploaded video for the game, drop some news. I just gave them a bit of a prime position to.
As of 29/05 according to SSMQ, crossplay was reconfirmed though it may not be in the initial launch, translations are done and PS5 cert had just been passed.
All of this is positive but the lack of a Steam page or any presence to wishlist the game digitally is still bizarre.
At this point, it looks like they might be waiting for EVO to drop anything because I can't think of any other obvious event to make a big announcement at, short of this month's Nintendo Direct.
Either way, it feels like they're gonna get creamed. All the concerns I laid out in this video have just gotten worse; the market's gotten even more flooded by big reveals and now even SF6 is going on sale for lower than Blazing Strike's base price.
@@GohLow A Nintendo Direct or Nindie Showcase seems like a good pick if they can secure the spot, but they missed a lot of decent alternatives like Best Indie Games Summer Showcase 2024 ( this channel regularly covers indie fighting games and has been tracking its progress for years but had almost nothing to report) which would be in the same month.
On the note of EVO, the plan couldn't be a new trailer in mid-July then releasing it almost immediately when almost every main stage game may have a big announcement like crossplay, a new season etc (KOFXV confirmed a "Special DLC character" announcement is on the way already) plus deep sales.
Taking attention away from fighting game gods and royalty during their exalting or coronating ceremonies is a big ask without a real plan. They won't be the only ones there with an in-person demo and/or with an online demo.
Yeah there's no good option for when to ramp things up. If they start doing promotion for it now, they're gonna get sloshed by major announcements that are basically raining down weekly. If they wait for the fall, DBZ Sparkling Zero comes out at the start of October, the Guilty Gear anime's probably gonna be in full swing, we'll only be about 6 months away from City Of The Wolves, and that's to say nothing of major DLC announcements. Wait for Dec-Feb and now you're actually competing with City Of The Wolves' prime marketing period along with HxH's fighting game, more news on the ATLA fighter from Maximum, Diesel Legacy, and more DLC news. This is to say nothing of the VF or SamSho rumors which, if true, good god...
And while some might say it's not fair to compare Blazing Strike to all those major games, Blazing Strike itself forces you to because of its $40 pricetag. I've had indie fighter TOs say "That's a wait-for-a-sale price" whenever I bring this up. If they aren't gonna be running the game & the people who TO major fighting games are gonna have more AAA fighters than at any point in history, who is gonna run events for this game? It really needs to be a $20 digital title. $40 for the physical version is fine as like a premium offering, but they're gonna need to undercut the price of the major titles if they wanna have a serious userbase and potentially make their money back.
Bro... I just wanted my multiarmed boy...
And I just want my demon-masked sickle ninja
I hope it comes out soon, like I can wait for games but seeing this game get pushed back so many times is just sad like I feel bad for the devs tbh
The funny thing about Mega Knockdown for me is that I was able to actually get that for free because the developers themselves were actually giving away code in a discord dedicated to indie fighting games. I was one of those who claimed the codes.
Everything I saw about this game looked awesome. Was waiting for more, but hadn't seen anything.
Found this video on accident and my dishes are done and now I'm pissed they are dooming this indie game people worked hard on
My criticism isn't iron-clad. I'm assuming this is the fault of the publisher, but with some of the interactions I've had in these comments, it's opened my eyes to it being pretty possible that this could be a developer issue.
Sucks that they didn't strike while the iron was blazing, huh?
But srsly
it's sad that this game didn't come out back when it had a better chance to succeed... also kinda sucks that the marketing is near-nonexistent. I looked up the game on here after watching this partly to see if I might've liked it and partly to see if literally any gameplay footage was available, and... I only found years-old gameplay, but from what I saw, I might've been interested in it if it had come out back in 22. Not any more, I saw Justin Wong playing City of the Wolves this week (the trailers were cool, but he explained the mechanics better than the trailers did and that did a lot more to get me interested/excited) and that reignited the part of me that wanted to get into Mark of the Wolves years ago (and COTW next year), but still, it might've had a shot once.
You bring up Justin Wong and like, that could be a whole other point in itself. With all these massive games coming out, what big youtubers/content creators/streamers are gonna even have the time in their day to make a video about Blazing Strike even if Aksys does try to approach them?
Hey I’m in college taking game design courses. MARKETING IS ONE OF THE FIRST TOPICS IVE EVER LEARNED ABOUT. If this is true that there’s no marketing even though the game is on its way to releasing, Axis Games haven’t taken a single college course on game design because there’s no way you fumble THIS badly of trying to get people hyped for a release.
I took a half-year generalized business class in high school and it was the exact same thing; if you don't market your product, you don't succeed.
Damn That kevin combo 0:50
13:31 This entire section is the phrase "let me cook" on video form. Awesome energy dude, you got me signed for whatever i s in store for this channel.
Cheers, thanks!
Preordered that game almost a year ago....now I heard it may come out on December 2024.......December 2024......
Wait what?! The dev was saying May in the discord like 3 weeks ago; where'd you hear December?
@@GohLow I went to aksys official website and it said December, but now it says Summer.....lets hope they deliver!
I think the reason it may have said December is because most places default to a release date of December 31st if there's not one already set. I know amazon does this sort of thing
it says a lot about this game that i instantly thought of another game cause it had a slightly similar name and i forgot this one existed
Yeah the name doesn't exactly jump off the page or stand out as memorable. It's a pretty generic pair of adjective and verb
🎉We got Mochizuki gameplay! We got a release date! October 17th 2024! They announced it at Anime Expo 24 - which was probably a better choice than EVO.
I still have some concerns about marketing and the game but to focus on what they had to show with this trailer. The release date was buried in the description with the trailer only having a release window. The trailer had no game sound effects or voice over. It also didn’t do the best job of selling mechanics since only Pink looked interesting.
All of that aside, we have a bit of time to see they shape up or consider a demo. Unfortunately, I may not be able to play it early if it releases in the month of Sparking Zero/Metaphor/Sonic X Shadow but we got a commitment to a date at least.
Another fucking delay after they said it would release in Summer of this year back in March of this year, and the trailer gave us nothing. I just can't with this game's marketing, my fucking god...
@@GohLow Maybe I've been too cynical for too long but I'm semi-unironically happy to see the closest thing to a commitment since the end date for the Kickstarter (we've only had loose windows since).
At a glance, the trailer shows nothing new (control schemes/, characters/mechanics/command list) but even seeing the timer moving properly and basically everyone in motion feels big.
I'll bet on it coming out and work on some material around the game.
I came for Blazing Strike info but also got to watch some intermediate/advanced Garou matches. Thanks. 😄
Ain't multi-tasking great!
Maybe the dev team doesn't have enough experience to handle this kind of project, design and balancing fighting game could be really difficult.
Yeah I don't have any misconceptions about how difficult game dev can be. That's why I tried to not throw any stones at the developer in this video. I'd hope if it is the case that they're not fit to handle such a project, the publisher would give them some resources and people who do have that experience to help them in completing the game.
With all the issue SkullGirls had, they were able to push out more than 1 revision to the game and all were received with relatively positive results.
At some point lack of know-how is nothing more than excuse.
its crazy to think when blazing strike was first coming out, it was priced at $60USD sheesh~!
If it kept that price tag and released today, I honestly think it would sell under 1500 copies
I remember seeing the trailer for blazing strike and was like yeah this looks cool looking forward to it. Then forgot all about it cause it got delayed haha
Kind of funny hearing even a passing positive comment about the handling of Them's Fightin' Herds, considering what happened to it over the last five months. Owner sold the game to a new publisher, who promptly fired the dev team, cancelled the rest of the long promised story mode, released the final two DLC characters (that had already been sold through the Season Pass) in a legitimately game-breaking unfinished state, allegedly were banning people on the official Discord for complaining, but it was also proudly announced that they'd partnered with Paramount to make an Avatar The Last Airbender fighting game.
I backed it so I will still be getting and playing it when it comes out, especially since I don't need online to enjoy fighting games.
The delay was super detrimental to Blazing Strike, and I have to wonder what caused the delay, between either the planned story mode, the ghost trained AI or (my personal wish) they got another character from an Aksys IP, especially since we know that there are a certain amount of characters and we've seen all but one. The only other thing i can think of is that during the crowdfunding they said about other costumes for characters which is also absurd for a sprite based fighting game.
$40 is insane for an asking price though and while I'd have gotten it anyways because I'm an addict not many people will, and Aksys have shot themselves in the foot unless the marketing is insane by letting the big fgc content creators show it off.
Yeah you and me both are diehards; we're gonna get this game regardless. I totally hope it's them working out something with a guest character. That seems like the easiest way to get the game some instant publicity and attempt to justify its price. But unless they managed to get a huge character inclusion like Baiken or Kazuya or Akuma, I can't think of a character that would really push this game into the marketing stratosphere it really needs rn.
Man during the part where you talk about indie fighter pricing all I can think about is UNI 2's release
wish it was like $20 or so, we'd have so many more players that way
Not just that, but Arcsys didn't put in regional pricing so it's actually much worse in third world countries
Goh got my number I've bought three of those indy games for that exact reason
It's the reason I bought Duelists Of Eden. For 5 bucks, it's a worth try.
I just literally pre-ordered the special edition today on gamestop ..eta end of june! We will see about that?! Legs, arms and eyes crossed! 🔀
If you don't mind me asking, what got you to pre-order the game at this moment?
@@GohLow truthfully I have been excited since hearing about it when it first got announced years back and I've been bummed out that it went dormant for so long. Today I was at GameStop and I saw the disc case with cover art and I brought it to the counter and the lady asked if I wanted to pre-order it. I asked when it would be released and she said at the end of June. I then found out there is a special edition that came with an art book, an OST and special card???! I'm a huge fighting game fan since the original street fighter game back in 87 and ever since I try to own as many fighters as I can. Truthfully I was kind of shocked at the regular edition game was priced at $49.99 CDN and the special edition at $70 CDN. I know that's over priced but this game has peaked my interest as much as phantom breaker omnia did back in the day.
That game's physics still look wack... I backed the kickstarter thinking it would look better with full development, but frankly looking at characters get hit and knocked around, I don't think people will like this even if it does come out.
I remember hearing about the game ages ago. Before clicking this, I thought the game came out without me noticing.
The actual reality of the situation is worse.
The Blazing Strike discord was so pressed at one point that they were praying for a stealth drop just to get their hands on the game.
Yeah 40 dollars is a lot to ask for something you just don't know will be any good, i think when you price yourself correctly you're a lot more likely for have people take a punt, like chaos code for example, that shit was like 15 bucks and i loved that game and purchased every update, 40 bucks you're far less likely to so i'll give it a go
Ah, the sequel to "Yatagarasu is yanking my chain". Aksys seem to be masters of marketing sabotage with this one but Nicalis had experience...
Blazing Strike seemed neat to me for the spritework, but I was ultimately left waiting for the second bullet point of why I should be interested - not to say price isn't a barrier but I play my share of smaller games and Blazing Strike is being failed by marketing/development in too many ways to count... but here's a few.
No demo.
Unpolished stages.
Rough audio (SFX and voices)
Strangely flat trailers which make ArcSys blush (early FighterZ and DNF Duel)
Repeating a trailer after a year of waiting (Square Enix did this once with a big game and couldn't catch a break)
No clear lore/story (the website has typos and is bland in how it explains the world/characters - one skill is just called "blue arm" and another character has a key appeal being "an orphan")
Timer at 00, infinite and 99 for all of the footage.
Numerous characters without clear gameplay.
No music uploads despite it being a notable selling point in the trailers.
Basically no unedited match footage which shows off the game in a well rounded way.
Has had a release window in at least 4 separate years (it makes it hard to believe it will really come out).
No side tournament appearances.
I literally found a game which I never heard of while looking things not to critique which gets most of this right. FrostFire has footage of a semifinal on their channel (you can find a full side tournament if you want), a demo (through Patreon) and functional timer through a search for more information.
Rollback is also actively promoted while you need to look for old tweets or the OG Kickstarter to find mentions of this for Blazing Strike (crossplay is only a vague maybe in a tweet as the reason for the last delay).
To put it briefly, I started off just thinking about how I'm that guy who would pay $40 for a dead game without online if it gave me good vibes but now I'm unfortunately convinced that this game is video essay material whether it somehow turns out fantastic due to changes, releases with few changes or anything in between.
Fantastic breakdown of what's been going wrong with the promotion. I remember working on the video where I first examined Blazing Strike's issues a few months ago, and had to go onto the developer's unadvertised instagram to find footage of a character I wanted to show off, and all I got was one combo. I don't see how this game makes its return on investment in the slightest.
@@GohLow It is all quite strange and unfortunate... What kind of fighting game has no command list for any character or clear system breakdown but has a limited edition complete with a 112 page artbook, CD and cards coming out from a notable publisher in just a few months in both America and Europe despite showing nothing new in like a year... Even the limited edition was supposed to come out two years ago.
On a further look, some of the typos seem to be inherited from the Kickstarter and the shop listings do read better than the YT video descriptions if only slightly.
That said, the Kickstarter explains that standing still blocks like in Tekken but also breaks normal throws like in Fantasy Strike which is sorta interesting but never communicated where it matters.
Then there's the Patreon (still active sorta) which mentions multiple demo builds behind locked updates which are pre-Kickstarter as well and I've seen other things while doomscrolling including for Yatagarasu that I forgot...
I'm like you though. I still hope for this to turn out well and know that sprite based indie fighting game development/publishing is one of the last places to make a quick buck. They want to make something cool and I want to be here for them.
I did not know about those mechanics, and I'm interested to see how the broader playerbase will respond to that style of grab-breaking. I remember people being very critical of it in Fantasy Strike.
I've only briefly skimmed the kickstarter because I wasn't expecting it to have more than what the official website had, and you're so right in that it's fucking nuts how little public info there is about the game despite there being these higher-priced special editions. It's like they're expecting us to buy it blind. The fact I can't look up the special moves for all of the characters on the website is a joke.
@@GohLow Personally, I don't mind the idea of throw breaking by pressing nothing though I barely played Fantasy Strike, I do remember CoreAGaming making a case for Yomi Counter as an alternative approach in the fighting game space.
That said, I don't think anyone is asking for that design in more traditional games. The majority seem happy with a dedicated throw input (two buttons, single button or forward + button) which can be answered by pressing the same input.
To talk about more Kickstarter curiosities, the music for the game has been deleted from the sound director's Soundcloud and the only place it was shared from what I can tell is the Kickstarter. The artist, lead dev and sound director are still credited based on the limited edition and website naming them but only the lead dev is talking about the game to any notable degree.
I'm not sure what's up but I hope all of them are doing okay behind the scenes. I would have liked to appreciate the music at least.
Word for word every single thing that i was thinking about this game, bravo. 👏🏽 👌🏽
Cheers, thank you!
God Dang this video hit hard. The passion in his voice, those steely eyes, with the soul of undying fighting spirit. Man I totally relate with this guy Goh Low. Subscribed.
Even the greatest sees how good I am!
I spent alot of time playing 3rd strike on fightcade this past year for sure. I've been following blazing strike for years and never understood why it just went missing.
... This entire time I'm listening, I'm wondering why Gran Blue isn't mentioned with its F2P option.
Cy Games did everything that Axis did poorly.
Because it completely slipped my mind. If it hadn't, I probably would have done a 5-minute section on F2P fighters.
we are looking at another Death Cargo situation. If you know, you know!
MvC2 had rollback on the PS3/360 FYI
Yeah but at the time - around 2017-2021 - MVC2 had already been delisted off those online stores and we were well into the PS4/Xbone generation
@GohLow The people who were going to play it until the present day all bought it. That was a shit ton of us.
Also, people are still selling codes for it to this day iirc. They're higher than giraffe pussy, but it's still an option.
Then there's that other "option"...
Had the LE pre-ordered since they put it up exclusively on the Aksys store. Before it went up on other sites with free shipping.
Did the Aksys store not offer free shipping?
Blazing Strike has the beautiful sprite art style i wish they would have done to Mark of the Wolves 2
I remember being really hyped because of that trailer
Kinda sounds like when Sammy overpriced the hell of the Rumble Fish 2 new gen ports.
Then turned the unlockable boss characters into paid DLC. If Blazing Strike tries to pull anything like that, I'm gonna make a scorching video.
It looks so promising too, a damn shame.
Strong words from a strong man
*Poses like Arnold*
I’m just trying to figure out when the hell blazing strike is gonna launch. Lool. I don’t mind the monetary or production drama as long as it launches before hunter x hunter does
That should be a given but it isn't. Plus there's the new DBZ Budokai reboot happening soon. The fighting game space is getting filled from all angles really fast.
Wait wait wait...
The game had 3 release dates in a span of 3 years AND THERE IS NO FOOTAGE AT ALL???
HOW THE FU-
Edit: Oh, forget it. There's is 2 trailers and some teasers. But still, barely any footage. This game has less marketing then a local bakery.
To put things in perspective, Aksys uploaded a new trailer for it in 2022 that got over 300K views. They re-uploaded that same trailer in February of this year and it's at 5K views.
they've started to show actual footage and showcases on the aksys yt channel and the game's official twitter, it's looking rough around the edges imo
Yeah been following it. The footage is hit-and-miss imo too. With the release date only being less than a month away, I'd expect more footage but there's not nearly enough with the date being so close.
I want to play the hell out if this game!!
But this wait is killing me.
It really is infuriating.
so who is winning Blazing Strike at EVO
The Ghost of Development Hell's Past
Sry to comment again but here are my thoughts :
1. 40$!? that's a tough ask, even 30$ is not a sure price to shell out as we learned from the ill fated Lawbreakers (yes, different type of game but we're talking about price point here). This is more so since this is a Fighting Game!
2. Blazing strike would absolutely lose if they fight directly against City of the Wolves, god forbid the game got delayed again near 2XKO cuz we all know that's a death window right there. RELEASE DATES MATTER FOR THESE THINGS! We all know so many games could survive and/or thrive if it weren't getting overshadowed especially by another game IN THE SAME GENRE!
Never apologize for commenting multiple times; more comments help the video get seen by more people. And yeah you're absolutely right on both points.
i've been dumbfounded by he handling of that game for so long i'd given up. when i first heard about it years ago i thought i was finally going to get a modern retro fgc centered game that hit all the right buttons, but at this point i've lost faith. i have to assume its been abandoned until i see more than literally nothing.
Well new player can just play granblue fantasy rising for FREEE with 1 always free char and 3 free rotating characters every week, and getting all content except chapter 2-3 story mode and private lobby
I'm shocked more people aren't bringing up that I forgot GBFR, because it would have made for an amazing segment in this video.
I holy crap I completely forgot that game 😧
Most people have by the looks of these comments
I literally forgot about this game lmfao. No wonder you're the only person talking about it
I'm the only one dedicated enough to give a shit, purely because Mochizuki is a character I'm dying to try out. The plight of having a character fascination 😂
Blazing Strike is cool and all, but it's a niche game, it was never gonna be as popular as the big fighting games no matter when it was released or how it was priced.
Yeah no chance it gets as big as the big 3 or even Guilty Gear pre-Strive, but being 5th amongst modern fighters still would have let it turn a pretty profit. People forget how starved the fighting game scene was before the wave of big new releases. Strive was the only thing injecting a spark into things and everyone was getting pissed at the lack of rollback in major titles, especially during the pandemic.
I thought it was either cancelled, or that the devs were still cooking. What a shame.
The dev said in the game's discord that it's not dead. But two years without any new trailer or gameplay or *anything* is hard to dispute
Blazing Strike is aiming to be more disappointing than Yatagarasu at this point.
I like mocking Yatagarasu as much as the next guy since I was hyped for the cancelled 3DS release, but there are at least 9 functional versions of the game from 2009 to 2024 with all of them being on Steam.
I'd even call 2015 release fun even if barebones and it had a demo.
Dude I wanted to voice act for this so bad but these devs have been silent about everything
This was a fighting game i was looking forward to at least to see a playable demo at evo seeing some of the characters look amazing. Years of no news or gameplay trailers I was curious for Hanas gameplay cause i want to main her. Hopefully they don't break that promise or damn at least have a update of all the characters they have
I wanted a Mochizuki clip for the first video I talked about blazing strike in, and the only place I could find one was on the dev's instagram from like 3 years ago.
@@GohLow I had an artist make a pocket sprite version of Hana as well cause how excited I was
I hope this isn't another Suits of Fate.
What do you mean, what happened with it? All I know is that's it's still not released yet just like blazing strike
@@cirro51 Trajes Fatais had a bit of an issue, the lead director was basically a perfectionist and constantly had the team keep redoing the game over and over again until it was perfect, so the team had left him, also add on the fact that apparently someone on the dev team stole a big part of the money that was raised during a crowdfunding.
@@Gamersgoinblind ohh. Well that's a shame. I was looking forward to both of these titles. Quite possible that neither of them will get released.😥
1000th like i feel so much power
YO! Hi-5! 🤚
I was interested I'm blazing strike when I first saw it but over time I just forgot about it. Really sucks for the devs. Anyways who is the tizoc player? He's pretty good
I’ve been following the development of this game myself(for what little was available) but as time went on I genuinely lost interest. I’m still curious enough to see the final product upon release.
40$? It better at least be in Game Pass so people can try it before commiting.
>Only Playstation and Switch versions annouced.
Technically also a PC version but still no steam page.
@@GohLow no steam page no game
@@GohLow It was on Steam. Also it is a small budget game. And I would not be surprised that they want to concentrate marketing when they will be sure that all ports are ready.
@@kordelas2514 It hasn't had a steam page in at least a year, despite those being free to put up. I can't think of any reason to not have a steam page up, especially with dev himself saying the game is gonna come out in May.
@@GohLow There was a steam page for it in greenlight program long time ago. It was before the dev had a contract with any publisher. It could be that Aksys is responsible only for console versions and they licensed a publishing right to Numskull Games for some regions (mainly Europe). If the dev is going to self publish a PC version, then they are likely limited by publishing contract. BTW the more recent screenshots from the game are on Numskull website.
It looks good but I wonder if going after 3s fans like Yata did will be a financial success
I remember reading reviews of the new Yata that said "This game was 10 years out of date when it released" and that feels like what's gonna happen with Blazing Strike now. Everything that it was using as a way to appeal to players are now givens in even indie games, and you could even argue it's now lacking standard features given how fast the new wave of fighters has progressed things from the biggest games to the smallest games.
It isn't a question of whether chasing fans of 3s is a problem, but if they are remotely in the same sphere of polish (very high bar) or have decent marketing (not impossible).
Yatagarasu actually had a good run on paper, but between Nicalis doing the Legend of Raven thing, unfulfilled crowdfunding goals, a release on PC which is very far from looking final as far as UI, story, online and backgrounds are concerned, no rollback even in a version which just came out and has new issues with random screenshots as you play. It doesn't matter if they have Max as a commentator or numerous FGC figures.
I think Yatagarasu still looks nice, is mechanically sound, has cool trial sharing features long before GG Strive but too many things are stacked against it. I could buy almost any BlazBlue or Guilty Gear for less including all of the content.
It doesn't help when modern ports of their inspirations get online/rollback and the improvement of Fightcade.
First I've heard of this game. Off to go find anything else I can find about it. Hey! You're a pretty good marketing guy, after all.
Thank you!
I was on the games discord, did it get taken down? I feel like one day it just wasnt on my list of discords anymore. As a big tfh fan this shit has hurt me so bad i dont know if i can even hop in the ring with this kinda vibe when if does come out lol, red flag
Nah the discord's still up. This video caused the most discussion there's been in there in ages. Most of the time it's just people talking about other stuff since the game itself gives them nothing to talk about.
Aksys is screwing rare breed.
I strongly suspect that is true... but also the opposite.
I'd like to hear more about your speculation in regards to the opposite end of things here.
@@GohLowTo be honest, most of my thoughts on the opposite end is hot air and cynicism since I'm looking for balance and seen at least one other relationship go south seemingly due to the dev.
I do apologise if I'm being uncharitable to devs here since unlike that example which I won't name as RareBreed is not a developer known for anything going wrong and I can't say I've seen anything negative about the composer or artist who have been part of the project since the beginning.
By comparison, I generally like Aksys but both the FGC (BlazBlue CF - no dub for slightly earlier release) and Otome (localisation - many VNs) bases have reasons to dislike them...
That said, everything seems a bit too strange as this is very uncharacteristic for a publisher and developer relationship.
It could be an odd ball producer or publishing team with absent/corrupt management who don't recognise how to support the release - but why promote a limited edition in stores for over a year rather than rush the game towards a release like BlazBlue (at least aim for early access digitally first if it is on the cards). I don't think RareBreed is holding Aksys hostage either while making money on Patreon for something, but it is just unusual all around.
When I said "also the opposite", I meant that both parties are getting a really bad deal and may have made some mistakes even if we can only see the results with. Aksys embarrasing themselves big time for the entire promotional cycle and RareBreed not getting the promotion cycle that you'd expect from a publisher or even a small TH-camr.
Forgot it even exists tbh
That seems to be the general sentiment in the comments. I've single-handedly reminded at least 40 people that Blazing Strike is a thing, and that's just people who bothered to comment telling me as much
You're fighting a good fight. Its a shame it had to be this way though. @@GohLow
Man, I feel like it's rare to hear you legit angry like in this video. Really hope Aksys gets off their ass, this game and the people excited for it deserve better than what they're getting from them.
Yeah I usually don't like to cover stuff I don't have something good to say about, but this close to the release, I started writing and this whole script came out
All I’m gonna say is that the blame in this video is being directed the wrong way
My social media profiles are linked in the description. If you'd like to tell me more, I'd love to hear about it.
Blazing Strike will get my 40$, especially if the pixelated graphics are well made
Pixel graphics have that hold on some people, me included. I'll take a well-made pixel-graphics fighter over any other sort.
Hope you'll have a good day
I'm doing pretty well dude! Hope you're doing just as good!
Lack of communication is exactly why ppl get so frustrated with projects such as Blazing Strike, like is it THAT FUCKING HARD for y'all to regularly remind ppl that the game is still being worked on and that it hasn't been turned into a tax write-off or some shit???
Seriously, this is how you get people to fall off the bandwagon; months and months and months of just dead silence from party involved. Like I can't imagine the publisher would smite the dev for talking more on Twitter about some of the characters in the game or some of the systems or the story or something. Give me some Tweet Threads on a character's playstyle, their moves, something.