Anyone who’s played any BlazBlue story mode will know how text heavy they can get, each characters scenario can last anything up to an hour if you want all of the possible endings. Of course BlazBlue’s a fighting franchise so the story is broken up by the occasional bout. But what if you removed them and left players with just the plot. Taking place 150 years before the wheel of fate began to turn XBLAZE Code: Embryo is a visual novel that follows the journey of Touya Kagari a mysterious girl called Es and the power known as the Azure.
Review by Mikhail M.
Over the last few months, a lot of Japanese game publishers and developers have been dipping their toes into the PC platform via Steam. Aksys was one, publishing the Arc System Works-developed visual novel Xblaze Code: Embryo on Steam recently and while it's fun, it also has enough flaws that hold it back from what I’ve come to expect from both Arc System Works and visual novels.
Chalgyr's Game Room writes:
I am absolutely terrible at fighting games which is why I was intrigued when Arc System Works announced that they were making a Visual Novel in the BlazBlue universe. Always having had interesting stories and characters between this and the older running series of Guilty Gear, being able to experience the narrative elements without having to literally fight for it was a treat in and of itself.
Zack H of The Cube gives his opinion on the newest visual novel to hit Steam
I am a big fan of visual novels so may have to look into this one. The art style looks really impressive, although it's a shame that there aren't really any cut-scenes and everything is told through text and static drawings.
I love a good visual novel, but I think I might find it frustrating not knowing what choices lead to what outcome. It might be a bit hand-holdy, but I expect to think "I want X character's path, so I'll do X things" and "Y things for Y character". It's cheap writing, but I love it.
I haven't played many visual novels in my time, but this looks like it is a good addition to the genre and certainly worth a look.
Its a shame this style had died out I feel theres something unique to piecing together a story with your imagination.
Can't play Blazblue after getting ripped apart from a Guiness World record holder on the game. Sacred for life.