BlazBlue Centralfiction

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Very Positive · 94%Very Positive · 94%2017

$39.99

US Steam price, checked 3 h ago

The verdict

A deep, fast anime fighter with a huge, unique roster, great music and sprites, and rollback netcode. Skip it if you hate steep learning curves or have no friends or Discord to play with.

Great for

Players who love deep 2D air-dasher fighters, labbing combos and playing with friends or Discord communities

Main risk

Brutal learning curve and a small online scene full of veterans who will stomp you

What players love

Unique characters with their own mechanics

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“nearly *EVERY* character has their own inputs and specials.”
Steam review · 137.4 h played ↗

“Every character feels like they’re playing their own game, which is both awesome and terrifying online.”
Steam review · 32.1 h played ↗

“The best fighting game in history in terms of game design: a huge number of characters, each with their own visual style and unique mechanics.”
Steam review · translated · 147.6 h played ↗

Deep, rewarding gameplay and systems

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews

“The systems are incredibly robust and well designed.”
Steam review · 353.2 h played ↗

“Could spend life in this game and still have more things to learn.”
Steam review · 107.1 h played ↗

“it's super fun on a casual level and it's super technical on a competitive level”
Steam review · 159.8 h played ↗

Great soundtrack and sprite art

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 positive reviews

“The sprite work and music still go insanely hard years later.”
Steam review · 32.1 h played ↗

“This is the peak of 2D sprites and we're never going to see a company do this level of sprite work again”
Steam review · 422.2 h played ↗

“Great visuals and fantastic music you can safely add to your playlist.”
Steam review · translated · 2.2 h played ↗

Lots of content, little DLC greed

Mentioned in ~1 in 11 positive reviews

“The game is not excessively greedy with content.”
Steam review · 95 h played ↗

“only dlc is a singular character and the rest of the roster is already unlocked for free”
Steam review · 21.5 h played ↗

“You have a lot of single player modes like STORY”
Steam review · 63 h played ↗

Rollback netcode and still-active community

Mentioned in ~1 in 12 positive reviews

“Rollback netcode - Heaps of QoL/training mode features”
Steam review · 717.5 h played ↗

“a great rollback netcode system for optimal online gaming. Although niche, its community support is very strong”
Steam review · 93.5 h played ↗

“The scene is very much alive, and if you're looking in the right places there's always going to be passionate players eager to share tech and matches.”
Steam review · 191.7 h played ↗

Cheap on sale

Mentioned in ~1 in 17 positive reviews

“Its about the same price as a big mac during a sale.”
Steam review · 56.4 h played ↗

“It's the price of a cup of coffee.”
Steam review · 27.6 h played ↗

What players complain about

Poor PC port and technical issues

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“Variable framerate (20 - 50 in my case) Sprite stretching/Sprite tearing Improper kerning/font formatting”
Steam review · 9.3 h played ↗

“the game has a problem where it black screens and is unplayable”
Steam review · 19.6 h played ↗

“Game would be amazing if it didn't crash every time character select started loading in online lobbies.”
Steam review · 34.7 h played ↗

Brutal for newcomers; online full of veterans

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews

“unless you're willing to spend close to 50 hours strictly in the lab, or have friends dedicated to teaching you, you will have a miserable experience in ranked.”
Steam review · 12.5 h played ↗

“After almost 100 hours I'm still pinned in the corner by any online opponent and can't get up.”
Steam review · translated · 80.5 h played ↗

“I would also advise against attempting to get into the game unless you have 100s of hours to commit, a mentor, or both.”
Steam review · 100 h played ↗

Character balance problems

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 negative reviews

“This is a critically unbalanced game”
Steam review · 1690.5 h played ↗

“The Devs REALLY need to rebalance most of the characters”
Steam review · 477 h played ↗

“shes SO OPPRESIVE that youll be unable to do ANYTHING to actually fight back.”
Steam review · 34.3 h played ↗

Small or dead player base

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 negative reviews

“Really great fighting game, but it's player base is dead. I've been fighting w/ the same 7 people for the past 3 months.”
Steam review · 111.1 h played ↗

“This is actually a 9/10 fighting game but it's dead so there's no point in buying it.”
Steam review · 38.1 h played ↗

“there's very few people playing it so only buy if you have a stable group of friends to play with.”
Steam review · 40.9 h played ↗

Netcode and lobby issues

Mentioned in ~1 in 13 negative reviews

“The netcode is awful, and even 3 bar (green) connections range from somewhat playable to atrocious”
Steam review · 96.6 h played ↗

“you are not allowed to do rematches and must go ALL THE WAY back to the lobby”
Steam review · 5.7 h played ↗

No English dub

Mentioned in ~1 in 25 negative reviews

“Please add back the English dub. This is the best blazblue, and the only one without English dub.”
Steam review · 435.9 h played ↗

“the English voice dub. Not even the VAs knew about that until they found out via tweet”
Steam review · 0.6 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Playable

Minimum

OSWindows 7 / 8 / 8.1

ProcessorIntel Core i5 / i7

Memory4 GB RAM

GraphicsnVidia GeForce 8800 GT or better / AMD Radeon HD3700 / nVidia GeForce GT 650 (Windows 8.1)

Storage18 GB available space

OSWindows 7 / 8 / 8.1

ProcessorIntel Core i5 / i7

Memory4 GB RAM

GraphicsnVidia GeForce 8800 GT or better / AMD Radeon HD3700 / nVidia GeForce GT 650 (Windows 8.1)

Storage18 GB available space

More games to check

Other games we’ve read the reviews for

See all →

Blade Symphony

Mixed · 69%

+ Deep, skill-based combat

− Dead multiplayer, empty servers

analyzed 2 h ago

DEAD OR ALIVE 5 Last Round: Core Fighters

Mostly Positive · 70%

+ Attractive characters and big roster

− Extremely expensive DLC and paywalled content

analyzed 2 h ago

WWE 2K16

Mixed · 64%

+ Better than 2K15 and later entries

− Servers shut down, online content gone

analyzed 6 h ago

ULTIMATE MARVEL VS. CAPCOM 3

Very Positive · 92%

+ Huge, iconic roster

− Capcom's Enigma DRM backlash

analyzed 1 d ago

Weekly digest

Fresh games worth a look, in your inbox

The most interesting games we’ve just analyzed, once a week.Once a week we send the most interesting games we’ve just analyzed: the verdict, top pros and cons, and what changed. No spam.

One email a week · unsubscribe in one click