Fighting games, while varied, are probably one of the most intuitive genres. Resources such as health/meter are always shown between both players, with the measurable distance between characters and the simple goal of beating the other player.
“Guilty Gear 2: Overture”, despite being part of the “Guilty Gear” series, is the opposite of all of that. “Overture” is a 3rd-person, pseudo-fighter, pseudo real-time-strategy type game.
The objective of this game is to destroy the enemy’s master ghost. To do this, you’ll need to summon servants. The servants have a rock-paper-scissors-like dynamic, with circle beating triangle, triangle beating square, and square beating circle units. To summon servants effectively, you will need “mana”, which is collected by capturing smaller ghosts around the map.
The main protagonist, Sol Badguy, is considered to be the strongest master in the game. He has incredibly high damage and a defensive buff, making him tankier than the other masters, but his servants are weak. Because of this, strategy is important. Upgrading the choice of servants will be key. A very important servant for Sol is the firewheel, which has high damage and long range, making this a reliable unit for Sol to stand behind. There’s also the engulfer, who can seal master items and skills, making it very versatile.
If you are not strategic in your use of Sol and have him run into battle by himself, ignoring the rest of the game, he will likely be stunlocked and destroyed by the mass horde of servants.
You could try grouping all servants and brute force your way through your opponent, but a reckless strategy like this won’t always go your way. Instead, you should spread out and try to cover as many ghosts as possible, which will deny the enemy resources. If you continue this, you can out-generate the enemy and crush them with relative ease.
Be careful though! If you ignore the enemy master for too long, you might find the next fight at your master ghost. If your opponent tries to group all of their units together, there are several items to discourage this. A bomb is one choice that is fairly self-explanatory. If you throw this into a large crowd, there isn’t a whole lot a master can do to stop it from damaging servants. This can really screw up your enemy’s plans.
As you can imagine, scrambles between masters can get very chaotic, but commanding through the chaos is part of the game’s charm.
If you like fighting games but are looking for something outside of the box, then “Guilty Gear 2: Overture” earns its merits.
