UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH II Sys:Celes Review

thesixthaxis.com:

We’re in an incredible stacked period for fighting games, and I couldn’t be happier. Capcom titan Street Fighter 6 is barely half a year old, while Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is delivering an incredible experience and promising crossover DLC characters. Then you’ve got the gargantuan release of Tekken 8 approaching in mere days – but it isn’t alone. Amongst all of these impressive sequels, another is dropping this week. The UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH series has long been the best-kept secret of modern fighting games, boasting some of the most fluid, dynamic, and hype-building gameplay in any fighter. UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH II Sys:Celes is all that and then some.

At first glance, this game might not visually come across as a true sequel – but much like the recently released Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, despite identical graphics and character models, numerous things under the hood have been changed to make this feel leagues different than any previous iteration of Under Night In-Birth. Despite being a 3-button fighter where every character only has a handful of special moves, there’s a gargantuan amount of depth and mastery to this series thanks to the layers of mechanics happening in parallel to the combat – and this sequel adds even more, on top of giving every character at least two new moves. That might not seem like a huge amount on paper, but in a game like this, where every character’s kit is so versatile already, these new moves add astounding amounts of new options to everyone’s arsenal.

Let me back up a bit, though. In Under Night In-Birth, there’s a shared Grind Grid, or “GRD”, meter at the bottom of the screen – it fills up if you move forward, block, land attacks, or hold down the GRD charge button – and depletes if you move backwards, get hit, or do special attacks that use GRD. There’s a looping timer that fills every few moments, and whoever has more GRD when it does enters a special Vorpal state – from there, you’ve got buffed attack damage and the