Melty Blood: Act Candenza (Vampires, Magic girls, and demons, oh my)

This may come as a surprised, but you know text-based games? The kind that are more about puzzle solving and finding out what to do next rather than full out combat and action? They’re actually pretty popular over in Japan and while a import of games like that might involve a big English patch or mastery of the Japanese language, certain text-based games can be so popular that they invoke spin-off titles. Such is the case of Melty Blood, a fighter based off the text-based game Tsukihime.

Story: Fighting game stories are pretty weak usually and while Melty Blood is a spin-off of a text-based title that is more about story than anything, Melty Blood doesn’t seem to take any major advantages in presenting its story. Not to mention, Japanese language is a difficult language to read. Basic plot seems to follow that one villain, a Dracula-ish character named Warachia has taken the fears of the main cast and put them in physical form, such as a blood-thirsty, murderous version of the main vampire character, or revived villains from previous titles. One thing in benefit of the story is that the characters are given full voice acting for every bit of title they supposedly say, so in that regard, the story is fine. Not great, but fine.

Gameplay: Sporting over 20 characters, Melty Blood has a wide cast and while it may seem at first that the characters might has duplication syndrome, it’s surprising how different a good and evil version of a character can be, where one version has a teleporting move, while the other can chain special moves together.

If they do have a duplication problem, it is that the inputs for most of the moves are pretty simple. Almost every character has a basic ‘Hadouken’ input for one move, a ‘Shoryuken’ input for another, and even a down-down input for another special move. I can only assume it was designed this way so that players can easily switch between characters if they desired.

The moves may work differently, but with identical inputs, it somewhat ruins the wonder of learning a new character. Simply put, it sometimes feels more like switching from Ryu to Ken rather than switching from Ryu to say Vega or even Zangief.

 
This brings up another problem in turns of characters “super specials”. To perform said specials, you have to build up a magic circuit bar, which is fine and dandy, but to perform the super specials, all it requires is, I kid you not, the SAME input as the normal moves except pressing circle instead of another button. This not only makes you accidentally waste magic energy, but it feels like they were just lazy in making the specials so easy to perform, especially when trying to come up with combos for each character. But maybe some players like the ease of doing these supers and after a while you get used to it.

The game also presents special well… I suppose you can call them ‘forms’ that can regenerate health and give you access to a even more powerful unique special, which is a fresh change of pace. However one of the main control buttons is designed to be a parry button, which uses up your Magic circuit just for pressing it and half the time it’s really difficult to time it to parry a attack, though mastery of it is necessary to use each character’s ultra move, the Last-Arc.

Despite complaints about how similar some of the characters appear, the game is fun in its simplicity, the characters are fun in their own regard, and while hardcore veterans might wipe the floor against newcomers, the ground isn’t as wide as in other titles.

Graphics: As a Dreamcast port from back in 2002, Melty Blood isn’t going to win a graphics award, the characters are very pixilated in appearance. Regardless of that, the animations for the character pretty lively with dresses bellowing in the wind and characters rolling across the ground, slipping behind opponents and throwing them over their heads. Also, the animation for some of the moves are vibrant and colorful, though I feel some of the designs are a bit plain: Oh, a school boy who is a vampire hunter fights in… his school uniform… that’s… exciting… On the other hand, we have a mecha-maid so the character ideas/designs sort of balance out.

So I feel indifferent towards the graphics of the game. My final decision though when some character sprites look like they’re so lazy in design, such as major villain Warachia’s eyes just look like sleepy closed lines, it takes away from the effect of the characters, so I give them a C for “Come on, guys. Really?” Yet I give them credit cause the animation of the characters are something of a sight to see, it gets exciting to see them move so fluently from one move to the next.

Sound: Music in Melty Blood is pleasing to the ears, utilizing a mix of piano and techno to make a music that is light on the ears, though memorable and at times, pretty catchy. It’s pretty good and some themes just strike a chord in me. I especially have a thing for the ‘Blank vs. Blank’ music before each battle.

The sound effect department is where the game shines with powerful sounding hits that fit the attacks they represent, and the use of the sound really brings out how much damage you’re doing in comparison to everything else. Voice acting is Japanese and is pretty nice, especially since everything the characters say is played vocally. It’s a nice touch.

Overall: Melty Blood is a simple fighting game that can be fun for some romps and despite a few designs, the characters are interesting looking enough to invoke some repeated plays if only to spend so many days just to try out the next character. 8/10