With the recent reveal of a release date, as well as the announcement that Team RWBY’s Blake Belladonna and 19 other characters would be joining the roster of the upcoming BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, many fans have been looking to see and hear more about the four-way crossover title.
Last weekend, BBTAG made appearances at both Evo Japan and the 2018 Taipei Game Show in Taiwan, with the full 20-character base roster available for players, giving us a healthy amount of new footage of the entire cast to share with you.
In our first video, we see our four main protagonists do battle, as Under Night In-Birth’s Hyde Kido and RWBY’s Ruby Rose unite to battle BlazBlue’s Ragna The Bloodedge and Persona 4 Arena’s Yu Narukami on one of the new original stages revealed in the most recent trailer. Initially, we can hear that Ruby has a new (or perhaps additional?) character theme. In previous builds she used Red Like Roses Part 2, whereas this new theme sounds like a mix of Red Like Roses Part 1 and the Volume 1 Opening Theme, This Will Be The Day. Resonance Blaze now has an on-screen timer of 15 seconds when all four blocks of the Cross Gauge are filled, and will now turn the screen blue when activated, similar to Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite’s Infinity Storms, though it remains to be seen if only one team can have the mechanic active at a time.
Our second match sees Weiss Schnee and Linne face Noel Vermillion and Yukiko Amagi on the newly-revealed Altar stage from BlazBlue. We can also see that Distortion Finishes now change the background into the diamond motif, featuring the signature colors of all four franchises.
We’ve also got two more videos, showing off a bit of play with all 20 cast members, with a variety of teams and stages, though the uploader mainly stuck to the duo of Weiss and Hazama for the majority of matches. We can also see that the Under Night quartet now each possess a second Distortion Skill like the rest of the cast, and are no longer solely limited to their Infinite Worths. The attacks appear to be Hyde’s Pale Bringer, which now lacks the usual kick ender, Linne’s Force Function, Waldstein’s C version of Sturmangriff and Gordeau’s EX Mortal Slide.
Lastly, movelists for 16 characters were spotted at Evo Japan, though they’re currently lacking translations. You can see everything below, including a write-up of one player’s thoughts on the TGS build, below.
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle will be released on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Steam PC on Thursday, May 31st in Japan, with a Western release following for the same platforms on Tuesday, June 5th.
Sources: Kaizouwar; Gamer (巴哈); macyayayaya; HackMD; Shoryuken Forums
Now you may be wondering why I’m writing this, and not someone like 
Now, the problem with this when it comes to fighting games comes from the fact that not everyone who joins a fighting game tournament is a professional player. Even for major tournaments, which in our case would be Rev Major (a Tekken 7 World Championship event) as well as my own Manila Cup (which is part of the Capcom Pro Tour) the majority of competitors are amateurs. Most people going to these events are just there for the experience, as well as to reconnect with other people in the community.
Fortunately for us, the GAB acknowledged that there was room for improvement with the regulation. A meeting was soon set up in late January (right before Evo Japan) between the GAB and some of the heads of the community. While I’m not at liberty to disclose what was discussed during the meeting, long story short the issues have seemingly been resolved, and again allow the fighting game community do what we’ve done for years now. That is, offer tournaments where anyone and everyone can join, regardless of a player’s status as a “professional” or “amateur.”