[Deciding to pick up a new fighting game can be a daunting prospect, especially if you’re not sure whether it’s the kind of game you’ll enjoy once you’re competent at it. If you’re comfortable with Capcom fighting games but intimidated by the thought of trying to learn something off the beaten path, Aevee Bee wrote this article to help you figure out if French-Bread and Ecole Software’s Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late might be up your alley. This is a new thing we’re trying out, so please leave feedback in the comments! –patrick]
What the heck is Under Night In-Birth: EXE Late?
David “Dacidbro” Broweleit calls it “a thoughtful game, combining subtle (yet vital) meter management with classic fighting game fundamentals for a fresh experience.”
Mike “Muscles” Murphy says, “Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late is attracting players from Capcom fighting games, ‘anime’, and newbies, and rightfully so. It’s a solid and fun game and it’s proving it.”
Chris “Hellpockets” Fields thinks being hard to describe is one of its good points. “Describing UNIB’s feel has been something we’ve been trying to do for a while now…which is fine. If UNIB straight up feels like UNIB I think that’s awesome, that a game would be so fresh and unique simply because it exists and you can’t make any deep comparisons/contrasts to other games, it’s a like a totally new experience.”
Under Night In-Birth is as ridiculous as it is honest, an undiscovered sweet spot between “anime” fighters and Street Fighters, with fast and risky movement and normal-heavy footsies. At first it seems a bit like an airdasher—it has fast movement and instant low jumps at aggressive angles, but you can only block air-to-air and there’s no defensive options off the ground, so footsies are much closer to Street Fighter. Execution barriers are low and the game is very generous about inputs, but it has a complicated and intricate subsystem called Grind Grid (GRD) that is absolutely vital to playing the game correctly at any level.
What are the characters like?
The first thing you will notice about the characters in UNIB is how utterly ridiculous their normal attacks are. Footsies are very intense in UNIB because of this, as Hellpockets explains. “Speaking specifically, footsies in UNIB are different from other games simply because you’re poking from ranges that you don’t normally see in fighting games. I’m reminded of Hakumen’s j.C [in BlazBlue] because it had great range, but it was a jumping move. So it felt more like a zoning tool, you know, keep your opponent from moving freely. In UNIB, it feels like every character has a move like that, or multiple, and they’re also used as pokes.”
Long-range pokes and space control are a shared characteristic between three top tier characters. Waldstein, the grappler, has access to all the same movement options as the rest of the cast (though his forward dash is short) but has massive limbs that are able to control incredible amounts of space, reaching nearly across the screen—his forward C begins with a close range blockable grab and turns into an overhead that still reaches three-quarters of the screen at max range.
Merkava, a flying elastic monster with a full screen blockable grab, is also quite a ludicrous character; SoCal player Alex Sanchez compares Merkava to Twelve of Street Fighter III fame since he doesn’t have moves that are punishable on hit. “What makes Merk stand out to a lot of people is his stretchy arm special. It’s a hit-grab that reaches full screen. Getting hit by that move is a ‘This is bullshit!’ moment. Hitting people with that move, especially the anti-air version, is extra satisfying.”
Rounding out the upper echelons is Gordeau, who may not look like a monster but has hitboxes and special moves that cover massive amounts of space. His Grim Reaper has already achieved meme-level infamy, as it hits in a massive radius in every direction and works painfully well as a way to start a round.
The rest of the cast is extremely different — and definitely competitive with the top tier. Linne and Hyde are the basic shoto-style characters; Linne combines quick, short-range tiger knee projectiles and special movement options like double jump and roll to make for a very rushdown-focused character, while Hyde is slower with longer range, and can detonate his projectiles to keep opponents in pressure. On the opposite end, you have Hilda, who has projectiles for nearly all her normals and feels like BlazBlue’s Nu-13.
This sort of design is characteristic of Under Night; Hilda’s very focused on her particular gameplan, setting up projectiles and preventing opponents from getting in, but neither she nor anyone else in the title is overloaded with gimmicks. Perhaps the highest execution barrier comes with Vatista, in that she’s a charge character with bizarre motions like up- and forward-charges, and while she seems like a zoner at first, all that garbage she throws out is actually how she sets up her much scarier rushdown. Byakuya combines rekkas and multidirectional normals with a huge number of options for traps and setups that, while very simple in premise, leads to a lot of options in practice, including an attack that starts out looking like a trap but is in fact a long range overhead. It’s clear what Byakuya is supposed to be doing: he has a core gimmick with multiple applications and options.
How does Under Night In-Birth handle? What does it feel like?
Under Night In-Birth is largely focused on ground-based gameplay, even though the anime aesthetic might lead you to initially expect otherwise. Only projectiles and air-to-air moves are blockable in the air. Its only resemblance to an airdasher is the Assault move, used by pressing forward+D. (D is a button used exclusively for performing system mechanic-based actions, which happens to make a lot of the execution requirements in the game very easy.)
You can Assault on the ground to instantly go into an aggressive low-angle jump similar to a King of Fighters short hop, perfect for quick overheads. You can use it in air too, which lets you change the angle of the jump, but that’s it for air movement–no fancy movement options, not even an air backdash (except for the ninja Seth, who is granted much better mobility in exchange for shattering almost instantly on hit).
Broweleit says that this makes air movement in UNIB extremely aggressive and not at all safe. “In games like Persona, BlazBlue, and Guilty Gear,” he explains, “you have extreme freedom to move in the air, boasting both numerous safe air options like super jump, double jump, and strong character-specific air-only actions, and defense systems which work against most or all ground-to-air or air-to-air choices. For this reason, matches in those games play out largely in the air compared to many other fighting games.”
Ground movement in similarly aggressive. Every character enjoys a backdash (though the GRD system penalizes it–I’ll explain this later) and most characters have a forward run that’s cancelable at any time. Unlike Street Fighter, where characters are planted exactly where they are, in UNIB moving just a touch closer for a poke can be done very quickly, especially considering some of the ridiculous normals in this game. The strength of grounded footsies leads pretty nicely into using Assault to catch an opponent overcommitting and, as you’ll see with much of the title’s design, forces good reads in this little rock-paper-scissors triangle of assault, anti-air, and grounded pokes. The result is a game that is fast and aggressive, but with limited options that are also risky. UNIB remains slower than true airdash fighters simply because you’ve got to be more cautious.
What special systems should I know about?
Many of Under Night In-Birth’s special systems are centered around the aforementioned GRD gauge. If there is only one thing you take away from this article, please let it be to never ever call this unique resource a guard meter. It is not a guard meter. It’s kind of like the opposite of a guard meter, actually.
Broweleit describes GRD as “‘Donkey Kong bananas for fighting games” as “it incentivizes taking control of the match, which is a great guidance for new players–it’s a guiding hand towards everything in the game. It says, ‘Discover where you can fit all of these tools because they give GRD,’ and implies, ‘Discover where you can fit all of these tools because they will win when used right.’”
If you’ve watched UNIB, you’ve probably noticed the little squares that look kind of like the Evo logo at the bottom of the screen. In the center is a little ring that makes a full loop every seventeen seconds, at the end of which the player with the most complete blocks gains “Vorpal” status. Vorpal grants the player a 10% damage bonus and the ability to use Chain Shift, which pauses time for 40 frames and instantly cancels whatever you were doing. You can use Chain Shift to make pressure safe, do longer Chain Shift-only combos, or simply pause the action to check out what your opponent is doing and respond accordingly. It also grants a large amount of super meter and allows players to use Guard Thrust (an alpha counter-style move) without penalty.
From a game design perspective, GRD is pretty slick, because the rewards aren’t anything guaranteed, but special tech that the player needs to know how to use. It’s not a comeback system in the conventional sense–in fact, it’s not a “comeback” system in any sense, as players are granted GRD for so many things, some of which seem contradictory. You get it for using Assault, but lose it if the Assault is blocked; you lose it for backdashing and gain it for moving forward, but you also get it for blocking; you can even stand and charge it if your opponent isn’t pressuring you.
GRD is confusing, especially at first. Fields, who has been following the game since the early days, shared his initial impressions. “At first, I was honestly afraid the GRD system was going to be clunky and take me out of the game,” he divulges. “I mean, Chain Shift is just so strong a tool to have…but as it evolved, and to the point where I finally got to play the game, GRD really feels like it has its own place in the game but at the same time does not overwhelmingly shift the tides of battle. Your character matchups are still extremely important; knowing what to do and when to do it, being able to sharply execute on command, all of these still matter and GRD is just a visual cue to let you know, ‘Hey guy, good job! Here, have the advantage!’ It’s really cool…that’s the best way I can put it. The GRD bar can show us who’s in control of the match at any given moment, and that control can be taken away in an instant.”
In practice, this changes a lot of other neat things about the game too; remember when I said GRD was like the opposite of a guard gauge? Well, that’s because a guard gauge penalizes you for blocking too much, breaking your guard when you’re caught in pressure that goes on forever, as a way of preventing players from blocking forever. And in this circumstance, the GRD gauge fulfills the same function–but it’s the defender that is rewarded with more resources. “It makes offense choose to go for mixups that do well against shield, like high, low, or grab, instead of being able to easily reset pressure again and again until you flinch and get hit or you’re so asleep you can’t see the grab coming,” says Broweleit.
UNIB’s defensive options build on this dynamic. By pressing D while blocking, you can shield, which allows you to recover from blockstun faster, and if you press it at just the right time you can also push the opponent back at the cost of a little meter. It’s not objectively better than just blocking though; shielding is more like a higher risk/reward version of blocking. If you block wrong while shielding–that is, shield high and are hit with a low (or thrown!)–your Grid breaks and you lose access to the D button and everything associated with it for about five seconds. You can’t gain GRD, can’t assault, and can’t shield for several seconds.
Can beginners get into Under Night In-Birth?
There is no such thing as a beginner-friendly fighting game. Every game pretending to be is a liar. But Under Night In-Birth, unlike other games, is not actively hostile or needlessly complex–it’s both very generous with execution and has a system that, while complicated, indicates very clearly who is in control of the match, and that’s something new players have a hard time reading. It really changes competitive play too–when the ring is about to complete a rotation, the lure of Vorpal will absolutely change how matches play out. So while might seem initially to be more complicated than other fighting games, I think it’s really equally complicated, but a bit more honest about it.
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late is currently available for PlayStation 3 in Japan, and will be officially making its way to North America on March 31.