Guilty Gear 2 Overture Is The Chain of Memories Of The Guilty Gear Series

You know a series is good when it has a weird sequel that's not just an offshoot. That's very much the case with Guilty Gear 2 Overture, the follow up to the original Guilty Gear XX. You might think it's a quirky little spinoff- after all, it's not even a fighting game. But you'd be wrong. It's a fairly big cornerstone of the Guilty Gear setting, laying the foundation for important elements in both Xrd and later Strive. 

All that to say if you've got any love in your heart for Guilty Gear's insane setting, go check out Overture. 

Title: Guilty Gear 2 Overture

Developer: Arc System Works

Publisher: Arc System Works

Platforms: Xbox 360, PC

You Must Construct Additional Pylons/You Must Cling Together

So what genre, you might ask yourself, would series creator Daisuke Ishiwatari throw Guilty Gear into if it wasn't a fighting game? The answer: a pseudo-MOBA. Through a bunch of the series in-universe contrivances, Sol Badguy and new character Sin need to fight off a mysterious new enemy using new magic that lets them... create a base... and spawn minions. Sigh, alright. 

The game spends a good amount of time tutorializing you on these concepts, too. You have low-level creeps that are good for capturing bases, while higher-level ones break barriers on enemy installations.

Despite all this, the Guilty Gear core is very much still there. Because characters you do control like Sol or Sin play really well, having regular action combat. For 2007 it's pretty decent, combining a lot of core Guilty Gear mechanics with more basic character action stuff. I mean, double tapping the jump button makes Sol airdash, and you even have Roman Cancels (albeit called Potential Cancels in this game). 

While a bit tricky you can even do air combos- which is a lot more than a lot of modern action games tend to let you do. The combat itself is definitely of its time, though. Similar to Devil May Cry you can hold a lock-on button to access different moves, including familiar ones like Sol's Volcanic Viper or Bandit Revolver.

It's such a telling peace of where Arc System Works' expertise lies. My favorite sequences in the game's campaign are the one-on-one bossfights because they don't use the MOBA system. The problem when you have such good action combat is you get impatient to do things like escorting creeps or defending your home base. Most Sol mains don't even have the sense to block on wakeup, now you're telling me I've got to kite responsibly when my heart yearns for more Volcanic Viper? 

The Missing Link In  The Ghain Of Memories

If you're one of the many who jumped into Guilty Gear via Strive, I can't tell you enough how important Overture is to the experience. From the introduction of Sin to the concept of Valentines, this game is Guilty Gear's own Chain of Memories. Literally, fundamental concepts are touched on here that would become a bedrock of the series worldbuilding.

More importantly, it's also just drenched in that 2000s attitude that defines a lot of older Guilty Gear aesthetic. It's weird seeing Sin be less of a goofball here- he's a punk, and feels much more like he should be stealing Sol's cigarettes instead of asking for Sugar Water. 

Even for a game that's almost 20 years old, Overture just looks really cool. The models aren't the cleanest, sure, but it's the closest I feel we've gotten to having that kind of grungey style that defines a lot of Daisuke's work. It's a great glimpse into how malleable the Guilty Gear series is, as even Sol looks closer to a typical fantasy hero despite commanding a legion of anthropomorphized motorcycle engines. The atmosphere is also unmistakably Guilty Gear- every hype moment is met with an equally hype soundtrack, complete with letimotifs you may recognize in later games.

Guilty Gear 2 Overture Verdict 

If you're a Guilty Gear fan, I highly recommend checking out Guilty Gear 2 Overture. It's such an interesting pocket of the game's history, with a lot of the visual flair of the older titles and the kind of innovative spirit that you'd see in later ones.

Of course, this enjoyment is not without caveats. It's a game from 2007, and even by that decade's standards its ideas err on the eccentric side. It may have great music and cool art but don't ever let yourself forget that for some reason the sequel to one of the coolest fighting games was somehow a strategy game. 

Still, if you wanna truly get just how wild Guilty Gear as a series is, check out Guilty Gear 2 Overture. The game recently received Korean and Brazilian Portuguese language support too, so even Arc System Works feels like it's a game you should check out to make full sense of the events of Guilty Gear Strive. 

Game reviewed on PC. Review code provided by Arc System Works