Arc System Works released the Guilty Gear Strive Team of 3 Mode Beta Test over the weekend. After Dragon Ball FighterZ and BlazBlue Cross Battle made their way onto consoles, the company has had its fair share of tag team madness. For what was released, there were some interesting things to look forward to once this is fully released. This mode was teased in the winter last year from Arc Systems Works.
The Team of 3 Beta didn’t need players to own Guilty Gear Strive. Everyone was available for use. Instead of one player controlling three characters, each player controlled one character. Rooms had 6 players. The setup is a main character with two assist characters. The health bar, tension, et al, however, are shared amongst the team, which separates it from traditional tag team fighters. In a sense, it’s more akin to earlier Street Fighter Alpha dramatic battles. The tutorial walks you through the system pretty well.
Each character has 3 base assists. There are other assists that each character has such as fire and poison. Each assist comes with cooldowns. Each of these can be fired off with a cooldown to stop spamming other assists and the original one separately. Wind literally pushes characters to the edge of the screen, for one. These were preset for now, with a possibility of picking which item assists will be available separately per character. I still don’t REALLY know what the little Chimaki does, but seeing Faust’s Afro attack available to all, is a nice touch.
Permission To Tag
Tagging characters in can only be done once for fights per character. Once the tag is initialized, the main has to accept the tag. If a tag is accepted, the character comes in for some seconds to make an entrance before the original character leaves. It’s from the ground instead of from a jump kick. If a wall break is activated during the tag, the tagged partner will stay on regardless of how long they still have to come in as an assist. If a character is tagged in, they will remain the main until tagged out. This even stays per round.
Team of 3 was good, dirty fun. Despite the cooldowns being present, it can at times be a bit more hectic if all characters are firing off. The camera pans out to reveal distance, so that’s a plus. The cooldown timers don’t affect each other, which can get cluttered pretty fast. Isuka’s 4 player mode has nothing on what Team of 3 is potentially bringing to the table. A possible gripe would be how the system handles connection issues in a match, which was to continue the action with pauses. Better to just close it off. It does get confusing to see all this going on and the lack of communication with random players does beg the question of organization. I haven’t seen any duplicate character teams, yet according to EventHubs, this is a possibility. 3 Slayers already sounds like a nightmare.
Sajam has a video out, from HiFight, on it which gives you a brief look as to how things will get.
3v3 Gaminghttps://t.co/dFDwZhg3zl pic.twitter.com/WZIGIaU2B8
— HiFight(ハイファイト) (@HiFightTH) July 27, 2024
There is no clear release date for this, but it’s reported to be here sometime in Season 4, according to the Evo 2024 announcement.
