I've played a lot of fighting games over the years, and I regret not getting back into the previous Melty Blood title when it was accessibleI've played a lot of fighting games over the years, and I regret not getting back into the previous Melty Blood title when it was accessible to the West. I had managed to grab it nearly a decade ago and fell in love with it just from a single-player perspective.
Melty Blood: Type Lumina is very similar to the previous game, a high-mobility, high-combo oriented fighting game. It's very approachable for newcomers, though the combo trails near the end for characters are needlessly harder, and you're better off learning easier ones from the Internet.
The fighting in general is very satisfying, and has several different mechanics to have interesting exchanges and things to consider during the match. The Magic Circuit (super meter) can be used activate a Guilty-Gear style "Burst" that knocks the opponent away, while giving you a draining meter that restores your health, while still giving you access to all your supers. There's another "Blood Gauge" meter for enhanced specials, and can be cancelled to enter a temporary buffed state with its own set of perks. All in all, it's just fun to actually play the game in this.
Single player-wise, it's got a few different modes to do with each character, which is fine. Story-mode is lacking, as you only get a three exchanges of dialogue per character's story. There's not much else to really cover there.
Multiplayer has two main modes: Ranked and Player matches. Ranked matches are simple, just queue for it to try and match you with an opponent, and the two of you fight. Player matches are held in lobby rooms, which works well enough, though the players in those rooms can be of wildly different experience-levels.
Strangely, while Ranked does have a "RP score" to track your status in the rankings, but it and the "unranked" Player matches influence your overall Grade, which goes from E to S+. This can be a bother if you want to learn other characters in online matches, as you'll be sacrificing your grade as you learn. Ultimately, grade doesn't seem to matter that much as a result.
What mostly knocks Melty Blood down a bit is the netcode. Online play can be all over the place, but when you get a bad connection fight, it can be downright unplayable even with the rollback netcode. There's also the Rapid Beat mechanic that is a great accessibility tool for newcomers, but it quickly just becomes a punishment to button mashers. Finally, while it doesn't seem fair to compare the start-from-scratch new game, it lacks the variety that was in the previous title, which had been going strong for 8 years in-between its first and last versions.
Overall, I applaud Melty Blood for being a "High Floor, High Ceiling" kind of fighting game. While many franchises have been simplifying their games to lower the skill ceiling in order to make things less daunting on new players, Melty Blood gives newcomers a wide-variety of simple-to-use, hard-to-master tools to enjoy the game. I definitely recommend it, even if it's only spot at EVO is in the restroom.… Expand