BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II Review

Back in 2008, Arc System Works released BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger on home consoles, with the follow-up BlazBlue: Continuum Shift (and its upgrade Continuum Shift II) two years later. Since its original release, the series has become immensely popular and spans almost every platform in one form or another. After successfully releasing a portable version of Calamity Trigger on the Sony PSP, Arc System Works and Aksys Games have teamed up again to bring over the portable version of Continuum Shift II to North America. So the question remains: Will Continuum Shift II on the Sony PSP continue the success of the original and is worth the upgrade?

Continuum Shift II on the PSP is an enhanced version of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, containing all of the content of the home version along with all of the DLC characters and a new gameplay mode entitled "Abyss", which will be explained later. For those who are not familiar with the franchise, BlazBlue's battles are 2D, one-on-one matches that include a variety of anime-inspired characters that range from vampires to classy knights and even the token "boobie lady" character. Each character has a weak, medium and strong attack as well as a "Drive" attack specific to each character. The Drive attacks help to extend the abilities of each character's fighting styles, such as draining an opponent's life with a successful strike.

BlazBlue also features two unique special combo attack systems entitled Distortion Drives and Astral Heats. Both are powered by a "Heat Gauge" which is increased as the player successfully lands and receives attacks, among other various conditions. The amount depends on the character, but all of the Distortion Drives take a specific amount of heat to be successfully performed and can be used when defeating one's opponent, which is called a "Distortion Finish". The latter is a special and extremely flashy combo that can be activated only under specific conditions. And for those who find all this too complicated to remember, Arc System Works has included a "Stylish" control option in addition to the default "Technical" option which strings together combos and special attacks for you at the cost of having a much smaller moveset poll to work from.

But enough about the particulars of the series as a whole (which can be found in our review of the original portable version) – let's get onto what's in this version of the game. Generally, when one thinks of fighting games on portable systems, they think of an extremely downgraded experienced when it comes to the controls. Thankfully in this case this couldn't be farther from the truth. The controls are exceptionally smooth, even on a PSP-1000, thanks to a toggle option in the game's settings menu which allows for a little more leniency when performing the diagonal motions on the d-pad (analog stick support isn't included like most traditional console fighters likely due to the design of the PSP's analog stick). Local multiplayer (online through options such as the PS3's Ad-Hoc party) performs admirably well, although PSP-1000 owners should note that playing against a PSP-2000 or PSP-3000 owner will induce frame-clipping to keep the inputs in-sync. It isn't a huge issue and there wasn't much Arc System Works could do due to the PSP-1000's lower RAM, but for those who care about that issue and have the original version of the handheld should keep this in mind.