YMMV / BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Towards the end of Chapter 3 of Episode UNIB, Hyde and Gordeau have defeated Blake and Makoto. The latter pair proceed to retreat. Afterwards, this is what the former pair have to say:
    Hyde: Sheesh... Those girls were crazy...
    Gordeau: Heh, I thought they were fun...
  • Yu and Yuzuriha's win quote is uh... a little suggestive. It brings to mind the ski trip incident from Persona 4 Golden.
    Yuzuriha: You're young, you could be more aggressive! Really get in there!
    Yu: I guess I just need more courage?
  • Weiss and Yukiko have some unfortunately chosen words after they defeat an opponent, especially if that opponent is male:
    Yukiko: Done already?
    Weiss: I feel so let down.
  • Rachel and Hilda fall into the same boat, but knowing them, it's intentional.
    Rachel: Your stamina is clearly lacking.
    Hilda: And your rhythm is abysmal. How embarrassing.
  • Susanoo and Azreal's win quote mentions 'Divine Punishment', referring to Susanoo fighting Azreal. But Azreal's response makes it sound like he's a masochist.
    Azreal: Yes! Give me all the punishment you've got! I won't let any of it go to waste, God!
  • Azrael and Elizabeth's win quote showcases the former's Blood Knight tendencies coming out after seeing how powerful the latter is. He demands a battle with her and she eagerly accepts. However, it sounds less like they want to fight and more like they want each other like no tomorrow, as Azrael sounds lewd as all hell, while Elizabeth sounds flustered and ever so willing!
    Azrael: This hunger's killin' me! Bring out everything you got! No holdin' out on me now, I'll devour you whole!
    Elizabeth: Ah, I can hear his heart racing with excitement... Is this how I find the "answer"? Then I will devour everything on the table, plates and all!
• Americans Hate Tingle: Yumi getting in has had generally less than enthusiastic responses from western Senran Kagura fans (which was already a point of frustration with them a while) despite being bar none the most popular character in her home franchise in Japan. This is especially noticeable because the actual series protagonist, Asuka, was not included in favor of Yumi, thus making Senran Kagura the only series represented in Cross Tag Battle to not feature its protagonist character.
• Anticlimax Boss: The Final Boss of Episode Extra, Susanoo. It's a two-on-one fight, but unlike all the other final boss fights in Episode Mode, there's nothing that makes it any more challenging or special than a regular fight, making it very easy as a result. Kinda justified, though, given it's a copy of the real Susanoo with only 3% of his power.
• Awesome Music:
  • We've got music from Daisuke Ishiwatari, Shoji Meguro, Raito and Jeff Williams all in one game. How can this soundtrack NOT be godlike?
  • As of the moment, tracks from all four series are being recycled for Cross Tag Battle, with a few new ones for the character select and such, but the tracks are still amazing and fit into the game well. Even the RWBY tracks which haven't been in a fighting game before, such as "Red Like Roses Part II".
  • As far as original tracks are concerned, "Crossing Fate" (the game's main theme) is just chock full of awesomeness from start to finish, perfectly capturing the epic concept of the four franchises crossing over with one another in one big clash. To take the theme to the next level, there's four distinct variations to represent each franchise:
    • BlazBlue's version is that classic Daisuke Ishiwatari epic rock sound that we've come to know and love, which was actually compared by fellow ASW composer, Norichika Satou.
    • Persona 4's version tones the guitar down to let the violins take centre stage, combined with a touch of piano from "Pursuing My True Self", and most likely nods to the music style in the Arena games by Atsushi Kitajoh.
    • Under Night's version takes an alternative approach, with a techno/club sound reminiscent of Raito's style, bearing a slight resemblance to Hyde's theme, "Scraper Sky High", in some places.
    • RWBY's version opens with a soft piano intro and then transitions into a triumphant live guitar via Jeff Williams' usual style of music for RWBY in general.
  • Another track in this game that hasn't been in a fighting game before? "Shadow World" from Persona 4 Golden. Cross Tag also features the original PS2 opening for Persona 4, "Pursuing My True Self".
  • Like in previous games, Astral Heats are accompanied by an epic song in the background that depends on which series the character hails from. BlazBlue characters have "Crossing Fate"^note specifically the BlazBlue version of it noted above, Persona characters (from P4A) have "The Fog (Knockout ver.)"^note which was the song used for Instant Kills in the original Persona 4 Arena while Adachi (from P4AU), at the moment, has "Time to Make History"^note which was the song used for Instant Kills in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. Under Night characters have "Unknown Actor"^note the opening theme for the console version of Exe:Late[st] and RWBY characters have "This Will Be the Day"^note the opening theme for Volume 1. Other franchises such as Arcana Heart has the "Arcana Heart 3" Opening theme, Senran Kagura (which turned out to be Yumi's personal theme, Grandfather's Wish), and Akatsuki Blitzkampf which has "War End"^note the credits theme to Akatsuki Blitzkampf.
  • The theme for the final boss, "SYSTEM," is nothing short of breathtaking.
  • The song for the True Ending's credits sequence, "Resonance", is full of feelings of triumph, excitement, and pure awesome.
  • 2.0 gives us a new piece; "Turning Fate". This song will get your hype blazing for the new characters, with all 7 fates crossing.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: You will see Ruby, Es, and Gordeau often in online play. Very often.
• Contested Sequel: The game is praised for having surprisingly fun mechanics, a versatile range of characters and essentially being the anime fighting game equivalent of Super Smash Bros., but some players have had issues with the "simplification" of various characters' unique abilities and the game's overreliance on DLC.
• Crossover Ship:
  • All four of these franchises are notorious for their crack pairings (Ragna and Yu have been paired with EVERYONE in their home series and RWBY has a ship name for every couple you can think of). Now they're all together in a single game that relies on a tag team system of two characters. In fact, Ragna and Ruby was a fairly popular pairing even BEFORE this game was announced (even having a ship name ^note most of the time it's "Bloodrose," others prefer "Cookie Reapers" and fan art), as was Jin x Weiss. Unfortunately, despite the popularity of Jin X Weiss (and their similarities), they actually don't have special interactions in the vanilla game.
  • One ship that this game launched, on the other hand, was Ruby x Rachel, due to their names being similar (starting with the letter R and being two syllables), both having a rose theme, and the two even sharing the same birthday (October 31st aka Halloween). Comes with a fair amount of Squick when one considers that Ruby is only fifteen while some of the people she is shipped with are much older, however. ^note When considering the BlazBlue cast at least. The Persona 4 cast and a majority of the Under Night In-Birth cast are around the same age as the RWBY cast, making it less squicky. But then again, she has been shipped with worse. ^note Not that that makes it any better.
  • Another ship the game launched is Yosuke/Makoto. Both characters have their own share of bad luck, but aside from that the two show up with each other in the game's intro, and while Yosuke is concerned about his well-being at first, Makoto winds up growing on him. It helps that, aside from Yu, Makoto is one of the few characters who doesn't give him the slightest disrespect, intentional or otherwise.
  • There's also been a lot of growing interest in Yu/Weiss because of their surprisingly friendly chemistry.
  • Orie is the only character Jin does not insult or demean at all. Helps that they have a similar sense of duty and justice, and Orie probably reminds him of Tsubaki, Jin's childhood friend from his series.
  • Episode Under Night certainly gives Hyde a lot of options by the end, the main ones being Ruby (who he pairs off with against Yosuke & Chie and has an interaction with during Episode P4A's ending), Weiss (who he saves from Azrael and Carmine), and Yukiko (who he helps save from Noel's curry).
  • Carmine's far from a nice guy, so it's rather surprising that Yukiko has the most affectionate interactions with him. His flustered reaction to her and synergy the two have in-game (Yukiko's healing off-setting Carmine's health sacrifice and giving him some long-range options) adds more fuel for the ship.
  • Naoto Kurogane is essentially built like an anime harem protagonist, so he gets a lot of shipping moments in the Extra Episode. The biggest frontrunner is probably Yumi, however.
• Epileptic Trees: After Senran Kagura and Akatsuki Blitzkampf were added to the roster, fans noticed that the current set-up of the colored squares that represent each franchise looks partially incomplete and fail to form a proper diamond that the game had pre-2.0. Alongside the reveal that all the representatives of those series would share a row on the character select screen with Heart (with the color and series logo changing depending on who is highlighted), this led to the birth of a fan theory that at least two more franchises will join the roster at some point in the near future.
• Fan Fic Fuel: If this game didn't have enough fuel, then High School AU fans will really enjoy Episode P4A's ending where several of the characters turn up in Yasogami High School.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The game has picked up the nickname BlazBlue: M.U.G.E.N.
  • A more derogatory nickname that's popped up is ArcSys Fighting Jam due to all the recycled assets.
  • Some fans have come up with team names for specific character pairings, such as "Team Rose" for Ruby/Rachel (in which that one became an ascended one via pre-battle character interactions) and "Ice Queens" for Jin/Weiss. The team names basically double as ship names as well. There's even a spreadsheet dedicated to recording nicknames for all possible pairings.
  • Gordeau Cross Tag Battle — referring to how Gordeau has easily become the most-used character out of the base roster.
    • Gordeau himself has gotten the nickname "Black Scythe Bastard" from fans and detractors online after Ragna referred to him as such in the BlazBlue episode.
• Game-Breaker: Discounting individual characters, two of these stood out from the beta. The first was that a team of Makoto and Gordeau was discovered within the first few hours to have a touch of death capable of killing most of the cast. The second was that a team of Ragna and Jin has an infinite in the corner that, while being unable to kill on a full health character due to damage scaling, can timer stall through use of Rags' Blood Scythe and Jin's Centralfiction 3C-turned-2C.
  • Later into the series' lifespan, solo infinites were discovered. While they do eventually end up dealing next to no damage due to how the combat system works (barring supers, which have guaranteed minimum damage), they're still infinites that can timer stall. Unsurprisingly, many tournaments banned the use of them after they were discovered.
  • If someone manages to look hard enough and/or setup a team comp for it, they can effectively land touch of death combos on anyone, and with possibly anyone. You just have to set it up just right while also making sure your target can't escape it.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Actively attempted. According to an interview, Arc System Works is apparently doing all it can to make this Japanese game appeal to overseas fans. It paid off, as the game is fairly popular in the US, despite being looked down upon as a mediocre party fighter in Japan.
  • And not only is the game making a return for Evolution Championship (EVO) 2019 as one of the nine main games, it is also one of the four Sunday games (that is, the finals are taking place on the last Sunday of the tournament). This places it alongside Street Fighter V, Tekken 7 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and it (not quite without controversy) beat out massive games like Mortal Kombat 11 and Dragonball Fighter Z for that spot. That speaks volumes about this game's appeal to western audiences.
• Good Bad Bugs: After the game's release, it was discovered that there's a bug that makes your assist character invulnerable when they're out. This was abused in EVO...by Japanese players, since it wasn't discovered outside Japan before then. Unsurprisingly, people were upset and suspected that it wouldn't have happened if the game wasn't rushed for the tournament.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Are you the main character of your series? Then congratulations, you are automatically on this list, in particular:
    • Hyde's attacks have a lot of reach and little wind-up despite their lag, and the ease of which to execute combos with him lets him pump out damage easily. He also has a very safe poke tool in Dark Lotus, both the special move version on the ground and the jumping C version (which was originally a special move in his home game), which allows him to zone/strike an enemy from their respective angles without getting up in their face for a free combo if he whiffs it. To mention his iconic 3C-turned-2B is a godlike anti-air as ever, with him being able reverse beat/chain into his 2A to lessen its recovery on hit which adds to his fundamentally powerful toolkit. Oh, and he does chip damage on all of his sword-based attacks, you know, in case fighting against him wasn't hard enough, especially if he activates Resonance Blaze.
    • Ruby combines Hyde's extreme combo potential with long standard reach on her hitboxes, unmatched mobility, multi-projectile special moves, and attacks that are very unsafe to switch into while being combo-ed. Her voice acting makes her even more obnoxious to fight. Oh and most irritatingly, most of her high hitting combos are brain dead easy to learn since almost all of them are simply auto combos give or take an assist or two.
    • Yu Narukami is arguably the best of the original Persona 4 characters, just as good as he used to be. He has just as many simple tools that Jin has but with an incredible crouch B (once again, much like Hyde's) that acts as a solid anti-air, more anti-air options than one, combo potential, and his two supers are incredible, Ziodyne pushes back and is a great long range punish while Cross Slash is just as good, if not better, than it was in P4A/U. Add on his powerful assists and you have a character who is solid in every area.
    • On the subject of the protagonists, who could forget Ragna the Bloodedge himself? He's usually middle tier in his home games, but few characters made the jump to tag-based fighting as cleanly as him. His Glass Cannon status is no more, having received the average amount of health for the cast, and retains the Life Drain effects of his Drive, turning him into a Lightning Bruiser of the highest order capable of rushing down his opponent from any and every angle. He also has a fantastic assist in Hell's Fang and Blood Scythe, which can be used as both a zoning tool and a very effective combo extender. All of this compounded by how damn simple he is to use, and how easily he can take off half your health in one combo.
  • Gordeau has regained his top spot since his massive nerfing in UNI[ST]. Almost every player uses him for his long and fast attacks on top of his meme-creating, hilariously broken Grim Reaper Assist. Beware if he's paired with Azrael or Makoto as those teams have Yukiko-grade touch of death combos. ^note Yukiko has 14K HP and the combos in question inflicts a wee bit shy of 15K; if Yukiko (or anyone else with 14K HP) facetanks the thing from start to finish, they're as dead as disco.
  • Jin is also hated for his ability to spam near-instant screen-filling supers (especially during Resonance Blaze) that do absurd chip damage even if they're blocked. He can also perform a Yukiko-grade touch of death combo all by himself in Level 4 Resonance Blaze. Not to mention his solid and easy combos and powerful assists and you have someone who can be one of the most powerful anchors in the game.
  • Nu-13 and Vatista. They were both Difficult, but Awesome back in their home series, and because BBTAG has a significant Sequel Difficulty Drop, they are unbelievably broken for Long-Range Fighters.
  • Mitsuru. Anyone who have had the pleasure to fight her in P4A will be glad to know that she's basically back to how she was there. Long reaching normals, strong moves, great assists and the mirror shield. In particular are her ice shard assist which can be used for fantastic lockdown.
  • Yuzuriha. Extremely long range normals and a strong anti-air game makes her really strong if that was her only strong qualities. What makes her particually good are her high damage and combo confirmation and finally her sword stance gives her a lot of trick play options. The only real trouble players may have is her skill gap, she is not easy to play.
  • Within tournaments, the team of Ruby/Gordeau has become the most hated team in the game. Gordeau's extremely strong and long-range assists combined with Ruby's mobility and easy combos makes the team a particularly popular pick for competitors, and they have won several major tournaments including EVO 2018, CEOtaku 2018, and Revolution 2018 (the first tournament of Arc System Works' ArcREVO World Tour). Even after the 1.30 balance patch nerfed Ruby, the team still dominates, and there has been no word of any more major nerfs for the two characters.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • To those familiar with his home series, Hyde is jokingly considered to be the love child of Ragna and Yu. Now he's in a crossover fighting game with both of them.
  • RWBY has been noted as taking several cues from Arc System Works games, be it through story elements or just blatant references. Now Ruby is in an Arc System Works fighting game, and her Japanese voice actress even voices one respective character in two of the crossed-over series! ^note Hayami is the voice actress of Mai Natsume and Orie.
  • This video from 2015 crosses RWBY's battle with Roman Torchwick's Paladin mech in Volume 2 with the Persona 4 battle GUI and normal battle theme, "Reach Out to the Truth." Considering that that theme is also Narukami's Leitmotif, it will be playing in many battles between him and any of the RWBY cast.
  • The first gameplay footage of Ruby shown off has her in her default color palette teamed with Ragna going against another Ruby in her blue color palette teamed with Jin. It's Red vs. Blue all over again!
  • A BlazBlue webcomic known as Blazen!, which already crossed BlazBlue over with sister series Guilty Gear at times (being, in part, a continuation of the author's work on a previous webcomic, Holy Zen!), started doing Persona 4: Arena crossovers when the assets become available. Perhaps if they show up to the fight, this means Hazama and the Boundary Bros. ^note Hakumen and Arakune can meet some of Persona 4 (and possibly Persona 3)'s "fair maidens"!
    • And now that Hazama's been confirmed, we are reminded of this gem from Blazen!'s "Back in the Saddle"...
      Hazama: They call sex 'social links' here!
  • BlazBlue has a Nico Nico Douga radio show known as BlazBlue Radio (BlueRadio or BuruRaji for short) hosted by Tomokazu Sugita (Ragna), Kanako Kondo (Noel) and Asami Imai (Tsubaki). Before this game was announced, Saori Oonishi (Phonon) and Showtaro Morikubo (Yosuke) had already made appearances on the show.◊ Mikako Takahashi (Heart) had also appeared on the show prior to Arcana Heart being added to the roster.
  • Es was one of the characters in Central Fiction with a color palette based on RWBY, Ruby Rose in her case. Now she and Ruby are both playable in the same game, and Es still has her Ruby palette.
    • And now, Weiss has seemingly copied Es's hairstyle (sans ahoge) in her home series
  • This video that came out in 2015: a BlazBlue: Chronophantasma combo music video set to "Time to Say Goodbye" from RWBY.
  • With Aegis's inclusion, she can finally have a re-match with Noel after their first encounter. It also means that, with Tager at her side, this can now happen.
  • It's been a running gag among the RWBY fandom about the argument whether it counts as anime or not. Now, RWBY will be animated in anime-style thanks to the cinematic intro.
    • Amusingly, in BuluRaji NEO, Ami Koshimizu refers to RWBY as an anime^note Technically not an inaccurate statement since in Japan "anime" simply refers to any animated work, but in the West it is interpreted specifically as Japanese or Eastern animation.
  • There's a Super Smash Bros. for Wii U mod that gives Pit a skin based on Ruby Rose. That was released long before Ruby had her own fighting game debut here.
  • Modding in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy made it possible to have Ragna cross swords with Yu and Ruby before this game made it happen for real.
  • In the fifth volume of RWBY^note the last released before Cross Tag Battle, it was revealed that the headmaster of Beacon Academy, Ozpin, is an immortal who jumps to a new host every time his old one dies, which is a very similar situation to Linne's.
    • Even better, Volume 6 revealed that his enemy, Salem, is not only someone he used to be close with, but also indestructible and immortal, much like Linne's relationship with her brother Kuon.
  • Jubei's inclusion here means that, ironically, he's the first of the Six Heroes to make it into the game after years of being snubbed from BlazBlue's character roster. (While Hazama and Platinum were announced before him, it is heavily implied that Hazama was not hosting Terumi for this game, and it was not announced at that time if Platinum would be hosting Trinity, which she does.)
  • Weiss has been noted to be based off Snow White, being an heiress with white hair, white clothes, and ice abilities. This game then decides to go one further by making one of Weiss's palette swaps◊ be based off the Disney version of Snow White.
  • In Persona 5, Joker can wield Izanagi (aka Yu's initial Persona) if one buys the DLC to do so. Come to this game, one of Yu's color palettes have him dressing up like Joker himself with Izanagi looking like Arsene (aka Joker's initial Persona) causing Yu and Joker to both wield each other's Personas in a way.
  • This fan art of Ragna wearing the Yasogami High School uniform manages to be this given how Chie states a line about him wearing the school uniform in the P4A trailer of the game.
  • In Episode P4A, Kanji was extremely disappointed that he couldn't pet Jubei. Later, Kanji was announced to be in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth with Morgana from Persona 5, giving him a second chance at petting a talking cat.
  • Speaking of Morgana from Persona 5, that cat has gotten an infamous reputation for constantly telling Joker to go to sleep. In Linne's interaction with Mika (who has the same English voice actress as Morgana), Linne told Mika that it is past her bedtime. So, in a way, Morgana got told to go to bed after all the times he told Joker to go to sleep.
  • Yang's battle theme "I Burn" has lyrics comparing her to a Super Saiyan and saying that the Human Torch and Johnny Blaze are posers compared to her. This becomes pretty funny when one considers the relationship between this game, Dragon Ball Fighterz (made by the same company), and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite (direct competitor and Johnny Blaze is in that game's roster). For bonus points, her theme song in BBTAG uses the portion of "I Burn" that includes those lyrics, and they're left intact to boot.
  • Flash Games once hosted an official April Fool's Blazblue x Arcana Heart Crossover. With Heart's addition, it has become reality.
  • You'd never expect Seth and Labrys to get married, did you?
  • A long time after this part of the Persona 4 Endurance Run became a thing, when Blitztank gets released, you can, once again, make Chie Satonaka Galactic Punt a tank into orbit.
  • Casey Lee Williams cosplayed as Neo before she became her voice actress.
  • A promotional stunt involved Heart going on a date with Ragna. Here, shippers can consider this game as them becoming a full on Battle Couple.
  • With the "RWBY" cast appearing in the opening sequence, it won't be the last time they appear in pure anime form.
  • Crossing over with Heartwarming in Hindsight, Teddie's interaction with Merkava in their shared victory quote shows that Teddie thinks he and Merkava might make a good pair. Under Night's sequel, [Sys:Celes] would have Merkava turn human again in his good Arcade Mode ending, albeit barenaked, much like Teddie was when he first showed his human body.
• Ho Yay:
  • Chie uses a rather... interesting choice of words to describe her first meeting with Makoto after they fight. Also, not long after she says that, she calls Makoto "cute".
    Chie: Well, the moment I made eye contact with that Makoto girl, I felt this tense, burning feeling in my chest...!
  • Mai's introduction to the cast is accompanied by her special interaction with Makoto, with the latter hugging the former before the match.
  • In Susano'o and Azrael's victory quote, Susano'o threatens to give Azrael divine punishment. Azrael's a bit too happy to accept it, and his enthusiasm can raise a few eyebrows.
    Susano'o: You shall feast on your divine punishment. A gift far exceeding what a stray dog deserves.
    Azrael: Yes! Give me all the punishment you've got! I won't let any of it go to waste, God!
• I Knew It!:
  • Many fans called Weiss from RWBY getting into the game months before she was revealed in October 2017, given that she's Ruby's partner.
    • This goes double for Linne's inclusion as Hyde, while being the main character, is basically her lackey.
  • A Redditor said that he felt that RWBY would get less roster representation than the other series. With the game being labeled as "complete" since the 2.0 Expansion Update, RWBY only has 5 characters out of the game's full roster of 53.
  • At least one person had the foresight to expect Gordeau's arrival immediately after the EVO 2017 teaser trailer, something that would be proven true five months later in November. They also specifically focused on Gordeau's infamous Grim Reaper special, which was referenced by the developers giving Gordeau a 6-star "Grim Reaper" stat in place of Luck.
    BlaiseGod: PREPARE FOR THE MOST IGNORANT ASSIST IN THE HISTORY OF TAG FIGHTERS
  • Due to the RWBY cast having dual audio options, some fans were convinced that the game would receive a dub, although some were concerned with BlazBlue: Central Fiction and Under Night In-Birth not being dubbed spilling over here.
  • Just about everyone assumed that Ruby would fangirl over the Impossibly Cool Weapons of the non-RWBY cast, particularly when it came to Ragna and his Blood Scythe. Unsurprisingly, this is exactly what happens when Ragna and Ruby are teammates.
  • Due to the color representing it, and the fact that the game is made up mostly of reused assets from games Arc System Works either developed or published, fans suspected Arcana Heart to be the fifth franchise introduced in Season 2 before it was actually revealed at EVO Japan 2019.
  • When a special Japanese-only retail version of the Special Edition was revealed, it was also announced that 19 stamps representing the BlazBlue side of the roster was to come with it... except that at the time, only 17 BlazBlue characters were known to the general public and the two unknown fighters were labelled as "??", all but confirming that two BlazBlue fighers would join the roster when the new update launched. This theory was later given more credence when Arc System Works released several acryllic artworks of character sprites during the Tokyo Game Show that consisted of fighters represented in the game thus far, except for two: Terumi and Celica. Later turned out to be half-true: Celica was confirmed, but Terumi was not — his alternate form Susanoo was.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!:
  • A major complaint about this game is that it is in permanent Stylish mode (Which allows for autocombos with the press of one button), while removing the Technical mode seen in the previous titles, which makes the gameplay shallow in comparison.
  • The CPU is too easy, the Story more is too short, and in general, this game seemed to be directed to a more casual audience despite the lack of core single player content.
  • Despite it being commonly pointed out that Persona 4: Arena and Under Night In-Birth also have combos that can be performed by rapidly hitting a button, both of those games offered extra non-auto buttons to work with. In contrast, this game offers two auto combo buttons, a couple of tag attack buttons, and a partner switch button; this offers zero viable options besides utilizing the auto combo in some way.
    • Thus, with all of this in mind, some would also argue the scheme of the game also teaches players bad habits who go into other fighters coming from this.
  • The attempt to consolidate game mechanics from multiple ArcSys titles under one roof lead to the end result of most characters either getting watered-down versions of their gimmicks or having them stripped of their gimmicks entirely, which has had veterans complaining about ArcSys "dumbing down" the game and making it less mechanically unique or deep compared to any of the original games.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • For many people, the really big draw of Cross Tag Battle will be RWBY characters in a 2D fighting game for the first time ever.
  • Come 2.0, the game drew in more players who just want to see the ridiculousness of a tank being a fighting game character.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: While all four of the protagonists can be viewed as this within their respective home universes, Hyde Kido has only increased this status by being paired up with the likes of Ruby, Weiss, and Yukiko for reasons that are listed above. If anything else, he out-harems Yu Narukami!! ^note They both have special interactions with 10 girls apiece in VS Mode as of the ninth DLC character pack, but Hyde interacted with two more in Episode Mode.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Makoto has very short reach and a very predictable approach game that can be easily countered by a lot of characters, and her damage isn't exactly stellar compared to a lot of characters who have far superior reach. Her assist moves are lackluster, she has the worst sweep in the game, and a lot of her moves can't convert into combos at max range.
  • Kanji has wonky hitboxes with a lot of his attacks, most of which don't hit much harder than other, easier to land moves other characters have at their disposal. Being rather slow in a very fast-paced game doesn't do him any favors either. What would have helped is if they kept the paralysis gimmick from his home game however they scrapped all status effects outside the ones BlazBlue naturally has, thus falls apart against his grappler brothers, whom each kept their gimmicks.
  • Yukiko has low health and unlike the other Long Range Fighters Nu and Vatista, who are perfectly fine at melee range, Yukiko is almost exclusively a ranged character, and a particularly predictable one at that. All P4A characters can suffer from Persona Break, but Yukiko is especially vulnerable to it due to how long and far she can send Konohana Sakuya out for; this often results in her getting punished with continuous minimal damage that can add up the more reckless she is.
  • Speaking of long range characters, Rachel is frankly lost in transition from her home game. A lot of it has to do with the nerfs recieved with her Silpheed drive ability when going from her home game to here, in which it is much harder to pull off. While she fares better than Yukiko, she still has to set up her traps and unlike Naoto Shirogane, doesn't have a lot to cover herself with outside of her assists and is harder to set up. To be fair though, she can have more than one George XIII on the field so her overall gameplan will revolve around him.
  • Weiss requires the use of her glyphs in order to get maximum output which is easier said than done as not only do these glyphs of hers disappear upon her being switched out, but are also highly situational to rely upon. Outside of that she also finds herself lacking in other departments: Her projectiles have such long start-up which make her unsuited for zoning, her combos lack range and can easily whiff if she's too far from the opponent leaving her vulnerable to attack, and both her Distortion skills barely reach full screen that have bad hitboxes and leave vulnerable to be attacked if they whiff. In addition she is heavily assist-reliant for her combo extenders and also has mediocre assists herself, making a very hard character to even consider in high-level play.
  • Noel's transition has been pretty bad in this game; one of her most important neutral tools (her 5B) is locked behind an auto-combo input, while her 6A-turned-5A is both a subpar anti-air and grounded poke due to its angle. Not helping matters is also her midair combos, as her air normals have been awkwardly mapped to the point where she doesn't have too many good air-to-airs like the rest of the cast.
  • Of all of the pre-season 2 characters to come out, Teddie is the absolute worse of the quartet. As with the above, Teddie's status effects are not enabled with his items so he cannot cause the chaos that he is well known for in P4A. But one thing they did keep from P4A was the fact that he does not have an overhead, outside of the universal overhead but players only have to watch out for that move and it's very easy to see. Really, the only thing he has for him is his infamous 5B but there are characters who can match or surpass his baseball bat.
• Memetic Badass: Susanoo rocketed to this position once it was revealed that he would no longer have his specials locked behind seals, on top of the usual reaction to him.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Blake, though it's more like a Memetic Woobie. Blake was already seen as a Memetic Loser in the RWBY fanbase as they saw her to be the least useful and most controversial member. After everything that has happened to her in her home series, she's the subject of even more mockery now that she's the first DLC character for Cross Tag Battle. Some have joked that Ragna has a better life than her at this point.
  • Hyde's been getting this treatment as well. Of the 7 main characters, Hyde is the one that has the least battle experience, yet he boasts a lot. This has earned him a lot of mockery, so much that even Ruby snarks at him. His home series also being the least known/recognized among the four starting series only adds fuel to that fire.
  • Yukiko has been getting this rep due to her status as the players' makeshift punching bag in the beta. As a result, many pictures of Yukiko being badly bruised/beaten up have surfaced. Her status as a Low-Tier Letdown (to the point she's widely considered too be the absolute worst character in the roster) only adds fuel to the fire.
  • Yosuke, given that almost every single one of his unique team combinations barring Yu, Makoto, Naoto Kurogane, Kanji and Teddie (albeit Teddie still acts like a demanding kid with him) all have his teammates talk trash on him or find him hilarious by getting hurt or because of his character quirks.
  • Carmine gets this for how ridiculously edgy his voice actor sounds. He already comes off In-Universe as hard to take seriously, but his "edgy surfer dude" voice sealed the deal.
• Memetic Mutation: Now has its own page!
• Moe: The lobby avatars. Chibi version of characters that have all sorts of cute animations. A lot of them will make your heart melt.
• Narm:
  • In their team outro, Blake complains about how Ragna calls their opponents "small fry" while she worked to keep up with him. The actual context of the line was that his overwhelming power meant that she needed to push herself harder to stay the pace (and given the differences in power between both of them, much less the BlazBlue and RWBY universes, this is true), but her very whiny delivery has caused fans to misinterpret the line as Blake complaining about her life being worse than Ragna's, when even that fails since his entire life borders on Cosmic Plaything levels of horrible.
    Ragna: Tch. Nothin' but small fry.
    Blake: Says you. You don't know what I had to go through.
  • Despite a number of the Under Night In-Birth characters who are natives of Kanzakai actually being Japanese, they don't bother to use honorifics in the English script like with the Persona characters, which makes things quite a bit confusing and/or amusing for interactions between them; the BlazBlue and RWBY characters get a pass however, in that they're from completely different universes that aren't as based on the real world.
  • Carmine's English dub vocals provided by Greg Chun also fall under this. Many argue that, while yes, he is incredibly edgy, his voice sounds way too much like a Gothic surfer dude. Is he a ridiculous character in general? Yes, but some fans state that he is a genuine threat in UNIB and his voice should at least reflect that.
• Narm Charm:
  • Despite the complaints about Carmine's English voice as listed directly above, it started to grow on some people. This was intended for the English direction, as those already familiar with Carmine's personality in the UNIB series knew that he's an edgy try-hard and isn't even taken seriously by his fellow cast members. Chun's hammy performance was just one way to reflect that.
  • With the addition of Susanoo in 2.0, MUST DIE returns in all its brutal, Gratuitous English-y glory.
  • Blitztank. On one hand, it's so silly that a tank is playable. On the other hand, the fact that said tank can combo other characters as well as being susceptible to every possible attack is an unbelievable mix of awesome and hilarious.
• Nightmare Fuel: Merkava is in the game! Yay! His Infinite Worths EXs is back as his Astral Heat! Double yay! It has him pin his opponent to the floor and eat them alive while their blood splatters on the screen, all from a first-person perspective... Yay?
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: In spite of the negative word-of-mouth due to the DLC controversy, even getting a video from Jim Sterling calling out Arc System Works and advising people not to buy the game at launch, the game sold 450,000 copies in the span of two years.
• Porting Disaster: Many reviews on Steam state the PC port is not terribly good, citing that you can't run the game at full screen among other issues that currently need to be addressed soon. However, like Central Fiction on Steam, there's also an improvement mod, which not only boosts the game's performance and changes resolutions, but also addresses the main issue for those having problems running the game (the battle HUD, which usually slows down the game to a crawl) with an option to toggle it on/off. These changes have been reported to usually boost the user's framerate to a stable 60 FPS, even on PCs that don't match the minimum or recommended specs.
  • However, the latest update on the PC (1.12) has introduced "Performance Mode", which probably help ease the performance issues a bit more, but still dependent on the persons PC and specs, and a toggle for sprite filtering. Other stuff such as bugs/glitches could be patched in later updates.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Many were disappointed when Mika was found amongst the datamined characters found a month after the game's release as it added another Token Mini-Moe to the cast and UNI fans felt that other characters from the series like Seth or Hilda should have been added instead. Opinions have shifted once players listened to Cassandra Lee Morris's voice work for Mika, retaining Mika's spunkiness while avoiding making her sound Cute, but Cacophonic. Her fun interactions with other characters also helped endeared her to many, most notably her Bash Brothers relationship with Akihiko. As a result, while fans are still disappointed, they're far more accepting of Mika than they were initially. With both Seth and Hilda being added to the roster, this seems to have dissipated completely.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop:
  • BBTAG deviates from the main series by using more standardized fighting game mechanics as opposed to BlazBlue's unique-but-sometimes-difficult mechanics, such as using a normal super meter instead of the Heat Gauge, the removal of dashing and making running the default movement option for majority of the cast, and the removal of two forms of blocking.
  • For the most part, the returning cast from BlazBlue and P4A is largely comprised of characters who have "simple" unique mechanics (like Sylpheed or Fire Boost) or no unique mechanics at all (Ragna and Yu). Some characters with unique mechanics had their mechanics stripped down or removed completely for the purposes of streamlining (Azrael's weak points, Hazama's Ouroboros, Yosuke's Sukukaja).
  • The game opts for heavily simplified combo controls over complex quarter-circle combinations; most attacks can be performed by simply inputting either 236 (quarter-circle forward) or 214 (quarter-circle back) and a button or button combination, akin to Persona 4 Arena.
  • Hakumen was well-known for having a magatama gauge which basically acted as his primary super meter/heat gauge. It refills automatically on its own and gave one magatama with each successful counter. Because every single one of his specials, meter-based-system mechanics and supers cost a set amount of magatama, Hakumen players mainly relied on the range of his sword and using his Counters on his Drive moves until they accumulated enough magatama to use his more damaging combos. However, in Cross Tag Battle, he shares the same type of super move gauge as with the rest of the cast (with his counter moves filling a big fraction of a gauge and any same-special-cancels costing a skill gauge stock each) and can maintain a more consistent pressure game as his special moves (aside from the EX ones) no longer cost meter by themselves.
  • Vatista is infamous for the insane level of execution required to play her. She is already confirmed to be much easier in this game, even more so than some of the easier characters from other series. Vatista's home incarnation in Under Night In-Birth is widely seen as one of the hardest characters to play in her series. The entirety of her moves are charge moves, even ones that go in the opposite of the usual directions, she even has unconventional directional charges in the air, along with button holding that needs to be done in the middle of combos that make her exceedingly difficult to play on a standard console gamepad. None of this was ported to this game, as Cross Tag only uses quarter-circle motions and has more simplistic universal systems. This also means that she lost a great deal of her more insane tech and unshakable top-tier power by gaining more weaknesses than her opponent relying on the Vatista player to make execution errors.
  • Hilda is notable for being one of the hardest characters to play in her home game, commonly being ranked as being among the likes of Seth and Vatista. Due to the more beginner-friendly design of Cross Tag, she is significantly easier to play as.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Ruby's Astral Heat has been criticized for this (here is but one example). She's supposed to be dragging her opponent through the sky using Crescent Rose, but the fact that she stays right in the middle of the screen for the entirety of the cinematic portion, with only some Speed Stripes to indicate movement, make for a less-than-convincing sense of movement.
  • Somehow, due to the fact that these sprites weren't meant to be fit into a Tag Team perspective, a lot of them end up being very misaligned or flat out missing via not even being on the same plane; this often happens if multiple sprites overlap each other or are too close to each other like so, especially during most dual victory poses and/or Yu's Astral. Other times, due to the tag team nature of the game, sprites can be visibly seen to "teleport" in order to match up with their partner for certain victory poses.
  • Carmine's blood splashes in many of his normals no longer count as separate graphics, meaning they stick to his sprite; his j.C-turned-j.A in particular is a clear example of this.
    • Also in Carmine's case, his laughing win animation doesn't match up to any of his spoken dialogue chosen for it, as the game somehow doesn't use a re-recorded version of his laugh.
  • In the English dub, a majority of characters end up being glitched in their in-battle dialogue on both their intros and/or victory poses where they don't say anything; the Japanese dialogue is left intact. The 2.0 update fixed this, however.
  • In a similar vein, some of the Infinite Worth EXS-turned-Astral Heats for the Under Night cast had their durations extended in order to fit their dialogue, resulting in them having long pauses in their animations where nothing happens.
  • The Snow Town stage from BlazBlue: Chronophantasma already has the road beneath the snow already paved out, thus riding the stage of that unique effect of the fighters being able to pave the snow out of the way themselves.
  • Heart looks quite out-of-place compared to the rest of the cast, due to looking more hand-drawn rather than pixelated. She also has a win animation that seems to wobble in place.
• Superlative Dubbing:
  • While most of the English UNIB cast is well-received, most fans agree that the crowning performance goes to Ian Sinclair as Gordeau, who managed to give him a voice that sounds very laid-back and yet oh so badass at the same time, which perfectly captures Gordeau as a character.
  • Ben Diskin as Merkava has also been universally praised for capturing the inner struggle between his humanity and Void instincts, transitioning seamlessly between a calm yet raspy intellectual tone and a bestial growl with every line of dialogue.
  • Mika's English voice as provided by Cassandra Lee Morris has been very warmly received for sounding spunky and confident while still retaining the comical and hyperactive nature of the character, to the point where it's widely considered by fans to be better than her Japanese voice, which is more high-pitched.
  • More or less applies to the grand majority of the cast, especially for the BlazBlue roster given the controversy that surrounded the lack of a dub for Central Fiction. Patrick Seitz in particular seems to relish returning to one of his most beloved roles in Ragna.
  • Susanoo's dub voice courtesy of Ray Chase has been praised very well. Many consider it to be one of the best performances in the game due to how well he was able to portray the sheer power of Susanoo.
  • Billy Kametz as Naoto Kurogane, who manages to show off both sides of the characer as a Hot-Blooded fighter in combat and for most serious interactions, and as the Only Sane Man subjected to all sorts of slapstick comedy in the Extra Episode.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Naoto Shirogane's Theme, "Seeker Of Truth", has a beginning that is reminiscent of "Tame a Bad Boy", from The King of Fighters XIII
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • Fans who haven't gotten over Central Fiction's lack of an English dub have been sore over the fact that Ruby keeps her original actress who just so happens to speak American English. Not helping is how many found her voice extremely annoying during the first footage of gameplay ASW revealed, to the point that many want the game to have the option to switch it off or switch her to her Japanese voice. Weiss's reveal confirming that all the RWBY reps will have dual-language audio mitigated the complaints about Ruby's English voice acting, but did little to alleviate the overall problem. While the later confirmation that the entire cast, not just the RWBY characters, will be getting an English dub was thankfully enough to assuage most of the community, some fans are still unhappy, as they feel this further rubs salt in the wound about Central Fiction not getting a dub.
  • News from a Famitsu interview with Toshimichi Mori (translated here) that, at present, there are no plans to add any characters from Guilty Gear because its story "hasn't reached a stopping point" despite the series being high in demand for representation within Cross Tag Battle (as it's the predecessor to BlazBlue and saw a resurgence roughly midway through its Creator-Driven Successor's run with Guilty Gear Xrd) ended up souring a lot of fans hoping for a Guilty Gear x BlazBlue crossover (given the mix of Friendly Fandoms and Fandom Rivalry the two series have going on, as well as ASW's previous teasing of the idea for a 2014 April Fools' Day joke).
  • Some aren't happy with the fact that BlazBlue is getting more reps than the other three series on display. While it is technically a BlazBlue Spin-Off to be fair, it's argued that since this is supposed to be a Mascot Fighter for ArcSys and a Massive Multiplayer Crossover in general, that there should be less preferential treatment for BlazBlue. For comparison, there have been ten representatives from BlazBlue of the first twenty characters announced, taking up literally half of the known roster and having as many as the other three series combined. With only four for Persona and Under Night In-Birth, and a mere two for RWBY, there's a bit of a divide as to whether or not this is acceptable. This is exacerbated by the fact that two of RWBY's main characters are relegated to DLC, even if they are free.
  • The announcement that the game would have forty playable characters... of which HALF are Downloadable Content. There are many reasons why this has fans pissed off:
    • The "base" roster of twenty is missing major and beloved characters such as Hakumen, Litchi Faye-Ling, Taokaka, Tsubaki Yayoi, Kanji Tatsumi, Teddie, Naoto Shirogane, Rise Kujikawa, Tohru Adachi, the Persona 3 cast, Vatista, Seth, Orie, Merkava, Hilda, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long (not to mention Team JNPR or any of the villains), among many others. This also means that one half of Team RWBY, the namesake of one of the game's crossover franchises and the one with the least representation, is relegated to DLC. Slightly alleviated with the announcement that both Blake and Yang would be free DLC.
    • The game mostly consists of recycled assets: the sprite work for the BlazBlue and Persona 4 characters is already mostly finished, and the UNIB sprites only need some tweaking to fit, meaning that only the RWBY characters needed to be made from the ground up with original new sprites. This has led some to question why these characters need to be sold separately, when most of the work is already done, or why certain characters end up being omitted.
    • For some, the sheer number of DLC characters is worrying. Though downloadable fighters are nothing new for the genre, the ratio of base-to-DLC at launch is much greater than any recent fighting game. Other games, such as Killer Instinct and Street Fighter V have a similar base-to-DLC ratio of characters, but these games announced their DLC gradually over several "seasons," rather than all at once before launch.
    • After Mori confirmed their plans for the DLC pricing (see Author's Saving Throw above), the fandom split into two groups — one claiming the idea of the game plus DLC being the standard $60 (Despite the fact that the full game is actually $70) at absolute most just about makes up for them locking half the roster behind DLC, and the lower initial price may help newer players ease their way into the game and see whether or not they like it before paying for the rest of the game (think Rainbow Six Siege's Starter Edition). The other group, however, still claims their plan is bollocks, asking why ArcSys didn't just delay the game to make sure everyone was in there at launch (meaning the consumer would end up paying $60 anyway). Remember that, at the time of the game's release, all but four of the game's confirmed universes used recycled assets.
  • No thanks to the aforementioned interview with Mori and VentureBeat, there are some people who are outright annoyed at how the control scheme of the game was made with massive misconceptions about the Western audience in mind, especially thanks to the possible newfound popularity of the YouTuber talking about it. That, and the ambiguity of how the netcode will be handled following a stream of fairly bad attempts in Arc System Works' previous games; not to mention the possible control scheme being a possible new standard for familiar-established IPs in the future.
    • Related to the above, the impression that the overall presentation of the gameplay could've been much better. This video mentions that tournaments officially sanctioned by ASW using demo builds of BBTAG (such as one held at Next Level Battle Circuit) had rounds that ended too quickly, and argues that the plan to invite guests who weren't actually that good at fighting games in the first place would make the presentation of the game a bit more lackluster while also running to counter ASW's efforts to sell potential consumers on the gameplay, which once again seems to display the disconnect that ASW appears to have with its audience nowadays and the difficulty of gauging the actual potential of the game.
• Take That, Scrappy!: In Episode Under Night, Platinum ends up being forced to eat the curry that she made with Noel and Yukiko.
• Tear Jerker:
  • On a meta level, the sheer fact that Monty Oum is unable to see this game due to his passing. Monty was a fan of fighting games and BlazBlue, and it clearly showed in RWBY, but despite everything (and how touching it is to see ASW honor his legacy with this game), the fact still remains that Monty will never see his creations in a fighting game.
  • Platinum and Hazama's intro, where the latter shows his Kick the Dog credentials:
    Trinity: [from inside Platinum] Kazuma... I'm so sorry.
    Hazama: [in a nonchalant tone] I think I'm hearing things, how scary...
  • The fact that Weiss has an alternate colour sprite to represent Pyrrha Nikos makes quite a few RWBY fans cringe considering it's a reference to the fact that, as of the events of Volume 5, both girls have suffered from Impaled with Extreme Prejudice via Cinder (Weiss was saved from dying but only barely, Pyrrha wasn't that lucky). Similarly, Yang has an alternate color based on Baiken from Guilty Gear, a tough-as-nails female samurai who also happens to be missing her right arm. Ouch.
• That One Attack: Yu's Ziodyne Distortion has received this treatment because of how it can travel fullscreen.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The control scheme of the game, while optimal for beginners in a sense, has too many other core mechanics removed in comparison to several of other Arc System Works' fighting games (barring the usual Damn You, Muscle Memory! nitpicks). This seems to already be on its way to splitting the base in the near-future:
  • Auto-run: Nearly all characters cannot walk normally and will only run, which may cause precise-positioning to be very difficult, making maintaining that effective space with footsies without moving up too closely. However, on the flipside, running is now much more acceleration-based while also being able to brake on a whim, but the problem still stands with characters such as Hazama who dash up a certain distance. Adding to this is that auto-run was supposedly added in because double-tapping forward to run was considered too difficult for casual players but they only removed the input for running. Azrael still both walk forward and/or dash forward like previously and all characters back dash and air dash by double-tapping. Because of this the auto-run only limits a player's options since it doesn't actually fix the input problem.
  • Little-to-no command normals. Each character now has only one command normal which severely limits their versatility with normal attacks which instead is normally their original light attack from their home series (e.g. Ragna's 5A being 4A instead); not helping the fact is that the control scheme is effectively limited to 2 basic attack buttons instead of 3 or more.
    • Additionally, causing characters to all have more than one smart/auto-combo akin to Dragon Ball FighterZ, which not only throws established veterans for a loop in terms of muscle memory, but can be quite the controversial issue despite the supposed freedom of cancelling every input of the said combos into nearly any other move of one's choice.
  • The inclusion of a universal two-button reversal attack, which while useful for a majority of characters, is still a questionable decision for characters that didn't really need it if they actually debuted in a game with no universal reversal mechanic (which is a varied-character identity issue).
  • Whenever the throw input is activated, every character always runs up a small distance before they throw. This either makes tick throws much easier to accomplish during pressure-and/or-makes them very difficult to escape said tick throw setups.
  • Despite the supposed reasonable balance buffs, certain characters' personal mechanics were removed, such as Azrael losing his weakpoint mechanic, which is what some people have argued made Azrael unique and interesting (as well as establishing his identity) in the first place (again, another varied-character identity issue).
    • Also, it applies to how certain returning characters' mechanics (especially Drive-based users from BlazBlue) have their unique mechanics mapped to an auto-combo input instead of a single button designed for it, which can cause veterans difficulty in handling their signature mechanics through such a control scheme. Not to mention other characters are arguably streamlined/dumbed down to much greater extents than before.
    • Inversely, it also may have made some characters too strong, such as the Persona users who no longer have to worry about standard Persona Breaks despite instead receiving direct damage upon having their Personas broken in one hit. Azrael as aforementioned, can also land his weakpointed-based hit effects for free and/or at the cost of meter, allowing him to throw out even more damage than expected.
  • Not helping matters is that this control scheme was made with Mori's supposed misconceptions about the Western fighting game audience in mind, which may or may not rustle some jimmies and/or imply a bleak future for certain fighting games that might follow that exact button scheme (or something similar) just for one supposed take on "accessibility".
    • Another side of the argument from those for the game's existence is to "treat it like a different game", as well as opining that the control scheme promotes better usage and/or reliance on the team-based mechanics as compensation compared to other tag-team fighters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In the Story Mode, Yang is heavily Out of Focus throughout story mode, only appearing at the start and the end of the Episode RWBY, with the player never getting to fight her nor use her, causing many fans to believe they could have done more with her. Episode Extra with the 2.0 update slightly rectifies it by having Naoto Kurogane and Yuzuriha fight Blake and Yang at one point.
  • This is more of a missed opportunity, but still deals with the characters. Each character has been recorded saying "BlazBlue" and "Cross Tag Battle" which can be heard on the title screen^* While on the title screen, 2 random characters from the roster will appear, one on the right and the other on the left. One character will say "BlazBlue", then "Cross Tag Battle" is said by the other. With the exception of the 4 RWBY characters, none of the English voices for the remaining characters were recorded saying the title. This was only done for the entire Japanese voice cast, including the RWBY characters. Version 2.0 however has included other characters shouting the title in their English dub voices.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Most fans seem to lament the lack of certain character interactions. While the base roster makes use of good in-universe pairings and a few unique crossovers (Gordeau/Yukiko, Yosuke/Makoto, Tager/Waldstein/Yang/Kanji, Weiss/Nu, any combination of Ragna/Yu/Hyde/Ruby), plus the idea that not every single pair would have dialogue, there are a few team compositions that have little to no interaction at all. ^note However, this only covers intros, outros and victory screens in-battle and some of these characters get interactions of even more depth in Episode Mode. A few of these "missed opportunities" include:
    • Jin and Weiss, given the many similarities between the two to the point where they have been heavily shipped by fans. In fact, that Jin only has unique dialogue with Ragna, Noel, Jubei, Yosuke, Orie and Blake ignores other possible combinations like Makoto ^note one of his classmates from the Academy and someone he treats with some form of respect and Tager ^note like the Ragna example below, Jin isn't friendly with Sector Seven either, not to mention the possibility of other unorthodox teams like the aforementioned Yosuke. What makes this even more hilarious is that both of them have dialogue with Mitsuru and Orie given the similarities they share. This was slightly made up with Version 2.0 with Episode Extra, where the two begrudgingly team-up at one point.
    • Ragna lacks team-up quotes with Hazama (despite being canon enemies to the point where they have a rivalry theme that is carried over here when they team together) ^note this one is a bit justified, though; it's Terumi who's Ragna's Arch-Enemy, not Hazama—their Vs. theme ("Nightmare Fiction") is a holdover from when Terumi and Hazama were merged together and Gordeau (the only other scythe wielder in the game who has similar powers, made slightly worse knowing that Ruby has dialogue with both of them) ^note though at the very least, Gordeau seems to form some kind of alliance with Ragna to fight Ruby and Blake in the Episode BlazBlue campaign.
    • Tager lacks unique dialogue with Azrael or Ragna, despite the former having slaughtered his troop in the past, and the latter having many qualms on working with Sector Seven.
    • Yosuke and Yukiko, despite being part of the Investigation Team. They are the only pairing out of the four default Persona characters that lack one. This is lessened by the release of DLC showing that Kanji doesn't have interactions with Chie, Naoto only having interactions with two members of the Investigation Team (Yu and Kanji), and the fact that having every character combination involving members of the Investigation Team would quickly grow to be too large of a number to expect.
    • Yosuke lacks interactions with Labrys, Adachi and Susanoo, even though he had Ship Tease with Labrys during his story mode in Arena, has a grudge against Adachi for killing his crush and possesses two Personas directly based on the ancient Susanoo mythology.
    • Blake and Makoto lack an interaction, despite having the obvious connection of "half-animal girls that are discriminated against in their universe." Not to mention the fact that Makoto also acts a lot like Yang in terms of personality and fighting style, giving another possible connection. What's even more strange is that Makoto has an interaction with Weiss, which is really only for the sake of a gag about Weiss' intelligence compared to Makoto's airheadedness. Fortunately, Episode Under Night In-Birth completely rectifies this problem by having Makoto and Blake team up and discuss their experiences with Fantastic Racism and how they dealt with it in more detail than in-battle interactions would allow for.
    • Likewise, despite their storied (and rather antagonistic) history with each other, there are no interactions between Makoto and Hazama.
    • Noel doesn't interact with either Chie or Yukiko despite it being a prime opportunity for the Lethal Chef jokes both series love so much. However, Episode UNIB does take advantage of this joke (at least with Noel and Yukiko), where Noel is such a bad chef that even Yukiko runs away in fear. As of Episode Extra with the 2.0 update, however, she and Makoto do fight Chie and Yukiko... In a cooking contest!
    • Noel and Ruby, who are both incredibly shy girls with a large gun based arsenal.
    • Hakumen and Jin, seeing as the former is the latter from an Alternate Universe/Alternate Timeline.
    • Hakumen doesn't interact with either Jubei or Platinum (or rather Trinity, who does appear in this game when paired with Hazama) despite them being fellow members of the Six Heroes. Jubei and Hakumen in particular is odd because they were close war buddies. This did become midigated after they (along with Nine and Platinum) were given a four way team intro like Team RWBY was.
    • Hakumen doesn't have any interactions with Nu. You would think he would have an incredibly angry response to fighting alongside her (even more so than he does with Ragna) considering Nu brutally murdered Tsubaki right in front of him when he was Jin and he's hated her ever since.
    • Ragna and Yang for well, you know... Besides that, their joint roles as older siblings (and their other similarities in general) — not to mention the differences in their relationships with said siblings — make it even more surprising that the sole interaction they get is a throwaway line of dialogue each during Episode RWBY's ending. Yang is also the only RWBY girl to not get an interaction with the main protagonist of one of the other franchises involved in this game; Ruby gets to interact with Ragna, Yu and Hyde, Weiss gets an interaction with Yu, and Blake gets both Ragna and Hyde, while Yang doesn't get to interact with any of them. None of this is helped by Yang being hugely Out of Focus in the main story. In 2.0 however, Yang does get an interaction with Akatsuki.
    • Similarly, Yang doesn't get an interaction with Nine either, despite the two also being Foils.
    • Speaking of Nine, she and Izayoi also lack interactions with Ragna, despite both having a large amount of animosity toward him.
    • Unlike Team RWBY, Celica and Noel against Ragna and Jin and the Six Heroes, the Investigation Team lack a special four-way intro, though, as with their individual interactions, their larger number of representatives compared to the RWBY side likely accounts for this "omission." However, it should be that the Shadow Operatives as well as Team Remix Heart has four representatives from that groups each^note Mitsuru, Akihiko, Aegis, and Labrys are all members of the Shadow Operatives and Mai, Noel, Tsubaki/Izayoi, and Makoto are members of Team Remix Heart, and they lack a four-way interaction as well.
    • Linne doesn't get a single interaction with anyone from Team RWBY in VS. Mode (so far making her the only character not to interact with at least one of them). This despite her having a similar form of immortality to their headmaster, Ozpin. To be fair, this was before The Reveal in Volume 6, both due to the fact the game came out first, and because the RWBY characters are from Volumes 1-3.
    • Aegis and Nu-13 lack an interaction despite both of them being Robot Girls.
    • Naoto Shirogane lacks interactions with all four of the Robot Girls despite her taking a liking to robots.
    • Orie lacks an interaction with Merkava despite the latter being the most possible candidate responsible for killing her parents. Granted one can argue that it has yet to be fully confirmed that Merkava is responsible to be explain why they lack an intro, but even then one would think they would address the possibility together.
    • Mika lacks an interaction with Platinum, despite given how they're the resident Token Mini-Moes who are young in body as much as in mind. However, they do interact in Episode Extra as of the 2.0 update, just not in battle.
    • Mitsuru doesn't interact with Labrys despite how both are part of the Shadow Operatives.
    • Conversely, Hyde and Vatista is a major Fan-Preferred Couple in their home series, so many fans were eager to see how they interacted in this game. In Episode Mode, Vatista never interacts with any other UNIB character, let alone Hyde himself, and their battle dialogue is mostly Hyde doing his usual spiel of being unable to control his power and just wanting to go home, while Vatista just comments on him. They never even refer to each other by name outside of assist calls. Needless to say, alot of fans were disappointed.
    • Nine and Es continue the tradition from Central Fiction of never interacting with each other. This is despite the entire focus of XBlaze Lost: Memories being a young Nine becoming best friends with Es (or Nobody who is Es... it's complicated). While it's still questionable whether this version of Es remembers Nine, you would think Nine would have some kind of reaction to reuniting with her first ever friend after several years, but there's nothing.
    • Despite being the main protagonist of a new series introduced in the 2.0 update, Akatsuki doesn't call out the names of the other protagonists, nor do they with him. He doesn't even get assist call-outs with Blitztank (the only other Akatsuki Blitzkampf representative on the roster) nor with the Under Night cast (his stint as a Guest Fighter there is referenced a lot, and many of the assets used for him here are taken straight from that game). Also, he and Yumi are the only pairing among the seven other main characters to not have interactions with each other, which is even more unusual considering they were both revealed at the same time.
    • As of the 2.0 update, Blitztank holds the dubious distinction of being the only character on the roster who lacks interactions altogether, not even with Akatsuki beyond a scene in the Extra Episode, and this is in spite of the fact that Neo - another character who doesn't speak at all - got a healthy amount of interactions with the rest of the cast.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Invoked in the announcement trailer. NOBODY saw Ruby Rose (and her series' inclusion) coming.
  • The fourth character showcase had curveballs from the BlazBlue and Under Night sides. While Yukiko was expected to be next in line from the Persona 4 Arena cast (as the character reveals so far had followed the order in which the Yasogami High students joined the Investigation Team), almost nobody saw Azrael and Gordeau being announced much earlier than other characters from their respective series.
  • Es was already considered a case of this when she was revealed for Central Fiction for technically being a Guest Fighter who made her way into the main series from a prequel Visual Novel, so seeing her revealed in the fifth character showcase caused some genuine surprise. Compounding this further is the fact that she's still relatively new and isn't as prominent compared to the other three revealed characters (Iron Tager, Makoto, and Nu-13).
  • The showcase for the first batch of DLC (Blake notwithstanding) kicked off with Platinum the Trinity as the next BlazBlue representative. While thematically appropriate in some ways (Platinum was originally introduced as a DLC character), this was a surprising choice for everyone given Platinum's popularity (particularly among the Western fanbase), as more popular and requested characters from her series currently remain unaccounted for.
  • The seventh character trailer for the second DLC pack has two: Aegis, who—as a Persona 3 character—completely breaks the order the previous trailers had been going by with the Persona 4 side (where it was mainly the Investigation Team in order of joining/awakening their Personas), and Jubei, who was only released in Central Fiction—after nearly a decade's worth of fan demand that he be Promoted to Playable—less than a year before this game's release (in fact, his debut trailer even aired alongside this game's teaser trailer).
  • Several of the datamined characters count. To start things off, very few fans expected Izayoi (aka an alternate form for Tsubaki Yayoi) to be in the game instead of the original Tsubaki Yayoi herself. Mika can also come across as this given how she was not part of the original cast of Under Night In-Birth. In addition, some fans didn't expect Labrys to be in the game since some fans thought ASW was only including characters from the mainline Persona games—though this is countered by Labrys making her formal debut in the original Persona 4 Arena; many fans figured she had a shot at being included, just not a better one than various other members of the Persona 4 and Persona 3 casts.
  • Were you expecting Heart Aino to show up in this game? The trailer also revealed that an unknown sixth series was coming, but more on that below.
  • The sixth series teased in Heart's trailer turned out to be Senran Kagura (represented by Yumi), but what was unexpected was a seventh series also being revealed: Akatsuki Blitzkampf, along with two fighters. Akatsuki's presence makes sense, since he already was a Guest Fighter in Under Night In-Birth, but Blitztank is literally a tank, making it one of the strangest fighting game characters in recent memory (with comparisons to Piranha Plant from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate popping up). Neo was also surprising, since not only is she a minor (if not surprisingly popular) villain that wasn't assumed to have precedence over say, Team JNPR, the RWBY characters need to be drawn and animated from scratch, so the addition of more representatives was uncertain.
  • The final 5 for Version 2.0 were a mixed reception. Elizabeth and Hilda were expected, as the former is the last character in the original Persona 4 Arena and the latter is the main playable antagonist from Under Night In-Birth. As for the other three, Celica and Adachi were somewhat odd choices. While both are fairly popular characters (though they are subject to Broken Base), Celica was introduced in Chronophantasma Extend (the updated version of the third game), and Adachi was DLC in Ultimax. Susanoo was the biggest surprise, as he was a Secret Character in Central Fiction, as well as being the last playable character to be unlocked in the series. Many expected Terumi instead of his final form.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Arc System Works's sprite work is as stellar as ever, and fits the character designs of RWBY like a glove.
  • Even if many of the sprites have been recycled, the pre-existing ones used for Ragna, Jin, Yu and Hyde are still excellent and mesh well enough with each other, especially telling in the case of French Bread's sprite work for Under Night being pit alongside sprite work by ASW done for 3 separate series.
  • Due to the comparatively lower sprite quality of Akatsuki Blitzkampf, Blitztank's massive model had to be done from scratch. And it looks great.

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