Arc System Works has managed what seemed unlikely: revitalizing Guilty Gear Strive. The community sentiment is at an all-time high, and the recent surge in the player base reflects it. And I’m here to tell you that you should join in on the fun.
If you’re out of the loop, Arc System Works, which is also currently developing the highly anticipated Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, just dropped a massive patch in Strive. Among the big changes is the addition of Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the franchise’s first-ever guest character, a ranked system that essentially borrows everything Capcom did with Street Fighter 6 to replace the obtuse Tower System, and a plethora of balance changes that are generally healthier for the game, both in terms of buffs/nerfs to characters and system changes as a whole.
The ranked system is perhaps the most welcomed change to the game. Imagine you were looking to grind and get better at Strive, only for you to run into the dreaded Tower System, a weird, unintuitive, glitched mess that barely incentivizes you to play. The Tower was divided into 10 floors plus one extra called Celestial. You could only fight a set number of players (each floor had a finite number of rooms, with each only able to host 32 at any given moment). You could dodge characters you didn’t want to face, play against lower-level players to secure a rank up, and the penalties for rage quitting were non-existent.
Reaching Celestial was supposed to mean you were at the top of the mountain when it came to skill, but due to how the Tower worked, it became a meaningless effort with how easy it was to skew things in your favor if you really wanted to take the cheap route to get there.
Now with a proper ranked system that essentially rips off SF6 (if you’re going to steal, do it from the best), the community is by and large happy with the state of the game. Just like Street Fighter, ranks are divided by tiers (Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and Vanquisher). You’ll play 10 placement matches, and that will determine where you belong. Vanquisher acts like this game’s version of Master, meaning you can’t be demoted, and you’ll start playing for Duel Rating (DR) instead.
That alone is a big enough change to make; now add the fact that plenty of people were already interested in trying out Lucy, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for success. Lucy is a simple, easy-to-pick-up and play character with enough quirks that could make her extremely good at high levels. Namely, Arc Sys managed to implement the classic hacking mechanic from the Cyberpunk franchise beautifully. You can inflict your opponent with various types of debuffs reminiscent of Cyberpunk 2077, adapted to a fighting game environment. For example, one debuff allows you to get counter hit properties in the middle of a combo.
Of course, the foundation had to be strong to begin with, and Strive has one of the best: a vast, colorful cast of characters, top-of-the-line rollback netcode and one of the most active communities online that just got the boost it needed to continue being one of the most popular fighting games on the market alongside Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 despite being released over four years ago at this point.
What’s best is that Arc System has massive plans for the game still to come. The Guilty Gear Strive 2.0 update is scheduled for release in 2026, so if you were worried the game was going to be abandoned by Arc Sys to fully work on Tokon, think again. There’s no better time to jump on Strive than right now.
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