Is Guilty Gear Strive hard to learn?

Since its development, Guilty Gear Strive is a fighting game title aimed to make the game accessible for newer players. As of June 11 this 2021, the game is now available for purchase for these new players on PC and PlayStation. However, is this game truly difficult game to learn?

Guilty Gear Strive's Direction

According to the Guilty Gear Strive director Daisuke Ishiwatari, this game is geared for a new audience to the series. The director noted that players who can keep up with the game are its longtime core fans. Strive's goal is to reach out to newer players and put the game in their hands.

Due to this goal, Guilty Gear Strive is designed to be less complicated than most fighting games while preserving what makes it unique from most fighting games. Among the fighting game titles, the Guilty Gear series lauds itself as a complicated fighting game that rewards players who are intimate enough with its system.

Read more: Guilty Gear Strive Review: A Welcoming Fighting Game?

Daisuke's Vision

Ishiwatari revealed in an interview with Eurogamer, Guilty Gear Strive is also a title where players won't need to memorize long combos to succeed in the game. This design is evident in the game as some characters can already deal a large chunk of the enemy's health on stringing at least four to five hits in a combo.

Moreover, Ishiwatari also confirmed that the design in simplifying and removing some options gives more leeway for beginners to catch up to the experienced players. Even with the streamlining, Ishiwatari confirms that there is still some avenues of game depth to explore in Guilty Gear Strive.

It Can Depend On Which Character You Pick

Ishiwatari's design does pull through and make the game extremely rewarding from the get-go. Some characters like Sol Badguy, May, Ramlethal Valentine, and Potemkin hit extremely hard once players get the hang of their combos. It could take some time to get used to their options but is definitely worth it in their case. Beginners who want to try out these game can try these characters out.

However, Guilty Gear Strive also has its complicated characters who are not rewarded with high damage on their foes if their combos are done right. Some of these characters often get access to pressure that can be difficult to escape or generally be difficult to approach in the first place.

Fortunately, Guilty Gear Strive has a difficulty system on its character select screen. 5-star characters are considered to be an easy to pickup character while 1-star characters are difficult. So far, only Zato-1 is the game's sole 1-star character as players will need to control two characters at the same time to be effective with him.

In the long run, Guilty Gear Strive is not hard to learn but can be difficult once the higher levels of play are approached.

Read more: Alioune's Guilty Gear Strive Tier List updated ahead of Goldlewis Dickinson's release, Sol Badguy still the best