Shortly after completing its early access in late January 2024, almost the entire development team and publisher were laid off, with 91Act essentially ceasing to exist in all but name, with only a few staff and a single producer continuing to work on the game, possible without pay, while they seek outside investment to continue development longterm and proceed with their plans to launch BlazBlue Entropy Effect onto Xbox Series S|X, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch or its successor.
Unfortunately, investment has not been forthcoming, likely due to the tangle of rights caused by the developers/publisher 91Act not owning the BlazBlue IP and the rights holders (Arc System Works) appearing unwilling to invest their own money to fund ongoing development.
While someone may step in with a wad of cash or Arc System Works will opt to fund ongoing development, as of February 2024, neither is the case, and the future of BlazBlue Entropy Effect is in doubt.
Image credit BlazBlue Entropy Effect - Published and developed by 91Act.
BlazBlue Entropy Effect looks fantastic, and I mean fantastic, with stunning character design, fantastic animations, and a wide variety of enemies to engage with, BlazBlue Entropy Effect is a visual treat of the kind that doesn’t come along very often.
I am a huge fan of the Cyberpunk aesthetic. While I did like Cyberpunk 2077, it opted for a darker, bleaker take on the aesthetic, which, while great for a game like Cyberpunk 2077, would feel out of place in a more relatively light-hearted title such as BlazBlue Entropy Effect.
Image credit BlazBlue Entropy Effect - Published and developed by 91Act.
Unfortunately, it is not all sunshine and roses. While every character looks great, some of the female characters are clearly created for the male gaze, with several characters showing vast amounts of side-boob/underboob and panty shots.
Honestly, this is disappointing as BlazBlue Entropy Effect is such a good-looking game; it doesn’t need to resort to such crass behaviour to make people play it; with a roster of cool-looking characters with diverse abilities, people would happily play BlazBlue Entropy Effect, without fanservice, which in my opinion diminishes an excellent game with near flawless art direction.
While some may dismiss this as a non-issue, I feel strongly that making content purely to titillate is wrong, and while there is a time and place for nudity in games, making every female character eye candy is offensive, and for those who are prone to acting on their lust, dangerous.
Image credit BlazBlue Entropy Effect - Published and developed by 91Act.
At its core, BlazBlue Entropy Effect is essentially a 2D action rogue-like, with mild RPG elements and persistent upgrades.
Combat is fast-paced, engaging and surprisingly challenging, and the ability to evolution your characters with the legacy and abilities of other characters you have levelled up is a great way to encourage players to play more than one character.
BlazBlue Entropy Effect, however, has one major issue: the gameplay is boring, and while the combat is fantastic, running left > and right through stunning but mechanically similar levels and facing off with a handful of different enemy types per level gets old very fast.
While boss levels are more fun, with so much of every run being entirely dependently on procedural generation and RNG, even skilled players may have difficulty reaching the more impressive boss battles if not given the option to upgrade their abilities or heal their character due to the option to do so not appearing due to RNG.
Image credit BlazBlue Entropy Effect - Published and developed by 91Act.
BlazBlue Entropy Effect swaps between explicitly explaining what a particular set of choices means one minute before explaining nothing about the next set of choices beyond their name literally, leaving players to guess what each option will do after playing BlazBlue Entropy Effect for a while I still am not 100% sure what some options accomplished, as no matter which I picked nothing of note seemed to change in the next level, no matter which options I selected.
Poorly explained mechanics like this diminish the player’s ability to customise their loadout to their playstyle and make informed decisions about how they want to build their character, and being robbed of that agency feels terrible in a genre that is built around players being given the freedom experiment with builds, and eventually find one that feels right to them.
While occasionally I was offered the choice between a few different skills, with clear and concise descriptions of each skill/ability, for the most part, I felt adrift in a sea of random jargon, with no rescue ship in sight.
With more engaging content, a better tutorial system, and a strong narrative, BlazBlue Entropy Effect would be the type of game I would gladly sink 50+ hours into; as it stands, I am uninstalling as soon as the digital ink dries on this review, and likely never looking back.
Image credit BlazBlue Entropy Effect - Published and developed by 91Act.
While BlazBlue Entropy Effect is a singleplayer title at its core, there is a rather lacklustre PvPvE mode to keep players entertained; however, due to matchmaking issues which have plagued the game since launch, very few people play, and often, players who are lucky to find a lobby suffer from lag and high latency due to EU and NA players often being placed into Asia region lobbies.
In 2024, time is as much a commodity as money, and with so many excellent games demanding our attention, for a title to attract and sustain a sizable community, it must perfectly well, and offer a wide variety of engaging content that is accessible 24/7, and frankly, BlazBlue Entropy Effect fails to do so on all three accounts.
Image credit BlazBlue Entropy Effect - Published and developed by 91Act.
BlazBlue Entropy Effect is a action rogue-like video game developed and published by 91Act, it was released on 31 January 2024 and retails for $19.99.
BlazBlue Entropy Effect is available exclusively on PC.
As of February 2024, around 30,000 people play BlazBlue Entropy Effect on a fairly regular basis.
BlazBlue Entropy Effect suffers from low activity, meaning that while off-peak matchmaking is possible in populated regions, finding full lobbies in less populated regions is unlikely outside of peak playtimes.
BlazBlue Entropy Effect offers the following matchmaking options:
The following peripherals are officially supported:
BlazBlue Entropy Effect is unrated and contains the following:
BlazBlue Entropy Effect is a nice-looking game that I wanted to like, but despite its smooth combat system, stunning visuals, and creative character design, it just felt hollow and lacking; while there is a progression system, it is hinged on re-running the content endlessly, and honestly, I feel I would have enjoyed the game much better if it had a more linear structure, with stronger narrative elements.
While the world is interesting, the characters look great, and the combat is engaging, the narrative is just too simplistic and cliche to make a 100% playthrough worthwhile, especially when there are so many better titles out there.
