You don’t need to be a BlazBlue diehard to appreciate BlazBlue Entropy Effect. Its roguelike gameplay features some of the most fun yet complex combinations of button mashing and attack chains. It is far more approachable than most roguelikes I’ve played recently thanks to how it presents complex information to players and gives them opportunities to test out mechanics without relying on trial and error.
After months and months of waiting, I am excited to share that BlazBlue Entropy Effect has OFFICIALLY left its Early Access phase and is now ready for full release. Oh yeah, it’s also available right this minute for existing EA owners AND folks who’ve been on the fence.
In case you missed it, I was given an opportunity to preview the game last year for a handful of hours. Despite my short time previewing the 2D roguelike platformer, I had quite a bit to say about it – nearly all my coverage was cautiously optimistic yet bordering on leaning positive. I won’t rehash everything in that preview, but here’s the gist: BlazBlue Entropy Effect is stylish, fluid, and complex roguelike featuring deep yet highly variant combat branches all while synthesizing attack combinations found in fighting games.
Five months since our preview, you’re probably wondering how the game has evolved as it prepared itself for its full release. After nearly 17 hours in-game, I am confident that BlazBlue Entropy Effect is a fantastic roguelike that many folks can pick up and enjoy.
Before I continue on, I want to emphasize that Entropy Effect is not a fighting game, nor is it firmly set in the BlazBlue universe. Those familiar with the BlazBlue series might see this game and jump to a conclusion that this roguelike is an expansion of the series’ lore. You might even think that the BlazBlue characters get additional lore or meaningful interactions in a non-competitive setting. That is not the case. Entropy Effect instead tells a mysterious story about a futuristic world that’s been destroyed by the Entropy Effect. A corporate body, SkysEyes, has created the ACE Mind Training program to fight and eliminate Entropy. But, like most corporations, there’s something else at play that the player is bound to uncover in between Mind Trainings.
The lack of clear connection between the BlazBlue combatants and the world effectively torn asunder by SkysEyes means that you can strip away the BlazBlue characters and still be left with roguelike that plays well but get the same disconnected experience between the player and the game’s universe. Some folks might find this disconnection concerning, as playable characters should meaningfully exist and/or have a purpose in the world in which they exist. Very little is said about Hibiki, Noel, Jin, and Hakumen’s existence, at least at first. But this shouldn’t be a reason to overlook Entropy Effect because it misses an opportunity to utilize its cast of BlazBlue characters to their fullest potential – it plays incredibly well.
The seventeen hours I have spent playing Entropy Effect flew by in an instant – it didn’t feel like I spent that much time, nor did I feel like I wasn’t progressing enough. Each time I attempted a Mind Training, I made meaningful progress even when I lost. All of this was a good sign.
Most of the core elements I initially previewed back in September of 2023 have been preserved, barring some notable exceptions I’ll flag in this review. BlazBlue Entropy Effect’s combat remains just as fluid, flashy, and fun as it was several months ago. Each character felt distinct, featuring a unique set of attacks and perks to ensure that each Mind Training (Entropy Effect’s runs) felt variable.
The full release of Entropy Effect has refined its existing ability and upgrade system to make it more user-friendly than ever before. As I mentioned in my original preview, there’s quite a lot to pick up on when first attempting to understand major combat mechanics. Now, talents (the elemental rewards that enhance all characters’ attacks and traversal) are clearly explained and easily previewed in a simulation room. If you can’t decide between two abilities’ descriptions – try them out! Literally press a button and test out the abilities against a training dummy. Once you’re done testing things out, you can easily resume your Mind Training! I’m thrilled to see Entropy Effect adding this preview system – not enough roguelikes feature such a system despite boasting hundreds of thousands of gameplay possibilities. Roguelikes shouldn’t expect players to simply roll the dice and hope that their first time testing a new upgrade ends up working out.
Potentials, or character-specific upgrades that augment and modify your characters’ combos, have been reworded and given the ability to be previewed, too. Potentials carry quite a bit of power in Entropy Effect, often given as a reward for completing the first room in a Mind Training as well as after each boss fight. These upgrades can meaningfully change your chosen character’s chain of attacks and grant you the power to create combos rather than button mashing while hoping for the best. For instance, Lambda-11’s default ability (the TRIANGLE button on the DualSense) summons a group of green blades up from the ground in front of her. One of her potentials makes it so that pressing the default attack button (SQUARE on the DualSense) immediately after the first ability press brings the same swords downward out of the air to juggle smaller enemies. This elevates a simple three-hit combo into a more powerful six-hit combo, leaving me ample time to follow-up with a legacy skill or another attack.
I cannot stress enough how I love the Potential upgrades in Entropy Effect. If you recall from my review of Astral Ascent and its characters’ swappable signature spells, having character-specific upgrades rather than universal upgrades gives character-building additional depth and combat complexity. It feels good to become more powerful during a run thanks to Entropy Effect’s Potential system. It makes it so that I, as a player, am quickly scaling in power to combat the enemies that are also becoming more powerful the further I go in a Mind Training.
At the end of a Mind Training is an Omega Zone. After clearing three biomes of randomized rooms, rewards, and bosses, I’m left to explore a metroidvania experience. This “level” has been significantly expanded and made slightly easier (thanks to the removal of the Entropy system; more on that in a moment). It’s a great way to “end” a Mind Training thanks to giving me access to additional upgrades and two bosses that are far more difficult than the normal elite enemies that guard the end of a biome during a Mind Training.
Entropy Effect has also revamped its quest system, adjusting the progression curve that dictates the rate at which players level up and acquire new characters. During my initial preview, I noted that Entropy Effect was incredibly rewarding in the sense that I could unlock just about all of the available characters in but a few hours of playtime. Now, side quests have been introduced and are offered by several NPCs, many of which require a handful of Mind Trials to obtain Prototype Analyzers to unlock additional characters (Prototypes).
The Mind Upgrades that were present in Early Access have been adjusted, too. Instead of simply unlocking permanent sources of power, like bonus health and additional base damage, Mind Upgrades now exist in the form of upgrade slots. Upon spending enough currency in between Mind Trials, additional upgrade slots can be unlocked for the player to slot in specific upgrades that otherwise would have been persistent. Having these upgrade slots makes the game less easy in some respects, but I would rather have some challenge rather than breezing through the game after a few short hours as I did in the preview. The new source of persistent power does just enough to give players a cushion from crushing losses, but it does make things a smidge more difficult.
BlazBlue Entropy Effect should be treated like a slightly more difficult roguelike in the sense that timing and attack chains dictate players’ success rather than knowledge checks, debuff management, and time-gated upgrades that require hours of grinding to achieve success. Several roguelikes boast long playtimes simply because learning enemy patterns and unlocking permanent sources of power are time-gated to ridiculous extents. Not to say that games like Hades and Enter the Gungeon are grindfests, but they do expect players to learn from playing for long periods of time. Thankfully, Entropy Effect isn’t a game that requires that time sink. If I could pick up and play it in short order while quickly learning its complex mechanics, you should take it as a sign that Entropy Effect is far more approachable than its peers despite it having a slightly more complex set of controls.
The Entropy difficulty modifier that was initially present in the preview has been significantly changed, too. Instead of being a consistent danger during a Mind Training and adding debuffs if I failed to decrease entropy by utilizing a resting room, I can enable entropy from the start that adds a debuff to my entire run. There’s part of me that wishes that the old entropy system could have been toggled at will, but the new implementation is better for newer players who’re trying to figure out the game’s difficulty levers. It now functions similarly to Hades’ Pacts of Punishment that add granular difficulty spikes rather than ambient difficulty.
Some of the Mind Trainings’ rooms have been adjusted, too. The Rest room simply refuels character health (as entropy is no longer a risk-reward metric that the player must continuously manage throughout a run), whereas Sortitio retains its “wheel of fortune” reward system minus the negative aspects. Event rooms give players the chance to gamble for a greater reward, such as giving up some health for another upgrade or exchanging a health potion for a large sum of credits. Most rooms give a universal ability upgrade, though – those are the bread-and-butter sources of power that’ll power up your character with elemental attacks and passives.
One of the concerns I had during my initial preview was that of Entropy Effect’s long-term progression systems. As mentioned prior, the quests have been retuned and reformulated to reward small achievements and offer players who decide to “main” some Prototypes over others some options of purchasing additional costumes for credits obtained by playing the game. If you unlock all the Prototypes and Mind Upgrades, you can start saving for aesthetic content to make your runs more colorful. This is a nice endgame reward.
The final new addition in Entropy Effect is a new mode, Battlefield of Entropy, that will be releasing shortly after the full release. It will contain some seasonal content and feature some multiplayer content, too. It wasn’t activated during my review period, but I’m quite curious to see how it’s implemented once other players get their hands on the full release. It sounds interesting and fun, however.
Knowing all of these changes from the Early Access version to the current full release, some of you may be hoping to continue from where you had stopped from the last time you played. Unfortunately, the full version of BlazBlue Entropy Effect has evolved so much that all players have to start from scratch when playing the new version. I can understand that many of the original progression systems found in Early Access are not compatible with the new ones, but it’s quite disheartening for initial players who’ve been playing and testing the game for the past few months to start from scratch without a boost to get them back to where they initially were. While there isn’t an egregious level of grind in Entropy Effect, players shouldn’t be forced to give up their progress like this – they should be rewarded in some capacity.
Truth be told, I had a fantastic time reviewing BlazBlue Entropy Effect. I still cannot believe that I’ve spent nearly 20 hours playing the full version and enjoying its combat. It successfully synthesizes fighting game chains of attacks with hack-and-slash combat and mild platforming. Sure, I wish that I didn’t have to start over and that its story better utilized the BlazBlue cast, but hey: I had fun despite losing way too many times to count.
You don’t need to be a BlazBlue diehard to appreciate BlazBlue Entropy Effect. Its roguelike gameplay features some of the most fun yet complex combinations of button mashing and attack chains. It is far more approachable than most roguelikes I’ve played recently thanks to how it presents complex information to players and gives them opportunities to test out mechanics without relying on trial and error.
A copy of BlazBlue Entropy Effect was provided for the purpose of this DigitalChumps review.
