The Keeper of the Key - Guilty Gear Strive
000:00 A.B.A Overview
10:10 Match 1 vs Howland (Happy Chaos)
14:03 Match 2 vs SharpenMirror (Bridget)
19:40 Match 3 vs PsychoDwolf (Potemkin)
25:54 Match 4 vs. Dexor (Johnny)
28:37 Match 5 vs Setherie (Baiken)
We're back again with more Strive, as a new character has hit the scene. The long-requested happily married homunculus, A.B.A is here!
A.B.A first hit the series in Guilty Gear Isuka, with her last appearance in the final version of Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R. A homunculus who grew up in a lab all on her own, she eventually met a powerful magical battle axe, Flament Nagel, renaming him Paracelsus and taking him as her beloved husband. A.B.A finds keys comforting, explaining why Paracelsus takes that form most of the time, though his true form does leak out at points.
A.B.A is deeply in love with Paracelsus, but the feeling isn't entirely mutual, at least at first, and their relationship is unhealthy in many ways. Paracelsus, for one, feeds off of blood and often brainwashes his wielders to go into battle so he can eat his fill, though it seems A.B.A can mostly withstand this due to not being human. As a result he relies on her for strength, though as time goes on he's grown fond of her...not that he'd say it out loud. As of Strive, A.B.A is insanely jealous and fearful of people taking her husband away, which has begun changing Paracelsus into a strange, gooey blackened form that at times shows something truly demonic. Throughout the arcade mode, A.B.A and Paracelsus talk things out and strive (heh) to work on their complicated relationship together. How sweet!
As I say in the beginning, A.B.A has always been a "mode switch" or "stance" character. Her default state is often considered the worst character in any game she's in, having lacking offensive ability and poor mobility. But once she activates Paracelsus' true power she briefly becomes one of the best characters in the game, gaining great speed, power, and altered normal and special attacks. In the past games, this was done by feeding Paracelsus blood, either by striking the opponent with a specific move to "feast" on the blood, or from A.B.A's own limited blood vials. Players would take damage when attacking in this powered-up state though, so you'd have to manage this transformation and know when to turn back in order to heal back some of the health you lost.
In Strive, this idea mostly remains the same, with some tweaks. Now, A.B.A enters "Jealous Rage," which augments her moveset for a short time. While she no longer loses health in this state and doesn't have to manage blood vials to activate it, instead you have to babysit a "Husband Gauge" (as I like to call it) which dictates how long you can run wild before transforming back. She's very challenging to use well, as half the time you'll be stuck as a character with poor mobility and lacking attack options, but if you can pull off a transformation you can quickly turn things around. Feast or famine!
A.B.A seems like she'll have some bad match-ups in this game, and you have to kind of earn your fun...but damn if it isn't satisfying to go wild in a jealous rage! I had fun here; I wouldn't main A.B.A, but I'll enjoy goofing around with her from time to time. And in about a month or so, we will be getting the FINAL character of season 3...which is like 99% confirmed to be Slayer at last. Fun stuff in store! I still have some stuff in mind for the channel but I've got some tech issues to work out first, so stay tuned!
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Guilty Gear -STRIVE- Statistics For B- Squared
At present, B- Squared has 1,588 views spread across 37 videos for Guilty Gear -STRIVE-, with the game making up 13 hours of published video on his channel. This is 9.14% of the total watchable video for Guilty Gear -STRIVE- on B- Squared's YouTube channel.