If I’m to make a confession, I must say that BlazBlue has always intimidated me. I love fighting games but, frankly, BlazBlue’s level of execution and mastery required to pull out some impressive combos is frightening – especially when considering it’s a game with a smaller audience, which makes it that much harder to play online. What’s the point in spending hours adapting to a game which you will seldom be able to play with real people? Unless you’re a tournament regular or have a good group of fighting games fans as friends, it’s a tough sell, despite being so gosh darn good.

But with this year’s Dragon Ball FighterZ, Arc System Works stepped away from their difficult brand of fighting game and gave us something where new players can just mash one or two buttons to feel good about themselves, while experienced fighting game players still had layers of depth to dive into. It felt like a renaissance for fighting games, and this golden era is continuing with BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, a shockingly approachable fighter with tons of depth hidden just below the surface.