Man talk about mixed feelings. I’m writing this in the past which means by the time this article comes out, Vira should be ready and available to play as her current release date is set for December 14th at the time of writing. She’ll be joining the roster of Granblue Fantasy Versus, alongside Avatar Belial as a new character for players to mess with and explore. Now don’t get me wrong, from a design perspective, I’m hyped as hell. I love her batshit crazy personality mixed with stylish moves. Honestly, if she was added earlier to the game she might have been my main. But that’s the problem. It appears like they’re including her at the end of the game’s life, despite announcements from the developers that more content is still in the works. To add insult to injury, I absolutely love her animations and combat. Her gameplay trailer is below if you’re interested.

Currently Granblue Fantasy Versus is basically a dead game. Between Guilty Gear Strive, Melty Blood Type Lumina, and now Blazblue Central Fiction since it received rollback netcode, the anime fighting game landscape is quite competitive. Well, I mean, competitive in the sense of different Arc System Works (the developers/publishers) departments fighting amongst themselves. At this point in time barely anyone is playing Granblue Fantasy Versus anymore, making it hard to find matches. Sure sitting in training mode can be a fun learning experience but if there’s no one around to utilize what you learned on… not so much. Trust me, I’ve seen Kinky search for matches in that game for like a full 5 minutes before giving up, or finally earning the chance to fight one dude over and over and over again cause y’all two are the only ones in the same region playing. Like always, new content will bring some players back and I’m sure on December 14th the player base will increase by a ton for a little bit. However, how soon will it return back to the abysmally low player count that has become the standard? At this point the only thing I can see bringing this game back to a wide audience would be, say the line Bart, rollback netcode. Personally I could go as far to say delay netcode wasn’t that bad at times, but at this point rollback netcode carries such a positive reputation thanks to Strive that just saying a game has it will make many players in the fighting game community check it out.

Man a character like this should of been on the roster Day 1 for Snooze.

So that’s my story. Hooray that a cool new fighter is being added to an anime game, but damn when the population has less players than I have inches on my dick, you know it’s a problem with a two player fighter. Maybe this is a sign that rollback is on the way considering Blazblue just got it for both Central Fiction and Cross Tag. Regardless, until that happens the outlook for this title looks bleak. Are you familiar with the Granblue franchise? Did you play the game? Where’s my Vira lewds, gentlemen? Grab your sword, go crazy, and win some matches in the comments below!