Arcade Mode
Arcade Mode is one of the staple gameplay modes within the Guilty Gear series. Appearing in several Guilty Gear games, it has the player fighting against random AI opponents until they reach to the end of the stage and fight a designated boss character. Depending on the game, there will be a definite penimultiate boss that the player will always fight regardless of who they're playing as (eg. Testament in Guilty Gear). The boss character tend to change depending on the entry, with I-No being the boss for the overall Guilty Gear XX series.
Guilty Gear
In Guilty Gear, the player is able to choose any character that they desire (with the exception of the unlockable characters Testament, Justice and Baiken) and play through them within the Second Holy Order Selection Tournament. Justice is the boss character regardless of who you play as.
The arcade mode lasts a total of 10 matches, with the first 8 opponents being randomly selected characters from the cast. Following this, the character will then fight Testament as they attempt to sacrifice your blood to free Justice. After you defeat them, Testament will then use their blood to bring back Justice from her dimensional prison and you fight her as the last character. Upon defeating Justice, the chosen character's ending will play, with the ending showing what happens to them right after defeating her.
Baiken also appears as a hidden character that can be fought. You can fight her in a match if you beat Arcade Mode with either Sol or Ky without using any continues.
Canonically, Sol will be the one who won the tournament and kill Justice (with it later being rewritten in Justice's Story Mode in Λ Core Plus R). However, every ending in Guilty Gear contains canon events that happens to the character, some which is much more expanded on in future games (such as Eddie overtaking Zato-1 and Gabriel leading a revolution against the Zepp dictatorship). As they are not playable in Arcade Mode, Testament, Justice and Baiken are the only characters to lack endings in the game.
Guilty Gear X
The Arcade Mode lasts a total of 10 matches. Dizzy becomes the boss character of the game, with her being recently discovered and having a bounty on her head, and Testament once again serves as the penultimate boss character.
In addition to the new characters, it is now possible to be fight against Baiken as a random encounter rather than her being a hidden fight. The ending for the character is now a singular image rather than being a full-on ending from before.
Guilty Gear XX
Following the previous games, the arcade modes within the Guilty Gear XX series have you pick a chosen character and fight randomly-selected AI in 10 straight forward matches. Replacing Dizzy, I-No becomes the boss character of the series. Unlike other bosses, I-No's boss version has the exclusive move Megalomania, which can only be avoided by either dodging it completely or blocking against it (ideally using Faultless Defense to do so as the move does significant chip damage).
In Slash, Order-Sol made his debut as the new boss and again as a hidden boss in Λ Core and its updated versions.
The requirements to challenge him in Λ Core are:
- Never lose a round
- Never use a continue (exception is boss I-No's fight)
- Half of the rounds are finished with Overdrive Attacks
Boss Order-Sol's also gains a new Overdrive called Flame Distortion, a variation of Dragon Install, which constantly fills up his Tension and Charge while also regenerating health on difficulties higher than Beginner and enters a short pseudo stunned state that is a counter hit in the duration. He also takes less damage and deals more damage. The AI also has access to a cheating Dragon Install: Sakkai which is fully invulnerable on startup and costs only tension, making him even more unstable to fight as the AI may just run up or on wake-up and activate it.
Guilty Gear Isuka
Guilty Gear Isuka's arcade mode is much more similar to other game’s survival modes where the player(s)[note 1] will be gaining levels and a very small amount of their health back by performing moves and combos on randomly selected opponents. After beating each opponent or set of opponents, the player(s) will have their health healed a bit. The player(s) will normally fight against one opponent until after level 70 or 190(?) where the normal matches involve fighting two opponents who are on different teams until level 99 or 199 respectively. Then at level 101 they go back to fighting only one opponent normally until level 149. At levels 20, 40, 60, 70, 80, 90, 110, 120, 130, 140, 160, 170, 180,190, 210, 220etc. a “Here comes daredevil” pop-up will appear and take the player(s) to fight two opponents on the same team. At level 99, 149, 199, 249, etc. Leopaldon will appear. Beating Leopaldon on level 99 or 149 will get the player(s) to level 100 or 150 respectively which will play the staff roll and allow the player(s) to enter their names and then put them back to the title screen. Beating Leopaldon on level 199 will unlock him as a playable character in versus and arcade mode.
In the Game Options menu the player(s) can choose between beginner, easy, normal, hard, or maniac Game Level, can change the time limit from 99, 120, 180, 200, and infinity, can change the amount of souls they start with between 0, 1, 3, or 5, can change if they start at level 1, 50,101, or 151, 201, 249, etc. after they have gotten to those levels, and change between consumer and original cockpit font. Starting at level 101, 151, 201, 249 etc. is required to continue to levels past that.
Guilty Gear Dust Strikers
Guilty Gear Dust Strikers's arcade stages have you fight 10 opponents instead, with the 11th being the boss character Gig.
Guilty Gear Xrd
See Episode Mode Within the Xrd series, Arcade Mode is split into three different sections: Episode Mode, Versus Mode, and M.O.M Mode. Episode Mode takes place as the standard arcade run from previous games within here.
Guilty Gear -Strive-
Arcade Mode in Guilty Gear -Strive- has three difficulty routes, which is determined by the first match participated. Cutscenes primarily take place during the first, seventh and eighth stages, and the contents of the dialog change depending on the difficulty.
Stage 1 will always be Hard Route. If the player loses, the rest of the Arcade Mode run will switch to Normal Route. If the player wins but loses one round, the Arcade Mode run will stay in the Hard Route. If the player wins without losing a round, the next stage will be on Extreme Route; losing a round in the subsequent stages, regardless of winning otherwise, will set the player back to Hard Route. The Extreme Route's stage 7 will always be a rematch of the stage 1 opponent. If a player on the Extreme Route defeats the boss on stage 8 without losing a round, they will fight an additional stage 9.
In a feature unique to Strive, the character encountered on stage 1 will appear on both Normal and Hard Routes as as secondary character who will fight alongside the player on the final stage. On the Normal Route and Hard Route, the character will appear to assist the player against the boss. On the Extreme Route, if the player wins the rematch of stage 7 without losing a round, the assistant character will not appear.
The final boss for all characters in the base game and the first DLC Season Pass is Nagoriyuki, but characters from the second DLC Season Pass onwards face other final bosses:
- Bridget and Sin Kiske face Ky Kiske
- Bedman? fights Ramlethal Valentine
- Asuka faces a copy of himself
- Johnny fights May
- Elphelt fights Faust
- A.B.A faces Elphelt
- Slayer fights Zato-ONE
- Dizzy fights A.B.A
Each boss has significant changes compared to their playable counterparts, making them more difficult than normal.
There are four possible endings determined by the player's performance. All endings serve together to show different aspects of the character while telling their story.[1]
- Ending 1: Obtained on Normal Route.
- Ending 2: Obtained on Hard Route.
- Ending 3: Obtained on Extreme Route, but losing a round in Stage 8.
- Ending 4: Obtained on Extreme Route without losing a round in stage 8, and subsequently clearing stage 9.
The Name of Heaven plays during the credits roll for all characters except Dizzy, who instead gets Shelter From The Rain as her Arcade Mode ending song.
Notes
- ↑ The home versions allow for co-op multiplayer