For a game series that was created in 1998, Guilty Gear is surprisingly popular in 2024. Unlike so many other games from the same era, it has withstood the test of time and maintained and even expanded its popularity over the years. There are many reasons for this but one of them is without a doubt its colorful cast of weird and wacky characters. You have American ninjas, vampire samurai, death metal idols and more. The cast only expands as the years go on, and many characters are carried into future installments of the series.
The latest installment in the series is Guilty Gear Strive, and the developers, Arc System Works, have been adding additional characters to the game in season passes. Currently, they have released three season passes with four characters each. However, they recently released the fourth season pass and they revealed all the characters that would be coming with it. The first of them will be released on Oct. 31 and her name is Queen Dizzy.
Guilty Gear is a techno-fantasy series famous for having one of the most convoluted stories in all of fiction, and the label is well deserved. However, in a nutshell, Dizzy is the daughter of the main character and the main villain. Since her parents are Gears, she is as well. A Gear is an organism with magic connected to each one of its cells, thus being extremely powerful. They were originally created to help people, but as is so common in fiction, they are misused and the results are catastrophic. Fast forward about a century, and Dizzy enters the story.
In fighting games, there are multiple different character archetypes. There are Shotos, rushdown characters, grapplers, puppet characters, mixup characters, zoners, stance characters and more. In previous games, Dizzy was a zoner and setplay character. Zoners keep their opponents out of reach and attack with long-range pokes and projectiles, hence, zoning them out. Setplay characters attack in devastating combos that seem to last forever and ignore any attempts to block it but must set up for it beforehand. Dizzy retains a few of the moves she had in previous games. Notably, the ice spike, the fireball and the fish. However, there are some notable differences. The ice spike inflicts a frozen state, which incapacitates the enemy for a brief moment then does damage upon releasing them. The damage can be triggered and the state can be ended early by attacking the frozen enemy before the time elapses. There is a further change where Dizzy can perform a follow up where she freezes the ground, reducing friction and doing damage to the first character to get knocked down. Other than that, Dizzy inherits a move from her mother called Michael sword. It has two versions, one is faster, the other is stronger. She also gets a giant death beam, and some swag combos.
Dizzy’s design as a character has always been more on the cute and innocent side, which I personally like. I think it’s a refreshing change of pace to have a cute, wholesome character in a game that’s all about fighting. That isn’t to say she can’t fight if she chooses to, she absolutely can. She has the destructive capability of a nuclear device, but wouldn’t hurt a fly. I find that kind of contrast amusing. She also has a much more mature vibe about her than previous installments, but she still retains the youthful charm that makes her really endearing to me. Her personality is also super endearing to me, because I’m a big softie. I love nothing more than seeing another softie in a game, especially when she’s super cool on top of it.
Dizzy has been a long-awaited addition to the cast of Guilty Gear Strive, and she’s almost here. If you like zoners who can do more than just sit still and throw projectiles, or just like cute character design then Dizzy might just be the character for you.
