French Bread- Part of the FGC’s Balanced Breakfast
Just some fluff while we wait for new Melty Blood
Melty Blood has a pedigree within the FGC all on its own- the infamous hotel bathroom grand finals, the Team Spooky laptop setup by the vending machines, and the Neco-Arc memes. While it might make veterans feel their age, there’s a new generation of players anticipating Type Lumina who might be unfamiliar with the older games, or even with French Bread as a developer.
If Arc System Works was the major progenitor of the anime fighter subgenre, akin to Capcom with Street Fighter, then the closest analogy for French Bread is SNK. French Bread began life as a doujin circle- essentially an indie developer- and Melty Blood was their first breakthrough hit for arcades. Melty Blood is a canon sequel to Tsukihime, one of the first Type-Moon visual novels and predecessor to the Fate franchise. Their pedigree for working on fighting game adaptations of light novels led to the development of Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax, a crossover fighting game that also released first in arcades. Melty Blood Actress Again even made an appearance at Evo in 2010. In the future, French Bread would even see success with an original IP, Under Night In-Birth.
Anime games are often called airdashers and are well known for their high degree of movement compared to ‘traditional’ fighting games or 3D fighters. While even SNK games will change how you move vertically across the screen with various jumps, the gameplay is more focused on grounded interactions and every air option is high risk. Anime fighters expand the play space vertically by granting nearly every character multiple jumps, airdashes, and other options rarely seen outside of the Vampire or Vs. series. While ASW was paving the way for the subgenre with Guilty Gear and Blazblue, French Bread’s Melty Blood became arguably the most popular take outside of those titles.
Another similarity between both Melty Blood and Under Night, apart from the high emphasis on mobility, is the freeform combo system. Referred to as Reverse Beat in Melty Blood, Passing Link in Under Night, or simply ‘rebeat,’ these chain combos behave similarly to the magic series in Vampire and Vs., or the Gatling system in ASW games, with one major caveat. Not only can you chain normals in ascending strength (ABC or light, medium, heavy) you can also chain them backwards (CBA, perhaps.) This lets you begin combos with any button and use any normal at least once during the series- a common bread and butter in Melty Blood might be a variation of 2A 2B 2C 5A 5B jump cancel j.A j.B double jump j.A j.B air throw. The rebeat system has several major advantages, even over other similar chain combo types. Not only does it make beginner combos easy to figure out across the cast, but it also lets you get even more creative with combos off stray hits or with better optimization.
The more direct similarities end there, however. Even shared mechanics like Shielding are treated very differently across both series, letting each game develop their own unique flavors and stand apart from each other. For instance, while instant blocking (EX Guard) in Melty Blood is distinct from the Shield mechanic, Shielding is the instant block mechanic in UNI. Melty Blood also lets you escape combos with Circuit Spark in a similar way to Bursting in Guilty Gear, whereas no such combo breaker mechanic exists in UNI. Both games do have Alpha Counter-style reversal mechanics- Shield Bunker in Melty and Guard Thrust in UNI- but there are very few other similarities. Each game also has drastically unique systems, like the Moons in Melty and their interactions with your meter, and the GRD gauge in UNI.
My first exposure to French Bread was during the height of the #PlayUNIST movement when it finally got localized and ported to Steam in 2018. I had been learning Pokken at the time and I didn’t even have a fightstick until I finished my degree, so I was using my Hori Pokken Pad to play fighting games on. I was also trying out Rev2 at the time, but it seemed difficult and obtuse for someone’s first anime fighter, and I didn’t know which character I liked yet. On the other hand, UNIST was a four-button game where the combos seemed very easy to grasp, and the tutorial and combo trials explained most of what I needed to know well enough that I felt confident playing against other people online or in tournament. (Incidentally, my first Rev2 tournament was a free bracket that Ruben roped the UNI players into joining after their bracket was over, and I ran over a bunch of people that didn’t know how to play by mashing with an absolutely trash I-No.) I also thought that GRD was a super cool system, having never seen anything like it before, and it added a new layer of complexity to every interaction. Even if I was going in and playing aggressively, I still might lose the GRD war because my opponent was defending against me well; I could cash out my GRD into a Chain Shift to extend my pressure, or I could use my Force Function’s parry to take my turn back.
UNICLR was a game I was looking forward to playing and competing in through most of 2020, but lockdown put an unfortunate stop to that. I ended up playing Rev2 a lot more, mostly because it was what I could play against other people in my online region, with the added incentive of brushing up on Strive (and +R, once it got rollback as well.) I also didn’t play as much Melty as I should have in the interim since the older iteration of Community Edition didn’t play nice with my PC and essentially required me to doxx myself every time I connected with someone, which was both inconvenient and untenable for my stream. (I’m playing it more now via Concerto- give it a peek.)
This was why I was so pumped for the Type Lumina announcement. The game looked like it was combining aspects from both Melty and UNI into a fresh package that would, most importantly, be playable online without severe delay. In fact, I would have taken that and been perfectly happy until they stealth-announced the next UNI update on Twitter. Assuming this version of the game will include the previously-promised netcode updates, that would mean both of French Bread’s modern releases would be setting a huge precedent- if a Japanese indie developer can retrofit rollback into one game while building another with it from the ground up, then big corporate productions no longer have any excuses. More importantly, anime players are spoiled for choice, with loads of high quality offerings to try out now.
I’m still digging the hell out of Strive, but I personally can’t wait to get back to games from the developer that got me into the anime fighter subgenre in the first place. As mentioned before, if you’re interested in trying out Melty prior to Type Lumina’s release, the rollback-enhanced Community Edition of Actress Again Current Code is a great place to start. (Be sure to pick up the Steam copy as well to at least support French Bread.) Furthermore, UNICLR is a very solid title in its own right, with decent tutorial tools and a robust, well-balanced cast, so it’s worth a shot if you want to dip your toes in a more modern offering. Even though I’m not playing it much anymore, I still have a lot of fondness for it since it served as my gateway game into titles like Guilty Gear, and I’m looking forward to the day where I can reliably play it with more people.
At this point, the only way my hype for French Bread could get even higher is if they finally make the Eltnum JAV a real thing. (If it is real, hook me up once locals come back.)
