Siliconera got to check out a demonstration of BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle at EVO Japan this weekend, where all 20 of the base game’s characters were made playable to try out in the crossover fighter.

The latest build that was shown off at EVO Japan 2018 featured all 20 characters from the base game, basically all the characters we’ve seen revealed thus far minus RWBY’s Blake Belladonna who will be available as a DLC character in addition to 19 others for a total of 40 with the base characters included.

At the BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle demonstration booth, Arc System Works’ Riku Ozawa of the development team was there to guide us through the demo and talked about some of its development. He recommends new players to go with Persona 4: Arena’s Yu Narukami or RWBY’s Ruby Rose as they’re both pretty easy to handle.

With that said, Arc System Works is focusing on simple commands and making BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle easier for beginners to pick up. The reason for this is so that new players who might be fans of RWBY can jump into it without feeling too intimidated by difficult moves and commands, especially if they’re not familiar with fighting games. Fans of the other series shouldn’t have any trouble picking up the game, but there are some small changes that might take some getting used to at first.

The first thing that is noticeable is that characters have more simplified commands. For example, the DP (Dragon Punch or Shoryuken) is performed by pressing two buttons at the same time, similar to the way Persona 4 Arena handles it. While it is easier to execute, it may feel a bit off for some of for BlazBlue veterans with changes such as Ragna’s Inferno Divider or Jin’s Rehhyo being performed by pressing square and X at the same time instead of the regular DP movement.

Those of you who’ve played BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, and other Arc System Works fighting games are familiar with the double tap to dash system, but in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle you dash the moment you press forward. However, you still have to double tap to dash in the air or backwards.

These aren’t the only changes, as several other moves from characters of BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena, and Under Night In-Birth have been simplified for BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, although according to Ozawa-san, you can more or less learn all the ins and outs of a character by putting in about an hour of practice time.

To further help new players, the game has an auto-combo system called “Smart Combo” where you can button mash the square or triangle button to pull off combos, including some aerials depending on the character. This feature isn’t anything new, as we’ve seen it in recent titles like Dragon Ball FighterZ, but from what we’ve noticed there isn’t much of a difference in damage output between using the Smart Combos and performing combos using the regular commands.

In the end you still need to learn how to pull off combos the old fashioned way to be optimal, but those who simply want to enjoy the game without going through hours of practice should be fine sticking with Smart Combos.

BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle releases for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam in Japan and Asia on May 31, 2018. It’ll release in North America on June 5, 2018. Check out our previous report for some info from the game’s producer on DLC pricing.