While Guilty Gear 2 is supposed to feature a mix of a 3D hack-n-slash and RTS elements, the demo only let us tear through a level of the cutting and killing variety. It is a combo-based H&S, though I'm not sure I plumbed its deepest depths or anything since it seemed fairly simplistic—in fact, I hope I've only skimmed the top because I'd expect a combo system with more complexity from Arc. That said, it was a lot of fun tearing through waves of fairly hapless drones with Sol's signature moves.

The thrill certainly doesn't come from how gorgeous the game looks. The graphics are adequate, but nothing special, which is disappointing considering the historical eye candy quality of GG visuals.

While I enjoyed the demo, I still walked away with the sort-of feeling I played a regular hack-n-slash with a Guilty Gear skin on top of it, ultimately leading me wonder how much of the enthrallment stemmed from the GG branding. The H&S mechanics are solid, but not mindblowing or genre-busting. In other words, it's really cool to kill things as Sol. But the Sol factor's a big part of that equation, at least for me.

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