Melty Blood is a 2D Fighting game and oddly enough a canonical direct sequel to the Visual Novel known as Tsukihime. It is set a year after the events of the original title that saw a town terrorized by a vampire that left several victims in his wake. Our protagonist is once again Tohno Shiki, a high schooler that posses a unique ability within his eyes that allows him to cut apart any object by tracing their lines of death, which only he can see. We start off as he blindly searches the town on a hot summer day for the rumored new vampire that has everyone on edge. Yes, the guy is looking for a vampire in the middle of the day, so thankfully he soon meets a new character called Sion that helps him on his quest.
That is quite the setup, and unusually for a fighting game, it has a lengthy story with a ton of text to go through as to stay true to its visual novel roots. You will have to download a patch to get an English translation, but once you do it is a near-flawless translation of this Japan-exclusive title. The plot in Melty Blood is far from half-arsed. It was co-developed by the same developers that wrote the visual novel, and it shows. All of the characters are recreated faithfully, the lore is taken into account, and it is an actually interesting follow-up story that is written so well that it makes sense why dead characters can once again appear. It has a lot less fluff than the original narrative, so it is far more immediately gripping as well.
It does have a slight problem in that people who haven’t experienced Tsukihime will have many details fly over their head and not fully understand the connection between characters. That doesn’t make the plot itself incomprehensible, but fans of the VN will definitely get much more out of it. All of the narrative is contained within the appropriately named Story Mode. In it, you will be spending most of your time reading with typically only a single fight between the five chapters it takes to complete it. The most engrossing things about these chapters are how they can split off into their own storylines depending if you win or lose certain fights. It has a large interconnected network of events which ultimately gives you eight unique stories to read through.
Two of these stories are locked until you complete the other six, yet contain no additional info or anything of importance to the narrative. They only add a bit to an already existing branch and aren’t worth getting unless you are a completionist. The other six are all well worth a read, however. After each chapter, you will be shown a chart to see how all of the events connect to another, so it is pretty easy to figure out what you need to do to follow a new branching story. All of them are a lengthy affair which really does make you wish for a button to skip all of the previously read text or to at least automatically forward every chunk of dialogue to avoid mashing the action key or button.
Much of the music are remixes from the classic tracks of Tsukihime and are oddly nostalgic despite having played that game for the first time only a month ago as of this review. I attribute that to how fantastic all of the characters of the visual novel where, and luckily for us, this fighting title is no different. There are three newcomers to the series with all of them being quite memorable in their own way. You have the calm and calculating Sion who takes up as much, if not more, screen time as the main protagonist Shiki. She has a very interesting past and personality. Then you have Shiki’s little sister from his adopted families side called Miyako. She brings a much welcome humorous tone to the otherwise serious and grim journey to destroy the hidden vampire. Also, despite her young age and stature, Miyako packs quite a punch and will quickly drain your health if not careful.
Finally, we have the much hyped-up vampire himself named Wallachia. I’m not going to spoil his deal, but once again they truly make vampires far more interesting than just frenzied blood-sucking killers. The situations he stirs up throughout all eight branching stories are quite varied. Each of them are not just some slight deviation of an overall narrative, but their own fully-fledged scenarios. Unlike Tsukihime, this is completely voice acted, meaning you’ll be hearing every character’s voice for the first time. All told, reading through Melty Blood’s storyline lasted me longer than some fully-fledged visual novels that I’ve played.
For people solely here for the story and are not a fan of the Fighting genre, you can set the difficulty to its lowest and easily be able to win most any fight, even against the main villain. The only character that may stump even some experienced fighting game fans is a secret boss fight found within a gag route. It is a character that has no flinch animation when attacked, spams a few long-reaching powerful attacks, and has a ton of health. This battle is not as bad as say, Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat, yet it is a massive spike in difficulty nonetheless. My tip to easily cheese your way through it is to practice on your double jumps and make good use of Shiki’s heavy jump kick to land two blows before hitting the ground. All of this boss’s attacks are ground-based, so you will be reasonably safe in the air.
A feature I quite appreciate is the ability to leave the Story after any fight since it will automatically save your progress. Perfect for when you want to get some practice in with the lead characters of Shiki and Sion, or simply want to take a break from reading and experience nonstop action. For those occasions, you have a Versus mode to fight against specific characters against either the AI or a human player. You then have Practice to get a character’s combos or quirks down since while most of the commands are relatively simple, each of them has their own unique styles of fighting. And finally, there is Arcade mode to fight against a gauntlet of eight battles with a single loss being a game over. There are no further story elements here, beating the final fight will simply take you directly to the credits.
This is a four-button fighter featuring a light, medium, and heavy attack. One of the buttons is dedicated solely to a shield system that lets you completely parry an enemies attack if timed correctly and allows you to move around during the resulting animation in search of an easy opening. You can also block by holding the direction opposite of your foe, but attacks will still chip away at your health and makes it more difficult to retaliate against their offense. Rushing the other fighter isn’t a safe bet either, this game features a “vital source” function that drains every time you perform a special attack or take damage. Think of it as a stamina meter that will leave you temporarily winded and dazed, as well as prone to more damage once depleted.
All of the characters can double jump, but some are far better aerial fighters than others. It is essential to learn the moveset of everyone in order to both make use of and counteract their skills. Some can dash without pause on the ground while others can only rush a few steps forward, some abilities are only useful to counter air attacks, and some skills take a while before you can regain composure, making them dangerous if missed. Not all characters are perfectly balanced, some are a tad overpowered, yet none of them feel useless and can all lead you to victory if used well, be it a godlike vampire or a maid dusting off her Swiffer Feather Duster.
Each character has a few powerful moves available for use once you have at least 100% of your Magic Circuit meter at the bottom left of the screen. It actually goes up to 300% if you are patient enough and that will allow you to unleash their ultimate attack. You have to be careful when using them as they are very easy to block and you’ll waste your meter for nothing. It is necessary to search for an opening before you use them wildly to little effect. If you do manage to land it, it will take a sizable chunk out of your opponent’s life bar, more so if it is the 300% exclusive ability. This can turn the tide of a battle quite quickly, whether it is in your favor or not. Blocking is an important aspect of this title, though button-mashing still works brilliantly on lower difficulties.
The character selection screen is a bit misleading in terms of the overall size of the cast. There are two rows of eight fighters to select from, however many of them are the same character only with a different appearance and contain the same moves. They are pretty much just costumes, and one of them are two fighters mashed together into a tag team dual. The latter is not a knock against the game, it is a pretty cool “character” to play as or fight against. In total there are 11 unique characters which is still a decent amount, and the tag team duo is not a simple costume so you can count that as another.
Melty Blood was a Windows exclusive originally released in 2002, two years after the visual novel Tsukihime. Funnily enough, this PC version worked far better on all the Windows 10 computers I’ve tried it on, while it experienced severe texture glitches I could not fix on my Windows 98 machine. As old as it is, it runs near perfectly on modern computers. The only glitch I’ve experienced is that the game would always lock itself to 25 fps on a certain Story Mode scene, effectively more than halving the speed of combat. You will have to get through a fight in that sluggish manner as to save after where it occurs and restart the game to fix it.
Melty Blood is still surprisingly cheap for us Westerners to get, despite being a 17-year-old Japan exclusive at this point. It is understandable though, for while it is undoubtedly an amazing game that went far beyond a usual spin-off and arguably became more popular than its source material, it is still the first title in a long-running series. Future games refined the gameplay to truly bring it to a level that surpassed most others of the genre, and if you simply want a Fighter, there is no reason not to get the latest version called Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code. It is also the only entry to be brought over to the West and can easily be purchased via Steam without a need to patch in an English translation. That being said, for fans of Tsukihime, this is a must-have game solely due to the Story. Just because future titles refined the gameplay, doesn’t make the one featured here any less fun. It is well worth adding into your collection while there are still copies out there to buy.
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