Guilty Gear Strive Starter Edition & major balance patch coming this summer

Published , by TJ Denzer

It’s already coming up on nearly a year since Arc System Works launched Guilty Gear Strive and rocked the fighting game scene with an impeccable level of quality in gameplay, visuals, and sound. Strive’s Season Pass 1 is done with the launch of final character Testament, but the fun is far from over. A major balance patch is coming up next month and later this summer, Arc System Works will launch the Guilty Gear Strive Starter Edition featuring the base game and all Season Pass 1 content.

The upcoming balance patch and Guilty Gear Strive Starter Edition were announced during a recent Guilty Gear Strive anniversary presentation hosted on the Arc System Works YouTube channel. It was during this stream that the devs at Arc System Works announced that the next major balance patch will launch early in June. More than just some character tweaks, this is bringing a full roster rebalance and tackling some of the game’s general gameplay features and mechanics with various reworks and tweaks. It seems likely that we could see some key changes in universal mechanics.

Happy Chaos has been quite the star performer since his launch in Guilty Gear Strive and seems likely to receive some nerfs in the upcoming major balance patch in June.

That wasn’t all. Arc System Works also announced the Guilty Gear Strive Starter Edition. Set to launch on August 9, 2022, this edition will give new players a way to pick up the base game and all of the Season Pass 1 content (which includes DLC characters Goldlewis, Jack-O’, Happy Chaos, Baiken, and Testament) in one bundle. It’s only announced for Japan so far, but it seems likely we could see this bundle come stateside as well, at the very least in a digital format.

Arc System Works announced that Guilty Gear Strive Season Pass 2 was in the works when Testament was revealed in March 2022. That said, the first year of Guilty Gear Strive was impeccable, with the base game earning high praises (including in our Shacknews review) and leading player registration for EVO 2022. As we await more details on the upcoming balance patch, Starter Edition, and Season Pass 2, stay tuned for more Guilty Gear Strive coverage here at Shacknews.