There's no such thing as a coincidence on this Night. Only Fate.
With the start of 2024, many games would come out and one of those games was the newest entry for Under Night In-Birth, being Under Night In-Birth II: Sys: Celes or UNI2 as it’s usually called. Unfortunately, this game was released at a horrible time. This was because a day after, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth came out, and Tekken 8 was the real killer for this game. Although people like me, who enjoyed the previous game, and wanted to play the game, did so. With that, we came across some issues but they were eventually patched out, but how is the game as a whole? This review will tell you about my experiences with the game.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Very fun gameplay with some more simplified combos
25 different characters for you to play as
Custom coloring combinations have been added
Updated soundtrack
Beautiful graphics that look very detailed
Cons
Online has some issues
The DLC wait time is too long for the season pass to be justifiably
Story
Three months after the events of the previous game, the Hollow Night has returned once again, although a new issue has come up. Kuon the Eternal Re-Birth has now shown himself and when the next night comes. He will try and put an end to mankind, In-births soon start to rise, and while different goals are put into place, Koun must be stopped at all costs.
That’s it in terms of the story for this game, there isn’t any other story that the game has, other than what the characters will go through in the arcade mode. There isn’t a Chronicle’s Mode yet, even though 99.9% of people who played the previous game went through it. We may get a mode like that shortly but only time will tell, as I think it would be nice if some of the lore was talked about so we know what has happened in the past three months.
Gameplay
The core gameplay has remained the same from the previous entry but has been tweaked somewhat with some improvements. One of the newest features that the game has is Creeping Edge, this is a forward dodge that allows players to roll past an attack, with the cost of them losing some of their GRD. It will also shield incoming attacks while moving the character forward, although they are still vulnerable to grabs. New Force Functions have been added and they have different inputs were added to a few characters.
Celestial Vorpam State has been added which allows players to fill their GRD gauge for the player. They do have to win the GRD gauge though with six or more blocks, which is a tug or war-based mechanic, it’s the meter on the bottom center of the screen. Although I should mention that this feature was in the previous game, it’s just Celestial Vorpal State that is new. Guard Thrust inputs have also been reworked, it’s been changed from a 214D to 6ABC, and some EX-only moves inputs have been changed with more improved inputs.
Smart Steer has also been reworked with new finisher moves, which will act as the fourth move that has been executed in the Smart Steer. It can be used in a normal combo and the player could gain or lose GRD, although this depends on how early or late, they use it in the combo.
There are a total of 24 different characters for you to play, with three DLC characters coming out soon, the first one is in August, while the other two are coming out in 2025. Some characters do feel different when playing as them, but their main gimmicks are all there. The ones I liked playing in the previous game still feel fun to play in this game as well. There is a character for everyone in the game, so just pick your favorite and go from there.
The controls for the game have also been simplified as well, there is an auto combo you can do but at the same time, there are inputs that are tricky to pull off. It just depends on what character you use and how you utilize their moves. I liked how they made the controls somewhat easy to pick up and play, it can get newer players into the game.
There is also costume coloring for the characters that have different colors on each of their skins. This was taken from Melty Blood: Lumina and the system works fine here, there are a lot of different colors you can put on the characters and your favorite colors of a certain color set. I really liked this feature as I can now make all my characters wear green.
I only have two issues that I want to bring up with the game, with the first being the online experience. It is similar to the previous title which isn't bad, but the lobby system has issues while you are spectating. It will bug out and you are unable to watch the match as it will kick you out. Also sometimes tabbing out will cause the game to go into a black screen forcing a restart but that's all of the issues I have with online for the most part.
The other issue I have with the game is that the DLC’s are really spread apart, even if there are only three characters, they are six months apart from each other. This technically makes the season pass not really worth the money at the time of writing this review.
I go into more detail about this game in the video that I made on it, so I recommend you check it out if you want to learn more about the game's history and such.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack has been updated with remixed music and they actually sound pretty good. There are a few new songs for the game and they are pretty good as well, my favorites were Tearing Bullet, Icefield White Night, Extreme Steam, Flame and Destiny, Monochrome Memory, and Bad Surface. All of them sound very nice and I never had a song I never liked.
Graphics and Performance
The graphics for UNI2 are beautiful, the designs on the characters have been updated and they all look fantastic, with the stages matching the upgraded experience which look amazing. I love the look of cities at night and this game delivered with its aesthetic. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM, I had no issues while playing the game.
Final Verdict
Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes is very fun sequel to UNIclr that I myself have enjoyed very much. I do hope the game gets some fixes for some of the issues it has with online and for some of the bugs some people have encountered. Although with that being said, I would wait for a small sale before picking this up if you are new to the series and have not played the previous game. Existing fans may still feel justified purchasing at full price, including the DLC, even if they will be waiting some time before all the characters are released.