Anyone want to provide a quick breakdown of Guilty Gear vs Blazblue? I'very played a little Blazblue but have never played a Guilty Gear. Is GG more popular in the states? Looks like it made Evo last year while BB didnt.
Though I can't speak on whether GG is still more popular than BB in the US (BB is the more popular one in Japan at this point, fairly certain of that), I can say that the BB community's dissatisfaction with the balance changes going from Chrono Phantasma to Chrono Phantasma Extend was what led to it not being featured as a main game at Evo 2015 in favor of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax as the other anime game alongside GGXrd -SIGN-. Given the fact that Atlus seem to have no intention of having the console release of P4AU patched to the arcade's version 2.0, I doubt that that game will be back next year.
BB is more popular than GG in Japan because of many reasons including it's leniency compared to GG but GG did have a very booming scene in the early-mid 2000's where people who you don't think would play anime games today was playing it. But today, I would say GG in America is more popular than BB.
BB does borrow aspects of GG but BB is a lot more combo heavy with a simpler control scheme and increased ??hit time?? (cant think of the right word) to make doing combo's easier while GG is more focused on trapping your opponent in the corner and forcing them to guess which way to block.
I personally cant stand BB. I think the matches are boring since combo's tend to take FOREVER and the characters are boring.
Input window?
That said, I would say that BB is only more lenient compared to the GGXX games, particularly when compared to Accent Core. Between Xrd and BB as of BBCPEX, I'd say Xrd is the more approachable game, even with Xrd's equivalent of BB's simplified Stylish Mode control option not being made available until -REVELATOR- hit arcades a while back. The fact that the Rapid Cancels in BB operate like the old GG Roman Cancels in that the fight continues at the same pace after using them, whereas the Roman Cancels in Xrd cause the fight to slow down briefly depending on the type performed, is one reason I'd consider Xrd more friendly to newcomers. Other than this, I'd say that how the Drive mechanics in BB cause everyone to vary so drastically in how they play and control also makes the learning curve more steep in BB than GGXrd, even after accounting for how each character in Xrd is also unique in his or her execution.
To be honest, I got burnt out on BB after CSII several years ago, but I've been enjoying CPEX after picking that up recently. The base mechanics have been overhauled pretty significantly, with the game being a bit faster compared to the games before Chrono Phantasma, along with them finally being able to decide on a more practical guard crush mechanic through the addition of Crush Trigger attacks (much better than that Guard Primer crap that the CS games used). Burst no longer being tied to Barrier in favor of choosing between it and the new Overdrive mechanic is also welcome. Additionally, I'd also say the combo length is more reasonable compared to the older games (certainly doesn't seem any worse than Xrd in that regard). I'm not sure if it's how the characters played that you didn't care for, or a combination of that and design and/or personalities on display, but I'd say that the chances of finding at least one enjoyable character are much higher than they've been up until now, so BBCPEX is worth looking into if you're looking for something else to play.
I'd probably rank the recent Arc-developed fighters on consoles something like this:
GGXrd -SIGN- = BBCPEX > P4AU
