Melty Blood: Type Lumina

Melty Blood: Type Lumina is a 2D fighting game and the fifth main installment of the series developed by French-Bread. The series began life in 2002 as an unusual mix of fighting game mechanics with Japanese visual novel adventure game. It is also an adaptation of the Tsukihime visual novel series created by Type-Moon studio, which is responsible for the development of the brand along with the French-Bread team, and also owns the popular Fate/ series.

Plot

As in previous games, the action of Melty Blood: Type Lumina is set in the world known from the Tsukihime visual novel series, combining contemporary reality with fantasy elements. However, the game does not continue the previous story, as it was based on the series of remakes known as Tsukihime R, and started with Tsukihime - A piece of Blue Glass Moon in August 2021.

As a result, the game, although showing the events of 2010 (previous installments took place in 2001), is in fact a prequel to the earlier parts of the series. The place of action has also changed: instead of the city of Misaki, we go to Souya, which is part of the Tokyo metropolis. The game also features previously absent characters, both completely new ones and those known from other Type-Moon games such as Saber from the Fate/ series.

Mechanics

Melty Blood: Type Lumina expands the gameplay scheme known from, among others, the Blood Act subseries. It is basically a classic 2D fighting game, in which we take part in 1-on-1 duels using a wide range of attacks. Fights stand out with their fast pace, requiring perfect use of counters, blocks, combos and air attacks.

Each of the 18 heroes in the base game has a different combat style and weaponry (swords, claws and... brooms), and can switch between three variants (fast, simplified and strong) linked to moons (known as Moon Systems), which can be selected before a fight begins.

Type Lumina also introduces a handful of modifications to this scheme. The developers have refined or modified some mechanics, including Last Arc special attacks. They've also added some new features, such as automatic Rapid Beat combos, and two Moon Systems-related innovations: powerful and easy-to-use Moon Skills and temporary Moon Drive power-ups.

Game modes

In addition to a separate story mode for each character, Melty Blood: Type Lumina also includes multiplayer modes: both local Versus and online Network based on the rollback netcode - a system that predicts the player's actions and immediately displays the next action, thus avoiding delays typical of online games.

Besides, according to the fighting game tradition, the developers included the option of training against the computer. An additional attraction is the Time Attack mode, in which we try to complete 10 duels in the shortest possible time.

Technical aspects

Following the Type-Moon tradition, Melty Blood: Type Lumina uses 2D graphics typical for visual novels, i.e. bringing to mind Japanese comics and animations. This is particularly noticeable in cutscenes in the form of static boards with characters and dialogue windows.

The graphics of the game look very good. Battles are accompanied by spectacular special effects, but the whole thing remains clear enough that despite the fast pace of the game there is no problem with recognizing what is happening on screen.

Soundtrack completes the anime atmosphere. The game has full Japanese dubbing, which is constantly reminded by characters speaking even during fights. The music composed by Masaru "Raito" Kuba (known to fans of, among others, the Under Night series) encourages to fight.