Under Night In-Birth
Gameplay. The game has similar mechanics to "Melty Blood", "Guilty Gear" and "BlazBlue". It uses three attack buttons and a fourth one tied to the "GRD" meter. Attacks can cancel each other in any order, and into special and super moves. GRD is a tug-of-war mechanic to reward players for defense or offense, for them to use Shield, an enhanced defensive technique; Assault, an air dashing move; and Force Functions, a character-specific action serving as offense or a temporary buff. Whichever character has more GRD at the end of a cycle gains a  temporary "Vorpal" buff, improving their moves and damage, and using Chain Shift, which cancels any move, resets the character to a neutral state and receives extra meter for the GRD. However, incorrectly guarding moves with Shield causes a state known as GRD Break, which locks a character out of any techniques with GRD. A traditional super meter known as the EXS Gauge fills up whenever players can attack or get hit. Characters spend half a meter for powered-up versions of special moves, or a full bar for Infinite Worth move, a high-damage super attack. When their health is  below 30%, characters can use Infinite Worth EXS, an extremely strong super activated by pressing four buttons. A technique called Veil Off can be utilized if a character has more than half a bar of meter, giving a "burst" shockwave, sending the opponent and a powered up state for damage boost and temporary use of infinite super meter. For "[st]", the game adds new features, including Cross-Cast Veil Off, which characters with at least half a bar of super meter and Vorpal state can cancel combos into a Veil Off burst, and visual novel series Chronicle Mode. Plot. Every  month, a phenomenon called the Hollow Night brings forth invisible, immortal creatures called Voids. They feed upon a power known as EXS, which they gain by attacking humans caught within the Hollow Night. Though the attack results in death or Void transformation of victims, anyone who survives becomes an In-Birth, gaining the ability to control EXS. After surviving a Void attack, high school student Hyde Kido receives the power to summon Insulator, a magical sword killing In-Births. An immortal girl named Linne offers to train him with powers on the condition that when he is ready, he will  end her life. Caught in a battle by others vying for control over EXS, Hyde finds a way to survive until the next night. Characters. The game has each original characters. The guest ones appeared from each separated games, including Sion Eltnam Atlasia (middle name dubbed as “Eltnum”) from "Melty Blood" and Akatsuki from "Akatsuki Blitzkampf". The game has Japanese-language voice acting. Some characters later appeared in "" with English voice actors. Development. The game began development in 2010. Nobuya Narita discussed how it arose from the team's experiences working on "Melty Blood". French-Bread originally planned to work  on the high-definition title for the game, but development later stalled while Type-Moon went on to work on "Mahōtsukai no Yoru". Early prototypes provided the foundation for the game. Narita emphasized they wanted to differentiate the game from "Melty Blood", so the lore, visuals, systems and combat flow are much different from the previous work. It marked the team's first game using high definition and features hand-drawn high-resolution sprites. In March 2013, Sega added support for its "ALL.Net P-ras Multi" service, a distribution network that allows multiple arcade owners to receive copies of the  game without providing a dedicated arcade cabinet for each copy. Other games that utilize this service include Arc System Works' "Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R" and Triangle Service's Game Center Love. A decade later in 2021, thanks to Sion's inclusion in "Under Night", the inclusion of said French Bread's original game series in "BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle" and Evo 2019’s main tournament event, the untitled "Melty Blood HD" remake was announced as a prequel reboot game title to 2021 remake of "Tsukihime", "". Release. Sega released the arcade version in Japan on September 20, 2012 . A major revision, entitled , was released on September 9, 2013. Arc System Works released the game for PlayStation 3 on July 24, 2014. A 2015 release for North America and Europe was later announced. It was released in North American on March 31, 2015, according to GameStop. However, Aksys Games revealed the release date for "Exe:Late", they said the game will be released on February 24, 2015. "Exe:Late" was released on Steam for Microsoft Windows systems on July 12, 2016. A further update to the game entitled was announced on May 15, 2015. "Under Night In-Birth Exe :Late[st]" was released on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in Japan on July 20, 2017, and in North America and Europe on February 9, 2018. "Exe:Late[st]" was released on Steam for Microsoft Windows systems on August 20, 2018. "Exe:Late[st]" is then re-titled to the update below, "Exe:Late[cl-r]", for those who owned PlayStation 4 and Windows versions. A final revision of the game, entitled , was released for PlayStation 4 and Switch. It was announced at EVO 2019 for February 20, 2020 release, while Europe released the game on the next day, after it was  released in Japan and North America. The PlayStation 4 version has an update for those who owned the version of "Exe:Late[st]", while the players who purchased the PlayStation 3 version can get a limited discount until April 30, 2020, in Japan and North America, and April 31, 2020, on Europe. Any players who owned "Exe:Late[st]" to update, contents which were added to "Exe:Late[cl-r]" update remains paid DLCs. A Microsoft Windows port was released on March 27, 2020. On March 22, 2021, the arcade port of "Exe:Late [cl-r]" was released on April 15, 2021. Reception . The PlayStation 3 version of the game received a 29/40 by "Famitsu". "Destructoid" said that it was "an intelligent, tactical fighting game that I'll surely be playing for a long time to come." "IGN" said it was "One good fighting game. Maybe it's not as deep as previous Arc System Works games, but successfully achieves what it is aiming: to let the player enjoy it." "Eurogamer" concluded "an interesting 2d fighting game with a very unique fighting system. Just try it, and you'll be amazed." It was nominated for the category of Best Fighting at The Game  Awards 2020, but lost to "Mortal Kombat 11". Future. On September 21, 2021, director Nobuya Narita and composer Raito confirmed on Twitter that the "next" installment of "Under Night In-Birth" was in development. Narita expressed interest in the announcement of said title coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the original release of the game. It was not explicitly stated whether this referred to a new version of "Under Night In-Birth" or a wholly new title set within the same universe.