Guilty Gear Strive is finally out in early access, while most players await the standard release on June 11 - and one question lingered during all the Beta Tests: whether the game had Instant Kills or not.

What are Instant Kills in Guilty Gear?

If you're unfamiliar with Guilty Gear, Instant Kills are basically ultimate techniques you can only activate after triggering a special state for your Tension Meter. You have until the Meter runs out to activate your character's Instant Kill's command. But if you fail to land your Instant Kill, you permanently loose the use of your Meter until the next round. It's an all or nothing, dangerous technique.

Instant Kills are basically the kind of thing you never see Guilty Gear competitive players do in tournaments. However, you'd always be trying to land one when playing with your friends for fun.

Fighting Games Community and Uma Musume Kontent creator Majin Obama recently explained in a very good video how fighting game players shouldn't train to be "good", but to be "better". And personally speaking, being able to land an instant kill on my brother or friends while playing Guilty Gear together was one of those incentives to train to be better. It was fun.

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GS Strive Instant Kills - Why Fans Are Unhappy?

Many Guilty Gear Strive players believed that while the game's Beta Test did not have Instant Kills, Arc System Works would add the feature in the final version. Now that Guilty Gear Strive is out, it turned out there are no Instant Kills at all, even though it's a staple of the series.

Instant Kills also feature cool cutscenes with nice screenplay- some have always been incredibly memorable like Jam's - and many players were looking forward to seeing the new Instant Kills with the beautiful graphics of GGST. It's a huge shame such a classic feature of the series is absent.

With that said, even if the loss of Instant Kills definitely is a big blow, I'm strongly against those claiming Guilty Gear Strive is not Guilty Gear anymore. I'm also against the argument claiming Instant Kills were removed to simplify the game for beginners. As Instant Kills look cool as hell and are in fact a huge honey trap for beginners.

Lastly, keep in mind it's still possible for Arc System Works to add Instant Kills through future updates. Remember we're in 2021, no game ever launches completed anymore, and we should also take into account how the pandemic affects game development. I'd say there's still hope.

What do you guys think? You can always reach me on Twitter at @A_iyane07. Guilty Gear Strive is already available for those who got in the early access on PS4 and PS5. The game will be out worldwide on Steam as well on June 11.