Valkenhayn R. Hellsing, the much-hyped and several times delayed new character for BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, has finally hit the Playstation network, and as an avid fan of the game I spent all last night practicing with him … rather than sleeping. At this point I have a decent feel for how the character plays, regardless of the trouble I’m having in learning him. So should you pick up Valkenhayn?

Well, before I go any further, the answer is most likely yes. If you own BlazBlue and a console, it’s worth it to pick up Valkenhayn just in case one of your friends ends up liking his play style. Eight dollars for a character, his extended costumes, his challenge and tutorial modes, and even his unlimited form is a great value. The only reason you should even consider not picking him up is if no one else touches your gaming console, for example if you play this game alone, in your room, perhaps solely for network play or something.

However, now that we know that you should probably purchase the old werewolf butler, the question is whether or not you will like him, and this is a bit trickier to answer. Valkenhayn isn’t a character that is easy to learn and hard to master, he is a character that is easy to understand but hard to learn. Let me explain. I picked up Valkenhayn and immediately blew through his entire list of challenge mode combos. I looked up some of his more advanced combos online and I even managed to nail those with only a couple minutes practice. See, Valkenhayn is fairly slow, and his timing is very forgiving, so when it comes down to making sure you land the next hit in your combo, you actually won’t have much trouble at all. However, actually using Valkenhayn is a different story.

BlazBlue fans that haven’t been hiding under a rock for the past few months already know a lot about how Valkenhayn operates. He has three basic attack buttons, like all characters, and his drive button transforms him into a wolf and starts draining a separate wolf meter. As a wolf, only the A and B buttons make him attack, and the attacks he has are limited to jumping A and B, standing A and B, his “wolf cannon” style specials, and one command throw. As a wolf he can’t block, crouch, barrier, normal throw, or even normal dash. Instead the C button becomes a new command dash that rockets him in whatever direction you point but rapidly drains his wolf meter.

Valkenhayn is pretty slow as a human but ludicrously fast as a wolf, so obviously the strategy is to switch between both forms at opportune moments, and this is simple in the middle of combos. If you press the D button in the middle of any of Valkenhayn’s special moves, or normal moves in which one of his limbs turns into wolf form (which accounts for most of his move list), then he will go full wolf instantaneously. As long as you remember not to mash on the C button and waste your wolf meter, you are good the go.

The problem is, it’s hard to score a hit confirm with Valkenhayn. He has no real safe way to approach the enemy. If you approach in wolf mode, you are begging to be counter hit due to your inability to block, but Valkenhayn can’t dash in human mode, he can only step forward like Hakumen. This makes air-dashing one of his best approach options, especially with the good range he has on most of his aerial moves. At the end of the day Valkenhayn is a pressure character, but he is a pressure character that can’t dash, so you can see how he might be hard to pick up.

The learning curve for Valkenhayn is strange, almost inverted from the learning curve of most characters. Like I said before, you will probably pick Valkenhayn up and immediately learn some of his most damaging combos, and then you will spend weeks upon months focusing on your fighting game fundamentals in an attempt to land the first hits of said combos. It’s his approach game that is the hardest to understand.

I’m not going to say that Valkenhayn doesn’t have many options, as he has only been available for play for a very short while. However, he isn’t as straight forward as Makoto, the previously released DLC character. His moves all have strange timing, and the peculiar two button nature of his wolf mode is a bit hard to process at first. The intricacies of Valkenhayn’s moves are still being discovered, and something tells me that Valkenhayn has a lot of potential that is as of yet untapped, but this means that we have a long road ahead of us. To make Valkenhayn a worthwhile characters we need to play as him, a lot, and lose, a lot. If you are looking for a quick and simple new secondary character, Valkenhayn isn’t the guy for you, but if you are looking for a complicated character with lots of interesting and useful moves, easy to learn combos, and complicated approach game, then you might as well try out the werewolf butler. Just keep in mind that he probably won’t even come into his own until far after the next DLC character is released.

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• BlazBlue Continuum Shift — Valkenhayn Move List and Gameplay Details
• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift — Valkenhayn DLC Release Details Revealed
• Quick BlazBlue Update: BlazBlue Continuum Shift II
• More BlazBlue Details: Valkenhayn the Combat Butler
• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift — More Goodies
• New BlazBlue Continuum Shift Character, Mu-12, Confirmed