The Guilty Gear series is probably known for its insane anime-inspired character designs and the rock n' roll soundtracks that accompany them. They, however, are also just plain fun as fighting games. But the developers for Guilty Gear Judgement are not satisfied with that apparently as Judgement drops the 1 on 1 character battles in favor of 2D sidescrolling beat em' up gameplay, and thats all there really is to the game.
To be fair it really is only a modified version of the fighting games with beat em' up elements tacked on. All of the moves your characters can execute are also found in X2 #Reload, which just so happens to also be included in this game as a bonus to buyers. So you are actually getting two games for the super low price of 6 dollars on the Playstation Network store. The character cast is also the same as X2 #Reload, however, there is only 4 characters playable from the start. The others (save one special character) are unlocked by meeting them one by one in levels as a specific character, meaning if you want to unlock all of the characters you will be playing through the criminally short campaign quite a few times.
Really though, there is no reason to play through it multiple times even if you are a huge fan of the series. The game is split up into 19 very short levels and can be completed in about 2 hours or even faster on multiple play-throughs. Nothing but dialogue and move sets change depending on which character you play as, all characters travel through the same levels and fight the same enemies and bosses. Not even the story changes which is somewhat odd at times. In a nutshell whoever you are playing as has came to a small mysterious island in search of something: whether that be to find out why all the village folk are missing as Ky or for more bounty in the case of Bridget. It all leads in the same direction though, so do not expect any special branching paths or the sort.
As sad as that may sound, at least the gameplay and controls themselves are solid; you use either the analog nub or d-pad to move around, triangle, square, and circle for offensive moves, and the x button to jump. Unlike the fighting counterparts where you press up to jump on the d-pad this is now used to move up and down the 2D background. Oddly though a guard command is missing, so the only way to dodge enemy attacks is to move out of their line of fire. Most of the time, however, it is easier just to take the damage since it is hard to line yourself up correctly to dodge since there will be a lot of action going on at once. That minor problem is not a game breaker though since levels are short and the game auto-saves after you clear one anyway.
Judgement sprites and many of their variations are ripped directly from X2 #Reload which is not a bad thing since the game looks absolutely amazing on the PSPs widescreen. All of the enemies you will be killing also look nice though you will get tired of seeing the same lava-spitting lizard thing recolored until the end of the game. The games presentation really shines, however, with the level design. The places you will be running around range from lush forests to the depths of hell itself and the art is a splendor to look at with nice foreground effects that do not seem to get in the way to much.
However, Guilty Gear Judgement may not be worth your time. As I mentioned before the main game itself can be completed in just a few hours with a single character, and nothing about the game changes when you play as another character aside from some dialogue. The best part of Judgement is the free addition of X2 #Reload which is a blast to play even though it is missing a lot of the features of that game on other platforms (such as the lack of cutscenes). Though as a PSP owner that is looking for something to play on the go this is a pretty good choice, especially considering that it is less than 10 dollars and downloadable from the PSN store.