i have been playing guilty gear petit 2 off and on for a little while. i don't have a lot of history in handheld fighters, and they're obviously a pretty different experience, though i've watched a moderate amount of ggx advance. (this game and its predecessor are also clearly based on x, with anji and johnny showing up alongside the usual core roster and the notorious petit-only character fanny. venom has a sprite that appears in zato's story, but i don't think he's playable. testament unlocks after you fight him in story mode.)
Mechanically and aesthetically, it's got a similar approach to NGPC fighters; the characters are super deformed, the backgrounds are low-res and -color interpretations of major ones from the full games, and a bunch of moves distort limbs to further emphasize punches and kicks. Even Faust is kind of cute, which is a sentence i never thought i'd write. The game really only treats the two right-side buttons as core inputs, with A+B giving a third set of normals and being used for supers and a small number of special moves. the Y buttons (difficult to reach when you're doing direction motions with the X buttons) have taunts and IK mode activation. Suffice it to say i realize fighting the computer isn't really akin to a real match, but most of the characters feel wild in a very guilty gear way, and although i'm not entirely familiar with which moves did and didn't exist in X, even coming from accent core/+r most characters have most of the moves i'd expect, except for sweeps (i think everyone got their 2H as 2AB instead of sweep, even though 6AB is generally Dust). in particular, Y4 is unused for most characters i think, but gives Eddie's drill; i assume this means unblockables are hypothetically possible. But the shadow mechanics make getting a knockdown that doesn't cause him to disappear before you can cast it rather difficult. still, he's the character i've played the most
Zato also has break the law, dashes absurdly fast (it's comparable to Chipp's!), his command grab seems amazing, and he can also do ungodly cheap tick throw setups off of the sawblade. The only default characters i haven't really played as or against enough to really understand if they have something that seems super silly are Millia and fanny; Millia is fast and has her two airdashes, but even with her moveset largely carried over i don't necessarily understand her gameplan with it, and she's probably more reliant on full combos than most...and Fanny is just strange, with Faust's pogo stance and a large number of functionally similar moves, but no item toss, so i'm not really sure what she's supposed to play for. She does have something that seems similar to the fish/pull type special move that Faust has from XX on if not earlier, so her midrange has better threat and reward, but she mostly seems weird, kind of boneless Faust. Anji gets two hops and Fuujin with most of the non-FB followups; the butterfly isn't as powerful but i think he gets a guardpoint (albeit with only one followup?) if i understand the command list correctly. Johnny has infinite coins (as far as i know...but the UI doesn't really have space for any of the character specific icons and meters), though their arc and character hitboxes make it seem not as good as XX, and the rapid-hitting level 3 mist finer, Jam has no cards but gets to keep most of her fast-moving specials and her divekick, Potemkin has Heavenly alongside his buster, hammerfall, megafist, and slidehead, and Axl gets to keep pretty much everything, even the unblockable.
but basically, i really adore this game even though i started playing it just because i got the wsc and thought it would be funny to check out. of course i always have a soft spot for quick to pick up fighters and with so many familiar movesets and inputs with only a few simplifications (there are no roman cancels, i think) this one's not the easiest i've played by any means but definitely scratches the same itch of just mashing out simple stuff to have a good time. it's full of personality, bringing a lot of the gg aesthetic with an appealing twist, and the director also went on to lead battle fantasia, which in a lot of ways is probably my favorite arcsys fighter of all still. you should check this game out if you get a chance (i have *no* clue where wsc emulation is at)