A wonderful new entry in the "poverty fighter" franchise that is Melty Blood. And this time, you may even enjoy the game without playing it in your bathroom or next to a bunch of rubbish bins! (Although, would it really be a Melty Blood game then?)

The artstyle and visual fidelity is great with detailed sprites and beautiful, albeit quite ordinary stages. Since this game is tied to the visual novel "Tsukihime", the character designs and aformentioned stages might be a bit too grounded for many people, although I personally quite enjoy them. The roster may not be huge, but you still have quite a diverse cast of characters. The moon system from MBAACC was removed, which means every character now only has one version instead of three. A bummer if your favourite moon didn't make the cut, but it also streamlines the experience by giving you less matchups to learn and it gives the developers more time to polish characters. The absence of moons is still divisive however.
Music is probably the most subjective part of any piece of media, but regarding my personal taste I enjoyed it quite a lot!

I cannot yet comment on the story much, because my focus lies in online play and I couldn't get too much into it.

Now for the most important part of any fighting game: the gameplay.
While fighting games like Marvel VS Capcom and Guilty Gear may be faster, Melty Blood is still quite the fast paced game, especially due to its unrivaled freedom when it comes to air mobility. You can double jump, super jump and airdash (as you can in other games), but you can do so freely without any action locking you out of another air action. Uniquely, you can also steer your neutral jumps, giving you unique mixup possibilities. All of this leads to the neutral game of Melty being mostly composed of air battles.
Melty offers you a wide variety of defensive mechanics. That doesn't mean that offence is weak at all, but it is highly like the main contributor of the pace. This in combination with the lower damage ensures that you have plenty of opportunities to make a comeback, even if those have to be earned. The shield system may be the most divisive change when compared to the previous games, as it was altered heavily. It is now a "rock-paper-scissor" based system, that only gives you guaranteed punishes on very specific moves. You either love the system or hate it, I would say that some adjustments are needed.
The game features auto combos to help newer players out, but this shouldn't scare you away as the combo system still offers plenty of room for creativity and optimisation.

Training mode options are excellent, although ingame frame data is sadly missing as far as I can tell.

Finally, a very important topic: the netcode! MBTL had issues with one-sided-rollbacks, but these seem to have been fixed with the latest patches. That aside, the netcode is stellar and this should be the standard for the industry. Nevertheless, there is one big point of critique here: Melty Blood is sadly region locked, which limits your available players somewhat. A real shame, I hope this will be addressed in the future.

tl;dr: It's and excellent fighting game with a good netcode, a lot of air-mobility and a lot of defensive mechanics.