#I just wanted to mess around with Xrd because I was excited

[golden-stag]

Oh! Almost forgot to mention that I got to play a tiny bit of Xrd -SIGN- with the same friend I played Missing Link and XX with.

My god Xrd… It’s so much fun, I cannot overstate how much fun I had getting to try it out!! The movement and animation is so bouncy and fluid, everything feels like it so lovingly crafted that you just can’t help having the time of your life.

I also got to meet two of the Valentines! I’ve heard a lot about them, so it’s exciting to get to see them in game :D

[broken-clover]

Who are your top three favourite Guilty Gear characters and why!

This question took me out into my backyard and shot me.

Okay, being a little dramatic, but it’s kinda tricky since my opinions on the entire cast basically go (favorites) -> (everyone else is slightly less favorite but I still love them) and then a massive gap, and the Zato. Aside from him, there really aren’t any characters I legitimately dislike. Everyone’s great! I’d say that basically everyone else is tied at #4. But I guess if I had to pick…

3). Venom

Personally, I think Venom has one of the best character arcs across the series. From the beginning he was depicted as a person with a stoic outer persona heavily influenced by and struggling with the ‘kill or be killed’ nature of his upbringing under the assassin’s guild. Despite being a highly trained assassin, he’s a very honest person who puts a great emphasis on morality and politeness.

His character arc has him basically deconstruct everything he has been taught and adhered to- the guild’s way of life and his status as an outsider, his feelings towards his master, and his animosity towards others. I loved his story in Revelator when he finds an unexpected kinship with Robo-Ky in how they share a similar history, having their lives being centered around fighting, and even sharing a sort of ‘us vs them’ mindset that prevented them from truly bonding with other people in different ways (Venom’s valuing the Guild above all else/following Zato vs Robo’s disdain for humanity and narcissism) culminating in a rather beautiful ending where he chooses to disconnect from the Guild and become his own free man.

Plus, his design and playstyle are very striking and unique, which is something that makes him interesting. He’s basically a wizard with an extra-long wand, but the usage and applications of billiards as a fighting style is just weird in the best way possible. Plus, it’s stated that Venom literally created his own type of magic from scratch, which makes him one of the most skilled characters across the series.

2). Zappa

I suppose it’s kind of weird putting him above Venom, since Venom has such a good and complex story while he just kinda doesn’t. But I really like Zappa for the roles he plays and how he basically contrasts against the entire cast by being someone with no capability to fight or a drive to do so. He’s basically the series’ straight man pre-Xrd, being just a normal guy with the normal goal of finding a romantic partner, but whose plans are repeatedly dashed. He adds an odd sort of relatability to the often-ridiculous plots of Guilty Gear, not really knowing what’s going on and not really wanting any part of it. He’s basically what most people would be like if they accidentally stumbled into a fighting game. Plus, I appreciate softer guys, especially in this genre. Zappa doesn’t even really like fighting, does his best to be polite to everyone he meets, and writes letters to his mom. Friggin’ adorable.

Along with that, he’s one of the few characters where we actually get to know what he was up to during the six-year timeskip between Accent core and Xrd. After failing to get help with his ghost-summoning ‘illness’, he not only got rid of the problem on his own, but managed to get enough insight on the Backyard that he played a major role in Revelator basically trying to stop the apocalypse. It was nice to see him have moments showing off his intelligence and aptitude for technology, even if After-Story C showed that he can still be the anxious dork that he was back in the old days.

1). Bedman

…This should probably should not be a surprise to anyone, but still. He’s my favorite. Kinda want to sum it up with a keysmash but I will actually explain a bit, since I know some people aren’t a fan of him and I want to explain why I am

Basically, I like the impression that they give off of him more or less being a deluded, messed-up kid given too much power without a real understanding of what it entails. What exactly does Bedman want? His sister, his only friend, and an Absolute World he can control for the sake of eliminating suffering. Unlike Relius, who I often see him compared to, he shows no interest in using the new world as a way to hurt people. Part of the reason he is so intent on fulfilling that goal is because it would also allow him to resurrect everyone he’s killed in the process of attaining it. His condescending nature is shown to be a side effect of loneliness, having only ever experienced friendship before with Delilah. Nor is he incapable of mercy or kindness in his own ways, showing sympathetic moments with Ramlethal and Axl (if there’s one thing I feel could have used some tweaking, I would have liked to see a more thorough relationship with him and Axl). The fight in Valkyrie Garden against Venom and Robo is by far my favorite across the series, as all three of them come from similar circumstances yet all react to it differently, giving off the implication that all three of them could have been friends if the circumstances behind their meeting was different.

And in general, I just really like his design and imagery he uses. I like nightmare and medical tropes quite a lot, which he uses plenty of. For what little we see of his backstory, there’s some not-so-pleasant implications concerning having a brain that literally works so well that it almost kills you and the medical imagery in his stage which literally exists in his own mental world, and whatever happened that lead to him being physically nailed down to a bedframe. I’m still pretty bummed about him getting offed, but based on the ending we see, there might be more to his storyline, which I am very excited to see more of.

[aegisreflections]

Thoughts on the Current State of Street Fighter V

You may have noticed that I’ve been shying away from Street Fighter (particularly Street Fighter V) themed content as of late. There are several reasons for this, chief among which are my feelings about the current state of Street Fighter V as a whole. My thoughts on this topic are lengthy, so I’m gonna go ahead and lay them all out under the cut. TL;DR version at the end.

Street Fighter V had a rough start. Servers were unstable, features were somewhat slim for a $60 purchase, and the balance was a bit questionable. At it’s core though, as a fighting game, it showed a lot of potential. I genuinely like the systems they had in place, and looked forward to how they’d evolve and build upon them in the future. Hell, the first month I spent with SFV was more fun for me than the entire 7 year life span of Street Fighter IV. While the short term of the first three or so months after release seemed like rough waters, there was a ton of promise on the horizon. That’s where the key issues lie, however. I personally feel SFV has utterly failed to evolve as a game. 

Since launch they’ve added new features; a cinematic story, daily/weekly challenges, combo trials, and as of writing this a total of 8 DLC characters. On paper that all sounds great. In reality, though, aside from the DLC characters those are all features that in the end felt like they should have been there from the start. The fact that they weren’t was disappointing, and the fact that they were EVENTUALLY added in didn’t really do much for the game as a whole. On top of this, the bulk of the content they’ve added, the DLC characters, ended up being of debatable relevance as well. When you consider that, at their original time of release, every DLC character (sans Guile) was considered low or nearly bottom tier compared to the rest of the cast, it was easy to see there was something wrong with how they were balancing the new fighters against the established top tier fighters. 

To Capcom’s credit, they did eventually realize this flaw in their balancing. However, the way they went about correcting it ended up creating more problems than it solved. Basically what ended up happening was Capcom took the two strongest DLC fighters they had made (Guile and Urien), buffed them up a ton, nerfed the established top tier characters (Ryu and Nash) to the point where they are now borderline useless by comparison, and for the rest of the cast made some minor tweaks that moved tiers around ever so slightly between them. That’s it. No buffs noteworthy buffs for the mid tiers, no major changes to the bottom tiers. Most of the cast of SFV was basically left untouched compared to the shifts seen at the top of the tier list and between Guile and Urien. It would seem Capcom’s idea of balancing the game is to simply rotate characters in and out of the top 3 slots and not really worry much about how fun it is to play against them when you’re playing someone outside of those slots. It’s fine for the people who want to play Guile and Urien, but if you want to play as any other member of the cast you may as well put your controller down against them.

Balance isn’t the only gameplay issue facing SFV right now either. I mentioned how I enjoyed the mechanics of SFV at launch, and looked forward to how they would develop over time. But, sadly, they haven’t developed. Not even a little. I had expected by Season 2 coming around we would have seen some sort of change to at least one of the core mechanics. Maybe add new sets of skills for character’s v-systems; new skills and triggers. Maybe a new way to use meter in general, hell, you could give us special cancels in exchange for using v-meter. SFV may not be receiving periodic new repackages in the forms of Super Street Fighter V and so on, but that doesn’t excuse a lack of evolution of gameplay systems over time in the manner these previous iterations gave us. I was under the assumption new seasons would bring more than just characters, and I’m disappointed to see that doesn’t seem to be the case so far.

Speaking of the new season, it is perhaps the biggest thing keeping me away from Street Fighter V right now. Capcom’s idea for Season 2 is, in my opinion, one of the most puzzling decisions they have made throughout this game’s life cycle. The idea of bringing in a cast of entire new characters, sight unseen, and expecting the entire community to A. Be excited about every upcoming release and B. Go so far as to pre-order them through a second season pass purchase is completely ludicrous to me. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of SFV having new characters. I think FANG, Laura, and Rashid are great characters (in concept, at least, and I’m not even going near Necalli) and welcome additions to the SF universe. However, to base an entire season SOLELY off of brand new faces is the fighting game marketing equivalent of New Coke. Not only did no one ask for it, but you’re taking away the thing people actually want from you (classic characters, in this case) in favor of the thing no one asked for instead. It would’ve been fine had you sprinkled it in along your line up of other products, perhaps people would have even liked it, but instead you have a package no one has any reason to be invested in at all. Characters sell fighting games, and giving people characters they know and recognize is chiefly important to selling SFV’s style of downloadable content. This approach does nothing positive for the game, especially when Capcom won’t even give us a HINT as to what each of these new characters holds for us gameplay wise. It hurts the current customers who would like to see familiar faces, it hurts would be customers who are WAITING for familiar faces, and, what should be most pressing to Capcom, it hurts Capcom. Because when you lack familiar faces, and give no cohesive details on what the new faces have to offer your customers, you end up in a situation where no one is confident enough to buy them. I guess it’s no wonder they keep shelling out costume DLC.  

Frankly it’s all a bit disappointing that this is where we are right now. I truly believe Street Fighter V has potential to be a great fighting game, but the current prospects aren’t as promising as what I had hoped for this time last year. Capcom’s complacency in regards to balance and evolving mechanics, on top of lack luster features and a marketing nightmare scenario have resulted in a game that I can in no way recommend to anyone at this point. And those are just the big points! I haven’t even touched the slew of PC specific issues that still exist to this day, lingering bugs with battle lounges, features that existed in USF4 that are still MIA from SFV, the unreliability of online matchmaking and connections, the fact that Birdie has been unjustifiably shafted when he never did anything wrong and is a precious boy who deserves nothing but the best, the list goes on into infinity at this point and it’s become too depressing to even bother. 

In closing, SFV is currently a massive source of disappointment for me, and until they sort out their mess I’m not motivated to keep up with its current affairs. The drought of SF related content will likely be persistent on this blog, at least until I inevitably pick up 3S again, or SFV suddenly becomes a good video game. In the meantime, I’m fully invested in my renewed love for Guilty Gear; a series the developers actually know what they’re doing with and only gets better and better. Good job Arc System Works, you’re a better company than the people who decided horror games don’t sell and Megaman should be exiled to Street Fighter x Tekken. Now if only they’d get a handle on their PC ports.

TL;DR - Capcom is consistently fucking up everything they do in relation to this game. It’s imbalanced, they show no interest in evolving the core mechanics, and Season 2 is a concept that is dead on arrival. My interest in the game as a whole is rapidly fading, and it will show on this blog. Also, everyone should go play Guilty Gear Xrd.