Feels like a game mostly barred by expectations - expectations that aren't unreasonable for a game released 7 years after it's predecessor, in all fairness.
Gameplay changes are pretty great overall. Most battles online do end up a bit spammy but the canceling and custom combos are truly insane, there's basically unlimited skill expression(once you get past the wall of spam previously mentioned).
Of course, I'm not immune to the expectations conundrum myself. There's only a handful of "real" new characters, with the rest being Boruto versions of old characters that have the exact same movesets, making them glorified costumes. The History mode is extremely barebones at best. The game original Boruto story is quite good, but still suffers from being on the short side. Single player modes are very limited too. All these are problems that really make no sense for this type of release, and people were right to be expecting much better.
Some issues are just boggling - I don't listen to the english dub myself but some of the lines included are actually just outtakes(or AI? I haven't kept up with the controversy too closely in all honesty). Not being able to invite friends to play with online. Online connection problems(I haven't experienced many of these but you don't have to dig around a lot to see it's a common issue). On top of the latter, disconnecting from a ranked battle brings you no penalty, so ragequitting is very prevalent.
It feels like the idea was that this would effectively be a launch just to refresh online a bit, and they had to add enough, but just barely enough, to launch it as a full game at full price. As someone who also enjoys fighting games, this is far from unheard of, so it doesn't particularly shock me, but this is not the audience Bandai has cultivated with the Storm games and they should be well aware of that.
Ultimately(heh) as a game I enjoyed Connections. It's not great, it's just good. It should've been great. It could've been perfect.
Not often I both enjoy a game but also come out of it feeling so let down.
Gameplay changes are pretty great overall. Most battles online do end up a bit spammy but the canceling and custom combos are truly insane, there's basically unlimited skill expression(once you get past the wall of spam previously mentioned).
Of course, I'm not immune to the expectations conundrum myself. There's only a handful of "real" new characters, with the rest being Boruto versions of old characters that have the exact same movesets, making them glorified costumes. The History mode is extremely barebones at best. The game original Boruto story is quite good, but still suffers from being on the short side. Single player modes are very limited too. All these are problems that really make no sense for this type of release, and people were right to be expecting much better.
Some issues are just boggling - I don't listen to the english dub myself but some of the lines included are actually just outtakes(or AI? I haven't kept up with the controversy too closely in all honesty). Not being able to invite friends to play with online. Online connection problems(I haven't experienced many of these but you don't have to dig around a lot to see it's a common issue). On top of the latter, disconnecting from a ranked battle brings you no penalty, so ragequitting is very prevalent.
It feels like the idea was that this would effectively be a launch just to refresh online a bit, and they had to add enough, but just barely enough, to launch it as a full game at full price. As someone who also enjoys fighting games, this is far from unheard of, so it doesn't particularly shock me, but this is not the audience Bandai has cultivated with the Storm games and they should be well aware of that.
Ultimately(heh) as a game I enjoyed Connections. It's not great, it's just good. It should've been great. It could've been perfect.
Not often I both enjoy a game but also come out of it feeling so let down.