I find it kinda hard to put my own opinion on Strive in an interesting way. I’d say “it's an alright but janky not-anime-fighter” with some wack mechanics and occasionally cool kits. I see it as the kind of game that won’t be many people’s favorite due to how many compromises it makes in the attempt to be accessible and expansive at the same time, pulling mechanics from all across fighting game sub-genres to do a little bit of everything. It’s far more interesting for me to think about what it represents culturally and what the game is trying to do with the FGC.
When the game was first revealed as the unnamed new Guilty Gear, it’s creator said in an interview that the game was meant to be a “bridge that connects people”. I took it as a corny exaggeration that's just meant to communicate that “its an accessible fighter”, but a couple months from launch now, I see how much the devs really tried to make true on that message and how much the game, in spite of its rocky launch and somewhat negative perception, managed to succeed at it.
Since its launch, Strive has been the talk of town for the FGC in a way that extends beyond the fad of a new release. Look at major tournaments and you will find the players that are pros and legends from across different fighting games. I never thought I’d see the Zangief legend “SnakeEyez” go toe-to-toe with Guilty Gear vets and Marvel players, transferring all his SF grappler experience into Potemkin and taking advantage of the GG systems in ways I haven’t seen GG players do, but here we are. Within my personal circle I saw friends who had always been waiting for a fighting game to break into and this game finally became the one to get them to feel competent and comfortable with the genre, and people who never ventured outside their niche of Tekken or Street Fighter gaining a taste for new gameplay styles through this game. Daisuke wasn’t talking out of his ass after all.
It’s main virtue is having a combo of elements that makes it easy to introduce to most people without having to put asterisks, which somehow no FG has managed to do in the past decade. These are:
A. Look Pretty
B. Have Good Netcode
C. Be Easy To Pick Up
And
D. Have A Playerbase.
No fighter in the last decade has managed to get all of these right to achieve proper flagship status. If you have good netcode you’re probably an inaccessible anime fighter or something on fightcade, you also don’t have a playerbase. If you have a playerbase you’re probably Tekken, Street Fighter, or DBFZ, which all have their own set of problems that stop them from being a flagship for the community. Strive did have terrible SFV-esque server issues on launch and still suffers from its lobby system which I think is the only place where it fucked up in this department of approachability, but otherwise these elements make it an easy game to get someone into as it won't be difficult for them to learn, they will be able to play against you regardless of regional distance, and they will have an ample playerbase and an active community to work with.
The other way in which Strive tries to bridge people is in its mechanics, and that’s where the game gets a little contentious. It prioritizes presenting a large variety of scenarios and archetypes in easy to understand ways, using high damage for strong feedback. Knowledge and execution walls are made much smaller and this comes at the price of much of what people liked about the older games. Stuff like every character being designed to only need to learn one easy BnB to execute their gameplan, and slowdown on counter hits to let anyone hit confirm, go a long way to allowing anyone to get to competency fairly quickly, but those who wanted their lab playground won’t get it here.
Changes are made to make its neutral and offense more Street Fighter like while keeping a distinctly Guilty Gear defense. A slower airdash encourages more grounded play without eliminating air footsies, the redesigned gatling system seeks to emulate SF’s risk/reward structure while keeping anime delay cancel pressure, and initially the game seemed to take cues from SFV in the lack of chip kills before that was patched out. The changes to its character kits lead to a lot less high/low or left/right and a lot more hit/throw which is a far simpler mixup to understand, execute, and defend against. Despite that, defense still focuses on up-back air blocking, using FD and meter correctly,
The experimental ways in which it tries to bridge SF and GG’s gameplay styles lead to a lot of jank. The unintuitive nature of its new gatling system receives flak for good reason, its airdash feels much worse than anything you played before, and the design philosophy seems a bit all over the place with how some hitboxes and kits are designed, leading to large power disparities like Sol vs Ky which feels like a barely toned down Guilty Gear character fighting a mediocre Street Fighter character.
The game’s throw is probably the most problematic result to me, with SFV-esque high reward and range but anime-style fast startup that beats normals. Usually fast/strong throws are incredibly short ranged but Strive is the only game I know that doesn’t do this, and combined with its character kits and the fact that throws put you in counter state on whiff, lead the game to a highly volatile throw-based meta that focuses on static 50/50s far too often. I find it hard to look at the game’s current state without feeling that it needed another pass of mechanical polish before launch.
Some changes are, however, more generally enjoyed: universal wake up timings, character weights that don't affect combos as drastically, and mapping multiple mechanics to the Roman Cancel input to have them activate depending on context instead of using unique inputs for context sensitive moves like in previous games (e.g Dead Angle).
RC mechanics are, in general, where the game almost succeeds at having its cake and eating it too. The creators claimed that they wanted to make things easier to understand yet “retain the depth” somehow, and there are some really admirable attempts where nuance is added in inventive ways that make things easier while also deeper.
The new Red-RC allows players to convert off of any attack with ease and use the staple mechanic for its intended purpose without grinding conversions from every possible situation. A new drift system that gives RCs new neutral, mixup, and combo possibilities, and the ability to cancel the slowdown to RCs allows players to have both Xrd RCs and +R style fast RCs.
These new systems are highly praised for a good reason, but a common criticism of it is that game locks too much of its depth behind a metered mechanic (in a game where you can only hold two stocks of meter at most too), meaning that the times you can be creative and crazy in the way old Guilty Gear used to be are limited to but a few instances per game. However, this criticism is probably seen as a success by the devs when thinking about it from their “bridge” point of view. The game lets you play with more classic neutral and mixup structures, but the RC system gives you a lens into more complex movements akin to crazier anime fighters. It allows you to taste the potential depth without having it take over the game and turn it into something too unorthodox and based around RC gimmicks.
This general philosophy is why I think that even when this game is all patched and polished up, it likely won’t stick as anyone’s favorite fighter, as it constantly refuses to indulge in a strong niche. I like my specialized games that revel in their niche, and overall have never been a big fan of Guilty Gear’s lab-heavy execution wall and oki focused gameplans, so I thought I personally wouldn’t get much out of Strive.
However, they succeeded at appealing to me with the design of Zato. I think he is one of the few cases in this game of a character that actually managed to retain his depth while also becoming easier, and they did not do this through removing mechanics, but instead opted to add new ones on top of the existing template.
Clap cancels and redesigned summon moves allow Zato insane possibilities he didn’t even dream of before, while simultaneously making him easier to pick up. But they did not, as most predicted before release, opt to remove his old mechanic, and thus allowed you to layer his classic Negative Edge mechanic on top of the additions, giving the character a really satisfying learning curve. He avoids most of the issues I would have with Strive, and instead souped up and more powerful compared to his previous iterations without requiring the massive labtime requirement that old Zato used to have.
I imagine many people had that experience I had with Zato with some other character that they always wanted to play but never could get through because of the lab-time barrier required in the past games. And while I think the way Zato did this is great, most characters aren't flexible enough for this kind of design. Millia stands as a stark example to me, a character who’s difficult multi-layered disc mixup has been made easy to execute and heavily directed by adding a forced jump after her disc, which comes at the cost of anyone who thought “what if I didn’t wanted to do a left/right mixup after disc?”, gutting much of the character’s interplayer variety.
That aside, much of my positive outlook on this game comes from what it did to the community and the potential it has as the devs continue to foster its growth and polish its mechanics. If you are already comfortable within your niche of fighting games and are having a good time playing with your group of friends without the want for a larger playerbase, there is probably not much for you in Strive, and I think I would almost be the same.
But I do like the playerbase, I do like having this game that I can use to introduce people to the genre, or to get existing FG friends to get a taste of new gameplay styles they never considered before. Even if I don’t think it’s a very good FG for my tastes, and would usually groan at ceaseless simplification of the genre, I highly respect what this game strived to achieve (heh) and I am very glad it exists.
When the game was first revealed as the unnamed new Guilty Gear, it’s creator said in an interview that the game was meant to be a “bridge that connects people”. I took it as a corny exaggeration that's just meant to communicate that “its an accessible fighter”, but a couple months from launch now, I see how much the devs really tried to make true on that message and how much the game, in spite of its rocky launch and somewhat negative perception, managed to succeed at it.
Since its launch, Strive has been the talk of town for the FGC in a way that extends beyond the fad of a new release. Look at major tournaments and you will find the players that are pros and legends from across different fighting games. I never thought I’d see the Zangief legend “SnakeEyez” go toe-to-toe with Guilty Gear vets and Marvel players, transferring all his SF grappler experience into Potemkin and taking advantage of the GG systems in ways I haven’t seen GG players do, but here we are. Within my personal circle I saw friends who had always been waiting for a fighting game to break into and this game finally became the one to get them to feel competent and comfortable with the genre, and people who never ventured outside their niche of Tekken or Street Fighter gaining a taste for new gameplay styles through this game. Daisuke wasn’t talking out of his ass after all.
It’s main virtue is having a combo of elements that makes it easy to introduce to most people without having to put asterisks, which somehow no FG has managed to do in the past decade. These are:
A. Look Pretty
B. Have Good Netcode
C. Be Easy To Pick Up
And
D. Have A Playerbase.
No fighter in the last decade has managed to get all of these right to achieve proper flagship status. If you have good netcode you’re probably an inaccessible anime fighter or something on fightcade, you also don’t have a playerbase. If you have a playerbase you’re probably Tekken, Street Fighter, or DBFZ, which all have their own set of problems that stop them from being a flagship for the community. Strive did have terrible SFV-esque server issues on launch and still suffers from its lobby system which I think is the only place where it fucked up in this department of approachability, but otherwise these elements make it an easy game to get someone into as it won't be difficult for them to learn, they will be able to play against you regardless of regional distance, and they will have an ample playerbase and an active community to work with.
The other way in which Strive tries to bridge people is in its mechanics, and that’s where the game gets a little contentious. It prioritizes presenting a large variety of scenarios and archetypes in easy to understand ways, using high damage for strong feedback. Knowledge and execution walls are made much smaller and this comes at the price of much of what people liked about the older games. Stuff like every character being designed to only need to learn one easy BnB to execute their gameplan, and slowdown on counter hits to let anyone hit confirm, go a long way to allowing anyone to get to competency fairly quickly, but those who wanted their lab playground won’t get it here.
Changes are made to make its neutral and offense more Street Fighter like while keeping a distinctly Guilty Gear defense. A slower airdash encourages more grounded play without eliminating air footsies, the redesigned gatling system seeks to emulate SF’s risk/reward structure while keeping anime delay cancel pressure, and initially the game seemed to take cues from SFV in the lack of chip kills before that was patched out. The changes to its character kits lead to a lot less high/low or left/right and a lot more hit/throw which is a far simpler mixup to understand, execute, and defend against. Despite that, defense still focuses on up-back air blocking, using FD and meter correctly,
The experimental ways in which it tries to bridge SF and GG’s gameplay styles lead to a lot of jank. The unintuitive nature of its new gatling system receives flak for good reason, its airdash feels much worse than anything you played before, and the design philosophy seems a bit all over the place with how some hitboxes and kits are designed, leading to large power disparities like Sol vs Ky which feels like a barely toned down Guilty Gear character fighting a mediocre Street Fighter character.
The game’s throw is probably the most problematic result to me, with SFV-esque high reward and range but anime-style fast startup that beats normals. Usually fast/strong throws are incredibly short ranged but Strive is the only game I know that doesn’t do this, and combined with its character kits and the fact that throws put you in counter state on whiff, lead the game to a highly volatile throw-based meta that focuses on static 50/50s far too often. I find it hard to look at the game’s current state without feeling that it needed another pass of mechanical polish before launch.
Some changes are, however, more generally enjoyed: universal wake up timings, character weights that don't affect combos as drastically, and mapping multiple mechanics to the Roman Cancel input to have them activate depending on context instead of using unique inputs for context sensitive moves like in previous games (e.g Dead Angle).
RC mechanics are, in general, where the game almost succeeds at having its cake and eating it too. The creators claimed that they wanted to make things easier to understand yet “retain the depth” somehow, and there are some really admirable attempts where nuance is added in inventive ways that make things easier while also deeper.
The new Red-RC allows players to convert off of any attack with ease and use the staple mechanic for its intended purpose without grinding conversions from every possible situation. A new drift system that gives RCs new neutral, mixup, and combo possibilities, and the ability to cancel the slowdown to RCs allows players to have both Xrd RCs and +R style fast RCs.
These new systems are highly praised for a good reason, but a common criticism of it is that game locks too much of its depth behind a metered mechanic (in a game where you can only hold two stocks of meter at most too), meaning that the times you can be creative and crazy in the way old Guilty Gear used to be are limited to but a few instances per game. However, this criticism is probably seen as a success by the devs when thinking about it from their “bridge” point of view. The game lets you play with more classic neutral and mixup structures, but the RC system gives you a lens into more complex movements akin to crazier anime fighters. It allows you to taste the potential depth without having it take over the game and turn it into something too unorthodox and based around RC gimmicks.
This general philosophy is why I think that even when this game is all patched and polished up, it likely won’t stick as anyone’s favorite fighter, as it constantly refuses to indulge in a strong niche. I like my specialized games that revel in their niche, and overall have never been a big fan of Guilty Gear’s lab-heavy execution wall and oki focused gameplans, so I thought I personally wouldn’t get much out of Strive.
However, they succeeded at appealing to me with the design of Zato. I think he is one of the few cases in this game of a character that actually managed to retain his depth while also becoming easier, and they did not do this through removing mechanics, but instead opted to add new ones on top of the existing template.
Clap cancels and redesigned summon moves allow Zato insane possibilities he didn’t even dream of before, while simultaneously making him easier to pick up. But they did not, as most predicted before release, opt to remove his old mechanic, and thus allowed you to layer his classic Negative Edge mechanic on top of the additions, giving the character a really satisfying learning curve. He avoids most of the issues I would have with Strive, and instead souped up and more powerful compared to his previous iterations without requiring the massive labtime requirement that old Zato used to have.
I imagine many people had that experience I had with Zato with some other character that they always wanted to play but never could get through because of the lab-time barrier required in the past games. And while I think the way Zato did this is great, most characters aren't flexible enough for this kind of design. Millia stands as a stark example to me, a character who’s difficult multi-layered disc mixup has been made easy to execute and heavily directed by adding a forced jump after her disc, which comes at the cost of anyone who thought “what if I didn’t wanted to do a left/right mixup after disc?”, gutting much of the character’s interplayer variety.
That aside, much of my positive outlook on this game comes from what it did to the community and the potential it has as the devs continue to foster its growth and polish its mechanics. If you are already comfortable within your niche of fighting games and are having a good time playing with your group of friends without the want for a larger playerbase, there is probably not much for you in Strive, and I think I would almost be the same.
But I do like the playerbase, I do like having this game that I can use to introduce people to the genre, or to get existing FG friends to get a taste of new gameplay styles they never considered before. Even if I don’t think it’s a very good FG for my tastes, and would usually groan at ceaseless simplification of the genre, I highly respect what this game strived to achieve (heh) and I am very glad it exists.
Drawdler
9 days ago