power stone was a throwaway gimmick franchise. a particularly perturbing memory i can still recall that happened about 4 years ago in the tatsunoko vs capcom discord was how, a guy claimed that this game had untapped competitive depth; and that it was massively overlooked and underappreciated. i have a funny history with this game, being very young, i first heard of this game from a video gametrailers put out in 2010 about which characters should be in marvel vs capcom 3, i was about 9 years old. when i got a vita 2 years later i quickly bought the psp version of the game, on my vita (i couldn't have gotten it on my psp sooner because for whatever reason that console wasn't designed for WPA2 for SOME REASON and they never rectified this issue with later models so straight up if your router was from 2006 or later you just couldn't connect the damn thing to your wifi) anyway, i was immediately hooked but you know, this game doesn't really have all that much to it. there are certain design aspects that really do belie some kind of masterful foresight. this game is one of the first of it's kind, the "bespoke arena fighter" kind of game where the layout is mostly isometric. so having astute design cues like, a potentially problematic mechanic like divekicks in a game like this can ONLY be used towards the other player; there being a quality of life style strafing mode to very up close and personal engagements; Power Changes being the main win condition of the game but not siphoning all nuance out of the game by making them a win button, giving them a heavy recovery period after use and most Power Fusions having very high startup that can be interrupted with throws, or dodged entirely.

That last bit actually brings me back to that stupid memory I have, where basically that guy's entirely argument was built upon the precipice that is "you can throw Valgas out of his power fusion" as if to mean this game must have a rich cavalcade of well designed interactions if the boss character has a glaring weakness for his super which is already one of the worst in the game

i addressed him by saying "no, that game wasn't really as well designed or even memorable as you might expect, I mean the combat within the game lacks depth, and at any point you can just get screwed by them grabbing an item like the giant mallet or sword and then essentially stun locking you on wakeup"

and then he promptly ended that discussion he began with "why would you play a power stone game for the combat?"