while most of the positive stuff i've said about this game is still somewhat true, there's just too many aspects of its design that are both oppressive and aggravating. the character balance has arguably gotten worse with a lot of patches, with incredibly obnoxious characters like labcoat 21 and jiren completely shutting down so much of the gameplay. the blockstrings are so tediously long and the defense has never gotten a proper buff. z reflect and guard cancels are completely pathetic mechanics that do not offset the game's uninteractive offense. there's some good ideas in this game but it is far too bogged down by its destructive desire to make fighting games as easy to pick up as possible.

the combos are still pretty fun, though

it's like this game has all the problems of the guilty gear series i've critiqued plenty before but with even less of the stuff that would at least keep it novel. the offense is still absurd and the neutral is highly skippable, but they overall made characters significantly less unique as they simplified a game that was only complex in the amount of mechanics it had. for fans of the creative character concepts in xrd and +r, this game sucks, for fans of neutral and footsies based games, this game sucks... so, who is it for? i guess for those who haven't delved into either of those, and people who want to play fighting games without putting much thought into decision making.

i compare guilty gear to fast food because it is easy, convenient, and highly appealing to one's primal senses. it also facilitates bad habits in the sense that it discourages you from learning more about the fundamentals of improving at fighting games—the intricate dances of neutral and the push/pull of offense/defense are basically irrelevant when your character's buttons and blockstrings are just that effective at shutting it all down. it then pains most guilty gear players gravely when they are tasked with the act of playing a fighting game with significantly lower design tolerance for these attributes, turning them into what feels like limb-flailing fools.

the guilty gear series is the epitome of seeing a fighting game character do a setup and thinking, "oh, that's neat." the moveset design is surely unique and experimental on a lot of these characters, but then... you see how they play at a higher level and realize there's really nothing else to these characters outside of their gimmicks. it is a game mostly comprised of learning and reciting pre-baked setups, highly devoid of skill expression because you are so strongly encouraged to just do this one thing the character or mechanic does. xrd, in particular, struggles with this a lot thanks to its roman cancel mechanics, with yrc being perhaps one of the strongest "bypasses" in any fighting game. these design aspects have some great theory behind them, intended to give you lots of choices as a player, but their execution is incredibly skewed toward a single decision once you are skilled enough at the game. it's great for an audience of people who aren't too well versed in the depths of fighting games (i was certainly there too at first), as these flashy gimmicks and varied mechanics are instantly appealing to anyone without requiring much prior understanding—but at the end of the day, it just ends up feeling like the fast food of fighting games (and, just like fast food, it will facilitate bad habits).

while sf6 is lacking and had a subpar patch almost a year into its life, tekken already had a solid balance patch barely even a month after release that nerfed the excessively broken stuff and made the game feel more like tekken. always good to see. hopefully the next patch (where they claim to focus more on buffing movement/defense) will ground the series even more into its roots of letting a player escape guessing situations with proper applications of knowledge and awareness. the more i dive into tekken, the more i realize how much i love that kind of stuff.

there is some pretty scrubby stuff shoe-horned into the tekken ecosystem, but it really doesn't seem as bad as most modern fighting games. the love given to legacy players here still remains pretty strong. hope we get some actually cool dlc soon though... and please stop buffing asuka's offense, just give her a normal backdash :(

this game finally got a real balance patch after almost a year, and i'm pretty darn disappointed. it's not that the game is particularly imbalanced character-wise, but it really just feels like this game has no idea what it wants to be... or maybe it does, and i just don't like it.

though it's good that they reduced the game's damage overall, so many alarmingly strange design decisions still remain completely intact in a way that continues to feel actively detrimental to actual fans of the series. what sf player actually likes blanka being able to two touch off of unseeable left/right mix that consistently beats any reversal? or level 3s instantly winning you the resource game, forcing you to watch them almost every match, some of them giving FULL oki? why is drive reversal still both extremely slow and highly punishable on block? i know dee jay was hella good but why'd they have to get rid of his coolest combos? and nerf chun's walkspeed? why not nerf something that's like, not as core to a character's appeal?

i don't want to sound like an fg boomer, but i miss when offense came from properly placing your pokes and capitalizing on openings instead of just... drive rush. seriously, what a lame mechanic. any nuance and depth to the drive system is completely ruined by the fact that you can simply spend it on your pokes to force your opponent to guess from your ideal neutral range. i'm sure they saw the strength of this mechanic and thought, "oh, the player needs to be punished for spamming it", so they introduced burnout, something that makes the game even more shallow by actively limiting your options and giving the opponent guaranteed checkmate scenarios where you lose even if you guess or react correctly. a completely backwards solution to a mechanic that significantly impedes on the core spacing game that the series is so beloved for. these mechanics alone ruin drive for me. it seems varied and deep at first, but at higher levels of play it becomes an awful, totalitarian system that punishes you for doing anything else... like trying to actually play street fighter.

i played the heck out of this game at launch. i was a top 300 chun with 1700+ MR, so i hope this comes off less like scrubby whining and more like someone who genuinely sees the potential in this game being horrendously squandered. it doesn't help that the roster is still largely dilapidated sf2 characters or really one-dimensional newcomers. at least rashid is cool. hope next patch is better—but for now, i'm playing tekken bruh.

very charming and cool fighting game that's fun casually and has huge appeal to any longtime fg fan, but there is some absurd jank in it that really makes me not want to play it more often than not. a-groove and roll cancelling really hinder the game for me. besides that stuff, it's a fun footsies game with a great roster, though i wish there were a bit more hit confirms and special cancels to help round out decision making. would be great with a few balance patches (which makes it very good mugen fodder)

i've always really liked tekken's movement and neutral systems. i like that the characters have a lot of nuanced options/moves, and that the game rewards the time and knowledge you apply to it. but the heat system really emphasizes some big problems with tekken's roster, with too many characters having esoteric knowledge checks and guessing scenarios that become completely overwhelming if you don't study the matchup. this difficulty can be as fun as it is monumentally frustrating. it doesn't help that the online ranked community is full of toxic lowlives who employ the most dishonest possible strategies they can get their grubby hands on, and either one-and-done you or plug when their strategy isn't working.

i think the game's very enjoyable overall, especially with its improved online infrastructure, but it definitely needs balancing. more counterplay needs to be added to heat systems and the top tiers' craziest moves.
also, please give asuka her backdash back :(

sf6 is still pretty cool—but the more time passes, the more i feel it has core design issues that desperately need to change. i continue to believe that it could become a vastly more interesting game and among the greatest fighting games of all time with a good few tweaks to its mechanics—until then, however, it suffers far too heavily from linear, flowcharty gameplay that discourages creativity and heavily rewards only a single playstyle.

the problem with meter systems in fighting games is that there is generally going to be a specific optimal way to use that meter; and the more pronounced/important said meter system is to winning, the more linear the game tends to become. when meter is the entire game, at some point it feels less like a fighting game and more like a resource management simulator (and not a particularly interesting one, either). this is also one of the many criticisms i have with guilty gear as a series, and why i feel like it doesn't maintain the depth and lasting power of its colleagues.

another big issue with this game is the roster, which is comprised of a majority of characters that are designed to force highly linear and uninteresting RPS scenarios. throw loops aren't the end of the world, especially if they eventually become more resource-dependent in future patches, but they still feel like an addition that doesn't care for the player's time investment, as too much of your time spent with the game is wasted on very shallow guesswork. i do still think the game (usually) does a good job of rewarding the more skilled player—it's far more an issue of fun and gamefeel than it is of balance. the way it stands, this game has some of the least fun offense to execute of any fighting game i've played.

i still have to commend this game for kickstarting the new generation of fighting game communities and infrastructures—the netcode and overall QoL is incredible—but as it stands i seriously would rather just play any other fighting game over this (except gear). i can only hope the patches address my issues, and also that some classic/beloved street fighter characters return that aren't gimmicky messes. rashid and ed are both great DLC additions, but aki and ed feel a bit undertuned—perhaps the game's power level will scale down to theirs over time.

kof still stands as one of the few fighting game series that are actually made for the fanbase rather than appealing to outside audiences. make of that what you will—it of course makes the games markedly niche—but for those it appeals to, it feels second to none. probably my favourite thing about kof is its roster of characters that are each their own take on a versatile, refined shoto playstyle rather than half of the cast being primarily shallow, overpowering gimmicks (something sf is really struggling with lately).

the big 3 might include MK for some—but for people like me who are passionate about 2D fighting game design, KOF has to take its place. if only it managed to reach the popularity of others, because i really think KOF15 is a great competitive game that has maybe the least design frustrations of any modern fighting game. fun movement, offense and neutral; all with very few knowledge checks or unintuitive, overwhelming, or flowcharty mechanics.

after this many revisions, granblue versus is in a great spot with its mechanics. there is definitely a big need for some character rebalancing rn (as per arcsys standard, the top tiers are ridiculous), but most of all im glad there is finally a real arcsys game with both rollback and footsies. it's also an interesting glimpse into a fighting game without the need for motion inputs, and a much needed respite from games like sf6 where sloppy inputs literally lose you the entire match. if you like street fighter but don't enjoy how unforgiving its input system is, i highly recommend this game.

the only reason i'm not rating this higher is because i don't really like the monetization scheme, with no ability to buy individual characters and instead having to pay full price for a remaster of a game that came out years ago. i also think the character and mechanic balance need tweaking, as 66L is far too overwhelming of a universal move and the top tiers feel like they're playing a different game at times.

street fighter 5 is a notoriously misunderstood game that, in its final patch, i can easily consider my favourite fighting game of all time. months after sf6's release and i still just think this game got so many things right by the end of it all, and i think sf6 should slowly steer its way to a similar path in terms of balance and roster. a huge variety of characters with interesting tools, strong defensive mechanics that shut down autopilot offense, an overall emphasis on interactive neutral play... if this game came out in the state that it ended up in, i think its reputation would be extremely different. or maybe it wouldn't because maybe people don't actually like interaction in fighting games and just want to play guilty gear and flowchart strings, idk

anyway, wish i spent more time playing this online before 6 came out. god bless this game

a beautifully crafted game tragically held back by its lead gameplay designer. mike z's views on fighting games are just so bizarrely detached from what i find fun about them, and it's reflected in the game's mechanics to a despicable amount. to me, this game feels like a homunculus of mechanics from games that mike z played without the deeper understanding of why they worked in their respective games. it ends up playing like a game with a lot of combo/team expression, but basically no interaction between players. honestly, even mvc has a more interesting back/forth due to its fast paced and skillful movement—this game just feels like there's nothing you can do in neutral besides call assist and start pressure. there's a lot to say about whether you should strive to make a fighting game fully balanced, but i think this game is just too far off the deep end to be fun for me at any level of play. broken games are only fun to a specific extent. i like doing the combos and playing bigband trumpet but i do not want to play the rest of the game; which is such a shame because it's one of the games that really inspired me to play and improve regularly all those years ago.

if they ever made a sequel, i would definitely tone down the absurd amounts of unseeable resets the game has, tuning it more similarly to something like dbfz, maybe adding a universal defensive mechanic that has a direction agnostic input to beat left/right mix. there also needs to be far stricter cooldowns on assists in neutral or general re-tuning of their power. i will say, though—in its current state, it is a pretty fun game to watch.