DarKaoZ: Heck, watching the vids of those Athena's again, renews my desire to play her too, haha. EX Shining Crystal Bit is awesome, Psycho Sword -> cancel combos are so fluid...
And I love the fact that even the old vids of this game offer good matches to watch... really speaks for how much potential the game as a whole has.
I can agree a bit on the scaling stuff too... it seems to affect some characters too heavily. A small change to how it affects certain characters moves would probably help a good deal.
Rex Dart: Eh, can't entirely agree. SNKP said each chara has something like 500/600 frames in XII, so we can assume in this game, with NM, new normals, new DMs, EX moves, taunts, and time out poses, that they've probably be upgraded to something like 700 frames per chara. Whatever new characters they make, to be complete, have to meet this heightened number.
So, lets say they made 5 characters worth of work for console release. 3,500 frames of work. If they cut 1 character out (4 new charas), they can spread those 700 saved frames to give each of the old 31 characters about 22 new frames each. For some characters, that would mean a new move, maybe. For others, it could mean new taunts, a new winpose, stun / time out animations, a special VS intro, an "alt" costume like Raiden's facemask, anything. And not every character would need as much new as others, so that's even more frames to those who need them. Work on the old characters already has style and base-chara-model made, so it's quicker (and possibly cheaper) to produce, too.
SNKP states they don't wanna p'o the arcade operators, so smaller changes are probably pretty likely.
And they did such a great job with stuffing the arcade game with new things at the last min (like Leona's new DM, revisions to Neomax moves, taunts, etc), that I wouldn't be too suprised for them to do such a thing for the console release.
asociale: -nod- Yeah, I can understand where you're coming from. It's like watching 20 second long fireball wars! It's annoying to either be under diminished control, or NO control at all, for that long. But that's why I love the fact that this game offers cancels, NM, and EX along with the insanity of HD juggles. You can never control your opponents playstyle in games like this, but I'm glad the options let you choose what YOUR style is, without one seeming weaker than the other. I really think the fact that various characters have varied lengths of combos helps diversify the 31 character cast well.
I hope they maintain such diversity with any new characters added, too. It would such for every character they add to be a 20-second-combo machine, haha. Also need some characters doing the same amount of damage in 4 or 5 powerful hits!