In the second set of vids, I really liked that Kim. I often find it silly how rarely people use his Aerial specials in this game... they normally only seem to use it for Drive Cancelling, but it's a great "Caught you by suprise!" move to stop advancement, as shown here. And watching Ryo "Abuse" his EX Ranbu off Kou'ken was also a treat. It really made him look like the defensive portion of the Kyokugen practitioners.
i think that mentality comes mainly from people who haven't really played the game yet. a few of the AI guys have agreed for the most part the that roster is decently balanced. almost every character has some kind of tool that can be utilized to a full degree. people who just watch have it embedded in their brain that "RAIDEN/K/LIZ OMG BROKEN!" mentality. granted, they have very good toolsets, but practically all of the other characters can give them a hard time if you have patience and learn your characters. on that note, i have a high suspicion that people who are complaining about top tier characters aren't going to be the ones using duo lon/leona/vice/hwa jai... actually i shouldn't include leona, since she's been getting a lot of love lately 
I have to agree here; that one of the reason I find all matches of this game fun to watch. The characters actually seem very well made in the end, and there's very little, if any "dead weight" to the cast. Most of the poor plays of each character, always leave me with a "Well, he didn't even USE that, and that's great!" feeling, rather than the "man, I wish they made X character better!" feel I get with certain other fighters...
on topic of the video, though, i think those vices were pretty terrible. based on the way they're playing her, it's like she's being played with older KOF strategy, which she is definitely not tailored to in XIII.
Hmmm, that's interesting. I thought the fact that she kinda relied on the new ubertool (Anywhere juggle Decide) felt like one of the most "XIII focused" plays of her yet. They also did a good job of using EX tackle in ways normal tackle really never worked WELL as in older KoFs (like as a kinda anti-air), and combo'd off it effectively. Lastly, they actually used Splash outside of the derived follow-up, which seems suprisingly rare on video.
That's no weird at all. That new voice is one of the bests things of this new Mai. Sounds more FF than KOF. I totally love it, not only her Kachosen, her NippoIchi and Hisatsu and Musasabi too.
The breathy sounds of her voice give her a nice amount of personality; it has a traditional "elegant, yet sexy" spin to it, kinda like old black and white movie vocal delivery. It really works for Mai; It's actually an improvement! And that's pretty suprising for a new voice for a well-known character.
I was under the impression that Ryo was meant to pressure with his projectile; an instant wall to help him advance and get some good close-up combos. Probably is a surprise because there's been a limited amount of Ryo in vids up until a few weeks/months ago maybe.
I think the fact the has advancing parries also hammers your impression home, as well as his somewhat unorthodox aerial normals. He seems to work best at messing up the opponents advances, rather than rushing in and dominating. Takuma and Robert seem to do that much better, due to better close range options (Guard breaking throws, better command normals), or better aerial domination (Robert can do SO much in the air now...)
