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I got a chance to play this on Sunday, and it was pretty damn fun.  If I had to compare it to other fighters, I'd say the gameplay is most similar to Street Fighter Alpha, Vampire Savior, or KOF 99-2001, though the pacing is a bit slower than those games (and nothing felt as stupid as SFA3 Akuma or VSav Wolfman).  It's something that I'd like to play more, if I could get the game for a reasonable price (or if I wasn't about to spend another month traveling for work *laughs* ).

Some things felt a little silly (i.e. Touka has a super that acts as both a command grab and a counter move, Manaka's books are active for days after she recovers, Karalau does damage even with on-the-fly day 0 combos, Morgan has a projectile super with invincible startup that's also safe on block at pointblank range), but nothing seemed like it'd be too bad if I'd actually known stuff about the game before playing it.  Of course, this is day 0 play, so I wasn't expecting to find anything ridiculously broken *laughs* .  But seriously, all of the silly things seemed manageable once I knew to expect them, despite playing against people who at least had some experience with the game, and nothing seemed outright dumb, so that's...something.

Not knowing anything about the source anime/visual novels made no difference...hell, if anything, it was more fun, because I got to make up backstories.  Many laughs were had when I decided Karalau was an alcoholic nymphomaniac furry who secretly idolizes Terry Bogard and got partnered with tsundere anti-nature terrorist Yu, who in turn was jealous of the attention Karalau was giving to demure pro-nature shrine maiden samurai Touka.

Welcome to DC

Welcome to DC

Athens, huh?  Ever get to see Uga?

Nope.  You have just barely enough time to charge during the animation of f+B.  Try charging immediately and canceling as late as possible.

Welcome to DC

It's never a bad time to start learning KOF.

Welcome to DC

Leona, Benimaru and Athena are good anti-fireball characters.  If you use Baltic launcher wisely you can eat up fireballs and apply pressure while slowly pushing the opponent back.  Also remember earring goes under most projectiles once it hits the ground, you can also use it to trade fbs but the start up time takes a while so its not a good idea. 

If you want to fight zoners with Leona, learn to do V-slasher on reaction to as many things as you can from every part of the screen (including learning the reach of instant tk'ed C and EX V-Slasher).  Fully invincible in the air and fast enough to punish a lot more things than most other moves.  Anything else (aside from straight rushdown) should be secondary to that, since that is how Leona becomes dangerous outside of cr.B range.

I also found it funny how it claimed that a game can't become more balanced in subsequent revisions.  That might be true of the small sample size that it looked at, but it's a pretty dumb thing to say in general.  GGXX started out nearly as bad as HnK (GG:TML and GGX were even worse *laughs* ) and became one of the most balanced 2D fighters by GGXXAC.  98UM is more balanced than 98, even with Krauser.  Each revision of BB has been more balanced than the previous, and BBCSEX looks like it's continuing that trend.  XIII home seems more balanced than XIII arcade (though I'd give it some time before saying that for sure).

Just because certain games only shift balance instead of becoming balanced doesn't mean that'll be the case with all of them.

I think you can input hcb,f as an alternate for the dp motion.  So you can probably do:



 

or 

I'd guess that toning down the guard crush to just 50% is to prevent it from being a punish to recovery rolling his sweep in the corner.  At least, I'm pretty sure there was a video of corner cr.D, qcf+(C), CABC, (MC) Neomax basically killing if you recovery roll the sweep and get guard crushed.  I don't think anyone else had a setup where a recovery roll would HAVE to be followed by a reversal or else give a free combo, and if the opponent didn't recovery roll, Shen could still cancel the punch and get some oki pressure on.

Just a note about qcf,hcb (and qcb,hcf): you don't need to pass through neutral.  It's one smooth back-and-forth motion, like d/df/f/df/d/db/b.  Same number of inputs as qcfx2, and I think it'd actually be slightly faster since you don't need to go back through neutral.

Of course, shortcutting with qcf,df,b is faster.

I agree that balance isn't necessarily a prerequisite for a fun game.  Hokuto no Ken is broken as shit but still pretty fun to play.  However, if you have two similar games where one is well balanced and the other is broken as shit enough for only like 3 characters to be viable in serious play, the more balanced game will usually be more fun.

The idea that more balance means less variety of play is absurd.  Guilty Gear is one of the most balanced 2D fighters (in Slash and Accent Core, not so much before those *laughs* ) and no two characters are the same.  There is some common ground in terms of tactics (like Dizzy and Testament both usually want to zone until they can get a knockdown, then commence projectile-covered oki traps, or Jam and Slayer both want to harrass with safe normals and confirm into painful combos), but the deeper levels of playing each character is pretty damn unique.

The whole point about not "having" to pick bad characters is kind of a logic fail, since the developers aren't likely to include characters that are purposely made cool but gimpy (excepting a few obvious jokes like Shingo or Dan).  The game was (hopefully) made with the intention of every character being playable, so it's a deserved strike against the game when stuff is badly broken and developers should be willing to fix it in some way (either in subsequent revisions like in the past or with update patches these days) if it's obviously and ridiculously broken (yes, I do dream of some day playing an HnK2 where Rei can't jump cancel damn near everything including specials to give him stupid tk infinites and quadruple mixups off of an IAD).

So yeah, the article has some flaws.  Still, I guess the basic points is that a game can be fun without being balanced and that people should stop crying about imbalances instead of taking the time to man up and really learn the game, which I can dig.

Welcome to DC

Yes, you shouldn't have much trouble finding a local scene in SoCal.

Welcome to DC

Welcome to DC

I'll probably just be in the lab for the next couple of months trying to get things down before I go online.

No need to hole up in the lab for that long.  Gotta play to make sure what you're practicing actually makes sense in a real match