I could understand that, but Seth is usually one to always give respect to a whole bunch of fighting games, and tries to level with us as much as his job allows him to. But either way, there's not much bait to take, I try to listen intently when people talk, and even I missed that VF joke, so idk if that many people even noticed it.
Plus I wouldn't call VF an underdog exactly, most people give a lot of respect to VF, even ones who don't play 3D fighters. It's one of the few games out there that actually benefits from hivemind assumptions.
As for the game itself, I guess Capcom really wants to sell what they see as joke characters as...well, jokes. And Paul hasn't exactly been the badass he was in Tekken 3 when he took down Human Ogre, you know, considering he's been rival fighting with Kuma. But you don't go to Capcom for decent models (well, at least Ono's department), we got Namco for that. Can't wait for how beautiful they make Chun-Li.
I consider VF the underdog primarily because there's tons of people here in America that respect it, but who actually plays the game still??? I'll ask this: who here still plays VF competitively??? Let's look at the actual scene in America-- mad small, probably smaller than the Smash or GG/BB scene and barely any tourneys host the game... I've lived in 3 different states in which I tried to push a VF scene, and I've come across tons of people who say they respect/played the game and when I invite them to, they don't... In fact, they make up some crazy excuse, or cop out... Straight up, it's the least played 3d fighter in most parts of the world-- other than Japan... Comparing sales, its not that strong even compared to games like SC3 or T4 (well EVO did great imo). It's on it's last leg, especially considering there's no talks of VF6, and Sega doesn't say jack about anything to anyone.
Ok, back to this here SFxT. Paul's phoenix smasher does crap damage in SFxT. That's a huge slap in the face to any Tekken player imo, especially Paul players (I being one of them). He has hard hitting moves that don't require counter hits either, ff+2:1, d+1+2, qcf+1, d+4,1:1+2 and some others as well. Paul is supposed to be that dude that does enough damage to end the match quickly, so he's looking for holes in your game to get that clean hit, God forbid if it were a clean counter hit. I'm not impressed with him at all. I understand "joke characters", but Roger and Ganryu are more of joke characters than Paul or Law. Their storylines sucked imo (Paul's T4 story was pretty good though), but play-wise, Paul only had 1 joke move and that was FC,u+3+4 (incomplete somersault). I thought Capcom was just exaggerating their appearances, but watching Paul play was practically unbearable imo...
Real talk, Dan seems more stronger than Paul right now, and he was supposed to be the joke character... Even SNK knew how to make a joke character like Dan have non-joking gameplay or lackluster damage for that matter (remember Shingo and his critical hits???)... Even Shingo, who was a joking character, could be considered a threat in gameplay... I feel like Capcom went over the top with some characters, and they don't know how to distinguish between characteristics/story vs gameplay/properties without making them weak (I feel like Dan in SFIV was a fluke tbh)... I mean sure, Namco did give Kuma some crazy moves like d+1+2, but it didn't make him worse. Kuma was still a threat... Hell, I've even seen some mean Dr.B gameplay back in the T3 days, and there were people who said he wasn't viable...
Paul might've had the dumbest story in Tekken, but he still a threat. He still had that phoenix smasher and that was one thing people didn't wanna get hit with. I'm not asking for a half-life 1 hit combo, I'm just asking for the signature move to be somewhat similar to what it was in Tekken. At least give him that... EWGF animations aren't looking great either imo, but I digress...
