Guilty Gear: Strive Review (龙仔)
First, the conclusion:
I do not recommend any player to buy and play this game; apart from the graphics and music, the game itself is worthless.
I have played this game for 1,300 hours, investing too much time and passion, so I am not hesitant to spend time thoroughly criticizing this new patch.
S4 negates everything from the first three years of this game and transforms it into a boring and foul mess. This stupid game has all the problems that a game patch can have:
1.They deleted the core gameplay of the characters; the new gameplay is boring and rigid.
2.The balance is shattered.
3. Bugs are everywhere.
Let's address these issues one by one, starting with the change in core gameplay:
Fighting game players invest tons of time practicing a character; for example, I have played for 1,300 hours, and I can only say I have truly mastered two characters: Sol and Slayer. However, the passion players have invested in a character over three years of daily practice makes everything seem ridiculous in light of the developers' foolish changes. Most players don’t care about buffs or nerfs to their characters, but the developers have directly deleted the characters they loved, replacing them with something completely different except for appearances. Veteran players have lost their reasons to continue playing this game.
Several characters have suffered from such disastrous reworks:
Ram: Almost the most broken character; she has all the aforementioned problems. The core gameplay has changed, turning her into a new character; all the skills that veteran players practiced are now useless. The new sword insertion mechanism is mindlessly strong, and Hekka's infinite loop is laughable like a bug. She's very strong but in a way that feels like cheating; veteran players are unwilling to play this monotonous new version.
Sol: Almost all mechanics have been removed, turning him into a complete waste. The Sol I loved has completely disappeared; none of his three dashes can be used, and what was once a rich combo variation has been reduced to only connecting to his new silly Fafnir route. Now Sol resembles a new character from Street Fighter more than from GG, and this new character lacks design sense from head to toe—rigid and boring.
Pot: Kara has been removed, turning him into a stupid character that only repeats command grabs. Not to mention how much time and effort veteran players spent understanding Kara; it was also where this character's depth and fun lay. The new Pot is just a zombie wearing Pot's skin, unable to do anything except use one move repeatedly.
Nago: Similar to Pot; the new Nago has no depth in gameplay but is absurdly strong in terms of numbers, becoming a character that can win just by repeatedly pressing one button. I don’t understand what value such a character has for gameplay; perhaps the developers who were kicked by a donkey into paralysis can only press one button will enjoy it.
There may be other characters I haven’t mentioned that have been destroyed. In summary, players can accept buffs or nerfs to characters but cannot accept having their characters deleted entirely—the things they used to play are simply gone, especially since the new characters are mostly boring and rigid zombies.
Now let's talk about balance issues:
balance may not be as simple as being flawed because S4 makes me feel that the developers haven't considered balance even a little bit. This version seems less like a gradient and more like there are only two types of characters: playable characters and unplayable characters. Strong characters and weak characters cannot compete on the same stage; the performance gap feels like they come from two different games. No fighting game player would believe that Sol, Ky, Go, and Ram are now all characters from the same game.
They made some characters feel like they were cheating: Go, Ram, Nago...
Some characters feel as trashy as Street Fighter II characters—stiff and rigid: Sol, Ky...
The strong characters from last version were not nerfed: Johnny, Slayer...
The weak characters from last version were not buffed: Millia, Testament...
However, based on those modified characters being turned into a pile of garbage, perhaps those who were hardly modified are lucky because even a beautiful jade would turn into trash after passing through these stupid developers' hands. Balance has collapsed to the point where more than half of the characters cannot compete normally except for a few.
Now let’s discuss bugs:
as mentioned earlier, even beautiful jade would turn into trash after passing through these stupid developers' hands; none of the modified characters are free from bugs. I won’t provide specific examples; everyone has seen various videos on Twitter.
Finally, some personal emotional outbursts:
This patch is an insult to all GGST players; it shows no respect for players and destroys everyone's hard work in practice by completely updating many characters into forms that contradict their original intent. Such deliberately disgusting behavior towards players is nauseating. With such an update that seems like it came out after killing ten thousand mothers, Arc still has confidence saying "there won't be major changes in the coming months." The concentrated trash produced after ten thousand years of decay is ten times better than Arc's updates.
In summary, ARC's ability regarding balance patches has become evident—especially with several heavily reworked characters—completely achieving discomfort for both sides—players do not want to use stiff, brain-dead characters devoid of fun, while opponents do not want to watch a ridiculous performance display. Now I can say there isn't a single healthy character; this entire game is garbage.
I don’t know how this farce will end; personally, I can't think of any remedy other than rolling back to S3. This was once my beloved game; now there’s no reason left to continue playing it.