izigame.me

We're some way into season 3 and I think I've been shaken off of this game. I won't tell you that I don't think this "isn't Guilty Gear" anymore like so many called out back then. The game looks beautiful, moving forward charges resources, and 6p is defensive. I don't know what else 'is needed'.

What I'm discomforted with is the system changes this last season, and the way it changes the fundamental rhythm of the game. I think I disagree with the inexpensive, low risk offensive use of burst guage, something every character begins with full at the beginning of each round. I think the Guilty Gear I enjoy is one where damage begins low (due to lack of resource), ramps up in the middle (as both characters gain resources) then plateaus as guts becomes a factor. This is no longer the case. Wild Assault enables explosive combos from round start situations, promises wall break (and simultaneously positive bonus) most of the time, and therefore makes the games 'top heavy'. Fewer decisions are deciding games, which isn't really the kind of game I enjoy.

I suppose this new volatility just pushed me away from neutrality, but that neutrality was always because of how many caveats persisted in my enjoyment. Ranked match and especially the 'celestial challenge' incentivises dodging games. Getting serious games is needlessly difficult if you're playing a character people don't enjoy playing against (new DLC character, or characters who are just perceived to have especially consistent gameplans like Sol or Giovanna). More than the Arcsys idiosyncracy of 'little guys in a room' lobby system, this is what makes matchmaking most frustrating, and it couldn't happen in a smaller game. Three matches period for ranked sets was never a good idea, and always seemed fixable.

From the beginning, I questioned the obliteration of the Instant Air Dash. Forward air dashes have significant start up, clearly indicated with a yellow circle they push against in their air dash animation. The problem which comes in isn't necessarily that it feels 'laggy', but that characters who the designers want to enforce 50/50s need to do so with single, less flexible tools which give smaller, more scaled reward. Therefore, optimization is better rewarded in managing conversions from counter hits than movement, defense and similar fundamentals that Strive was told to re-emphasize over past entries.

Roman cancel is needfully more restrictive in this game, and there is plenty of room for experimentation on paper, but damned if the removal of Xrd style YRC and +R style FRCs for 25% meter makes one hesitate on using it in interesting ways. Blue roman cancel has the strongest time slow effect, and can be used offensively successfully if a player has a very high awareness of game state. I would like to think I do, but most of the community does not use this one on purpose. Red RC is useful for conversions or correcting mistakes, but it's expensive for both situations considering Wild Assault now exists for the former and the latter is exclusively unoptimal play. Then defensive yellow RC probably shouldn't be done at all. It is a poor defensive option who'se guard crush can occasionally be used to convert into a poor combo. It can be baited, and I would be interested in seeing dead angles return in some capacity. All this is to say, meter spending lacks the flexibility I've enjoyed in previous entries.

As a personal preference, I miss checkmate situations and alternative win conditions. Playing 'off' characters felt interesting in previous arcsys titles because there were other objectives one could rely upon besides opening up the opponent and vortexing them. Difficult characters are not necessarily stronger for successfully running their gameplan, and historically technical characters who get high damage get their damage defanged for more persistent pressure (observe Happy Chaos, Axl Low). This also has to do with the 'return to fundamentals', but it's not my preference. Bedman and ABA are characters I enjoyed switching to against opponents I've been playing for a while to 'change the texture' of the game for myself. Here, they are much more in line with the rest of the cast. You as a player are never playing 'a whole new game' by switching to a secondary-- nor does any character need to change their strategy significantly match up to match up. I understand these types of match ups can be cumbersome for casual players to be asked to learn, I am simply the type of player who does enjoy this type of variety and diversity.

The game has excellent netplay once you're in a match, and thankfully this game was part of the tide which forced rollback into an industry standard. But now that it is an industry standard, that no longer qualifies a game as automatically superior to its peers. This might change if the devs choose to make similarly radical changes to the systems as they did for this last season, but that's perhaps why I'm willing to give a negative review now where I wasn't willing to give a positive review before: they changed the nature of the game in a way that I personally didn't enjoy. That kind of polarization is the risk of making a move like this, and I don't fault the devs for losing me. I'm just writing it for a public forum now after sitting with these changes for the better part of a year now.