Compared to my last review I’ve spent a decent amount of hours at one of the arcades in my area playing this game, I genuinely wanted to in a sense defeat how blunt I was in that but even just meeting the game on its terms and practicing I just get frustration more than anything.

While I can squint and see the outline of games like Tekken existing because of this if you think about this existing a year after Street Fighter II dropped and this was developed by the second biggest video game company at the time you add up something that feels gimmicky rather than what it is, innovative.

For starters, there is no cohesion between 2d fighting and the 3D space fundamentally. When you’re off the axis your opponent is on you are essentially caught in the stream of wherever you can move until the game eventually corrects itself. This one fundamental piece crumbles the house of cards this game is built off of, if I can die because my opponent can be in a space I cannot reasonably counter (or because the resources this game provide me do not teach me these mechanics), what good is the 3D space if I can’t utilize it besides being a way to sidestep the entire genre I’m playing?

It’s one thing to develop technology that changes everything (I imagine it was incredibly hard for them to even make the hit boxes as decent as they are here which rival even most 2D fighting games at the time), but it’s another thing if the game you’ve made just doesn’t feel good and the art of game design is making the compromise between fun and technical.

Summary: I wanna see how the other games improve upon this