My hottest take in the gaming world is that I've never understood the hype around Rockstar games. To be fair, it's a small piece of my grander opinion of "Some open worlds are just too open for me." Games like Grand Theft Auto, Skyrim, etc. throw you out into a world where there's endless possibilities, but that means I'm endlessly distracted from the content they want you to partake. I never unlocked any of the map in GTA IV when I was kid because I just kept driving around and killing people. Decades later, Red Dead Redemption 2 sweeps the nation. People praise the story so I sat myself down and forced myself to not get distracted, but when I go in I find the plot gratingly repetitive despite a great ending. Now GTA VI is on the horizon with people freaking out, so I've downloaded GTA V to see if something will finally click.

...It didn't.

Even less so than Red Dead Redemption, because there's so much I can do but is any of it really entertaining? Do I really want to figure out investing in the stock market, playing tennis, or doing yoga in my backyard? And then the plot is even less intriguing than Red Dead 2. I hardly care about what's going on past Trevor being a hilarious weirdo and wanting to see what he does next.

Aside from that I also just absolutely hate anything to do with planes or more specifically helicopters in GTA. The controls are awful, and while yes they may be difficult to control in game because they're difficult to control in real life, I ask again is it fun? And on top of that they ask for near pinpoint accuracy with this jank. One mission tasked me with picking up train cars via helicopter. It probably took me 6 minutes to properly align my helicopter with each pickup. Just fucking streamline it. Literally any other open world helicopter is more fun. Just Cause or Saints Row do this so much better.

Is there any good here? Yes. I really enjoy the heists. It is fun to plan out and prepare for these high stakes adventures. Also a lot of the side characters/missions are hilarious. Past that though I'm still indifferent about Rockstar, and most likely will not be getting GTA VI.

I've given Strive so many chances since its release and like, nah dude fuck this mess of a game, this shit sucks.

There are things Strive does right that are worth pointing out:

- Bridget
- Testament outside of giving them Slash's hat
- a 3rd of the soundtrack goes really hard
- Being able to grab a combo in client to practice is cool

Almost everything else comes off as a dud. The game isn't fun to play. The damage is higher than previous games, there's less of an execution barrier to that high damage (which, you can argue about balance yadda yadda, but you can safely assume that not every +R Sol is going to hit every Sidewinder), except in weird cases where they still have that limiting execution like Happy Chaos's clean hits (which like, didn't work to balance him out). There's also less defensive mechanics (DA is sorely missed, and the changes to IB are fucking terrible considering how good they were in almost every GG game prior). The gatling system is gone, and while most of the roster works off of the same rules, it's more arbitrary and confusing than "just go down the line like a slightly fucked up magic system". The wall breaking mechanics are confusing for new players, while they're still able to be manipulated in a way to either give oki setups or greatly reward players for breaking the corner. It's not even like Tekken/DOA where stage breaks enable different combo routes or ways to change the game, it's just a disorienting reset to neutral. Some of the character reworks (like Anji and Faust) missed what made those previous versions of the characters so fun. Anji in particular was a sign early on that they had no idea what to do with this game. Why would you release Sin or Elphelt and give them the most 4/10 buttons in the game?

I think the story of the game is bad, there was a clear critique of American jingoism (they called this dump "a country" for a reason) that they go back on for no gain. Some of the redesigns of the game are insipid (Baiken's key art is fucking embarrassing), bland (Strive Sol's design is my least favorite in the series) or just trash the character for little story or gameplay gain (Faust). The new members of the roster are fine, and if we ever get a Xourth, it'd be really cool to see them fleshed out, but outside of HC they seem more subdued than the returning cast.

The game is also just a fucking chore to actually play. The lobby system is the worst they've ever had by a country mile. Trying to connect to another player in a public or private lobby shouldn't be this active chore to accomplish. Invites to friends regularly fizzle. If you're using the quick match feature, the game will regularly push you into whatever dead room it wants, pray that you're not just sitting in an empty queue for 15 minutes. I'm not a big fan of ranked systems in fighting games to begin with, but why is this ranked setting the default way of experiencing the game? You're going to lose a ton when learning a fighting game, that's part of the appeal if we're being honest. Telling a player "you lost too many times, get fucked" or "you won! time to stop your set with this player even if you think you aren't ready" is horrendous for the new player experience and installs the same sort of bad habits that chasing PP in Osu! does.

Strive feels like a game that's development was hurt by the pandemic and they still launched the game and have been trying to do band-aid fixes without a clear direction ever since. I'd pop in every now and then to see if the game would ever get to the fireworks factory, and I think at this point I've totally given up. As a game for newer players, I think it fails. As a game for fans of the GG series overall, I think it fails harder. Strive is an incoherent disappointment, and at this point I'm just waiting for them to move on to the next game in the series. Nothing against you if you still have fun with the game, god bless your heart, but you deserve better than this.