So, listen. I don't really play fighting games. I know what most of the terminology means and generally understand what the frame data people talk about means, but when I'm playing these games I am two measly notches above truly mindless button mashing. I'm never the person who excels in games due to superior mechanical skill, so I'm not particularly interested in getting deeply invested in a genre of games where I'll never feel capable of mastering anything.
But this game? This game feels good. Other reviews here seem somewhat displeased with this game's potential as a competitively viable fighting game, but this is a dream for someone who engages with fighting games on the same level as I do - a level where you "learn" a character until you feel like you can do some mildly cool shit sometimes, and your eyes glaze over when you see some 40-input combo string appear on your screen. The lightning fast pace and truly bonkers mobility options set things up so you always feel like you're a split second away from doing something flashy and just laying into this little idiot baby who thinks they can cook you. Even defense feels chunky - successfully shielding an attack feels like a lightning strike. I can't even be mad about it, I get just as hype watching them block my own attacks.
Gotta love the characters too. These are VN characters, baby, and Nasu can't stop you before each match to make you read for 45 minutes about what constitutes a "vampire" in Souya, so it's a lot of fun seeing how they've adapted the newly-HD cast to squeeze character expression out of the animations. Mostly, this work was already done with previous iterations of Melty, but it's still fun to see the way Shiki and Aoko's mentor/mentee relationship translates into moveset similarities (and the way you can show someone three seconds of gameplay from the identical red-haired maids and they would immediately understand the dynamic the two have). Not exactly reinventing the wheel in terms of characterization here but it's schlocky anime fun all the way down. Even its most serious cast members are wound so ridiculously tight that you can't help but laugh at them ("the perfect combination of human and demon blood").
It is completely brain-off fun? No, but it's as close as a mainstream fighting game will come to providing that kind of experience.
But this game? This game feels good. Other reviews here seem somewhat displeased with this game's potential as a competitively viable fighting game, but this is a dream for someone who engages with fighting games on the same level as I do - a level where you "learn" a character until you feel like you can do some mildly cool shit sometimes, and your eyes glaze over when you see some 40-input combo string appear on your screen. The lightning fast pace and truly bonkers mobility options set things up so you always feel like you're a split second away from doing something flashy and just laying into this little idiot baby who thinks they can cook you. Even defense feels chunky - successfully shielding an attack feels like a lightning strike. I can't even be mad about it, I get just as hype watching them block my own attacks.
Gotta love the characters too. These are VN characters, baby, and Nasu can't stop you before each match to make you read for 45 minutes about what constitutes a "vampire" in Souya, so it's a lot of fun seeing how they've adapted the newly-HD cast to squeeze character expression out of the animations. Mostly, this work was already done with previous iterations of Melty, but it's still fun to see the way Shiki and Aoko's mentor/mentee relationship translates into moveset similarities (and the way you can show someone three seconds of gameplay from the identical red-haired maids and they would immediately understand the dynamic the two have). Not exactly reinventing the wheel in terms of characterization here but it's schlocky anime fun all the way down. Even its most serious cast members are wound so ridiculously tight that you can't help but laugh at them ("the perfect combination of human and demon blood").
It is completely brain-off fun? No, but it's as close as a mainstream fighting game will come to providing that kind of experience.
jobosno
1 year ago