Everything considered, if it’s a straight up yes or no question I’d go with no, but it’s not as clean cut as that.
I’ve had the game for almost a month now, and I think I’m finally over the new car smell of the game and I’m not liking what I’m seeing if things don’t get adjusted.
The game imo is shallow, if you’re only sticking to tourney presets it’s painfully shallow and just about everyone feels too simple.
Custom moves fixes some aspects where you can equip moves to enhance the way you want to play (more combo routes, more zoning/anti-Zoning, safer options, more options for mix like command grabs and stances etc) but honestly even with custom I think it’s still too simple but at least it’ll be more fun and exporation can be a big factor and more worthwhile.
Movesets are too gutted. They need 2 or 3 more strings universally, adjust some specials set to abilities to be universal.
Outside of Sonya and Geras everyone just feels like they werent fully done.
I dont understand this new hard-on fighting games have with “neutral” but I realized after SFV and now MK11 than I’m not a fan of this approach.
Making every other aspect garbage just so people are finally forced to walk around and whiff punish thinking they’re hot shit is not my idea of a good game.
Look at tekken or SC or even KoF, you can keep all the options strong and useful and still have “neutral” as a very important part of the game.
Movement and spacing are always a big part no matter how crazy the tools are, you don’t have to make everything ass so people will play more footsies.
You’re glad that people are more grounded and you can play “neutral” whiff punish? Well no shit coz that’s all you can do now as everything else sucks.
Jumps are just straight up awful, they’re overly floaty and slow and can’t jump over anything, yet jump kicks are still stupid and needlessly hard to anti air.
90% of movesets are unsafe or crazy negative limiting the already small movesets even more.
Throws are too good as it is, at least half of any match is just throws. Them beating pokes is still annoying, I get why they did it but I still don’t like it.
Pokes need to be more plus on hit, if you don’t have a good mid it’s almost stupid if they dont mash d1.
This along with how throws are just makes the game very mashy and messy upclose.
So many hitboxes are sloppy and need adjustments, Kollector’s u2 straight up doesnt work, Erron’s f32 hits behind him, Jacqui’s KB anti airs behind her, Liu’s throw makes d2s magically whiff etc.
Krushing blow requirements are all over the place, some you’ll rarely see coz of overly specific and pointless restrictions like Johnny’s camera and glasses KBs and Kollector’s mace KB when others like Geras can get all of his almost every match.
I love KBs but some requirements definitely need some tweaking.
They also need to add a setting for them in training, I’m so sick of having to do Jacqui’s full clinch rotation just to try out one combo.
I’ll end it by saying this, I don’t think the game is bad, in fact the game is super good and has a crazy amount of potential, but personally I don’t see myself sticking with it if custom variations don’t get added so I can play my character the way I want them to because 16bit’s “tourney presets” are trash.
I hate saying it because not only was I hype over the roof for the game (I was scouring for almost 8 hours on the day the game arrived here to get it asap) and I’ve been helping many players from other games learn the game, but its hard for me to enjoy the game as it is so hopefully things will get changed/polished soon.
