4 people found this review helpful
Not Recommended
0.5 hrs last two weeks / 25.3 hrs on record (15.4 hrs at review time)
Posted: 1 Dec, 2024 @ 8:12pm

Mini review, more of my first thoughts than a full on review, but as a quick TLRD: Good base, but the product feels unfinished, like it should have released in Early Access instead of a full release, and has questionable mechanics and balance decisions.

Yes, the base game can be pretty fun, doing combos and learning your character. The problem is that there isn't much to do from there. The only single player mode is arcade mode. Rivals 1 launched with a Story Mode and the Abyss Mode for single player, yet, this game's story mode isn't included in the launch version and the upcoming updates will only be chapter based. A sequel shouldn't launch with less content then the original. If this was Early Access, I would forgive it. But considering this launched with less content than even Nick Brawl 2, a game that definitely had a much smaller budget and less dev time, that's pretty worrying.

Of course, the biggest problem mechanic that the game is facing is crouch cancel and floor hugging. Basically, if you hold down before you get it, you stick to the ground, doing a crouch cancel. But you can do this even after you get hit, giving you a floor hug. The issue? This means the attacker is minus ON HIT, including on moves specifically designed to start combos. This makes it so that you can easily be punished for simply playing the game the intended way. The only real counter to this is to grab since you can't cancel that, which turns this platform fighter more into a platform wrestling game. It's not surprising that a lot of people are struggling with this mechanic, and I feel it needs to be toned down. I also had some struggles with tech windows, they feel kind of strict, but I also feel the gravity is to blame. For some reason, it feels like your character's hitstun gravity goes down when they're nearing the floor, and that can easily mess with tech timing.

And the balance, while it may seem like there are smart ways the game is balanced, you will hear people bring up Zetterburn, Ranno, and Clarien as the problem characters. Some call them cheaters. I haven't played a lot of Clarien players to know what her problem is, but I played a few Zetters, and definitely a lot of Rannos. For Zetter, it's mainly his Shine pressure and how stupidly fast he can kill with his fire and how many confirms he has into his strongs, including his DACUSable Up Strong that either matches or even outspeeds multiple Up Tilts. And then there's Ranno and his 6 frame startup FAir that can do a lot of damage (Especially with the bubble), spike, and even be a kill move without the spike, alongside his poison mechanic. But ironically enough, you'll probably still eventually figure out the matchup because of how many Rannos you will fight, I swear he is the most used character in this game.

Also note that the netcode, even with rollback and that weird SnapNet thing, while mostly good, I still had issues with. Even when I was using Ethernet, there were still times the game stuttered and even had matches that were fully lagging out to the point I had to double check mid match that my Ethernet cable didn't break. This isn't an issue I ever had with Nick Brawl 2, even with my combined 200 hours on multiple versions of the game. That isn't to say the netcode is completely awful, it's still great, but it ain't perfect.

Overall, I'm still gonna play, there is a roadmap, and I'm sure the game will only get better from here on out, but right now, I cannot fully recommend this game. I feel I would give this game a *6/10, that asterisks placed there as I am sure I will come back to this review in the future with the improvements. Even with a rocky launch, the game's future can still be great, and I still want to see that.
Also it should be noted that this 30 dollar game still has microtransactions and they make sure you spend money because if you want to grind as a non MTX user, it'll take forever, as even though I spent 14-15 hours grinding, I still wasn't anywhere near the coin and Aether Buck requirements for anything beyond a player icon. This is unacceptable and should not be defended.
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