Kicking Your Ass: Balance Changes

Hello and welcome to Fighting February!

Elena vs Makoto, by Genzoman

There's no simpler way to say it: I love me some fighting games of all shapes and sizes, from Street Fighter to Guilty Gear to even Tekken every once in a while. I've even began my series to Fighting Games 101 a few months back and while I don't consider myself pro, if there's one genre of game that I love following, it's fighting games. Even what some could consider to be small things that wouldn't change anything ends up being so much a difference that it can completely change how effective a character is, but that's a discussion for another time.

This month on the Nerd Sanctum, we're going to discuss some of the recent history in Fighters. Most of this is old news, gathered from sources like Shoryuken.com, Dustloop.com, and Eventhubs.com but this is something of my own personal opinion of the events and changes. Firstly, we'll be discussing the balance updates to two of my favorite fighters, Super Street Fighter 4 and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. With both changes coming out around the same time and both having been extensively played, I have to say I'm really happy with the changes thus far.

While I never came around to doing it, if I were to write a review on BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. I would say that the game is an improvement over Calamity Trigger as it gave a lot more options to those that needed it, such as Tager's Gadget Finger pick up, along with a few new and switched normal moves for gunner girl Noel, which make her better if other factors about her didn't change, such her launching kick no longer hitting most characters while crouching, along with several of her moves no longer being as safe to do. It really hurt her game, but overall I prefer her Continuum Shift version to Calamity Trigger because she could do a lot more while still being challenging. Though the game wasn't perfect with characters like Bang, Litchi, and Ragna dominating most of the other characters, though not to the extent of Nu and Arakune in the first game.

Gif powers, ho!

The update, known as Continuum Shift 2, strives to balances the characters more and for a while, a good number of fans thought that the game's developer, ArcSys was just plain crazy, further buffing some characters that were already too good, and hurting some of the weaker characters. There was also the concern that some of the changes would absolutely ruin certain characters, such as Hazama's loss of his midscreen combos. However, once the final version came out, most of these fears were unfounded with Hazama being just as strong, if not stronger than his CS version. In fact, this can be said about a lot of the characters in CS2, they ended up pretty good and none are too over powering (at least, not yet).

The only noticeable exception to this is Bang, who seems to have gotten the Rachel nerf treatment from shifting from CS to CS2. While he can still do decent damage in the corner, it looks like his midscreen game was ruined. However, this are just initial impressions and over time, new strategies with the character might be discovered. Overall, I'm looking forward to the console patch or version of Continuum Shift 2, if only for the fact that it provides many new toys and tricks for most of the characters.

In terms of Super Street Fighter 4's update, simply called Arcade Edition. The general consensus is that the whole style of the game has shifted from favoring overly defensive play to a more rush down style with characters like Fei Long, Akuma, Cammy, along with two new entries with Yun and Yang being having the advantage against projectile based characters like Ryu, though Sagat is still regarded highly, just because of his good range and strength. One of my favorite bits of news however comes from the greatly increased respect for my personal favorite, the karate girl Makoto, who was regarded as the worst character in the game back in Super Street Fighter 4 has become one of the 10 best characters according to initial impressions by top players in Japan. I love that.

Other characters like Gen, Gouken, and especially Hakan also received considerable buffs, but despite that, their use seems to be fairly limited, with Hakan still being second least used to joke character Dan, while Gouken and Gen despite being used a little more are on the lower end of the spectrum. This could just be because the version is mainly in Japan, with limited west release so the options aren't open to as many players, but it could also be because the Arcade version is still fairly new and some people don't want to try learning a new character. Gen IS one of the more difficult characters to pick up and learn, and Gouken is a little more advanced than most other characters, but that shouldn't mean he's necessary used lessed. Makoto for instance is more advanced and she's used a lot more. I'm sure once the Arcade Edition DLC patch hits, there will be more use of these characters.

One complaint I've heard is the imbalance that Arcade Edition brings, that it's worse than the original Street Fighter 4 and while that might be for high level play, I doubt think it'll be as bad. For those uninformed, in an interview with Daigo, Mago, and Tokido, the general consensus is that Fei Long is the best character, hands down. He's so good, they've gone to lengths saying that he's even more powerful than Sagat was in the original Street Fighter 4. While that might be true, lets analyze this a moment: in general, Fei Long is a character who has to be up close in order to really put on the damage and the pressure. He doesn't have a projectile, nor does he have a means to close distance quickly without using up his super meter and even then that's iffy.

Meanwhile, in vanilla Street Fighter 4, Sagat was annoying at all levels of play at every area of the field: close up, medium range and long distance. The only reason he's not nearly as much as pain in the butt to fight in Super Street Fighter 4 is that his projectile recovery is more than before so he can't punish advancements cause of it. He's still a threat, but not nearly as much. What's my point in all this? While Fei Long may be a better character now and is considered better than vanilla Street Fighter 4 Sagat, I don't think he'll be as annoying as Sagat.

With that, we come to the end of the first part. Next week, we'll be talking about some character leaks that happened recently. Until then, street fighters, keep hype!