[Ronnoc]

Oh man, I forgot how great the Skullgirls tutorial is. I'm making all my dumb friends download it.

[Lasakon]

queen's guards and punks. the entire british checklist.

_________________

[Renfrew]

I voiced my desire in the Bloodstained thread for it to get a Vita release, and it worked. So here I am to say that I would really love to play Yatagarasu on my Dreamcast. I know it would never happen, but is there any technical reason that it couldn't be ported?
_________________

[BotageL]

Technical, no.

Practical, plenty!
_________________

http://www.mdgeist.com/

[Geo Mantle]

Been playing that new Dragon Ball Z 2-D fightman for the 3DS. Shallow as hell but quick, snappy and fun enough. Has shades of King of Fighters 2001 where you choose between additional team members and strikers to make a team. A little over 20 playable characters with small movelists and 80+ striker only characters. In fight tagging works pretty well, but combined with single button combos (a la Persona 4A/U and Dengeki Bunko FC), pumping out long-winded combos is extremely easy.

Pros:
+Great character selection for a sprite based fighting game in 2015
+Guilty Gear-style music all throughout (it IS developed by Arc System Works, after all)
+Shoehorned story and adventure modes give plenty to do
+Really pretty graphics with decent interface
+Cameos from all of Dragonball, Z, GT

Cons:
-Not enough moves per character
-Combos are too easy
-Matches are over too quickly
-Too many forms of Goku, Gohan
-No online

Like its namesake, Extreme Butouden carries on the SNES fighting game series with many of the same trappings, for better or worse. I'd say this is for the cross-section of casual fighting game fans and Dragonball diehards.

[dementia]

[Renfrew]

[RobotRocker]

[Lasakon]

big sf v news
simplified inputs because "wah 360 are hard"
birdie is jack turner and omega red and birdie
_________________

[schroeder]

What the hell, Birdie. So far V overall looks significantly better than IV, but fat Birdie is Not Good.

[Persona mobile]

Fat Birdie reminds me of Hakan mixed with Hugo.
In appearance anyway.


I'm all for more Alpha folk returning though. Alpha 3 is easily my favorite SF game.
_________________

[Ronnoc]

[Lasakon]

it's all become so clear:
+ =
_________________

[schroeder]

I guess Capcom realized they didn't have room for another non-joke black character?

[notbov]

this week, SF got simplified inputs and Smash got SF inputs
_________________

[BotageL]

Fat Birdie sounds fun. He has chains and item throwing.
_________________

http://www.mdgeist.com/

[Guillotine]

Birdie doesn't have a hole in his hair, whatever

[Ben Reed]

There was a lot learned about SF5 today. First time seeing both general public and e-sports luminaries going at the game. It's still a strange creature on day -100 or what have you, but after today, I've gotten even more optimistic about the game. Here's my impressions on the characters thus far:

Ryu - Good old Ryu, boring but effective for what looks like all the right reasons. He commits fairly hard to his most rewarding reads at neutral and converts them into chunky-ass damage and stun. His parry makes for an interesting V-Skill because they don't let you cancel it into moves except itself. This creates an interesting dynamic because it means that you'll probably get very little reward for parrying a single light attack. This makes a lot of sense given the high level of damage in the game and the fact that the parry (I think?) parries all levels. (Is it throw invulnerable? I presume not). So if Ryu wants to get bang for his buck with parry, he needs to pursue one of two situations:

(1) Parry and commit to parrying as many hits as needed -- hopefully only one or two -- until he parries a move with enough recovery that he can recover all the way from his parry and punish, or
(2) Try only to parry in low-risk zoning situations where it won't matter if he has to sit through the parry recovery, since he can't be reached. In plain English, parrying fireballs, at a distance where a fully-recovered opponent can't put a jump-in or other attack on top of him while he's busy parrying the fireball.

So his parry's much less brain-free than "hey I guessed right on a poke and now I get a free fierce > SRK or w/e for 25-33% stun". A very reasonable commitment.
His V-Trigger's a little interesting, too, simply because it gives the already hard-hitting Ryu powerful properties, but only on moves (special moves, of course) that are a big risk to deploy outside of a combo. It's not hard to imagine where Ryu players would want to save their V-Trigger to activate for a powerful punish combo on a VERY big mistake (say a guess DP or super that was massively wrong), rather than just popping it at neutral to get the powered-up fireballs and DPs (though as Daigo shows, the fast V-Trigger Hadokens are a very effective zoning tool, much more immediately useful than setup-dependent guard-break Denjin). The whole of Ryu in this version seems to be patiently waiting for big opportunities and then unleashing one brutal counter-response.

Chun-Li - Insert boob physics joke here.

...Having gotten that out of the way, Chun is definitely the most technical character revealed thus far, the most reliant on practice to understand her combo routes and her poking game. This is probably a good sign, because she doesn't look any more complex than a mid-level SF4 character at present. The hold buffer for link normals will help players immensely to link jabs off her Lightning Legs on hit, and her walk speed, dash speed, and general normal speed seem as relatively fast as ever. like in SFxT, she seems to have some of the most permissive juggle states in the game. She can't end a V-Skill > j. d+MK x3 juggle with regular Lightning Legs, but maybe if she did less stomps, she might have more juggle points to play with.

Her V-Trigger's interesting, even if they took away her Double Chunppukens from the Singapore demo. She still has to be brave and walk fairly close (and risk opponent's abare) to pressure with 2-hit normals, but the extra hit in V-Trigger gives her an excellent and reasonably risk-reward-balanced approach tool using her new c.MP slide. Her fireball looks about the same (good) as in SF4, and regaining Sen'en Shu (analogous to Hazan Shu from SF4) gives her both a ground overhead and what is presumably a tool to jump over low pokes.

Somewhat disappointing to see that you apparently can't cancel attacks into her V-Skill hop, but I don't think it hurts her that much. If the routes are damaging enough, she might be able to link it from a fierce jump-in or a counter-hit to start her Aerial Rave.

Nash - Still a fascinating offense-oriented alternative to Guile. Certainly less boring than Guile as space control goes since he commits so much harder to his projectiles without burning V-Trigger. (Well, he doesn't commit that hard. His fireball balance is more akin to Mai from KOF, where he has a slow-starting fireball that recovers notably fast, and a fast-starting fireball that recovers notably slow. He has to mind his spacing a lot more than Guile, who commits so few total frames to launching an LP Sonic Boom that he risks a lot less letting one rip without a whole lot of thought about where he is on screen.)

Being able to cancel certain specials into V-Trigger (most obviously Sonic Boom, as Xian did) is a very cool mechanic, both inside of combos and also for creating spacing situations. Depending on where you launch the fireball from versus where his teleport takes him, Nash can alter the timing to frame-trap people who might try a projectile-invulnerable move to escape the fireball and/or hit Nash if he tries to attack. His V-Skill seems like a reasonable design choice; he can destroy fireballs and build V-Trigger, but he commits to standing in place in order to do so. If he threw a Sonic Boom instead, he wouldn't get any V-meter for it, but recovery permitting, he might get an opportunity to move a bit backward or forward for free.

I think he's a great addition to the roster not just because of how interesting his playstyle looks, but also because he sends a clear signal about how serious(ly weird) Capcom is about this game's design. Where SF4 sought orthodoxy, this game is seeking to synthesize all the best-received progressive mechanics of SF4 revisions, SFxT (poor, poor SFxT), and several of their competitors' games. (They're not trying to be EXACTLY like Killer Instinct, but it's plain to see they're taking at least a few pages from that game's aesthetic and design philosophy.) Nash isn't your grandma's Guile. He's weird, he's aggressive, he has bits of other people sewn onto him. It's a weird new world in SF5.

Bison - Sweet, sweet, delicious Bison. I could go on and on about how much I love this character's new direction, but I'll try to keep the gushing to a minimum.

Besides Birdie (see below), Bison is definitely the most RADICAL reinvention of an established Street Fighter character I've seen since, well...ever. It's not even fair to compare him to previous versions of Bison in many cases because he has such a different (and apparently much better) focus.

The best way to describe SF5 Bison is not in terms of Bison, but in terms of Rose. Historical Bison was all about two fundamental strengths -- his walk speed and his normals. He used his lightning-fast walk speed to keep himself in poking range, counterpoking bad button presses and tick-throwing people when they clammed up. His main weaknesses tended to be any matchup where he had to use his floaty jump against fast-recovering fireballs a lot, leaving himself open to "free" anti-airs and limiting his ability to walk up and poke people.

In SF5, Bison loses his obscene walk speed, but gains so many new and good stalling tools that this is a trifling price to pay. With his V-Skill Rose projectile absorb/reflect (that also parries strikes), Bison has to take to the air far less in order to avoid fireballs, a move that frequently gets him killed against characters whose fireballs recover fast (most notably Guile, Chun-Li, and Poison in SF4). Getting kept out of poke/scissor kick range is no longer a huge deal for Bison because he can both avoid chip and build V-meter with very little risk, running the clock and building towards a big comeback off one decisive read. He does great damage and stun and most of his normals are still great. His anti-air options are GREATLY improved between his new Rose-style c.HP and his new Psycho Inferno move (see below).

Bison's specials also have a lot more purity of purpose in SF5. The historically-flaky combo-use-only Psycho Crusher is replaced with Psycho Blast, a simple knockdown tool that can juggle from floats and destroy projectiles while building regular meter. The EX version is a great projectile which looks like it'd pair well with his V-Trigger teleport dashes. Devil Reverse and Head Press have been merged seamlessly into the same move, and the new auto-correct feature on special followups greatly benefits the steerability and low minimum height on new Devil Reverse (spaced properly, Bison has frame advantage on a blocked Devil Reverse!). Bison gains an all-new and surprisingly versatile special with Psycho Inferno, which doubles both as a slow-starting but advantageous blockstring tool, and its zillions of active frames + slightly detached hitbox make it surprisingly useful as a situational anti-air. The EX version seems even better in that regard.

His V-Trigger teleport dashes must still be spaced properly if you don't want to get thrown out of your pressure, but they pair very well with the "teleport" property on his V-Trigger Knee Press to make it ambiguous to react to what move Bison is performing. His teleporting crossup V-Trigger Devil Reverse looks like a Mortal Kombat Scorpion teleport (and looks to be almost as annoying to block in a game without a guard button).

If not for the recent Birdie reveal, Bison would definitely be the most radically revamped (and probably strongest) character in the E3 build. It is very little wonder why players are so hype over him, both competitive and casual. I am salivating at the chance to play him at CEO and EVO (which I will be attending for the first time this year). My life for Lord Bison.

Cammy - Cammy's not quite as exciting a reveal as Bison or Birdie, having changed very little from her previous incarnations. But what little has changed with SF5 Cammy so far appears to be some significant quality-of-life changes to some historically flaky tools of hers, all while keeping the core of her gameplay (normals, Cannon Spike, footspeed, and of course divekicks) intact.

Her long-flaky Axel Spin Knuckle has been made into her V-Skill. This in itself is unremarkable, but the changes to the move itself are a HUGE improvement over previous versions. The idea with Spin Knuckle is to blow up fireballs at neutral, a purpose for which Spin Knuckle usually sucks because it's too slow-starting and slow-travelling to punish anything except TERRIBLE Shoto fireballs at ridiculously close ranges. In SF5, this move not only travels across the screen much faster, while presumably keeping the window of lower-body and projectile invulnerability, as well as the advantage on block that Capcom always hoped (in vain) would redeem the move's slow startup and travel. On top of that, Spin Knuckle can now cross through the opponent and auto-correct upon doing so, giving it new potential utility to slip past sloppy lows and confer Cammy, if not a free hit, then at least good frame advantage.

Cammy's also-flaky Hooligan Combination also benefits immensely from the new auto-correct property on special move followups. Being able to Cannon Strike from a Hooligan roll that passes over adds a great new dimension to the move where she can make it ambiguous which side the divekick's coming from and whether or not it will cross up on the way past her opponent's head. It also slightly redeems the unsafe slide followup by allowing that move to cross up as well, using the threat of divekicks to open people up to it.

Her V-Trigger suits her pretty well, giving her more hits and enhanced float/juggle properties on her special moves. They're still very risky to throw out at neutral without good conditioning, even her multi-hit divekick, which is the safest V-Trigger special of the bunch.

She's not a radically different character, but she's solid and hopefully a little less one-dimensional on offense now that she has a crazier Hooligan and a much better Spin Knuckle. If you want to RTSD, Cammy's your girl right now. Her new eyebrows are growing on me, but her cowlick needs to be sent back to the shop before release; it looks terrible.

Birdie - Now THERE'S a comedy option. Birdie cross-trained with Faust and came back as one of the scummiest grapplers in Street Fighter history. He's a grappler. With Faust items. Even as tame as they are, they're a huge deal for a character who's strong enough before considering those items! Great anti-air, great normals, easy and absolutely brutal combos, command throw scumbaggery (both leaping and not), and all it took was patching his mohawk hole (RIP in peace) and switching to the Rufus diet. If you can make the gutsy reads required for grappler success (and a couple that aren't all that gutsy; look at those anti-airs!), it looks like Birdie will do right by you.

He's definitely the most fascinating character revealed thus far, and an even more radical reinvention than Bison. His meter gain will likely see some adjustment as the build develops, given how quickly he came to dominate in today's exhibition tournaments. But besides that, doesn't seem like there's a lot to fix about the character (besides a mild adjustment to some of his risk::reward ratios). Hit a button with this character and something crazy happens. Definitely the most inventive Capcom grappler to date.

This post is long already so I won't take up any more space with general system impressions. (You can read my Twitter for that if you want. Just parse past all the Gatchaman posts.)

All I'll say is that I agree with the vast majority of design decisions made. Chip damage normals, no chip kills (except using super?), overall damage output, ability to special-cancel chained light attacks, the hold buffer for links, followup auto-correction, crossup advertisement, Critical Counter, the whole V-Meter mechanic. I see pretty much nothing I can complain about yet. (Well, I can complain mildly about the aesthetic. But we can't all be Guilty Gear Xrd, and compared to other AAA developers, Capcom retains more claim than most to a novel aesthetic. And they certainly claim more regions of the visible color spectrum.)

tl;dr this game has at least an 80% chance of ruling. I do not apologize for making that statement about a Capcom game. I am legitimately impressed so far.

EDIT: Fuck, that was longer than I thought it would be. Does this board have collapsible quotes?
_________________

[RobotRocker]

https://twitter.com/KillerInstinct/status/610985973850210304

You'll want this http://ki.infil.net/
_________________

[chevluh]

[Deets]

[chevluh]

What? No! Right is normal in my heart! Adjust the other side!

[ArOne]

I think my only personal hang up SF5 now is the whole V-bar and skill system. Just feels a tad gimmicky/anime when all I really want is some kind of return to ST purity. It's mostly the 'build up the side resource and go crazy' kind of thing but at least it looks more sensible than Blazblue's mess.
_________________

[Ben Reed]

Well, Capcom presumably wants some flash for the press and casual players to "ooh" and "ah" over -- something that's immediately, visibly new and shiny to people who don't/can't spend a lot of time probing the subtleties of the game system. Hence, you get V-gauge mechanics, which looks to be a much better "new and shiny" gimmick than Focus ultimately was. The use of most of them is at least a little more immediately obvious than Focus applications, and their balance with the V-Trigger gauge is in most cases pretty well justified. (Birdie might need some tweaking.)

I think V-Trigger as a "comeback mechanic" is pretty well balanced so far; it's definitely not X-Factor. In exchange for alpha counters, you have to defer your V-Trigger. In order to build V-Trigger, you either need to use a V-Skill or get your ass beat (preferably #1).

The V-Trigger modes themselves all seem pretty reasonable so far. Ryu, Chun, and Cammy still need to commit to good decisions and/or hard reads to get the most of theirs. Cammy's V-Skill is justified because it's a good move but not a super-overwhelming one. It doesn't need to be, since its goal is just to get Cammy close to her opponent safely while going through fireballs. From that point, she doesn't really need to back off and accumulate V-Trigger, because she's right in her opponent's face where she excels.

Bison's is good because he has to back off on his great pressure in order to build V-meter safely (in exchange for his V-Trigger being really, really good). It's sometimes more likely that he'll get V-Trigger for getting his ass beat rather than reflecting fireballs (a fair decision vs non-fireball characters who he can out-zone without the use of V-Skill). It also helps justify his new slow walk speed and emphasis on "anti-zoning". Bison WANTS to get the life lead and hang back V-Skilling fireballs. Like Rose, he wants to watch fireball characters dig their own grave so that when they fuck up when his bars are glowing, they're gonna DIE for it.

Nash's seems good because despite not being a crazy "Nash Install" move, its access control/resource cost is pretty comparable to Bison. He has enough offensive initiative without V-Trigger that it makes sense he'd need to back off in order to use his V-Skill. With enough initiative early in the game, Nash shouldn't NEED V-Trigger to hand you your ass, just like Bison.

Birdie might gain his a little too easily right now, but the mode itself doesn't seem excessive. Huge damage, armor, but all the moves that plow through stuff are very unsafe if baited. Capcom just needs to make it a bit harder to access; it doesn't take that many donuts to get V-Trigger right now when people are already scared shitless of Birdie at neutral.

I don't mind V-Trigger because despite being a "build towards side resource" thing like in Blazblue, it seems like if you make good decisions in SF5 (basic, fundamentally good decisions like you need to win in SF4...just somewhat obscured by the execution requirements of that title), you won't NEED V-Trigger to beat your opponent's ass. V-Skill is mostly there to help keep things lively in matchups where one or both players AREN'T committing to big gambles to try and end the match fast (gutsy grappler reads, Ryu playing close-range driving for stun). Things that would drag the match out in a "simpler" Street Fighter like ST or SF4, like fireball chucking, still run the clock, but they ultimately build towards a potential read that might turn the match around.

This isn't a HUGE difference from older Street Fighters. This dynamic just gains a weirder, more anime signifier, in that it's preceded by an X-Factor activation animation rather than JUST a well-guessed jump-in or fireball-invulnerable move into a brutal combo. It LOOKS more exciting to spectators (get that stream time! get that e-sports money! jumpsuits! headsets! soundproofed booths! cheering Korean crowds! A BRAND NEW CAR!) when the age-old situations are resolving with more or less the same result as always.

Then again, I'm poised to love this game because I love weird games that synthesize all kinds of mechanics. This game reminds me of Injustice -- weird, but with way more good ideas than bad ones. I owe it to myself to see how far Psycho Power takes me in this game.
_________________

[kirby.png]

[ArOne]

I'd probably be less bear-ish if we could have one button throws and if we had to have techs go Accent Core style. I used to like the two button input so that when you knew you were getting a throw when you wanted it but after my time in GG and ST I just can't move my mind away from wake up throws for characters with bad or no reversal options so that way oki wasn't completely one sided and so that if you whiff you at least get a punch out so you aren't looking dumb for missing.

[kirby.png]

Oki's never completely one-sided and getting people with a wake-up throw is something that's going to happen less and less as you play better people anyway.

One button throws are probably better once you get used to them, but I don't really see anything wrong with two button throws. I mean it's not uncommon at all for kara throws to make a pretty huge difference in a character's game plan. Two button throws are also kind of why plinking exists, and that's a pretty important thing in SF4.

[BotageL]

I'm with James on this one. While the sheer variety of different stupid secondary resources in BB are annoying to track, they're not really that divorced from how universal resources like super meter (or the V-Meter) affect the game flow, and most of them are either built by playing "normally" or are fully automatic. I'd say a lot of secondary gauges in BB act as "cooldowns" rather than a consumable resource.

(BB's problems are, among others, 1) characters are far more sharply divided, resulting in less skill/knowledge transfer, and 2) characters have a very bad habit of dramatically changing from version-to-version, rewarding those willing/able to invest far larger amounts of time and practice more disproportionately than some other games in the genre.)

re: one-button throws, this is something that depends a lot on which silly option select you prefer and the particular engine allows. Guilty Gear has really strong (unbreakable!) one-frame, one-button throws. Part of what makes them so strong is because you can do the input as, say, Forward + Kick + Heavy Slash to OS a standing Kick if you mess up the range or they jump (Sol wants to marry this input). If the game had a "throw whiff" animation, and prioritized the stronger attack buttons over the lighter ones, then you'd see those go away. All depends on what the designers wanna do.

e: On the subject of meter gain and stupidity, watch some Nitro+ Blasterz, and note how both players gain the same amount of meter in all situations, and what that does to the gameflow.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[Ronnoc]

That's amazing.

[ArOne]

I'm just not a big fan of the mental gymnastics involved at least on paper. If I want EX or Super I play well/offensively. If I want V-Trigger or alpha counter I have to start losing or use the character specific actions to get that option. To SFV's credit it looks like it's doing a good job of making it all gel together and have the V-bar fill up pretty naturally.
_________________

[kirby.png]

[Deets]

[ArOne]

You know just how to sway me deets. That detail was the missing piece in my game design armchair.

[Ben Reed]

Since the 6 characters revealed thus far for Street Fighter 5 are so crazy (even Cammy, Chun, and Ryu!), it's kinda hard to think how they might top some of these design choices with other characters they might add. But since Capcom has shown that they're willing to go WAY off the wall with SF5's cast (Faust-Gordeau-Birdie from out of fucking nowhere), I tried to get into this nutso mindset when thinking about who I'd like to see in SF5, as well as what characters might be likely to make it in (accounting for both fanservice and mechanical possibilties based on character aesthetic). Here's my hot-ish take:

Juri - The most well-received of the SF4-original characters by far, I would put Juri on my shortlist for a very likely character to return (if not in time for release, then perhaps as DLC). She has a great blend of zoning and close-range offense that would fit easily into SF5's offensive style, and it's not hard at all to imagine what her V-Skill and V-Trigger might be. (Presumably, repurposing her qcb+P teleports as V-Skill, and making Feng Shui Engine her V-Trigger.) She's a cool character and I do hope she makes it back.

R. Mika - ...Wait, where are you going? Lemme finish!

My initial reaction to people floating a Mika comeback was "lol no way, Mika sucked in Alpha 3". She offered visual fanservice and little else, I thought (said the guy who plays Mai in like every game she's in). And if they ported her playstyle verbatim from Alpha 3 to SF5, that would probably still be true. But after a few seconds' reflection, I realized that there was no guarantee she couldn't re-enter SF5 as a whole new-ish character a la Birdie, heavily modified for the better.

Putting aside being eclipsed by the cheesier V-ism characters in A3, Mika's fundamental design weakness was that she had neat grabs but little else to offer. Invincible/delayed grab, fast grab, air command grab (unbreakable, a novelty in A3 with its universal, breakable normal air throws). But her normals ranged from meh to terrible, and her ass moves were just that -- ass. You had the slow one which was safe(plus?) on block -- but terribly slow to start, easily reactable for a counter hit. And then you had the fast one, unreactable, capable of comboing, but greatly unsafe on block and not even very good as a combo tool. Her off-the-wall super was hard to set up and usually took a back seat to her grab/combo supers.

But with the lack (so far) of an agility grappler (as opposed to Birdie's, uh...power grappler? More like power EVERYTHING character, never mind his grappling...), there may be a niche opening up for Mika to steal some luchador moves from El Fuerte, Guy, and/or Maki. Play up her ability to do top-rope moves to enhance her ability to play at neutral and dance in and out of throw range as needed. For all we know Capcom might decide to give her crazy chain combos for what seems like no goddamned sense until it proves to be well-balanced and intuitive for actual play. She could spontaneously develop a divekick. I dunno what the fuck Capcom might do with her gameplay in this game -- which, judging by Birdie, may be a massive boon to her.

Sean - Going off the "make him crazier" Birdie model: I want Capcom to basically make him into Lucky from KOF 98. Turn him into a ridiculous, meme-ready basketball zoner to prop up his basic toolset from 2I (minus the obscene links to super) and 3S (minus the shame and despair). Free throw zoning. Dunk attacks. Dribble stance and pass the ball right to the opponent's face. Make him have to grab rebounds in order to keep his pressure up. Go HAM with this kid, Capcom! For once in over a decade, I think you have it in you! (And don't skimp on the in-your-face Barkley Gaiden win quotes, either. This kind of character cries out for it.)

Q - He's a robot. Or a cyborg or something. Play that up. Give him V-skills that show off his doll joints, or his rocket punch, or eye lasers, something crazy like that. Make Total Destruction his V-Trigger, or better yet, make V-Trigger like some kinda Robot Install or something. But he might not be immediately popular enough to command a spot on the roster, and ultimately, I respect that.

General archetypes/new character wishlist - I think more than most returning characters (except maybe for Hugo, cause he's my boy, even if being the world's largest land mammal is harder than it looks in SF), I would like to see a CvS2-style "puppet character" in SF5. I think this game is crazy enough to make the attempt. Of all the Capcom "original" SNK-character designs in CvS2, I always thought Chang and Choi were the neatest. You usually associate puppet characters with (1) a super-high execution curve a la Zato/Carl/Ice Climbers (kinda), and (2) being the absolute craziest characters in the game when played at high level. Chang&Choi had neither, but they weren't garbage, either.

Choi could only do special moves, but he could take hits for Chang, was a good meaty, you could juggle off his attacks in the right circumstances, he was basically a slow-starting, fast-recovering fireball that any attack could "destroy" -- but like Eddie and Carl's puppet, this property actually made Choi better in some ways than a "normal" fireball. He created different situations because opponents might be willing to risk an attack to hit Choi that they wouldn't risk against a "real" fireball, which opened people up to get hit by Chang somehow. But at the same time, being able to hit Choi with any kind of (non-throw) attack, as well as Choi's long cooldown on failure, meant that Chang had to be at least a little brave and get closer in order to support Choi so that he wouldn't just be sent out to "die" and wasted.

I always thought this dynamic was really cool for a "non-anime" fighting franchise (although SF5 has definitely gone fuller anime than before), and I'd love to see Capcom explore it with an original character(s) of their own. They'd probably have to be new, though -- the only existing Capcom characters I can think of who have a Chang&Choi-style relationship are, like, Hugo and Poison (platonic Resident Evil-style life partners that they are), and combining those two even in mild form sounds waaaaaay too good even for this crazy game. Maybe combine Yun and Yang? (Wait, no, that'd be even worse!) Um...Two P and Bred? (That might be aiming too low...)
_________________

[Persona mobile]

Man, SF5 is so slow.
_________________

[Ben Reed]

Footspeed-wise, yes, SF5's not that fast. About the same as SF4.

But footspeed isn't the whole story about what makes a game "fast" to play. The tension in these matches is off the charts! There was tension in heated SF4 matches, too, of course. But in SF5, you have a much more desirable kind of tension, both at "perfect" neutral (neither character has a decisively advantageous position or frame advantage situation over another), and in situations where both the character at advantage and the character at disadvantage have to guess big.

The aesthetic advantage SF5 has here is that bad reads in this situation (bad enough to result in a free hit) might kill a character outright, where in SF4 they might just live, in disgrace, at a massive life deficit, frequently fighting a pitched footsie against stacked odds. You could still win it, of course, but it might be really, really slow going, which is still exciting to competitive players who know the stakes, but to spectators who don't, it often just looks hopeless and boring.

Basic reads in this game hurt so bad even with no resources! The meterless damage is not that much higher than in SF4, but the stun accumulation is nuts! This in itself might cause a spontaneous outbreak of turtling, but the beauty of SF5's system is that while blocking is still good and important, attempting to reverse from disadvantage -- or sacrifice a low-damage, guaranteed situation for a high-damage gamble -- is more attractive than ever. Chip damage from normals means you might not want to sit idly through every frame trap, particularly if the battle at neutral has been equal and neither player has a significant life or stun advantage. Footsies are loaded as hell in this game cause EVERYTHING hurts -- throws, punish combos, reversals, counter hits. It's a tougher, more situational call than ever whether you should just play it safe, or whether you should roll the dice to try and end it all right then and there, when in SF4 the clearest, sanest answer might just have been "call it good and go back to neutral".

So even with low footspeed, you get a game that's exciting to watch both for casual spectators and competitive players, who know firsthand the real stakes of a situation that looks kinda subtle and boring. So many fighting game design sensibilities from different titles are coming together in this game in a way I honestly didn't expect from a relatively "conservative" developer like Capcom. I'm gonna get winded at CEO running back and forth between the anime side room and what will certainly be the godawful queue to play this game.
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[Victor]

Remove Birdie jab to headbutt combo and game is pretty cool looking so far.

[Ben Reed]

I dunno that that combo should be removed. I think Birdie, like all SF characters, deserves some kinda dinky hit-confirm into soft knockdown from light attacks. But I might not disagree with making the damage (scaling?) a lot more intense from light starter (especially given that I'm pretty sure ALL his headbutts are super-cancellable).

The game's clearly trying to have anime-game sensibilities, and that means that you should (appropriately) get dinky damage from dinky starters. (This usually is the trend throughout Capcom history except for CvS2, where c.LK x3 into super ruled the roost. But it's good to affirm again here.)

It's only the light headbutt that combos on cancel from light normals, right? If the fierce version combos from jabs, that IS a little too much, lol.
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[Victor]

The guys in the stream were saying jab headbutt combos off jab, strong headbutt combos off strong; yeah. Don't know about fierce. Could just be a scaling thing, indeed. c.jab-jab-headbutt-super was kind of ruling the roost by the end there. Beyond early days for sure but that was shutting down Daigo.

[Lick Meth]

I am somewhat disappointed that Birdie turns to a chilli for spicy times; it'd be better if he had a more culturally relevant dish, like a curry, or sneak a cheeky Nando's

[Renfrew]

Watched some of the E3 tournament and Nash looks really fun. Color me finally interested. Still holding out for my boy Cody though.
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