Doh, just had to go through 14 pages, ouch.
I think Honda got wayyy better. Right now I think I’d put all his matchups somewhere between 3.5-6.5 and 7-3, which is considerably better on the losing side and not worse enough to complain about on the winning side. I don’t really care about the nerf to the hands hitbox because it comes up very rarely and I don’t really care about the nerf to ochio because I preferred O Honda in ST and honestly think that Honda’s regular grabs were often already better than his command grab even in ST. Even as Honda player, I wanted to see his good matchup opponents get better and to get a bit more nerfage on the ochio and/or the headbutt, although I don’t think that’s a huge oversight. I think he’s high tier now.
I think in general it’s a more balanced game. Yeah, I agree that Dictator is probably top tier now, and I also think Fei is more competitive, even if relative to other characters he’s not in a better tier position. If we’re just talking about balance, so far I prefer HDR.
My complaints about HDR are about its methods and goals.
I don’t like the emphasis on special moves in the changes, for one thing. I really wanted some of O Honda’s normals for R Honda, I wanted to see Cammy get a bit more range on some of her normals, I wanted Gief to get a couple of slightly better hitboxes on his two jumping knees (one to make his hitbox much smaller and another to make it hit stronger) and range buffs on a couple of his ground normals, etc. Instead there were almost no changes to normal attacks, and I think that’s weird.
I also don’t like changes that just added mind games instead of really addressing underlying problems. Gief is now a considerably better predictive character; if he guesses right, he can hop over your low normal into spd or knock you down by hitting your normal with his lariat. He can guess better, but… so? Is that an interesting way to change him? Can he get through walls significantly better than before (I think a bit better, but not significantly, especially against certain characters)? Is it more strategic to guess a hop than to have better footsie or air tools?
I also kinda think some changes tend to remove some of the charm and individuality of the characters. Like, I liked that ST Ken was kind of a weird modified shoto-grappler with his sick knee bash, and I was cool with the fact that he wasn’t as good a “shoto” as Ryu. I wanted to see some of his shoto-iness buffed, but to be honest I would have been totally cool with an even BETTER knee bash, not a worse one. He’s really just a shoto now, and I think that’s kinda sad (and much less interesting to me personally). I also liked that Dictator was such an all-or-nothing character, whereas with the new standing jab and dr he’s more like an all-or-still-some kind of guy now. I also think it’s weird that Honda’s jab headbutt goes through fireballs, I don’t like that chicken wing doesn’t combo, and I think safe cannon drill is a cop-out; I don’t think any of those things fit those characters. Man, I would love to have seen Chun and DeeJay lose their upkicks and Claw lose his flipkick.
But mostly, I don’t like changes that were inserted for basically no reason. Juggling tiger knee? New roundhouse flash kick? Fake slide? Fake fireball? Fake wall dive? I don’t think anyone was clamoring for things like these, and I think they were inserted just to drive home the point that this game is NEW more than for any actual gameplay reasons, which is just about as bad a reason as you can get imo.
Anyway, because right now I think HDR is a bit more balanced, I guess I prefer it. But I’d really like to see a Re-remixed HDR with a lot more community input than this one had.