A friend and I tried playing the game a little today. He’ll probably see this and lend his impressions. I wasn’t taking notes or anything, so forgive any mistakes.
The game feels a little unpolished to me. The backgrounds ranged from the unremarkable to the well-done (Demitri’s Mansion (I think) looked nice, I thought). However, the characters frankly look cobbled together. Many characters are obviously using the same sprites as their CvS2 counterparts, and they look a little pixelated against the backgrounds. I guess I can be thankful that the old Morrigan sprites aren’t in there (AFAIK).
The hit effects look a little too flashy to me, but I suppose I’ll get used to it. At first I thought it looked like I was hitting coins out of the opponents due to the yellow particles of the hit effect.
The whole game feels a little slow. I don’t know if the machine was on the default settings, though - I assumed so, but I can’t really say.
These are the characters that seemed to lose, when people used them: Nool, Zangief (a little). Urien (a little), Mukuro and Hauzer. Some of those may be good, and just not easy to pick up immediately (or have some difficult to intuit strength). They lost their matches pretty quick, so people weren’t lining up to try to use them again.
The characters that seemed to be getting a lot of attention were: Ryu, Guile, Alex, all of the Darkstalkers crew (mostly Jedah and Demitri, though), Sakura (only a little Karen and Guy), Leo, and above all INGRID.
Ryu was getting a lot of attention at the arcade. I doubt he’ll be top tier, but he’s not too shabby, either. He seems to build super fairly well, and his super uppercut is great anti-air. The fireball trap is back, gentlemen. Some characters probably don’t have to worry about it, but I others have a hard time getting out. His super fireball seems like it does almost half a life bar. His super uppercut probably does half a life bar or a little more. Ryu vs. Ryu is a boring match, and one we’ve all seen a million times. Play somebody else.
Guile was pretty good, too, but his charge times are old-style (ridiculously long, is what it seems like). Charging aside, his moves (all two) seem pretty good. His light kick moves a lot farther forward and up than I remember - I’m not sure that it’s a good thing. His forward-moving super seems to be safe - Many people were caught off-guard after it was blocked. Guile’s medium crouching punch will combo with itself.
Vega seemed okay - didn’t see enough to really tell. It seems like he’d be a lot better if he didn’t have to charge so long for scissor-kicks.
The only sort of ‘ability’ that the SF2 characters have is ‘tactical recovery.’
Parrying supposedly feels just like CvS2 parrying. EX moves seem to take up an entire half bar of super. All 3S characters have a super bar that charges up to 2, but it takes a while to get there.
Alex seems okay. Alex doesn’t seem to be able to combo out of a jump-in? That seems unlikely, but who knows. I didn’t play Alex myself, but it’s not like the other people weren’t trying it.
Chun Li looks and feels mostly like CvS2. Bleh.
Urien seems… odd. His moves look toned down, especially his supers and his tackle. I’m not an expert on the topic, though, since I don’t play a lot of 3S. He wasn’t getting much play.
Yun also was neglected. I guess without the gen’ei, nobody loves him.
Sakura was the only Alpha player getting lots of attention. She plays like CVS2 Sakura. Whee. A-groove sho-sho-sho-sho looks like it would probably do barely over half a bar of life, if it were executed correctly. I think.
Leo was getting the most attention of the Warzard characters (followed by Hauzer). His moves have a whole lot of range. Especially crouching medium kick, which hits low and covers about half the screen. A lot of people who didn’t know about it lost about half their life to that move alone. Leo doesn’t seem to have very great supers and specials (maybe?). His dash-grab move seemed to be okay, but again, it could just be because people didn’t know about it.
I don’t really understand the Warzard system, and I can’t tell if it’s really good or not. I suspect that it may not actually be very good, but because I wasn’t sure what it was capable of, it was hard to play against.
Darkstalkers characters seemed quite good. They take a substantial bit more damage than other characters, but it looks like it could be worth it for a good player. In particular, their air abilities tend to really give other characters a hard time. Also, dashing for a quick overhead is amazing.
Jedah seems to have great runaway, which some characters have a lot of trouble trying to get in on. Demitri has an amazing jumping short that seems to beat out anything short of shoryuken-style anti-air. I didn’t see much Felicia, but her quick dashing overheads seemed good.
Ingrid was getting the most play, by far.
She has rolling and air blocking. Her sprite looks a little out of place, but so do the rest of them. Her counter move seems to be potentialy quite nice - if it connects, the opponent is thrown high in to the air (off screen), falling down next to Ingrid and allowing a juggle of choice. They are in the air for quite a while - I am wondering if you can connect her level 1 super from a counter. Her DP+K move seems to be a pretty good anti-air if you use short. The other versions move her forward first. After the move, she kind of floats in the air, and it look strange. Her fireball is okay. Jab stops shortly in front of Ingrid. Strong moves a little bit further, and is high enough that I think many crouching opponents won’t be hit. Fierce travels a fair distance at a 45 degree angle up, and stops at about the height of a jump. If Ingrid is hit late during her fireball animation, the fireball comes out anyway and trades hits. Towards + MP (I think) is an okay overhead. People playing her seemed to be using her throw a fair amount. I don’t know if it’s actually better than anybody else’s throw, though.
What am I forgetting?
