Fantasy Strike - easy to execute fighting game

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
501

I like how people that doesn’t play the game make dumb comments on something they don’t know about. Reversal window with piano is basically 6f, make it bigger and you get vanilla SFIV with dumb defense, and the “inescapable” command throw characters become worthless because as is they are already mid tier at best. Walldive shenanigans need a knockdown to be set up most of the time, and for that you need great ground game and only superb players like MAO really achieve that. And Balrog throw loops against anyone with good reversals is risky because they can turn the attempt in a KO and crush you because Rog is quite weak on wakeup.

To get to the “obscene” setplay and oki you need to actually play good footsies/mindgames, which is what happens at high level ST. The game is so unforgiving that you need to be on point or die. But this is lost on people who watch a video without the slightest idea on how it plays and then goes to make uninformed posts about it over the internet.

502

Nobody is claiming ST is a pure game but you still need really solid fundamentals to win in it. A lot of basic tools are really strong and you aren’t really randoming people out unless you have a good understanding of what you’re doing.

People love saying this or that is like ST when a lot of things sure as fuck aren’t. This isn’t really like ST but hey, THIS IS TOTALLY LIKE ST. Game has like 3 normals but its the same as ST where characters have all sorts of useful normals for offense and defense.

503

I remember James Chen saying that HD Remix is more balanced than ST, but it changed the characters too much, made it guess-based and lost a lot of depth. He also said that USFII is less balanced than ST, throw techs hurt a few characters really badly, and having Evil Ryu, Violent Ken, and Shin Akuma available as overpowered characters sucks.

I think HD Remix is the best game of the three (which is why I’m interested in Fantasy Strike) but I think James does a great job of putting these three SFII games in perspective.

504

Fresh state of the art walldive bullshi-- waitaminute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q14ZJN3kkIs

There’s something amazing about the fact that that set and this are from the same game with the same character:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzqnk9e8yGk

505

Anyways, to get away from the veritable mountain of salt that is our lovely @Cronopio I decided to do a bit of a writeup about the cast so far.

Grave: Despite calling him Not-Ryu, he’s honestly a pretty unique character, almost a zoning Sakura meets Rachel. He’s got Sakura’s fireball (but better); amazing normals that can poke, combo on counterhit for 3 damage, and anti-air; one of the trickiest crossups around; a super slow but very invincible DP that you can generally only punish for 1 damage, and a wind mechanic to make his offense and neutral very unpredictable. His supers are good workhorses, a reversal and an air counter that lets you have complete control of the Y axis.

Jania: Okay, she’s Not-Sagat. You do High Tiger Shots by TKing her fireball and she’s got raining fireballs, but between those, her tiger knee, and tiger uppercut you know the kind of zoner you’re getting into. Interestingly enough her DP actually costs her health, making any usage unless she’s at 1 HP neutral at best, and generally taking at least 3 effective damage when blocked.

Geiger: Not-Guile with lots of air options. He’s got a sonic boom you can delay, a flashkick (which isn’t particularly invincible, ends after the first active frame or so which means you must be spot on using it to AA), spinning back knuckle… then Sagat’s stepkick for getting pressure started, an air hover + invincibility, and a jagga kick. Basically it means you can jump and put even a prepared opponent into a mixup. Oh, and he’s got the most powerful super in the game for escaping pressure or punishing fireballs or long pokes.

Rook: Not-Zangief, although instead of having his command throw be super fast it’s slow but fully armored, allowing you to anti-air with it alongside its massive amount of active frames. His game is to bully you to get in, with Potemkin’s Slidehead and Hammerfall to close the distance, an aerial Lariat whose hitbox is basically “do not challenge,” and an incredibly powerful oki game which does 2 damage each hit minimum and goes back into itself. Forces basically every character to play some sort of hit and run game due to how strong his armor is, but he definitely can have issues getting in.

Midori: Not-Honda with a (literal) Dragon Install. He plays reasonably passive with great normals and specials which make him hard to anti-air or beat in neutral until his Super is charged and then it’s time to go ham with massively damaging normals, armored command grabs, headbutts, and unblockables that beat parries.

DeGray: Not-Slayer, and he works surprisingly well in an SF game. All about dem counterhits, with a Gamma Blade he can use in the air to lock down foes or go for a left/right on their wakeup. Basic plan is to approach behind a ghost and force frametrap after frametrap, with any counterhit being 3-4 damage. Also, unless you have an air-invincible move do not fucking jump when he has super. Just don’t.

I didn’t really play with the two pixies so I can’t comment there.

506

Nah, lets stick to the whole “This is like ST thing”:

How many 7-3 match ups should we expect out of the finished product?

507

The reason the game is being compared to ST is because it feels like something like ST was the starting point.

“Evolution” of ST doesn’t necessarily mean more advanced than ST, or whatever people seem to be taking that as. You can start with something and build off that by actually REMOVING stuff – that can be an evolution too. And I think that was the goal, here – make something even simpler and more elegant than the early fighting games while attempting to retain most, if not all, of the depth.

But that’s all nitpicky and irrelevant. The point that I would make is that I think this game will appeal strongly to people who think SF2 series and its clones were really great fighting games. Someone who doesn’t need or want a lot of “fancy” stuff. I really think this player will really like Fantasy Strike if they give it a chance.

On the flip side, I can definitely see someone who eschews older games and got into fighting games with much more complicated games finding Fantasy Strike too simplistic for their tastes.

And then of course there will be some overlap between the two groups.

After playing even more, I stand by what I said earlier – I think Fantasy Strike has the potential to be one’s favorite fighting game, depending on what they are looking for. It’s certainly the game I’m most looking forward to, and the fighting game I’m most interested in playing today.

I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt and assuming it’s only going to get better.

508

The campaign did not succeed (the game is still “planned” for release based on the info provided on the above blog post).

509

What a surprise when you neither fill the hardcore audience niche by having a hardcore game, nor fill the casual audience niche by having a popular ip to work with.

510

It’s not surprising the game’s kickstarter was a failure, Fantasy Strike had no PR campaign

511

Yeah, he should have at least gotten some streamers to shill it

512

Well they also used fig, which is a cool service but way less known than kickstarter and indiegogo. You probably don’t even need a PR campaign to get the word out with those sites.

513

Not just the streamers but the game had no presence on anywhere but PlayStation’s YouTube channel (and you can imagine how many trailers are being uploaded there daily).

Fantasy Strike wasn’t at any of the major press-conferences at E3, it wasn’t at any publisher daily shows (like PlayStation Livecast), it wasn’t at any of the game outlets’ daily shows (IGN, GameSpot, Giant Bomb were all at E3 doing interveiws and game demos)

Hell I don’t even think EVO 2017 has showed any trailers for the game during the breaks between matches (at least I don’t remember seeing one)

And it obviously completely missed Gamescom

I have no fucking idea how was Sirlin going to amass 500k$ with next to no promotion for the game, feels like nobody outside the FGC (and the game clearly isn’t targeted at the FGC, it’s catered towards the casual fanbase) even knows this thing exists

514

Every time some news happened (announcement in november, Fig campaign, free weekend) it was covered by gaming sites all over the internet. But there’s just so much that can be done without a serious commercial campaign, and the price for that kind of campaign (like you see with triple A games) approaches the $500k he was asking for…

515

The last free weekend wasn’t covered anywhere as far as I could find. I only became aware of it by visiting the website by chance one day.

516

The campaign was going to fail because of many different factors. least of which includes…

  1. Only works for a subset of FGC and Casual players.

People act like this isnt made for the FGC but thats not true as many tournament level competitors at EVO enjoyed the game as well as some casual fighting players. But thats it. SOME, not ALL. Really casual people like flashy or general games like MvC, GG, BB, Smash, and SFIV. This game isn’t NEARLY that at all and so some may look at it as kind of boring. FGC players like things with deep gameplay and strong movesets as well as whats popular and where the big money and notoriety is at. The deep gameplay comes mostly from individual matchups and mind games and not from any deep moveset. Theres no big money tournaments for this game. And the notoriety is piss poor given that the man who made it only helped make one game (HDR) and mostly does boardgames. This is only going to appeal to people who are a bit in the middle and have an open mind about fighting games and what they can be and no one else.

  1. Lack of advertisement and Fig not being a big thing.

Has already been talked about above so no need to speak further on it.

  1. Gameplay and mechanics are much different than both casuals and the FGC are used to.

I feel this is very true still because the gameplay is a little bit simple, but also a kinda deep, but generally just comes off as very strange. Attacks are a single button with directions giving you COMPLETELY DIFFERENT attacks. No lows but crossups are a thing. Throw and specials/supers are buttons. Jump can even be a button or up as usual. There are no low attacks. And throw teching is doing NOTHING and can deal damage. And supers build over time and not just through attacks. These are concepts that both a dyed in the wool veteran and a casual player are going to find pretty strange and its going to take some acclimation and not being stubborn about a change in concepts to get used to. Which means it needs a model that makes it easy to at least get into as many hands as possible so that this niche community that enjoys these things can rally around it. Which brings me to…

  1. Standard pricing model WILL NOT work for this game

This game would have to be $15 to even have a chance with the way it uses it fighting game concepts and EVEN THEN it may not gain enough traction because people may not know what to make of it. Thats why I championed a FTP model similar to KI. Having 1 free character on a constant weekly rotation gives players a chance to get a feel for how it plays and can come to a decision whether they are on board with it or not. And by having the characters charged individually between $6-$8 or everyone for the game’s flat $50 it means theres alot of choice for the community to get behind so something can come out of this. A fighting game is only as a strong as the community behind it. FS could totally have one too. But its unique concepts and how it plays and how its not as flashy as the bigger ones out there could get in it’s way. So something very consumer friendly that isn’t just a big $50 or $30 wall would make the pill alot more easier to swallow.

517

Casuals will never care about Fantasy Strike. The only reasons they buy fighters in the first place are brand recognition, graphics, and single player content. Fantasy Strike has none of those things going for it.

The person Fantasy Strike is for isn’t the casual. It’s for the person who wants to get deep into fighters, but is intimidated by their depth and execution barriers. How many of those people are really out there? Obviously there are people like us interested in the game as both a case study, and something to pick up and play without any real commitment, but we’re clearly not Fantasy Strike’s main focus.

518

See i dont know about that. What do you mean by commitment? If you mean willingness to grind out the rank mode, then itll be just like any other fighter currently out. Personally I would like it if they did it how VF and Tekken do it since those feel really good because you can lose and still possibly rank up if you did well enough against a higher tiered player.

Im still iffy on “depth” anymore since i feel that comes from how it best uses its mechanics and allowance for variation and of good mindgames and less on bloated movesets and combos. But then again, Im the kind of guy that likes his games to just “make sense” and have a good “feel and flow”. And if that sounds vague as shit, its because my taste in fighters is vague as shit. Like I enjoy Tobal 2, Bushido Blade 1 (2 sucks to me), VF5:FS, KI, and VSAV. I cant say the “flow” of FS is anything to write home about. Feels about as stiff as any other old school 2D fighter. But exchanges make alot of sense. So I like that part I guess. I still stand by what I said though. Its going to appeal to a niche within a niche and alienate pretty much everyone else.

519

By without commitment I mean to be able to pick up the game without needing to grind out tech in order to compete with people who play every day.

520

ah. I actually think thats the best thing this game has going for it since the tech and training mode grind always felt kind of stupid. But i guess if you always knew how every exchange would play out then there would be no need for one right?