If you don’t have a decent projectile, Zangief is an extremely annoying, tedious, slow paced fight of pokes. He’s not a fun character to fight. I don’t fault him for that because I like his unique design. But I wouldn’t want any more than one Zangief type character being in the game.
I think it depends on the character though, Zangief vs. Rufus may be tedious and boring but I’ve always been a fan of Zangief vs. Hugo when I get to play it. I know for sure that Zangief vs. Balrog is like pulling teeth for Balrog.
I like footsies. I like fundamentals.
This character that forces footsies and fundamentals is boring and tedious.
-_-
That’s actually why I like playing against a good Zangief when I’m playing Honda and vice versa. I don’t think any other matchup in SF4 gets as close to the essence of Street Fighter. It’s a gimmick-free spacing war of the highest order.
Charge for DLC.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just looking at it from the wrong mindset. And while I may not agree with what you say, i’ll defend to the death your right to say it.
I’ve always considered the Zangeif and Dhalsim matchup the pure essence of Street Fighter. 2 completely opposite play styles trying to impose their game plan on the opponent.
how is that even a reply to my post?
I agree with much of what you say on different topics. But in most respects Bella breaks the mold of immobile grappler hence the reason her hp is the same as everyone else’s:
A double jump that is average for the other casts double jump (the fact that she even has a double jump is pretty anti grappler)
A run command that some of the cast don’t even have (parasoul, painwheel, double)
A glide attack to make up for the fact that she has no airdash
Very fast recovery non super command grabs (admittedly nothing to do with movement speed, but slow recovery command grabs on wiff are a hallmark of grapplers, especially “slow” ones)
No discernible nerf on her jump height or jump range as compared to the rest of the cast, and sg is a game that is basically played in the air.
Her dash jump is as good if not better than anyone else’s in the game.
Bella’s “slowness” if she has any is based around her having a slow ground dash. Which is why she dash jumps and double jumps everywhere and says to hell with slowness. Coupled with this she has the highest damaging level one super in the game, the biggest hitbox level one super in the game (tied with bigband)
And possibly the second best or straight up best airnormals in the game.
The only way Bella resembles a true grappler is the fact that she has command grabs. She even has a viable high/low game AND a crossup game… And a fireball reflect. She has basically everything except a fireball and an airdash so it’s very hard for me to consider her a “true” grappler like… Gief or even tager etc. characters that have huge nerfs to their movement to make up for the fact that their throws are so good.
Not saying that she doesn’t deserve what she’s got. But it’s hard to label her a grappler in the vein of zangief imho.
Don’t KOFXIII characters have the same health?
They do. And pretty much all the grapplers in that game are really good. The basic systems of the game help them a lot (the different jumps, rolls, being able to combo into command grabs), but the main reasons they do so well is that they still have really good options outside of their command grab. Daimon and Clark have amazing normals and space control in addition to built-in mobility, Raiden has some really insane combos thanks to his dropkick, Vice has an extremely rewarding AA game. They’d be complete characters even without their command grab, but having it just strengthens their game. It’s drastically different from the SF-grapplers that revolve around landing their command grab, and it also makes the characters way more interesting to play.
Everyone having the same health in KOF13 didn’t hurt character uniqueness at all in my opinion. The characters were well enough designed to not need it in the first place.
(also as a note: that game has almost no character-specific combos. CONSISTENT HURTBOXES <3)
Naeres makes a great point. KOF is a lot closer to SF than Skullgirls is, and the same stamina doesn’t limit variety at all in grapplers or any other character type.
This health issue is being seen a major cause for imbalance, but it’s not. The cause for character imbalance ultimately is character design. Character imbalance is rampant in all games whether or not the characters have the same or differing healths. SF4 initially started off with a high health character (Sagat who had 1100 health at the time) being top tier.
Health makes things more interesting. It adds to the metagame. ex) If you’re a high health character you know you have a sliver more life to soak up damage and take risks with. Normalizing health will just take away from the metagame and it won’t even solve the balance problem in the first place.
Yeah, I believe Capcom has screwed up making some low health characters. But rather than normalize the health, I’d rather they just changed the character mechanics to simply balance better despite their health difference.
Yeah the problem is Capcom has done a very poor job balancing with stamina, and KOF has shown how much diversity can be achieved with even stamina.
Grapplers in KoF have great normals and everybody has a hop which minimizes the difference between grappler and zoning archetypes. hops are about as good as dive kicks so it only makes sense everybody has the same health in KoF.
This! Thank you. When I saw these Cerebella and Zangief comparisons I’m like “wut”? Like you can’t compare the two. The mechanics and gameplay of their respective games are night and day. Zangief doesn’t have the luxury of air blocking, air dashing, and double jumping to get around the stage. Also he doesn’t have the combo potential Bella has. Like you’ve stated Bella is only a grappler in the sense that she has command grabs. Grapplers like Bella, Victor, and from more mobile fighters like guilty gear etc don’t really have the limitations of grapplers in the more traditional sense like Zangief. So the latter needs some type of edge or advantage in more grounded fighters like Street Fighter, and that is extra health, so the player can afford to take some risk and eat a few hits. Also these grapplers live by the SPD, if you aren’t landing any, you’re struggling. Where as more unorthodox grapplers like Bella can get by just fine without them, they just simply make her more threatening than others at close range.
I was talking about this in the other thread but I realize it makes more sense here.
RE SF5: Outside of v-trigger(which is a big deal, yeah) it mostly looks like an improved sf4 so far (honestly it may be a better game just from not having focus attacks). SF4 came and it was huge and people are talking about sf again. However, thats not enough to ensure great sales again.
With only around 8 months of development time left (if the games coming in the spring they have to be finished around DEC to ship on time) I hope capcom has been hiding something big, because right now I don’t think there really is anything exciting enough to pull in an average gamer or even people like me who play fighting games but just don’t care for SF4 at all.
Once again I’m still hoping theres a system like isms or grooves.
I just want faster walk speed and dash animations, like 3S 
What about running? Do you guys think it has a place in SF?
I wouldn’t be opposed to it (since sf5 is trying some new things anyway) but regular forward dash better be kept in.