A brief summary of the current state of the fighting game community and why it's so great.
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Hell no. We are not.
Mortal Kombat 1 is full of microtransations, had guest dlc chars that did not really fit, the whole game is all about combos /juggling and it almost lost the identity of MK.
Tekken 8 is per se still great but the heat /burst systems are just too much. Just like in Mik1 its more about who lands the first launcher instead of having strategic matches with mind games like in the past. Tekken was once called the "chess of fighting games" Today its like the most others just another round of tictactoe.Or a head or number guessing game. The story was okay, but the choices for dlc characters are rather odd. + the balance is simply out of place.
Fatal Fury is also more about combos than ever, again once someone launched the opponent into the air the match is almost won. Also pretty weak new characters, the wrong name since its more Garou MOTW 2 and not a Fatal Fury based game.
KOF is still great, but even while it was always a crossover game, its story was a ton more fun in the past.
Street Fighter 6. Great game..but just 4 dlc characters in a year for the price of 6 characters in SFV. And most new characters are pretty lame, it also got the worst soundtrack in a SF game since Street Fighter 1. Also no real story mode. But online its actually more fun than the games above. In the case of KOF however, because online is simply broken.
Guilty Gear Strive is in general awesome..except a few weird character redesigns ..but how they made it rather simple sucks. GG Xrd was so damn much better.
Multiversus..dead in a few days.
Virtua Fighter 6..might be good but I fear it will be filled with systems that are not needed in a VF game. Something like rage arts etc...
There's some solid choices today, but I'll always regard Fighting Games' Golden Era as somewhere in the 90s, alongside the prominence of arcade cabinets.
Can’t wait to experience the current ‘golden age of fighting games’ 4 or 5 years orso from now when there are (hopefully) finally some complete editions for sale …
We're in the age of a shitty fighting game that constantly tries to sell crappy cosmetics by launching with half-assed characters and selling the rest through DLC. The people who think it's in a golden age are fighting game makers and their supporters.
How can we call this the Golden Era of fighting games? That's not true at all, this is just the Easily Accessible Era to fighting games. This isn't a statement I'm making to speak ill on any newcomers, it's just that the truth is these fighting games these days implement so much now into the foundation to make them more about picking up and playing than really understanding the systems at play and refining your skill set. I don't like how the innovation for Fighting Games now seems to be all about simplifying things rather than expanding on the aspects that made the games great or adding a different flavor in general.
Just because we're surrounded by newer fighting games at the moment doesn't mean it's the Golden Era, I mean it's definitely good to see that companies are willing to produce these games which are very niche by the way, but often times I feel like a lot of these titles are losing their identity (visually and gameplay wise) just to cater to a particular demographic.