VFDC Member Reviews for VF5FS

I haven't played VF since 5, what would be the main gameplay changes between this and vanilla? Would you say the changes make this game significantly better? Thanks!

 

Some ppl say VF is too slow, some say it's lightning fast. IMO, the thing I prefer about VF (and most 3D fighters) over 2D fighters like SF/KoF franchises is that it has a wider range of tempo. A 3D fighter can flow slow or fast, depending on the circumstances. A 2D fighter always feels spastic to me, and it all feels like rote muscle-memory to me, with no time for reacting or hit-confirming. I can perform almost any string/combo in VF, and I'm actively trying to use them in-game now, but cancel-combos in SSF4 are beyond me nor does it feel fun/satisfying.

It's the #1 reason why I no longer seriously play 2D fighters nowadays, and like 3D fighters better. And the VF system I just *get*, thanks to VF4evo training. The other 3D fighters I just play for lolz.

 

the game is great but will be perfect if they fix crouch punches and didnt take away the nicest throws especially laus other then that love it oh an vftv

 

What's wrong with low punches?

 

To someone not familiar with VF franchise, the low punch looks kind of stupid (aesthetically, and compared to real-life MA). At the very least, it doesn't look "cool" for such an ubiquitous move that every character has.

Now, other games also have the low punch. But there it's unimportant or weak, so it doesn't get negative attention. In VF, low punch is an important interrupter, and if any move may be considered "cheap" by a beginner it's the low punch.

So now we have a move that is "uncool", common, and "cheap".

 

I think the tutorial should have taught character specific ways to kill 2P's hard.

 

I've loving 2P actually, as it's the only way my Jeffry can friggin' get a hit in against all the string spammers. Dunno why but I can't seem to punish most blocked strings even with Jeff's simple PP which should be the fastest thing he has.

 

Most strings aren't -12. If you happen to crouch the last part of the string though landing P would be easy. In-fact you can get a knee sometimes, like for example from jacky's annoying 4 hit string, the last two hits going low > high.

 

Final Showdown is one of those titles I hold in highest regards in respect to introducing the game to a new generation, kinda in the same vein as did Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix.

The gameplay really hasn't gotten old, and the new twists certainly keep the fights interesting. I do miss the throw options Wolf and Goh used to have, where the mixups that came with it were certainly entertaining. Overall I do find things as tight as ever, where if you're not careful the fight can be over in a few seconds. I do kinda miss the crazy options from Evolutions Quest Mode regarding the special situational fights (moves cancelling, ice arenas, etc), just for casual fun's sake.

Online is a good start, excellent netcode all around. A few refinements with the lobby experience would make it top notch. A great place to keep skills honed for bigger offline matches.

The Tutorials and License training are less than what was given in VF4:Evo, but still deep enough to get fighters in the game.

For what it's worth, a solid game overall that I recommend to anyone.

 

String spamming? Is that the same as combo spamming?

I'm still learning the new combos in VF5FS. In all honestly I only know one so far for Lei Fei, if I use it several times during a match am I guilty of string spamming?

Is there something about VF5FS that makes string spamming easier than it was in previous versions?

Things changes so fast. I was under the impression that for the most part spamming was doing the same cheap move over and over again. Does spamming now include using the same cheap combo, sequence or string multiple times in a match?

Mlai, please do get me wrong, I'm just trying to get it right so I won't piss ppl off in online, since this is the first VF that has online play for me.

If repetitious combos, sequences, or strings in a match constitute spamming, then honestly what does a match look like if neither opponent spams?

If there a gentlemen's limit to how many times I should use a string or combo?

If I use a move, a string, a combo more than twice or three times within a round
is that spamming? Does the new VF5FS encourage spamming over the previous releases?

Just curious. Rly...

 

Forget about what people want. Play the way you want to play.

There's nothing wrong with using moves and combos that work over and over. Spamming has a negative connotation to it, but it's not wrong per se. On a personal level, the kind of spamming that I don't like is stuff like Brad players doing ... Being cheap and easy is one thing, but stuff like that doesn't even work.

 

All you guys need to do to beat 2P is do backdash -> Mid/Launcher, or wait for them to do 2P from disadvantage and elbow/launcher. Most characters also have a 2P killer (usually a high or ex. high).

 

I personally differentiate string vs combo as:
String = A canned series that you can input even if they all miss or are blocked, e.g. PPPK or PPPdK, etc.
Combo = Something you use to link together attacks for taking off one unavoidable chunk damage, e.g. launcher then keep hitting floating opponent in the air.

At my level, playing against other newbies on 1-bar connections, I'm having trouble with fast characters whose players are just mashing one fast string nonstop.

I block all of it easily because it's the 10th time the guy is doing it. Then I think hurr hurr time to punish. I press PPP as fast as I can, because it's the fastest thing he has. Next thing I know, Jeffry is eating the same combo. That scrub had advantage after I blocked his entire string?!?

I know there are moves where the attacker has advantage even after being blocked. For my character, Jeffry, it's all slow wind-up moves. Y'know, moves I have to actually be smart with and work at setting up, to get advantage-on-block. But these scrubby Lei Feis and Jackys and Sarahs are getting advantage on me from blocked fast strings, wtf!

So now I'm evading linear strings and ducking high strings in order to get my successful punish, i.e. playing 5x harder than these other guys who are basically mashing with their eyes closed.

 

Let me cut some BS and present an objective quasi-review about VF5FS's FEATURE SETS, because pretending everything is rosy and happy doesn't cut it:

VF5FS' online and offline features, in a word: sucks. Decent only when compared to a generation old vanila VF5. Poor compared to pretty much every other competition.

Now of course people would jump up and down and point out it's a budget title. But considering it's still $45 for the whole game, _some_ comparison with $60 competition is warranted. (You don't even get one of the single player modes until you buy all DLC.) Also consider we pretty much got a complete game for $20 when VF4EVO came out.

I don't think I need to dwell on its lack of offline feature too much, as we came to expect anyway. But the much hyped training mode turned out meh at best and in some ways not even as good as what we had in VF4.

But the online features--please notice I am not talking about online lags and such--is still substandard at best. First of all, after all the years of bitching and requesting, we still don't have a viable room/lobby feature. This is 2012 for crying out loud and other games had this feature working and thriving since 1942 (or at least feels like it). There is just no excuse for shipping this feature that has this retarded un-usability built in.

Moreover, all the stat tracking feature that other fighting game fans take for granted are missing. All other games I know have some way to keep seperate win/loss ratio, points and ranks for your different characters at the very least. Tekken allows you to create different ranking stat for all the different characters you play, which makes perfect sense for me and mirrors how the arcade competition works for both Tekken and VF. Tekken and SF games offer far more detailed stats for both aonline and offline matches even including move stats. In 2012, not even being able to track win/loss ratio for your charcters just doesn't cut it.


Last but not least, the ranking mode is utter joke at least until you hit Hunter. I can't think of a single other fighting game where "ranking mode" doesn't rank until you play triple digit games. There is also no feature to automatically search similar ranks for you. Also, coupled with the fact that you can't maintain separate ranks for different chracters, isn't that strong incentive NOT to use more than one character in your ranking matches? That was a problem in the vanila VF5 too. Can you possibly justify a feature that discourages character diversity in a fighting game?



I know people would still make excuses for all these. But I am a programmer and I know simple things like stat tracking simply does not require some cutting-edge, multi million R&D.


I know that any major or even minor update to the game at this point is very unlikely. But I don't want to pretend everything is perfect when it's not, otherwise we will not get any improvement in a future version/update, assuming there is one.

 

Hyunster you do make a good point about the online being lacking in features. The room match's usability issues (no joining during match, unskippable countdown) and lack of invites to player matches are what bug me the most. It's worse on PSN where it does not track the players you have encountered in ranked mode.

Ranked mode being poorly thought out (and the lack of SP content) isn't a huge deal to me, since even the best systems tend to get gamed by exploits, but it's a shame to see no attempt made on that front. The tutorials are thin/vague on details as well. People noting work-arounds aren't necessarily apologizing for flaws.

 

From what I've heard, stat tracking isn't present because the console kiddies get their feelings hurt when their losses are made visible to others. I pretty much agree with your other points, too. I don't believe in reviewing downloadable titles or budget games. I believe in reviewing games. I don't believe that games should be cut slack because of how expensive they are. Also, some people might say that the game lacks features because of first party restrictions on file size. In that case, the decision to release this online, rather than as a physical copy, was a mistake. I'll never base my opinions of games upon their distribution method, either. They are what they are, and they're not what they're not.

 

I can understand where everyone is coming at in regards to the stat tracking, but at the same time I can also understand what SEGA were trying to achieve.

we seem to live in a time where competitive gaming is flowing everywhere, especially when you have top quality fight vids all over the internet. So people do go into the game in wanting to be like the rest. But reality soon hits them and they realise they're not as good as they thought they were and their W/L ratio shows it. In some cases, people tend to feel humiliated by their ratio and just decide to give up, others scared of being severely trolled. Either way it puts those players off.

By having the points system only focused on BP and GP, it takes away that distraction of how bad your W/L looks and focus more on the game at hand. Of course, you can normally work out how well they've performed on that as well!

I'm not saying that I'm siding with SEGA's decision as I like to see my W/L ratio as a challenge of performance (even if it does look bad at times!) I just tend to look at things from both sides of the fence.

 

I also agree with Sega's decision to make the early part of ranked online like a MMO, where you can just grind and feel like you're "leveling up" whether you win or lose. Other online games do this too, such as RTS games I play on the PC.

Being too hardcore with the ranking system turns new players off really fast. For example SSF4. I was very turned off by the online system where you gain absolutely nothing onscreen for losing (+0 Battle Points). You feel like you just wasted 3 minutes getting pummelled by a faceless opponent, and the whole atmosphere feels very futile and hostile. I don't play SSF4 online at all, and that's a big reason.

Sega correctly figured that after you rise above 10th Dan, that's when you're officially not a newbie, when you actually take online comp seriously, and they can stop babying your feelings with the ranks.

 

You get arcade, score attack and I think the licence mode. As well as dojo. All the DLC is is items, 4 costumes and special sparring. So its not like you have to buy it as the vast majority of it is cosmetic.