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"El Blaze can still cheese the Very Hard AI by spamming the Kick button."
VF5US didn't really need to exist; when the Sega project that would become this game, which is known as Virtua Fighter eSports in Japan, was first talked about, they said it would be out Japan first, and the rest of the world some unspecified later--years after they had dropped official support for the game in the arcades that had been the series' home for so many years, Sega wanted to capture the Japanese online VF5FS tournament scene that had sprung up and begun to thrive on its own. Ultimate Showdown, the Western release, is kind of a bonus.
Also kind of a bonus is the obligatory included Arcade mode--that's the only single-player mode included this time, aside from Training modes and costume Customization, if you buy the Legendary Pack DLC.
In the previous version, Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown (see entry 1376), there had been another single-player mode or two, but nothing big; the focus even there was clearly on getting you to play the game online. The AI was deeply flawed: while it could seem scary if you tried to play honestly against its aggressive, toned-up offense, it just couldn't defend well, and you could spam simple attacks to overwhelm it even on the highest difficulty level. (That was not possible in the first Virtua Fighter 5--see entry 1224--although that game has its own defensive problem: it can't really defend against throws. : P)
Ultimate Showdown is a painstaking remake of Final Showdown, in an entirely different engine: Sega's Yakuza engine. The clothing looks a lot nicer. The reimagined stages don't quite have the subtle, efficient style and colors of the old ones, but they look nice in kind of a more generic PS4 way. The character redesigned character faces are mostly better; a few look somewhat cracked out, but at least the eyes focus correctly now, avoiding the uncanny valley effect of the old versions.
The gameplay was kept exactly the same. That was mostly with an eye toward multiplayer, probably, but yes, the AI still has the same inability to defend.
Maybe they'll fix it eventually, this time around? Seems really unlikely, but I suppose it's slightly more likely now than when we thought the series was completely dead.
The Legendary Pack DLC includes, among many other things, Virtua Fighter 1-style costumes for the characters--bringing that back from the VF4 console games (see entry 1377 and entry 329)--as well as a single VF1-style stage (Jacky's, I saw someone on the internet say) and, almost best of all, an optional, big, blocky, simple VF1-style game UI to replace the game's overly large and elaborate cel-phone-style UI; it even replaces the huge, flashy animated WIN, etc text before and after a round with just nice big non-flashy legible, VF1-style yellow intertitles. For someone like myself with occasional photosensitivity, this is in the running for the greatest fighting game option ever. : D (Can't get rid of the huge gassy hit sparks they added for sort of the first time in the series' history, ah well.) |
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| | | I wanted to relive the old days and play a little dress-up with Sarah. = P I meant to do like an hour and of course, even with the current tiny fraction of the customization items that are in the game so far (15% of what was in Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, maybe?), I still got obsessively sucked into messing around with it for twice that amount of time. ; )
So anyway this is me with Sarah Bryant, checking out this version's Customize mode, making her one costume out of each of the three currently available costume types, A, B, and C, and playing through the Arcade mode on Very Hard with the Type A costume.
I forgot how different Sarah is in FS/US than she is in VF5 (vanilla), which is where I was mostly playing her over the past 11 months! So it took me a while just to find some moves to spam in my stupid "the AI can't defend so just attack it" strategy:
0:00 - start
20:09 - Customize - Type A
48:27 - Customize - Type B
1:02:00 - Customize - Type C
1:10:50 - Very Hard - Type A
1:36:38 - credits
1:40:26 - Type A tweaks & testing
1:50:17 - viewing matches
1:55:14 - Ranking
1:58:19 - wrap-up & what's next!
The colors and details of the items are improved over FS so that's a plus, and the characters' eyes--although the stiffness of the facial animations still makes them look a little zombielike here and there. ; )
The editing window background is a little harder on the eyes than FS's simpler background, and there's no lighting control like there was before. I'd like to see them get that stuff in there.
That Type C blouse (49'12) sure is big and lumpy. I *think* that's what I used for my "Elf" costume in FS -- https://youtu.be/knJxiYdZVa0?list=PLZO3OPzPjIzM56olIuSlxU4Ty4de_qLaA&t=1061 -- but it fit so much better there, and wasn't all rumpled and loose. Eh. |
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| | | Tweet by Sega's "Virtua Fighter Official" Twitter account: https://twitter.com/vf_official/status/1399980057804697604
'[Hidden Tech]
For those who have purchased the DLC, try pressing the OPTIONS button when selecting "Virtua Fighter 2" in the Main Menu ? Settings ? Config ? BGM Settings. This will let you choose music from "Virtua Fighter Kids". Please give it a try!' |
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I couldn't find the big easy offense to keep the AI offa me as Goh, so that was rough. At least I can say that it doesn't seem like the AI is unusually vulnerable to throws, like it was in 5; I was able to throw it a bit, but got teched an awful lot, too, and it felt harder just to do a throw as a counterattack after a block. The throw system was redone between 5 and FS, and I *think* I read that throws in the new system take longer to execute, which would explain some of it.
I'd thought that being able to do throws on crouching characters with just the Guard and Punch buttons, like a standing throw, instead of also requiring Kick, would make it much more possible for me to throw crouchers, but I'm not used to it yet, and it does open up the wrinkle that if you slack off and let the stick droop a bit like I SEEM TO BE DOING, then you can now accidentally do a crouch throw instead of the standing throw you meant to do. : P |
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Oh yeah also I set it to VF1 music.
Oh Brad's awkward pants. Some of them definitely had that weird long straight waistline going on in Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, of which VF5US is mostly a remake (only 10% of the original customization items having yet been re-created in the game's new Yakuza series engine, though!), but I don't remember there also being this "just lost 30 pounds" overly wide waistline. : P Hair and loafers are looking good, though!
I kind of have fun with Brad but I'm still not sure how much I actually get him. |
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| | | | (The more I think about this throw escape system, the more it makes me mad; the standard advice is to use it to take away your opponent's most effective throw; for most characters that's a forward throw, so what it really means is that every time you guard, you also have to plink to holding Punch and forward as well as Guard. SUPER FUN. ; | GAHHH. Well I guess I'm glad I'm only playing against AIs so I can ignore it shamelessly.) |
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| | | (You know, if it weren't for the costume making, I wouldn't have much to do in this game, now that I've taken a look at the characters I was interested in seeing. So I think I'll be sticking to VF 3tb and 4Evo for the time being; I like their fighting and AI better. :)
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With the Legendary Pack DLC, setting the music to the Virtua Fighter 5 R soundtrack (some of these tracks are not my thing :p), making a new costume for Sarah, having her wear it through Arcade mode on "Very Hard" difficulty, and checking a few of her kick moves in Command Training:
- In 5 vanilla, dfK was my go-to for going into Flamingo, but doesn't seem to now; or er well actually it was dfKK that went into Flamingo in 5v, so was I maybe not doing that second K? The dfK animation seems different here, at least. I wouldn't be surprised if they changed it so you can't just spam dfKK+ to go into Flamingo and then keep kicking, they seemed to have a real thing for taking away the easy inputs I used to rely on; I know they want you to spread your attacks around a bit more but sheesh, way to make the game less intuitive. (Actually I'm feeling like--and remembering my feeling about it from FS--that's a large general problem in FS/US: moving away from intuitive inputs and feeling like complication for complication's sake; in some cases I know it was to fit into a new universal input scheme they came up with, like for throw directions, but man, for this noob the attack inputs feel all over the place here, like I have to memorize a spreadsheet in order to get them all down, whereas in 4Evo--and 5 vanilla--a lot of the time they feel more like they sort of make sense, or at least have a unique and memorable character. Although I suppose it could just be 'cause I've been playing 4Evo and 5 vanilla a lot more in the past year; I'll have to see if FS/US grows on me as I spend more time with a small-ish set of characters.) Eh anyhoo there's still something I gotta figure out there, because a few times it seemed I did go into Flamingo from dfK somehow, probably my fingers flailed and hit some other input.
- The big up kick launcher is dbK (was it dfdfK in vanilla? or am I just thinking of Jacky in 4Evo? oh hm yeah that's probably it)
- Sweep is dfG+K; I think I had trouble remembering what it was in vanilla, too : P |
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| | | | The game's director spent a lot of time palling around with Tekken director Harada, being invited on Harada's YouTube show, etc. The rest of the FS costume items did not make it into the game. Tekken DLC, however, did. ... Good thing I still have a PS3. : D |
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