Tenkaichi 4
Easily the biggest gaming related news this month is Tenkaichi 4 being announced. I’m kinda out of love with Arena fighters currently; the only one that has had my interest in the last few years was the Kill La Kill one, which is far more fun than it has any right being . Still, I’d be lying if every view of this trailer didn’t make me feel alive. The Budokai Tenkaichi games are such a big part of my childhood and are a big reason why I love gaming and fighting games so much. I’m so glad this exists, man. Anybody around my age knows this feeling I’m feeling when I look at the Budokai Tenkaichi games, and I’m so happy for all of us that this is real. I hope it’s the jankiest game ever with 36 forms of every character and a bunch of filler characters and godlike beam wars. I want all the bullshit for this game, man. Let it have it all.
FEXL
I didn’t play FEXL this month, but the developers did tease something for Evo Japan. ARIKA is known for doing something crazy on April 1st, so we may either see more of this or the game they teased a while ago that I can’t remember the name of.
Y’all know I love FEXL. I’ve talked about it before in a previous post. Game is great, and is probably the easiest fighting game to pick up if you already know how to play a fighting game in my opinion. If this is new release of FEXL they’re teasing, it could do a lot. FEXL had a decent amount of momentum on its initial release, but a combination of SFV already existing, no rollback, and people reacting badly to the gougi system initially kinda kept it down and more in the niche section of fighting games. Now, SF6 and Tekken are coming out soon, especially the former, which literally comes out in 2 more months, but a good looking game wth real rollback and good QoL could carve out a good space for itself. At the very least, if they’ve learned from community feedback over these last few years, this game could improve the state of the FEXL community, and that’s something. The FEXL community is pretty great, and them having a game more up to their standards is a W in my opinion. I’m kinda in the opinion that we kinda have too many options right now, as wild as that sounds. There are so many real options available to us all as fighting game players that it can kinda be hard to really see any game that’s not the big mainstream ones having that big of a playerbase. The market is a bit oversaturated and the big players are still the big players at the end of the day. People like to shit on finding games via discord and forums, but when you like a lot of fighting games, that’s kinda what you have to do. I hope this game comes out strong so the FEXL community is a bit larger so people can get games more conveniently.
Speaking more on the gameplay side of things, there’s a lot to talk about here. Air blocking, 7 bars of meter, sidesteping, a whole lotta stuff. The OG build of FEXL teased sidestepping, so it’s cool to see them go back to that. Makes things like zoning and juggles a bit more interesting by quite literally adding another axis. The 7 bars of meter is pretty wild, but going off of the video linked below, it makes a lot of sense; they seemed to have completely ditched gougi as a requirement and have just made a lot of the abilities mechanics. On that note, now that they consciously cost meter, there’s a bit more freedom in the usage. For example, in normal FEXL, the Illusion gougi automatically triggered to get you out of a combo once a certain damage threshold was met, but here in the video, they just spend a bar of meter to do it when they want. They also put in the EX Dash from FEXL AD, and you can even do it from supers here. They didn’t add jump cancels, but they seem to have added a launch property to heavy buttons and added a slowdown when they hit to give you time to jump up and do a small air combo. I prefer the juggles we have in normal FEXL, which don’t seem to be gone at all, but these air combos are pretty cool and definitely add more fun to the mix. 2 rounds was a bit strange to me, but then I saw the 7 bars of meter and how often you can burst out of combos and it made sense then. Air blocking is pretty wild here, especially since it doesn’t seem to cost anything. You can just block uppercuts, fireballs, anything in the air for free. Granted, it shouldn’t mess up the flow of the game too much; FEXL is a pretty fast, aggressive game, and a lot of the jumping people do is jump-ins with buttons, so AAs will be fine.
Really excited to learn more about this one!
Skullgirls
Black Dahlia came out right at the end of the month. Didn’t get any games in with her, but I was in the lab with her the final days of the month and had a lot of fun! Not sure if she’s earning a spot on the team, but she’s cool and I can see all the work they did on her these past couple months.
DFO’s Birthday
This month marked DFO Global’s 8th birthday. In typical fashion, they had a bunch of fun events and gave away a bunch of free shit. I got to make a Shadow Dancer on my steam account and get her leveled up real quick. Plus, I got some sick outfits for my Sword Master and Grappler.
Happy to get some nice skins for my characters. pic.twitter.com/esZMK7biVG
— Cornrow_Wallace (@Jushido_Brown) March 9, 2023
Shadowverse
They finally buffed my girl Mars , so she is now more viable as a sword strategy. This buff, combined with Gilnelise rotating out leave a lot more room for a deck centered around Mars and a bunch of strong officer followers to breath. As it stands, the Hero archetype from the anime is best in slot here, being a entire gang of officer followers with good effects. Plus, Tony , a new card from this expansion, tutors both Mars and Valiant Fencer , who is pretty insane for helping closing out games in combination with Mars’ amulet. Damage can pile up pretty fast with the chip damage from constant follower attacks with Mars’ amulet up plus face damage thanks to Swiftspeed Quickblader , Mach Knight , and Amerro having storm.
I’m so glad about this Mars buff. It came outta nowhere, and I kinda gave up on it, but I’m glad to be able to play this card. I was hype as hell when it first came out. Also, this deck gives me an excuse to play my favorite 1-drop in the game, Brave Vanguard , who is absolutely insane going 2nd or into a board, especially with Mars’ amulet out.
Snap
DeathWave
I finally got my hands on Death and She-Hulk , so Marvel Snap’s most infamous combo deck is finally available to me. This deck wants to leverage Destruction effects early on to gain advantage and discount the cost of Death, and then play Wave on turn 5. The way Wave interacts with cards like Death and She-Hulk is that instead of overwriting their costs effects, her effect to set everything to 4 applies first, and then their cost reduction effects apply to their new 4 cost. This means on the final turn of the game, where we have essentially floodgated our opponent to only playing 1 card, we get to play an Aero to drag said card to a lane we gave up on, a She-Hulk who will only cost 2(Wave costs 3, so she costs 2 less due to the leftover energy from turn 5), and a Death that is entirely free if we destroyed enough cards during the first 4 turns. Very powerful deck that is pretty easy to pilot. It put in a lot of work for me this month.
Aero and She-Hulk did catch nerfs in the middle of the month; Aero specifically pulling the last card the opponent played instead of all and She-Hulk going from 10 power to 9. The latter nerf is a good, noticable nerf that doesn’t stop She-Hulk from being strong at all; I felt like that would happen eventually anyay. The Aero nerf kinda kicks her down from best-in-slot 5-drop to just a really good one that has counterplay. Still, in the context of this deck, and any deck that does the Wave + She-Hulk combo, not a damn thing changed.
Alucard’s Zoo
This deck is kinda an upgrade to a very early marvel snap deck - Strong Guy Swarm, the earliest version of discard available to players. That deck used a bunch of 1-cost cards to empty its hand so Strong Guy could get real big and so it could discard Swarm easier. This deck has a very similar concept. It floods the board with 1 drops that will be buffed by Ka-Zar so only Red Skull and/or The Infinaut are left in hand so that Dracula can discard them and take on their power. I’ve tried this deck before, but I played it a lot more this month, enough to include it here. I really like it! Deck is solid and very fun. Probably the deck I had the most fun with aside from Negative, and up there with DeathWave in terms of consistency.
Dracula is just a strong ass card in this game. He’ll regularly be 13+ power from discarding big bois, but he doesn’t gain that power until the end of the game, dodging stuff like Shang-Chi. His effect is also not an on-reveal or ongoing, so Cosmo and Enchantress don’t do anything to him. Him gaining the power at the end of the game also lets him be played in some locations like Jotunheim without a single care.
One thing this deck leveraged very well this month was the prevalance of Leech . I can say from personal experience that nothing in this game is funnier than watching someone snap right before they basically buff my Red Skull and Infinaut.
After the nerfs in the middle of month put Red Skull to 13 from 15, I go back and forth between him and Destroyer . Destroyer’s now undoubtedly the better discard off Dracula, and playing him out is not a real problem due to Zero, Armor, and Cosmo. Red Skull is still the more versatile between the two of em since I can drop him and a 1-drop on the final turn and still discard The Infinaut. There is of course a world where I just put both in and cut a 1-drop. I just tend to stick to 2 big bois in this list.
Junk
Not too much changed here, but a change was made nonetheless. Spider-Woman got a nice little buff last month, so I slotted her in over Doc Oc. She’s really fun, effectively being 12 points of power if played in a full lane. She’s also obviously less risky than Doc Oc. List still runs fine.
Negative
I finally got Mystique this month as well, so my Mr. Negative deck got another power boost. Being able to double up on my Iron Man and Blue Marvel does wonders, and she’s an excellent inverted target due to being 0 power. I also got Sera really late into the month. Sera, in combination with Bast, gives this deck a realistic way to walk away with Ws when Mr. Negative is nowhere in sight or comes around a little too late. She’s amazing for this deck. A 4-cost, 3-power Iron Man followed up by a 2-cost, 3-Power Mystique is absolutely crazy. Not many other updates other than swapping out Mojo for Angela . Angela is an amazing inverted target who is great to play on curve and just lets me take over a lane, especially in tandem with Bishop .
Shuri
Prior to nerfs that hit in the middle of the month, this was the 2nd best deck in the game, and was the best deck in the game the month prior before people realized the power of Thanos, and is currently the best deck in the game now that Thanos has been nerfed a little. I pulled Shuri from a reserve, and copped Taskmaster from the token shop a couple days before the patch that nerfed this deck hit. Damn good deck that just goes bigger than everything else in the game. This deck’s claim to fame is Shuri on 4, Red Skull on 5, and Taskmaster + 1 drop, preferably Titania, on 6 - a very linear, but ignorantly powerful play pattern. Another common option that plays around Shang Chi(but not Aero) was Shuri on 4, pass on 5, She-Hulk + Taskmaster on 6 to drop 40 power on the last turn. The deck also just runs good cards to help get priority and give it some game when the exact line of Shuri into Red Skull into taskmaster is not on the table.
The Red Skull nerf to 13 power and the She-Hulk nerf to 9 did next to nothing to this deck. Still prints cubes. The Aero nerf is also a buff to this deck because it makes the She-Hulk + Taskmaster line much stronger. The deck already played around her in the Red Skull line by simply making sure the Red Skull lane was full on the final turn or by just chucking him behind Cosmo, so the Aero nerf only really helps the She-Hulk + Taskmaster line.
Comics
Galaxy Guarded
I finished Ewing’s GoTG run. It was a really good run that gave me a lot more to enjoy about the Guardians and also introduced me to some new characters I can see myself enjoying. More importantly though, I got see Dr. Doom be a fucking badass. All in all, I got nothing but positive things to say about this comic. It has great character work, a pretty engaging story, and some really good art. I didn’t care for all the new additions very much, but I really liked the ones that i did care for. This is another fun GoTG run to add to list. I can see myself coming back to read this one again.
New Mutants
I sat down and read the 2019-2022 run of New Mutants. I was very unfamilair with basically all of em. I knew a little about Warpath because he was in an X-Force run I read before, and I’ve seen some of the others in X-men issues, but overall, all the New Mutants crew was a mystery to me before I read this run. I’m very familair with them now, and I’m very fond of them.
Magik is the easy standout of the main group for me, being a regular through the first couple arcs and having an entire arc about her passing over rulership of Limbo. I especially liked the Limbo arc because it gave me more insight into Magik’s past that made me like her even more. What I really loved about Magik in this book was her attitude. She’s just kinda this ride-or-die, unhinged woman of destruction, and that’s just right up my alley. She doesn’t take any bullshit, and loves her friends dearly. She has a lot of nice moments in this run, be they funny or badass.
Something nice about this run is that it does put the group in the mentor position to younger mutants, with a whole arc dedicated them trying to help a group of younger mutants understand themselves and how things are in Krakoa, chief among them Gabby Kinney, X-23’s little sister(basically). I remembered Gabby from the bit of All-New Wolverine I read years ago, and she was just alright to me there. I remembered not minding her but also not feeling too strongly about her. I liked her here because of her straightforwardness and her attempts at being the voice of reason to her fellow youngsters while they were dealing with Shadow King.
She-Hulk
I’ve liked She-Hulk for a long while mainly off the back of how cool she is in Marvel 3. I’m still early in her latest ongoing series, but I enjoy it a lot. There hasn’t been much action, but there’s been a lot of good character stuff. She has a heart-to-heart(sorta) with Titania that brings them to a much better place in their relationship, and she gets along really well with the newly not dead Jack of Hearts.
The main joy of this series so far has definitely just been Jen interacting with people. She just has a nice rapport with everyone - Wasp, The Thing, Jack, etc. She’s a bit down on her luck, but she’s a trooper and very pleasant to follow around.
Wasp, X-23, & Cosmic Ghost Rider
All three of these series basically just started, so not too much to go over individually. Wasp has an issue or two more, but that’s it.
Personally, I’m not too attached to The Wasp. Never seen her in any of the movies, and I’ve obviously never read any of her comics before this. Still, the first issue has me very interested. Janet’s up against an old monster that killed her father. It’s got some nice setup. I’m already liking her relationship with Nadia, too.
I like Ghost Rider,but know nothing about The Punisher except that he kills people a lot. Cosmic Ghost Rider is just a weird premise, and it started in weirder places than this current ongoing run. If you’re like me and don’t know what the gist of Cosmic GR is, he’s a version of The Punisher from the future who sold his soul to become a Ghost Rider, and then served as a Herald of Galactus, and then as a right hand man to Thanos. He had a very wacky 6-issue run where he goes back in time and kidnaps baby Thanos in an attempt to raise him so he doesn’t become…well, Thanos. It’s every bit as wild as that statement would lead you to believe it is. This current run seems to be a lot more serious, which isn’t unwelcome. I did enjoy Frank’s Lunacy in that 2018 run, but somethng a bit more serious that still makes use of his current situation will probably be a lot of fun.
This new X-23 run, New Genesis, is a flashback, essentially. It takes us back to when Laura left Utopia and what she was up to around that time. We’re retreading past ground here, but as long as I can get some nice moments and stories out of this, I don’t really care. I love X-23 to death, so I’m not about to complain about more comics focusing on her. We’ve got Kimura sending an assassin after Laura; it looks like it’ll be a really fun fight in the next issue.
Return of The Yokai Sōdaishō
Nura: Rise of The Yokai Clan, my favorite series ever, is getting a short sequel manga to celebrate its anniversary, and I couldn’t be happiwr. I don’t get to talk about my love for Nura, but it’s a series that has stayed in my mind daily since the day I first saw it. I loved the main character, the story, and especially the art style. Shiibashi’s art is almost unmatched to me. I’m so serious. I’ve followed what I could of his his series following Nura’s ending; I liked Illegal Rare and Yui Kamio, but havent been able to scans of his latest series, Mr. Iwamoto.
I’m pumped for this. Nura has a lot of fun stories it could tell, and I have full confidence in Shiibashi’s storytelling.
'Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan x Recommendation from Mr. Iwamoto' Special Collaboration Illustration by Hiroshi Shiibashi in the cover of Ultra Jump Issue #4 2023.
— Shonen Jump News (@WSJ_manga) March 14, 2023
The illustration commemorates the 15th Anniversary of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan. pic.twitter.com/JuveLPdTMk
Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan by Hiroshi Shiibashi will be receiving a sequel short-term serialization titled 'Nurarihyon no Mago Kage' starting Ultra Jump Issue #5 2023.
— Shonen Jump News (@WSJ_manga) March 15, 2023
This new series will run for 4 consecutive issues, revealing content not published in the original story. pic.twitter.com/JYMqL64oMJ
A High School Hero
I picked Dogengers High School back up and finished it this month. This show came out last year, and it actually got official subs on youtube, but they went down before I could watch, and the sub group I usually got Dogengers stuff from got busy with other projects, so I didn’t get to finish it. They came back recently and dropped the link to a completed sub batch for it, and I got to watching.
This is a fun show, as expected from Dogengers. It follows a high school girl by the name of Mako who ends up becoming a hero and getting guidance from the Dogenegers, basically. It’s a wonderful, silly mess. The first 8 or so episodes are about her meeting each Dogenegr and learning a lesson from them and then the final 4 episodes are her big character growth payoff + the final showdown with Yabai Kamen. The stuff she learns from them isn’t groundbreaking or anything, but the real draw of these episodes is how fun the characters are and how sincere the moments when she learns these lessons are. That’s always been what I’ve liked about Dogengers - All the characters are complete goofballs, but they’re earnest goofballs. The show has a lot of heart, and it shines through every single episode. It’s hard not to love a show where the mom transforms, the bad guys get cheered up by their food server, and a thug becomes a construction worker.
If you’re reading this and wanna watch, I’ll link to the subber’s blog. They’re also doing the Dogengers Metropolis, which starts next month!
Dogengers: Metropolis begins airing April 9th! And we will be handling it! pic.twitter.com/albyrN89Wh
— Haunted GaGaGaScrubs (@GaGaGaScrubs) March 2, 2023
Royal Sentai
Donbrothers has ended, and now the newest Sentai has started up. This new one has started off strong, which is pretty consistent with Sentai the last few years. I haven’t finished Zenkaiger, but it started off strong as hell. Same with Donbrothers.
The short of it is that the main character rebels against his land’s selfish king, stealing the sword to his megazord and declaring himself “a tyrant king” in contrast to the evil king’s justice. At the moment, he’s ending up in the lands of other kings and learning about them. It’s a fun premise and they’re doing a pretty damn good job in the execution. They have also stepped up their CGI and Donbrothers, which is very welcome. Looking forward to tuning into this every week for the rest of the year.
Rider Royale
Okay, so Kamen Rider Geats started a good while ago; the show is about halfway finished now, actually. I just never around to writing about it on here; I’m fixing that this month.
Kamen Rider Geats so far has been a 10/10. Every episode so far has been great, which is very welcome. I love Kamen Rider Saber, but I can’t in good conscience call it “good,” and I completely skipped Revice, so this series knocking it out of the park basically every episode has been a great way to come back to current Kamen Rider.
Geats is about a Kamen Rider battle royale where the winner gets to have a wish granted. What separates this from Ryuki is that the royale is very inspired by modern games like Fortnie and Apex. The riders compete in challenges, with riders slowly getting eliminated until someone wins. The other thing that separates this from Ryuki is that it doesn’t follow just one “game” of the royale. The series opens with the main character fresh off of winning a royale, and we’re in the middle of a 3rd one as I’m writing this.
Geats has a pretty fun cast of characters. Ace, the main character, is pretty badass; he’s a regular winner of the royale, and he keeps competing and winning to try to find his mother. My personal favorite character aside from Ace is Keiwa, who’s just a nice, relatable guy trying to win so he can make pretty selfless wishes like world peace or dead riders getting brought back to life. A character I don’t like much at all is Buffa, the main rival character; he’s not a bad character per se, but he’s one of those “I want revenge at all costs” type of guys and I just find him very stupid and needlessly aggressive a lot of the time. Granted, that just makes Ace one-upping him even more entertaining, but I still don’t like him all that much.
The story’s in a very good spot right now, and I don’t like spoiling stuff in case anybody reading this actually gets interested and tries to watch, so just know it’s really good. The fight choreography has been godlike, as well. It’s a really enjoyable season.