Dandadan Anime
Late in the month, we got the first trailer for an upcoming Dandadan anime . I already sung Dandadan’s praises a while back; you already know I’m hype for this. This series is just bonkers. I’m very high on this series, even if I’m not caught up atm. It’s just a good time. Go read the manga. Join me, brothers/sisters/persons of undefinable genders.
Omega Strikers
Omega Strikers sadly announced that it will have no more content updates and that focus will be given to developing future titles with the hope of creating games with stronger player retention. I enjoy Omega Strikers, although I’m pretty casual about it. The game is really fun and has a pretty memoriable cast of characters. It kinda stings to have this happen to another game I liked. I think back to Rumbleverse shutting down. Luckily, this situation is more akin to Splitgate than Rumbleverse. Omega STrikers, at the time of writing, isn’t going anywhere. The game’s gonna stay up for as long as they can keep it up/until their new titles drop. So I still get to hop online and enjoy the game for the forseeable future. It’s just a sobering situation. Make sure to enjoy these types of free, live-service games while they’re around; not all of em stick around for that long.
Granblue Beta
We had the beta for Granblue Fantasy Versus : Rising , an update to the original Granblue Fantasy Versus that came out in March 2020. This is an important game, all things considered. Granblue was one of the many games that essentially got shot in the face by Covid-19, coming out only a couple of months before the pandemic got really serious and shut the world down. Of course, launching with delay-based netcode and having the locals and offline tournaments gone for a good while, the game’s momentum died out very quickly. To their credit, a lot of community members kept the flag flying until they could get to this point, so props to them and I’m obviously happy that their faith to the game has been rewarded.
This update, first and foremost, brings rollback netcode to Granblue, which is the biggest and most important thing here. Much like SamSho before it, Granblue was a beloved game with a dogshit online experience.
I was not very impressed with Granblue on its original release. I had been playing games like Xrd, BBTAG, DOA, etc online for a couple years at that point, so the netcode wasn’t something I was going to hold against it even if it was subpar. I just wasn’t gripped by it during those early days. I had love for some of the characters because I played Shadowverse before and used several of the characters in the roster in my Shadowverse decks when I first started playing that game. Granblue just had a lot of little things that made me dislike it at the time. Some of these have changed in this update, and others I just don’t care to complain about anymore. For example, I am not a fan of only EX DPs/Uppercuts being completely air-unblockable. I’m not very fond of how the game punishes you for reacting to a throw by making you more minus if you broke it late. And there were just some legitimately corny characters. I love playing as Lowain, but his ultimate super is just miserable both to use and to fight against. Charlotte is just E.Honda with a demon flip, and I have never been a fan of that kind of “lowest common denominator” gameplay. You may notice that none of that has changed in Rising. I attribute my enjoyment of the game just coming from my palette for FGs changing over the course of the pandemic. Everything I just mentioned still sucks and I would be happier if they didn’t work the wau theu did, but I was able to enjoy the actual gameplay of GBVS more this time around, so my overall enjoyment outweighed how dumb it is that only EX dps are air unblockable the whole way through or how corny Charlotte is to fight.
Netplay
The netcode was pretty good. Now, in my games against friends, I wasn’t exactly pushing the boundaries. I’m located in Mississippi, in case you’ve forgotten, and I played against my friends in Illinois, Florida, New York, and Maryland. I did try out casual match for a bit and played agianst anybody i got paired up against and didn’t have any unpleasant experiences. Netcode is like a referee in sports. It’s at its best when I never actually have anything to say about it. We’re all good here, chief.
A big win here is that the game is crossplay. I played on PS4, and most of my buddies played on PC. We were able to match up just fine. More fgs as of late have added crossplay, but this is my first time experiencing how convenient it is on a fg.
Things I Liked
Like I said, Granblue’s general gameplay is enjoyable. This isn’t like DNF, where the game remains fast-paced and aggressive despite the lack of an airdash or particularly fast run. It is a slower game. You can’t block immediately upon dashing, jumps are pretty floaty, etc. Pressure is solid. Your lights are advantageous on block, as is the now infamous dashing light, so you can make people uncomfortable and test them. There is pushback, of course, and far lights don’t have any cancel options aside from specials, so if you don’t reset early, the actual pressure can end pretty quickly.
The cooldown mechanic is inconsequential for the most part. They took out the cooldown penalty for doing simple inputs, so this is kinda just there for the most part. It can come into play sometimes, but for the most part, characters seem to be able to manage their cooldowns easily enough. The only time I really noticed the cooldowns was when I dp’d someone and couldn’t run up dp them right after. That is a very big sour point for me, but it’s the only situation in the entire beta weekend that I noticed that cooldowns were a thing.
I wasn’t feeling the dash buttons at first, but got used to them very quickly. They’re pretty useful. Everyone’s dashing light is + on block, so an easy pressure reset if your opponent respects too much and a way to get advantage from weird knockdowns. On Vira, who I played the most, her dashing medium was a far reaching low and her heavy was a big ole combo starter mid with a lot of startup. Adding these to the game made me think of SoulCalibur, honestly.
Things I Didn’t Like
As I said, I hate that only EX uppercuts are truly air-unblockable. I find things like Lowain’s super and Charlotte’s entire character very corny. You know the drill. As for things exclusive to this new version I that I hate, chief among them is mashing any button to tech throws. I am a strike/throw truther. As you can see in the gameplay vids on this blog post, I like throwing people. So it sucks when people can break my throws without actually trying to break my throws. This is especially heinous in regards to air throws. Multiple times, I jumped up to air throw people, but because they were mashing on the way down, my throws got broken. Actual clown shit. I hope they change that.
I did prefer the way they handled simple inputs on the original release of Granblue. That system made the cooldown gimmick make more sense. If you did an easy input, you were punished with a longer cooldown. You wanna do 1-button flashkicks? Hold this longer cooldown. It made sense and, on paper, encouraged newer players to eventually learn normal fighting game inputs so they wouldn’t have to deal with cooldowns anymore. Here, they took that away and instead of just have raw special inputs in neutral a damage bonus. It’s nice, but now we’ve sort of taken away the biggest point of the cooldown system, so now it just feels like this weird limitation on gameplay instead of a more serious choice.
More Fun Compared to OG Granblue
I do believe a big part of why I enjoyed this game more here compared to on release is in large part due to my fighting game palette changing a bit. It’s not like I dislike slower games; I was already playing DOA and SamSho when this game originally came out. But I do think spending so much time playing a lot DOA6, SamSHo V Special, and VF made me more comfortable with the types of decisions and concessions I have to make when playing a game like Granblue compared to when I first tried it. I really can’t give enough credit to DOA and especially VF, and of course, the guys like Hajin, Dark Nova, and Smurf who beat my ass in those games, for really just changing my brain chemistry in regards to fighting games.
Under Night Beta
Under Night In-Birth is one of the best fighting games out there. I don’t specifcally mean the original OG Under Night that came out in 2012. That was kusoge as fuck. But I say Under Night the same way I used to mean Guilty Gear. I’m talking about what it currently is/has built up to. Watching and playing Under Night is a great experience, and the community, while weird at times, is ultimately cool. Climax of Night is probably the best event I’ve ever been to and I’ll sing its praises until I’m blue in the face.
For me, Under Night is very special. I started playing fgs in summer 2017, but if I had to specifically put myself in a group, I’d definitely say I’m part of that 2018-ish group of players that really latched onto to BBTAG and UNIST. I made a lot of friends playing Under Night. I experienced a lot of things for and because of the game. Hell, it was the reason I went to the first real meetup for dudes in my area to play fgs locally at the time. I love the game, and like a lot of people, I was continually disappointed by the netplay. Well, disappointment will terrorize us no longer. French Bread announced a while back that this sequel(but it’s honestly more akin to a version update) will have rollback, on top of new characters, balance adjustments, and eventual dlc characters.
Under Night, like Granblue, effectively got shot in the face by Covid-19. The difference, however, is that Granblue got shot the moment it was about to step into the room. Under Night, along with SamSho, BBTAG, SoulCalibur VI, and really any game that wasn’t SF or Tekken, got shot after sitting down and getting comfortable. You really had to be around for the momentum Under Night had once UNIST came state-side. Hype tournaments at Ceotaku, Frosty Faustings, and CB, Climax starting up, a spot at Evo. Seeing the game get that momentum in real time was surreal. And then it got shot like Chris Brown in Stomp the Yard. Fittingly, like SamSho and Granblue, Under Night’s making its comeback. Fresh release with better online and a couple new toys, but really, it’s just the game we signed up for a couple years back, and that’s all we ever wanted.
I’m a fan of the new UI. It’s not that big of a change from the previous version, but the touch-up is nice and appreciated. Of course, the new music is great. Raito always delivers there. I didn’t get to all the new stuff people got, but Seth got a cool new moves that I had to work on to integrate into my play. I’m kinda playing from really far behind, because I didn’t even really learn his UNICLR bnb. A good part of this beta, and thusly, in most of the footage I post on this blog post, I’m still just doing his UNIST bnb because it just works and I still have the muscle memory for it for the most part. They did make a lot of changes, like adding Celestial, which is basically Vorpal on crack, and changing VO startup, but for the level I was playing at, most of those never mattered like that. I was just running around playing matches. The music got a pretty noticable touch-up, as well. Everyone has a new rendition of their original theme. Some are really nice upgrades, like Hyde’s. Others are mostly slight enhancements since the OG was already so good, like with Gordeau. And then you have Hilda, who has an almost completely different theme altogether. Also, Nanase’s theme is no longer a meme. Thank God.
The netcode is the most important thing here. Like with Granblue, even moreso, honestly, the game is mostly the same as it was when we left it aside from balance changes and a new mechanic or two. The netcode was pretty good. Same deal with Granblue, I never had anything bad to say about my online matches unless I was playing against someone clearly on wifi. Basically the same netcode that Type Lumina uses rn, which is great.
Genshin
I went on a bit of a wishing spree in Genshin on the standard banner. I have my guaranteed 5-Star pull that I’m still saving for Arlecchino next year, and I was just sitting on a bunch of wishes, so I went on a wishing spree to just see what i’d get. Well, I got a lot of good stuff. I finally got Xingqiu, who is admittedly a better fit for my Burgeon teams than Yelan or Candace, being able to provide some damage reduction and minor healing to go with Thoma’s shield. Speaking of Thoma, I finally have him at C4 from these pulls, so I was able to finally take him off ER Sands.
I also pulled Kuki Shinobu, which means I am halting building Lisa since Kuki is the superior Hyperbloom trigger. I’m still gonna eventually build her, but for Aggravate. I also pulled Jean, who I wanted for a good while now. Really solid healer & VV holder. I did also manage to get some better artifacts for my Eula; she’s finally on a full Pale Flame set.
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Snap
Annihilus has finally dropped in Marvel Snap, bringing a strong boost to my Junk deck. The deck feels noticable stronger now, for sure. Being able to run Sentry and another way to get rid of his token adds a lot of punch to this deck. M previous build of this deck didn’t really have stats outside of Gamora and Spider-Woman, but now it has Spider-Woman, Sentry, and Annihilus(via his swing in points), which makes it a lot tougher and a lot easier to play. Locking up a lane, having a big ole sentry, and playing a strong 5+1 on the final turn. Really fun.
That being said, though, Annihilus was the last card I really wanted/needed, so I’m probably taking a break from Snap for a good bit. Played it for basically a year now.