What are you playing?

[Rapeculture]

And even SFIV eventually had Ultra to fix a lot of its problems and improve overall game balance. KoF 14 and SFV are a better comparison now tbh. Looks like shit, plays like shit.

So, you're saying that Ultra SFIV is better than SFV? I've not played SFV yet.

I hated vanilla SF4, hated Super, but finally came around with Ultra. I enjoy Ultra more than 3rd Strike even though I'm well aware 3rd Strike is a better game. But I like Alpha 3 better than all other street fighter games.

Hell yeah, Alpha 3 is the shiznit. Love 3rd Strike, possibly my favorite fighting game of all time. There's a new SF collection coming out soon, I think all of the Alpha games are in it.

[rabidtictac]

I've put a few hours into Ken's Rage now. At first, I really didn't like it because Ken starts out very, very weak. But after grabbing a few upgrades and clearing a couple stages, I think it's great. Don't let people convince you it's another shitty musou game. Ken's Rage's main mode is completely different from musou gameplay. The levels are fixed from start to finish, enemy numbers are fixed, enemies attack in fairly small numbers with decent AI and use of physics objects, temporary weapons and meter management are necessary to beat the level. Item pickups, such as health and meter, are very limited, unlike a musou game. You might only see two health pickups in an entire level, depending on its length.

Normal enemies can be kind of tough in groups. They will attack you all at once and can stunlock you. The game gives you a lot of tutorials for button commands and interactables, but it doesn't tell you what you really need to know to avoid being combo'd to death. The game also throws you to the wolves FAST. 1st level boss is Zeed. Second level boss is Heart and then you walk maybe 30 feet and fight Shin in a massive three-stage boss fight. If you had nothing left after beating Heart, get fucked mate.

That said, Kekmo-Koei still made this. When you boot up Ken's Rage, it asks you 3-4 times to switch the difficulty modes down to the babiest settings possible. Fuck you, this game was clearly designed around Normal difficulty. Default spoken language is shitty dub english but you can thankfully change to japanese with subs. You can still grind for shit to make the game easier if you want, and it's probably required later. The controls are fiddly and I'll probably rebind them if I can. QTEs always suck shit too.

But I was amazed how little Ken's Rage feels like a musou game. It's as close as we'll see to a new proper 3d beat em up. I'm shocked this got reviews as poor as it did tbh. It's closer in feel to a game like Urban Reign or God Hand than a musou. You actually have to learn how to make bosses flinch, how to break their guards and how to punish them. I can't recall ever needing to learn that shit in a musou game. Oh and Ken takes damage really fast too, unlike musou games. It adds up quick when you don't get health drops hardly ever.



This guy has too much shit unlocked in his playthroughs for first-time characters (way too much spirit) but this will give you an idea.

[rabidtictac]

My apologies for double post.

I was going to post two Jim Sterling reviews to compare and contrast Ken's Rage 1 and 2, since he liked 1 and disliked 2, but his opinion is still shit even when his score of Ken's Rage 1 is high:

What is less pleasant, however, is how unapologetically cheap the game's boss fights are. Most major enemies in the game are far too frustrating to fight, due to their ability to shrug off all your attacks, recharge health, break your combos whenever they please, and block even while halfway through taking damage. The bosses could have shed at least half of their inflated advantages and would still have provided a stiff challenge. When you're being juggled by an enemy for so long that you actually put the controller down and watch yourself get raped, however, things just aren't very fun.

Fuck off. Bosses in Ken's Rage follow the rules more than 99% of musou bosses. So many times I've seen pirate warriors 3 enemies just become invincible when I'm in the middle of kicking their asses.

In Ken's Rage, bosses have a shield meter. You have one too when you use the block button. Certain attacks can break their guard. Like you, bosses can break out of being combo'd by using the jump button to do an air recovery, and if they have air moves, they can use those while still in the air. Bosses have throws just like you do and they often have a shieldbreaker move just like how Ken has shield-breaking attacks. A basic light-heavy-heavy string 100% breaks the block of any enemy or boss. The other way bosses can avoid damage is going into their musou mode. You can just run away and it'll wear off, or you can activate your own clothes-bursting super saiyan mad max mode and keep fighting.

Some bosses have special gimmicks and you have to learn them, like Jagi cheating with cages and bombs or Mamiya spamming crossbow hadoukens.

Boss health does regen, and it regens a lot if you fuck up the death QTE at the end. Tough luck git gud scrub. You can't use DSP tactics to slowly cheese these guys to death. I killed Shin and Mamiya first try, in fact I killed every boss so far on the first attempt. Not saying the game isn't hard, but git gud. You have to play way more carefully than in dynassty warriors.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Don't Pirate Warriors 3 enemies have some kind of shield meter as well? I can recall a lot of them having a sort of extra bar you had to deplete before they'd start flinching.

I'm shocked this got reviews as poor as it did tbh.

Video game journos hate hard games, and they tend to dislike anything associated with the Warriors series (except for Hyrule Warriors I guess because that was muh Zelda).

My Rengoku 2 playthrough is shaping up nicely. Mainly using blade arms, one of them being a jump attack that's really handy in closing the distance. Initially tried to go for lazors, but I find my current shotgun head way too fun, especially in combination with the jump for some surprise point-blank shots.

Fighting up to 3 opponents at once is tough, but it has become more manageable after finding some neat AoEs (a grenade launcher and that shockwave weapon.)

[Guest]

Are there any modern fighting games that don't have annoying super moves that take like 2/3 of your power and turn every match into a 3 round race to see who can fill up their power bar fastest?

[rabidtictac]

Blazbue doesn't allow you to carry over your meter from one match to the next. Maybe that qualifies. You start fresh at every round and almost nothing carries over. Super moves in BB don't do all that much damage compared to normal combos. A good combo will do 3000+ damage. Sometimes 4000. No super move does that much IIRC. There are instant kill moves but nobody lands those, ever.

Older games had less of the meter comeback mechanic bullshit. Games like 3rd Strike (unless you play Chun).

[Kugelfisch]

And even SFIV eventually had Ultra to fix a lot of its problems and improve overall game balance. KoF 14 and SFV are a better comparison now tbh. Looks like shit, plays like shit.

So, you're saying that Ultra SFIV is better than SFV? I've not played SFV yet.

Ultra SFIV is to SFV what a shitty trash hotel meal is to prison slob. Yeah, it's strictly better but you wouldn't want either.

And KoF 98 is the best KoF and Garou is the better 3rd Strike.

[rabidtictac]

Kicked Jagi's bitch ass with no problem. He's another boss people bring up for "omgwtfbbq ken's rage is unfair bullshit."

It's super easy to deal with his moves. TBH I had the most trouble right at the start because he spams rockets and shotgun blasts when you're far away. Then I got in and he was done. His bombs and cages routine isn't the easiest to avoid sometimes, but it doesn't do that much damage and he only does 3 before coming back into the arena to taunt. His third phase was trivial. Shin was way more threatening because Shin was in the second level (of the entire game!) and came right after fighting Heart. I beat Jagi with full health since they give you an HP powerup and I never needed it. I just took it at the end so I could finish at 100% hp for ego.

I'm telling you, the more I play this game, the more full of shit I think the reviews are. The metascore is around 56/100. Of course, 50/100 doesn't have to mean "unplayable trash" since we're not all using the IGN review scale, but it still shows a pretty basic misunderstanding of the game. It's not "2/10 God Hand review" bad, but the consensus is so widespread among "professional" reviewers regarding Ken's Rage that the end result is probably worse. A legitimately excellent HnK game was translated into english with full japanese VA and subs OR a dub option, and people shit on it because it wasn't enough of a mindless musou.

HnK is a perfect series to make a game out of too, considering how many episodes are just Kenshiro murdering mooks.

[Guest]

The first Ken's Rage is a solid beat'em up, the second one was a cheap cash-in. They dumbed down a lot of the gameplay to expand the character roster. That's why you can't jump anymore. The only thing going for it is that it covers 90% of the story, but most of that is reduced to static comic-book panels. Might as well read the manga in that case.

[Charlar]

I'm playing Hatoful Boyfriend and got my 5th ending. Things got weird when on this path the last part was a jrpg battle, i forgot this was the path with a jrpg plotline.
Oh and the music in this is really good