Recent reviews by Ant0

FG credentials? Been to a few majors, mostly drowning in pools. Placed high in a couple of side tournaments

Graphics: Okay? Long story short, it's updating 20 year old assets into a modern engine, with 4k and all that. Some of the models look messed up, with weird smiles. When the game is in motion, VF has a clean look: not that many large visual effects. Hitsparks on counter hit are small, but visible enough to act on them.

Single player content: Not there. Virtua Fighter doesn't have a story mode, but older titles had a quest mode, where you roam fake arcades and fight in ghost battles, which unlocks cash to get outfits. R.E.V.O doesn't have that. For offline, you have offline versus, training, arcade, and costume edit.

Customization: Not great either. Even though this is an updated port of an old game, a bunch of player outfits weren't ported over to the new engine, so... =| You won't be able to change your characters look without buying DLC. One of the dlc packs has tekken 7 outfits for cross-promotion, and they look nice. Swimsuit outfits in another pack, etc. They're okay, but not great.

Online experience: First game in the series to use rollback, and it works well enough (make sure to set delay on 2 or 3). It has ranked mode, and lobbies, which have different modes. If you don't want to just do winner stays in rooms, team battle and league modes are pretty fun options (league is simultaneous matches with up to 16 players). Can set private slots or passcodes on rooms if you just want to play with your friends.

VF R.E.V.O has a weird habit of random crashes or occasionally getting stuck in ranked mode. To be honest, it will be like 1 out of every 20 sessions, which is still annoying.

For the playerbase, it's basically a discord fighter at the moment. Crossplay is coming soon, which will help a little bit, but you'll have to ping people in one of the discords to get matches that aren't "peak times". To be fair, the playerbase is full of old heads who are willing to help people out all the time.

Gameplay: The saving grace of this title to be honest. For a 3-button game, there is a lot of depth and decision making. The VF triangle of guard beats attack, attack beats throw, and throw beats guard is the basis of low-top level VF play. Throws stay strong throughout all skill levels, but of course, there are ways to hedge bets against throw happy opponents. The strongest mix-up options in the game is mostly mid/throw, with caveats and character specific options (at least half the characters have guard breaks, to threaten players who hold the guard button too much).

VF5 is a fast game where you're constantly making decisions every second. Rounds are 45 seconds, but if you're lucky, will last like 20 seconds. Combos are short, and damage is fairly high (except for a couple of characters for balance reasons. You don't want the character who has counters to crap out a bunch of damage). In terms of characters, most have a low skill floor, with a couple of exceptions ( imo, 4 of the 19 are complicated, which is a pretty decent spread). Additionally, only one character has to deal with a meter (Shun Di, the drunken boxing/twerk master).

I could write about how the stages influence matches, but I've written too much already. Basically, while VF5 is an old game, the gameplay is really polished, and you're forced to constantly make decisions/reads on your opponent.

The tutorials are decent, and go into some of the higher level concepts as well. In addition, the developers added a replay takeover function where you can go into your matches (or matches of top players) and see what you did wrong/how can you fix it.

Final Rating: 8.5/10. The depth and decision making of this 3 button fighter is some of the most fun i have had in a fighting game, even when I'm losing. However, I think the package that surrounds the game is a little shoddy, like a lack of offline modes, missing customization options, and the game crashing or hanging in lobbies in ranked mode.

This game gets a tentative recommendation. It has an active enough playerbase, rollback netcode, cute avatars in the lobby system, and a decent enough ranking system. The skill floor is low and all characters are easy to pick up and play, because they all share a similar combo structure. Also has a free version that lets you use Gran alongside a rotation of 3 non-DLC characters in all game modes.

My biggest problem (for mid-level play and up) is that 66l and brave counter kind screw the flow up this game up. 66L centralizes the neutral: it's a plus on block move, long reach, 9 frame startup (8 +1 for dash start-up), whiff punishes,and generally the best answer for many decisions in this game. 66L helps make this game feel super volatile, along with half screen jump scares. Brave counter is a needed mechanic to deal with the strong stagger pressure in this game, but it's very mindless in the state it's in currently. Not enough counters to it, PLUS 6 on block, and gives a hard knockdown on counter-hit. Getting a turn and losing it to your opponent pressing BC, with them gaining the advantage because it was counter-hit is baffling.

7/10. Good stuff for "casuals", hits the technical basics like cross-play and a functioning matchmaking system. Looks good and has an okay free version for players on the fence. However, the universal mechanics like 66L and BC give the game a volatile feel at mid level play and up.

Edit 3/5/25 Haven't played the S2 balance patch yet. Will update once I put some time in.

scratches that dark soul itch

♥♥♥♥, this game is so good!