Simplifying Fighting Games - A BBTAG Retrospective 

ALRIGHT BOYOS BBTAG GETTING ROLLBACK EVERYTHING I SAID ABOUT THE GAME BEING DEAD IS NULL AND VOID IM COMING BACK TO BBTAG

Rollback or no rollback, BBTag made me go from "casual who mashes button" to "casual who kinda enjoys fighting games and wants to improve". I love this game despite its very glaring issues. Like you said, it did a great enough job at having a low skill floor with a high skill ceiling (albeit I kinda wish it didn't mean that half the cast lost half of their moves). Nice video man.

I think a game that has really widened the gap is Melty Blood: Type Lumina. It's autocombo and strong shield system means anyone can pick it up and feel like they are doing something. The game allows for really complex high level play as well

This was basically my experience with Mortal Kombat 9... that was the first fighting game that I really got into.

I'm an intermediate FG player and have been for about a decade. I started with SSF4 and BlazBlue CS as my proper entry, so, to be blunt, the idea that casuals and newcomers can't get into harder games always felt stupid to me. Obviously, I'm one person and everyone is different, but I just don't like the idea that FGs NEED to be easy to be fun. When I first popped in BlazBlue, I just hopped into Vs., picked a character, and had a blast. After just messing around for a while, I decided I actually wanted to learn what I was actually doing, so I went into the tutorial to learn the mechanics and started spending time in training. Personally, I have no problem with easy games (I love Smash, BBTag, Power Rangers BftG, and Kill La Kill IF), but it's different when you take an already established series known for one thing and turn it into something else. The other problem I have with easier games is that it seems to be the direction nearly every major fighting game is headed now. Nowadays, it seems like if you want something more complex without just sticking with old games forever, you're better off just playing fangames and indie games. It'd be fine if it was more balanced, but it's not.

BBTag was the game that really got me into fighting games as well, and I think that you really nailed it in your analysis. The game is just fun, no matter what skill level you're at. Initially I only picked up the game because it had Persona and RWBY in it, but the more time I spent with it, the more fun I started to have with the game. With all of the different teams that you can use in the game, it really feels like there's no skill cap to what you can do. When I started out, my main team was Narukami and Weiss (because brand recognition), but as I branched out and tried other characters, I started to like the characters that I'd never even heard of (Yuzu and Akatsuki bring two of my favorites). I bought this game on the Switch in Winter 2019, and I've sank hundreds of hours into this on both Switch AND PS4.

9:30 #bbtagrollback Anyway. I think your approach is a decent one. My own take is that experimentation and variety are healthy for the genre. There effectively were no "low skillfloor" anime fighters up until ~2018, so games like BBTag and Granblue were a huge step forward in that sense. Guilty Gear's case is a weird one. Here I question why they made Strive a canon sequel, rather than a standalone title like they did with BBTag for Blazblue. Breaking tradition with the gameplay of a franchise almost always leads to some form of backlash from fans, even outside of fighting games.

This is a great video i 100% agree with everything you said and that last gag is gold, keep the good work!

Stumbled upon this video while working on my own project, well said and very well made!

Fighting will always be fun if you put the time & effort into it, Cross Tag Battle would be fun if people see how fun it is like some of my friends & some. But I sill play cross tag battle there are some things I didn’t knew or discover yet that’s ok you still learn some tricks into this game.

I stumbled onto your channel by accident and was pleasantly surprised. Getting past the "is it dumbed down???" conversation and recognizing that a fun, functional product is paramount is strangely difficult for a lot of fighting game players and players of non-fighting games like Smash Bros. Having a good release window helps a lot too, which is a large part of the reason Strive sold well: if it had garbage netcode and was competing with Street Fighter 6, then it would have probably marked the death of the franchise (as opposed to what it currently marks, which is zombification, but that's another issue) because it certainly didn't have any meaningful single player content. If you look at my channel you can see I love Guilty Gear Xrd, which I think strikes a really good balance between a low skill floor (gatling > special move, or gatling > roman cancel feel great and look cool) and a high skill ceiling with crazy movement and mixups. People who just want to mash and get their feet wet can even use the Stylish mode and just mash for an autocombo. Keep up the good work.

I’m a hardcore casual been playing for over 30 years and I loved bbtag. Such a shame the game didn’t get more shine

8:24 "People who put the most time and effort into the game will be rewarded with a game that promotes creativity, expression, and individuality." EXCEPT! Except, if you are a Adachi, Yumi, or Hilda player. THATS when things gets really muddy! I was like you. Actually, I was worse. Smash Brothers was the only fighting game I ever played until I played BBTAG. This game showed me what stringing a combo together was like for the first time and after practicing the game for almost a year now. I'm really addicted to learning combos, the gameplay, and have hopped online every day in hopes of getting better at it. I would like to think I am in the same boat as you. I'm a casual, but I push for competitive when I feel up to it. That being said, there is a line I feel BBTAG crosses that, for me personally. Makes the game not fun. While characters like Hyde, Gordeau, Ragna, and many others reward players for performing longer and more complicated combos. Characters like Adachi, Yumi, and Hilda not only ruin that effort with how busted they are, but those busted combos are so easy to do it's essentially promoting "press A, B, C" to win, and nothing else. I know that some people get a kick out of mashing, and I get that. I was there. However, because these three are so broken and the player behind the curtain has to do so little to pull these combos off. It ruins the fun and effort for players who want to try performing these more intense combos. There is no way for someone like Gordeau or Akuhiko to get close to a Hilda or a Adachi to do anything at all. Combine that with the fact that some characters have extremely broken abilities (Naoto with her insta kill, Ragna with his healing ability without a punishment for doing so.) and the game starts to become not fun for me. If ArcSysytems took the time and effort to just go back to the game for a month and do a complete overhaul when it comes to the balancing of certain characters. I wouldn't be complaining about it as much. Just today, I wanted to practice with a new combo, went online, and got beat by a Yumi team with 85 wins to her name (I have 400, both on the switch and on the ps4.) That's how done I am with her, and many of the players know this. They will pick up Adachi, Yumi, or Hilda just to spam and win, and that's when I just want to stop playing the game. I pretty much put in a "No Adachi, Yumi, or Hilda" rule into effect when I go online now because I know I won't beat them no matter how hard I try, and because of that. The fun of the game is gone whenever I see their faces. I hate it. I hate it so much.

The first traditional fighting game I played, aside from a brief instance of Mortal Kombat, was BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend. It drew me in thanks to its story, but when I got to my first fight, the controls seemed super stiff to me. I knew that in order to keep playing, I would have to actually learn the basics. After a brief session through Tutorial Mode and learning I can’t double tap directional inputs to save my life I was able to play the game despite the fact that it’s cut of the first game’s story isn’t beginner friendly. *cough* Unlimited Rachel *cough*

Never have I agreed more with a video more than this

One of the reason why I started to learn doing my own game is to play other fighting games with my own twist of simplicity. I do not mind DPs, QCF and Half Circle inputs but I like to see Basic Auto-Combos that don't deal alot of damage but makes you feel satisfied. I can see most casual to even non-gamer people who just like to play for fun would just mash buttons and that's totally fine. But it's when they start thinking about "I want to do something cool" they are free to do so. Most fighting games today expects you to already know alot and that's where casuals to non-gamers stay away from it. BBTag has been one of the few test subjects I'm learning, absorbing some of its mechanics while making my own. I think auto-combos makes new comers feel welcome while simple combination of Specials will make them feel they need to use it soon enough if they got bored with the auto-combos.

I get the idea behind making it easier to combo and do 1 button specials, but i dont find playing that way to be satisfying. I like that some games let you turn off auto combo. I think it was one of the UNderNight games

Bb tag bois unite. Lolololololo

Love this video

As someone who has been getting people into the game as a master plan to introduce them to other fighting games and finally have someone to play them with, bbtag has proven itself to be, despite its nasty reputation, an absolute blast for everyone I've introduced it to and is simple and engaging enough to stoke improvement. The only other game I've been able to introduce people to like this is Soul Calibur, but that game has its own problems onboarding people after a point. It has the accessibility, but the complexity is just a little harder to dig out without some help.

I would personally say that understanding roughly what you are doing and what you want to do even at a really low level and feeling rewarded for it is really important. Like I tried Skullgirls and it didn't stick cause I just couldn't do BnBs even. I could get some wins by just getting a ton of small hits, but it still felt like I wasn't really playing the game, so I got bored and moved on. Then I tried Fantasy Strike and I could way better understand what I wanted to do and could execute that without issues, and I have been playing ever since.

BBTAG is a good Fighting game even though it has some problems that i really wish they will do some stuff but atleast they made rollback which i'm happy. The real reason i like about bbtag is the special interaction (which I'm a sucker for characters interacting each other) and yes the characters (cuz my faves weren't but who am i kidding) it just feel like they want to know each other or just do they're own thing which i appreciate with like naoto k. interacts with naoto s. Which damn this is so good interactions.

I originally got into BBTAG walking around in my local trading games shop searching for Fighterz since me being a DBZ fan I heard a lot of accolades for the game. Never found it there and in other shops the game was still full priced so I couldn't afford it yet. That's when I was looking at the shelfes and found a PS4 version of BBTAG 2.0 and since I recognized the developer ArcSys from Fighterz I took a risk on it because after all it was only 10€. Didn't spend a lot of time with the PS4 version until I just wanted to get the game for my Switch that I was getting around Black Friday 2021. Found the Switch version for BBTAG 1.0 on Switch for 5€ and still bought all the DLC and 2.0 update on Switch because I love this freaking game so much. Never played an Online Game of BBTAG and even still been playing the game for around 90h according to my Switch timeline. Besides Smash and anime arena fighters like Naruto Storm and playing a little bit but never really getting into Street Fighter 4 I never got into competitive fighting games. I would love one day to organize a local tournament for BBTAG with my friends that I managed to convince ro try the game and they also love it. I really want to explore the various franchises that BBTAG represents especially Under Night but this game is provable already going to become one of my favourite games of all time. I'm also a proud Neo + Hyde team and think I'm pretty good with them😁😂

Don't unist and persona 4 arena have auto combos but you say those games had too much for you to handle? I'm fine with the auto combos and such, but i dont want it to be the most optimal damage. I tried out gg strive and it has to be most dispointed i ever have been about a video game. They massacred my girl ino. Took some of her old moves and combos away and made her existing stuff weaker. They made her mad basic from xrd to strive to the point where i can't even express myself like how i used to. I question why does simlication of games have to limit the amount of moves characters have, the amount of combos, the amount of systems all that stuff is what makes these games fun to me or at least thats the way strive devs done it. if developers want to make more games that removes options, tools, and combos from the players to make the game easier then may have to quit this genre one day.

If I can't do cool stuff early I wouldn't want to play for hours. Soul Calibur 6 allows for that. and as I learnt more I could do more. I actually could feel the progression.

Thank you for this video the game is finally on Xbox so I can finally try it out I’m not that good at fighting games but this game is very fun

Actually BBTAG has rollback now

As a long time SF fan... I think the original Blazblue was very hard to pull off complex combo's in my opinion. I am not a fan of auto combos though... I think the original Marvel Vs Capcom and Marvel Super Heroes had it right. Street Fighter 5/6 were great too. I think oversimplification is a double edged sword with pulling in new players but putting off others.

BBTAG had a lot of depth with creativity but my issue was that it also confined what you could do. The game only having two functional attack buttons stifled a lot of characters. They made things exclusive to autocombos or assists and it came off as very cluttered to fans of those characters. I feel like BlazBlue and Persona characters lost a lot of what made them unique with drives and persona management because they have to adhere to this framework. Somehow UNI kept most of their options intact or familiar enough to work since they didn't really have elaborate gimmicks. I played Aigis, she had a lot moves because she's a mode change character in P4U. She basically had no room for both neutral *and* combo tools without spending meter or orgia. It was clear that it was hard to intuitively use her without a lot of practice. In 2.0 they took out one version of her gatling gun special and did a meterless version of her Megido Fire special. This made it easier for beginners to finish combos but made it much harder to play neutral on the ground.

Definitely agree with you about widening the gap. All these games should have an Easy Directional Input Mode like the new Street Fighter 6 but still have the other Mode for the Legacy Players. The hardcore will always come, you can’t guarantee plenty of new players to stick to the game. I love Fighting Games even though I’m not very good at them. But I still don’t enjoy the ones that are made super easy like the Power Rangers Games because I love Motion Inputs. Anyway, good video on making it more about this game. I agree with your points.

My first fighting game was BBCF, so when I saw BBTag I was insanely hype and I immediately pre-ordered the game as soon as possible (avoiding all news while doing so). Jumped into the tutorials and combo trials and I noticed something was missing: the stylish vs technical option, it’s just default stylish. If we’re talking about lowering the skill floor and raising the ceiling wouldn’t having this split be the best option? Easy entry with far more experimenting available if you’re willing to work a bit more? There is still the assist system to add complexity even for the neutered stylish mode. Imagine this game with its diversity with fully fleshed out characters. I could sink months into this game’s training mode if that were the case, and there would be a hopefully diverse meta as well. Also the combo trials are boring af in BBTag. Edit: just mashed out the combo trial in the beginning of the vid. It’s pretty underwhelming even for the first column of combo trials in CF. I main Lambda in that game for the record. Then again, this will be the new norm anyways whether we like it or not. Capitalism is king and developers have gotten a taste of reaching out to a much broader audience.

one of the games i use to make this point, at least from my perspective is FFXIV. in its early years it was pretty complex, and had a bunch of dumb shit, but they really started to find their stride and the culmination of that manifested in the Stormblood expansion. I played during late Heavensward and throughout Stormblood's life cycle. Stormblood was so much fun. As a beginner player it was fun to just press shit and get through dungeons, raids and trials. the story mode was decently solid (by xiv standards. compared to other games it was still very good) then, when I wanted to start actually learning the game I was met with a deep system that offered player creativity and expression through it's system/class mechanics. i fell in love all over again. in order to clear the harder content in the game it required you to play at the top of your performance. then shadowbringers hit. I love shadowbringers and Endwalker for where they brought the story, but the gameplay completely lost me. the homogenized everything, made it so simple to do stuff that previously took several hours of practice an awareness to do. it got rid of the expression to appeal to a wider audience. I eventually quit after savage raiding in the 2nd tier of endwalker. the game just was not giving me what I wanted out of its gameplay anymore. it is absolutely possible to allow your casual players to clear the content that they have the bulk access to while still offering the hardcore players the shit they like to do. something I've noticed over the years is an increase in entitlement to access specific content in the game by everyone who plays it. i just don't think that should be the case. there should be hard things to work towards that you have to spend hours in game practicing in order to achieve. new generations of players want everything that they want, but don't wanna put in the effort. there's been so many controversies in the xiv community about stuff being too hard for them (even after the simplification) and also the devs putting cool shit behind hard content. the fuck am i supposed to have then? i agree that the skill gap should be a lot wider to allow everyone the stuff they enjoy most about any kind of game. as it stands right now, what i enjoy most about fighting games is all but dwindling from the newer titles that release in the modern era. in order to have the fun I want to experience, i gotta go join a discord server to coordinate matches with people in games where there's less than 500 people online at any given time. it's heartbreaking.

And the game is no longer dead. Imma push myself to get good at the game this time

i really felt you were describing tekken 7 tbh

I started Fighting Games with BBTag. Then I expanded to other games like BBCF, Xrd, UNIST, Melty, and some stupid obscure ones like EFZ. I had a lot of fun with BBTag but I just don't feel the same way with Arcsys's newer installments like GBVS and Strive. And I think the reason I don't like the two games despite liking Tag is the amount of options the game offers. Tag has very simplified inputs and each individual character is very watered down. But it's compensated with free form assist system that allows for countless mixes and set ups.

Maybe a 1v1 should’ve been implemented as well

Oh shit gotta comment before this blows up 👀

Allow for character power to go as high as player power. I understand that.

Interesting FGC origin story for you there. To each their own. I honestly hate simple inputs, but I'll take them over auto-combos, which are just bad habit forming for new players. Simple inputs can really get on my nerves in the wrong context personally but they are not the same level of bad design. In theory I don't even think of them as bad design. Either way I wish Bbtag had gone on getting characters for longer.

as one of the few people s till playing bbtag on pc. There is still so much I want to learn and do but it's hard even with a game that hasn't seen a balance patch in 2 years. A part of our community still has hope (the little bunch of munchkins I corraled into a discord server). Anyway story time. I got into BBTAG because I saw RWBY (and it was the only good RWBY game out at the time/still) and after spending 550 hours on the game I got Unist because I liked Seth in BBTAG why not. Tried to play him for a week but just couldn't do it 22.4A and jc.C fucking ruined me, got Strive loved everything about it but found the gameplay while good and did what it set out to do it feels stiffling a bit some characters where super free others not it made for a weird time it still does. But I still play BBTAG sure there are "better" games I love Jubei in BBCF and Strive is fun on the occasion but there's still a small part of me that will continue to play BBTAG and if god help us all we get a new version or a sequel with Rollback (unless a RWBY fighting game comes out) I might play that till the world turns black. No one can force a game to be strictly competative or simply casual. You can try by god you can try, but if there is a semblance of complexity someone will try to take it further, and some people just want to watch shit explode.

Mori vision

It's a shame this game does not have a puppet character i'm this bbtag 1, since under night in birth 2 Sys celes i believe Will appear a bbtag 2 excluding Amane nishiki and relius clover because they did not created for characters from another world astral skill like that.

Honestly I think it's less about general simplification in all fighting games and more about how some mainstay games have been changed to be more alienating to people who loved the way it played initially. Like, I love Guilty Gear because of its presentation and gameplay, even if it was hard at first. However, the changes in Guilty Gear Strive removed many of the things I personally found fun, like the freedom gatlings had, the mobility, how old and new characters had lots of creativity in their skillset, the amount of things you could use with your super meter and the instant kills. I just feels too strict and gimped to me that I honestly wish I could refund it on steam.

back in the day it was kinda just sink or swim, dealing with people who are much better than you and being forced to either experiment yourself or look up very inconsistent guides because tutorials didnt exist. the sudden shift in player inclusion came drastically with suddenly fully explaining in depth mechanics with huge ass walls of text tutorials, long trial modes, auto combo systems, and to an extent online training modes while skill ceilings were basically untouched. i think its important to bring into question that when auto combo systems are available why is it that nobody ever brings them to tournaments, but when those systems are baked into a game then suddenly an entire community is willing to defend it. you'd get roasted into oblivion picking stylish in blazblue, and probably just flat out excluded from a group if you picked simple in marvel3 but a game consistently of essentially just those ways of playing will always be defended vehemently. i do think player inclusion of all levels is important, but have the changes over the years of thorough explanations not enough to at the very least give the people the tools to understand how to defend themselves? i feel like the worst this ever got was how sf5 was being constantly berated by sf4 loyalists, and not only that but they were beginning to lose majors and absolute no name people who had just started their runs in the fgc like all the time they put in had meant nothing. the floor was raised by a large margin and the ceiling was dropped just as bad, letting new people mingle with those who had really dedicated their time to a game that was their livelihood.

Coming from someone who's generally against simplification, my problem is that simplification of an established franchise almost always equates to removing or at least deemphasizing core features. To someone whose been playing for years, newer games aren't just easier, they're objectively worse than the older ones. It's easy to say both sides, but when was the last time a game more mechanically demanding than its predecessor came out? Once a game gets simplfied it may never go back. And the disturbing thing is that the trend shows no signs of slowing down. I shudder to think of a day when games like Strive and BBtag will be looked back on as challenging and deep compared to new games.

I had a similar history with fighters, though replace UnderNight with Street Fighter II. I didnt like SF2 Because of how slow and clunky every character felt and Pokken had similar obstacles. One thing that BBTag had was good feeling movement. Movement is something to nebulous for me to explain well, but moving and jumping felt Leagues better than Pokken or Street Fighter. And that's not even touching the double jump or air dash

3:41 capitalism

Agree but it's the fgc way of thinking puts off a lot people from playing games.

A part of wishes it could have enjoyed BBTag but they game feeled soo cheap and lazy almost like a cash grab at times (if i remember well many of the sprites were reused from their respective games and the money was mostly for strive development if what i heard is true) maybe is just me (and probably it really is me) but at times BBTag kinda feels soulless

not gonna lie for me it was this game is and still bad for multiple reasons 1 i owned 3 of the games that combined i am still heavy into BBCF when my mains are Ragna Susanoh and terimi with a side Mai i have never been able to use Tager or Hakumen so when im able to use them its weird so when i picked rags and hyde im also confused when they play vastly different from there own game 2 the meta took so long to fix I stop caring aka team Scythe 3 the dlc was bullshit not gonna pay 40 dollars when im not paying for characters that were not even updated like whaaaa 4 no updated sprites so it looks weird af sometimes 5 it was tooo simplified bb is already a simple game they took moves and placed them in auto combos there are un accesable overheads in autocombos when i can go to the games of choice and do it manually

Old guards are afraid that by simplifying fighting games they will get more competitions and will definitely lose to newcomers. And they are like that fox who lost his tail and want everyone to go through a finger gymnastic to pull off a character super. Execution needs to be easier for every fighting games.

BBTAG is not real BB game

I think your first game is also important as it establishes some expectancy from future games My first SERIOUS exposure was Skullgirls and after maybe half a decade playing it religiously with a fam, I got pretty decent at it (Mid level probably) I took a stab at Strive and hated every minute of it, mostly because diagonals have so much priority on the analog and because it felt like nothing combos besides a cS fS into maybe HS or a poke into special Then played Type Lumina and enjoyed it considerably more since it allowed me to do light to heavy combos into air raves and even if Moon was hard to understand, it was rewarding to use short and long-term Even if I can't be bothered with predicting the scaling air combo timer After that I played BBTAG and came out with a meddling sensation of 'meh', mostly because it seemed to me as if all combos were either A or B fests, and being a forced tag battle, costantly spamming assists heavily rewards ungabunga (Skullgirls also has tags but I always play 1v1) I can hardly make an objective critique that won't get debunked by "skill issue" (I guess the most plausible theory is that Strive and BBTAG are a bit too monkey brained and unga bunga for my liking?) but it can't be a coincidence that the one I enjoyed most was the one most similar to my first and largest exposure