You Should Expect Your Character to Change (Sometimes Dramatically) Between Games 

People that didn’t think baiken was gonna be changed massively really ignored ramlethal straight up becoming a new character

These thumbnails are a work of art.

This is the 4th time I've spent the entire length of the video laughing at the thumbnail. Moste keeps breaking his limits, & I'm afraid he's no longer human

I’ve seen so many people say “they’re made her nothing like the old baiken at all!” And I’m like: which old baiken? If you look at baiken in every gg game she appears in, she’s actually one of the most changed characters in the game. Missing link baiken plays different from +r baiken, which plays different from xrd baiken, which will now play different from strive baiken

I’m fine with the changes with baiken but I think people are frustrated because they feel like some of the legacy characters could’ve been translated better but that’s subjective as hell. Hope she’s fun and people have a good time anyways.

I'm hoping my main Kermit with two katanas smoking a blunt gets added next patch.

bro I can’t with the thumbnail

Damn this thumbnail really did make me realize that each iteration her hunch gets deeper. Those big personality traits really weighing her down

Average "My Character Changes From Game to Game" Fan VS Average "My Character Has Been a Set of the Same Reused Assets for the Past 10 Years" Enjoyer

rest in rip wild throw / grand viper / riot stamp / kudakero / dragon install / pbb / dustloop

Where were those people when Jack-O happened.

This was a very reasonable and level-headed response to this situation. That's honestly really cool and it helped me to feel a bit less frustrated, especially when you related the Wonder Woman changes in Injustice. I'd forgotten that she changed so much between those two games! Juri in SFV was kind of a similar situation, now that I think about it. I am frustrated by the gameplay changes for Baiken, as that defensive playstyle was what I most enjoyed about her and what I was really looking forward to in Strive. However, I've still been enjoying Strive before Baiken's arrival and I can continue to enjoy it afterwards whether her new playstyle suits me or not. It's not the end of the world. Thanks for sharing the perspective, Sajam!

It's kind of the reason I'm a little more open to trying or playing new characters. So I don't have to compare how much characters differ from their previous versions.

Am I weird for loving Baiken's screaming voice during "TATAMI GAESHI"? There is so much authentic emotional rage and at the same time sexiness just in these two words, it's always enjoyable. Very distinct. Impactful. Always loved it during Xrd. Now it's even more pronounced.

It's here that I realize outside of Justice I've never had to experience a game where my character changed so drastically I couldn't play them anymore. Changes were usually subtle, positive, or I hated the entire game anyway. That said I'm obsessed with big movelists so the removal of moves is always bad in my book if they aren't replaced with something else. Part of why I dislike SF5 is that all of the characters, especially the new ones, feel like they don't have enough moves. As for Justice? I played her as a rushdown character back when she was illegal so turning her into a zero mobility zoner that everyone hates makes me sad. I waited all these years for Justice to be legal and everyone hates her.

I think the problem (in my opinion, with a lot more characters than just Baiken) is that in Strive, she basically only lost tools. She doesn’t seem to be doing things drastically different from old Baiken, and is just doing what old Baiken did with less. The only old character that I think they did the right thing with was Ram because Ram is simply a new character wearing Ram’s skin. They couldn’t translate old Ram because she’s so corner reliant, so they had to make a new one. I think they should’ve done that for a couple more characters so that it didn’t just feel like you were playing the Xrd or XX versions but with like 4 moves missing

The biggest example for me was Erron Black from mkx to mk11. He was so fun and rewarding and actually felt like a gunslinging cowboy and then in mk11 he just kind of swings his gun around randomly

I think what's most important is to maintain the theme and identity of a character when they're being translated, but individual moves/combos can and should be mixed up. Baiken will definitely play differently to how she did in previous releases, but she definitely wouldn't have fit in the game's ecosystem if ArcSys just did a 1/1 port. Another thing to consider is that she *seems* to be the first DLC character which won't be a pain for newer players to pick up. GL, Jack-o and HC are all cool characters in their own right, but they're really inaccessible to the casual playerbase. It's probably a good thing that the series' most iconic character has more broad appeal than she's previously had.

i'm one of the few baiken mains from xrd and i think her transition seems good. i expected it to be different since most aspects about strive have been different, and thats fine, because generally its new gameplay has clicked with me. its impossible and pretty redundant to say how she's presented now will be good or bad until we get a go with her for a month or two, but judging her changes from the video... they feel like they make sense. She has interesting tools and her parry gimmick has been translated in a simpler, more fun strive-ish way. I'm excited to pick her up

Dudes be like "you've changed." I've been in several games of course I had to change.

It's wierd, I went back and unlocked Baiken in The Missing Link, and Strive Baiken is almost kinda like she was in that game. Her normals are all from Xrd, but in Missing Link she didn't have any of her parries yet, it was just Tatami, Youzansen, and The Claw. It's like they boiled her back down to her original state and used that as a jumping off point.

As a guy who enjoys defensive characters with a parry mechanics I’m glad she still has something like that in her kit at least The rope mechanic looks dope tho

i do expect characters evolves between games, but the main thing for me is the gameplan has to stay. +r baiken has special guard cancel during her blockstun, making her has options to punish peoples offense (mawarikomi for side switching and sakura for an easy get off me tool). xrd then added azami for baiken, a stance that parries most (if not all) attacks to replaces the guard cancel input but the meat of it is still the same, a move that gives you options during your defense. strive changes bothers me because the options is now limited to only option. a high damaging parry that gives hard knockdown, removing the creativity on the defense side. the tether also i don't think a good feature on her (especially those who plays old her) because it makes baiken's image as an infighting brawler that want to always get close to opponent which she was not

I would have been fine if arcsys decided to heavily rework her because she didn't fit the game like they did with Ramlethal and Jack-o, but that's not really what happened here. Baiken in strive has had her azami (the parry), their followups and a way of using them outside azami (suzuran, the command dash) removed and replaced with Leo's counter without the need to enter a stance and vulnerable to projectiles, and instead of picking the best option for the situation (like when you succesfully parried a move with azami) you skip straight to the damage (which feels overtuned). It feels like she actually lost stuff and gained little to make up for it even in the context of this game, and absurd damage doesn't really make up for it, it feels lazy. It feels like with strive, legacy characters have a 50-50 of being almost completely reworked or just being copy and pasted from xrd but with less stuff, it feels lazy, and that combined with her having no changes to her character design (which i can understand, she was the last character added to revelator) makes it look like they really didn't put a lot of thought into it. To sum up, for a game that is supposedly something completely different from the previous guilty gears, it sure likes to just copy them when it feels like it in a way that makes it less interesting because of the more limited nature of the game. Anyways I hope all of you that are excited to play her and like the game have fun with it, just wanted to share my 2 cents as a boomer

I agree with you. Although, i think people are justified in feeling frustrated with legacy characters being dramatically changed between games. I think we should strive for kinda of a balance in terms of respecting legacy players and trying to appeal to new players. I played baiken as secondary from +R to xrd because she was one of the few characters in the game to have a defensive playstyle in a offense oriented game. The changes from +R to xrd were drastic but her general core identity was still there. I was expecting a rework similar to jack o or zato. Their core identity is still there in their gameplay. Baiken on the other hand. Idk. I was expecting an interesting take to defense in strive. Instead i got bootleg tager

Why wasn't there the same fallout when Jack-O returned in strive and she played like an entirely different character? Oh right, because only like 5 people actually played Xrd, even when everyone on the internet said it was their big favorite and strive is ruining everything.

Always bitter sweet to me because I love seeing the evolution of the characters I love, but when you don't vibe with them it is really hard on the soul.

Well seeing how much they changed Ramlethal and Baiken, it gives me hope for A.B.A. A lot of people say her playstyle would be hard to add in Strive, but they could always change her dramatically to add her into Strive. And I wouldn't mind, because Strive is a different game and doesn't go in the same direction as previous GG titles. Same if they change Dizzy a lot, I won't mind as long as the characters are fun to play and add something to the game :) Please Arc System Works, add A.B.A to Strive!

I'm an Anji player, and seeing what they removed from Accel Core originally frustrated me greatly, but in the long term its definitely more fun having to adapt a different approach to work around it Since if I wanted to play Accel Core Anji, I would just play Accel Core, I'm playing a new Game, I want to experience new things, and Strive grants me that opportunity

I understand what you are saying, but the Baiken argument isn't the same. This isn't about "not changing a character vs. updating a character"; this is about "stripping core aspects of the character that was needed to compete". Baiken is slow. Baiken has always been "flowery" in her animations and her run start up is arguably the worst in every Guilty Gear game, with her actual run being absolute trash. Even her 6-P was one of the slowest in every game. Her running guard was perfect for getting past zoners and her guard cancel was there to punish negative moves and later to control the amount of pressure on her. The trailer shows once again a not-fast Baiken. Her moves still have more animation than most, and her run still looks trash. They removed the running guard and guard cancels for the parry. I get the damage is juicy, but losing overall versatility, of controlling pressure through defense, is forcing you to play this weird offensive wall defense. The Parry Juice can only be squeezed at close distance (which don't look like much). The Parry Juice starts at what looks like 7 frames. That's stupid slow. You have to call out the opponent; it can't be used as a reaction. And the parry at long distance gives her a 9 frame advantage. Only 9. You can maybe get Baiken run to start, or use her tether (if it is range), or use her tether slash (if we can quick cancel it). That is trash. The first option exposes her to potential danger depending on the cast (which most can clash with her or take defensive options), option 2 is shown in the trailer to miss, option 3 maybe invalid 'cause we don't know if we can cancel the HS tether to go directly into the slash and if it works, it knocks them back; placing Baiken back in square one. The core aspec,t or gimmick, of the character has been changed, but the theme is still the same. This literally is forcing Baiken players to learn a NEW character that is only the old in appearance. If you still have trouble understanding this, then think of it like how KOF Kyo Players hate Kyo version from CVSNK [mostly CVSNK2]. The Kyo of that game was an homage of Orochi saga Kyo. That Kyo plays nothing like the Kyo of the Orochi saga, but still keeps the theme. The Kyo Players had to learn a NEW Kyo with the looks of the old.

"Lol baiken fans getting ready to play her for the first time" "WHY DOES SHE NOT HAVE THE 30 DIFFERENT ALPHA COUNTERS SHE HAD PREVIOUSLY THAT MADE NOBODY PLAY HER????"

kermit the frog with two samurai swords smoking blunt was an excellent touch bro

i wished they gave back her debuff/curses another shot this time since they would balance it this time around

I mean i think baiken is lookin pretty fun, but the character changing even drastically is fine. My issue with strive to me is alot of characters bieng gutted. I think there was a better compromise to her counter playstyle. Like take the effort they used to make the counter attack animation and use it to make 1 maybe 2 more specials and turn the counter into a parry that you can special cancel out of with certain specials after a successful parry.

Coming back to an older video because I have had this experience myself. Growing up, my dad would beat the hell out of me in SF2, until at one point I just said, "fine, imma learn a character and mess you up." So I picked Vega (Claw). And the thing about him in that game is that he is cheap as hell. But he was also a charge character. And so his gameplan was essentially using his good moves to score a knockdown so that he can gain charge, and then he runs his stupid ass oki that just kills you. I picked of SF5 a while back, and wanted to play Vega, but when I went to try him out, I learned that he was no longer a charge character (and that he wasn't that good compared to the rest of the cast). I dropped him. Idk if he has a similar gameplan in that game or not, but I do know that the transition out of charge motions to circle motions changed how the character feels to play enough that I was not interested in playing him. The Vega I knew was gone (maybe for the better). I don't mind, but as I don't have all the characters, the base roster isn't that interesting to me, so I haven't really played since.

I was sad when they completely changed Ram in strive but it makes sense for the change in gameplay, just miss my giant sword oki. However new baiken looks alot more appealing to me then her other iterations by a mile.

I’m an old Baiken player and I’m a bit disappointed, but I do agree that those changes are probably for the best. She was playing a different game than every other character before.

I'm fine with this, but if they had removed mat...

Its interesting to think about this in terms of Tekken, where character loyalty is taken to new levels. If any popular character in that game had their traditional game plan fundamentally changed, people would fuckin riot.

KoF maybe not the best example of a series where characters don't change. Obviously not all the characters all the time, but KoF changes how characters play so regularly that they just started putting EX versions in the game that play like how they used to play in older games. The outrage when Iori lost his flames was incredible, dude been the same way for 20 years and then all of a sudden they decide he's completely different now. There's like 4 different versions of Robert and one of them is exclusive to the giant SNK tag game Neo Geo Battle Coliseum. SNK was one of the first to jump on the train of totally changing how characters play, even the main characters.

My problem with Baiken is it seems like the core identity of the character was changed. For me and a lot of other people Baiken is the guard cancels character. My most wanted character is Kum but if she didn’t have fireball manipulation I wouldn’t care. I think they could of nerfed her options or made them metered. The tether is cool but I feel like they could of made a tether character instead of changing Baiken into that. May is a better “simplification” IMO. She lost a lot of options but the core of her is the same. Big buttons, dolphins, strike throw mix. They removed beach ball but they replaced it with arisugawa sparkle, being a less oppressive alternative. Guard cancels didn’t get nerfed or replace, they just got removed.

I get that some things wouldn't work in strive, but Seeins as other characters have followups to special moves makes it very hard for me to believe that not one of her 9 followup moves could have fit in here somewhere. Though I guess it is kinda like the removal of pogo stance for Faust, with the Difference being that Faust still has one of the largest movelists in the game, when removing Baikens stuff makes her list look simple AF. I guess the thing is that the rest of the GG series kept characters either the same or changed in ways that didn't remove anything often without adding something of equal value back, so the new game removing things without sufficiently expanding the character with the new tools is disappointing. And in Baiken players' perspective, What's the point of being a GG fan when they are trying so hard to make sure the archetypes you like don't exist in your favorite series anymore?

Initially I was upset with the way they changed Faust. I loved the direction they took with his design, but not with his gameplay. Now, I love everything about him. Just took some time to get used to.

It's definitely a tight rope to walk when it comes to bringing back old characters. Outside of some of the KOF games just putting in old versions of characters, I'm not sure there's much you can do to appease all sides. Even then, consider just how different one game can be to the next and ask if bringing over a character unchanged would even work out? They HAD to change the likes of Ram or Jack-O' in Strive because of how the game was designed, and Baiken was no different. Virtually EVERYONE was changed to a degree, but admittedly they usually just lost a tool or two, not huge chunks of their moveset. But who knows how busted Baiken could be if she kept her parry stuff. Or how much people would complain about having to fight it. I'm more of a casual fighting game fan in general, so I LIKE seeing the changes game to game and if there isn't enough changes I get a bit disappointed. But I'm not someone who pours in hours and hours into learning a character for serious competition only for all of that to be potentially obsolete come the next game, so it comes down to perspective too.

for me, in blazblue terumi and hazama are the same character but with different playstyles but if arcys decided to delete hazama and just changed to terumi I would be sad

Personally, i dont like how they changed her kit so much. Even without the guard cancels or azami, she still feels meh since kire tatami as it worked before wouldnt work in strive either. Her full screen confirms with j.d frc in +R are gone, and so are her dustloop combos in the corner. I guess the new tether mechanic will add SOMETHING to her but they simplified the character so much that it feels... empty. People seem to think that baiken without the followups from her GCs/Parry would play the same as before in neutral, but that couldnt be further from the truth when we talk about strive and the changes as a whole that the game made. I hope people do enjoy the character, i will keep maining her in +R and just main Nago in strive.

Had this happen to me with basically everyone I played in SF4 that made it into SF5. Sakura was my main and Juri my secondary in SF4; don't like either of them at all in SF5. Rose and Seth were characters I dabbled with a bit in SF4 but didn't get much into; wound up liking their SF5 versions better (though by that point I didn't like SF5 itself enough to play them for long). On the other hand, it would be a new experience for me in an ArcSys game. Been playing BlazBlue since its first game, and while my characters have changed a bit each game, they've always felt like their fundamentals remained, I just needed to learn different combo routes or adjust to a new move or two. So if Guilty Gear was like that prior to Strive, I can understand it being jarring to Guilty Gear veterans.

i'm ok with my character changing if they're still fun, y'know, if they don't take away stuff that's been part of their game plan for over 20 years and now you have to commit grey life to get in (zangief)

I expect my characters to change between games because that has happened to me before. Also I expect that the characters that I do play, will someday not be around in future games. Here's my experiences with character changes in Smash since it's my goto (I do dabble in other fighting games though. I just prefer smash): Back in Melee I said I was going to main Meta Knight, and he felt great in Brawl, but he was OP as heck. I knew he'd get nerfed to heck in Smash 4, and I was fine with that. However what I was not fine with, is that he ended up turning to be a character with a very linear game plan that revolved around getting dash attack or dash grab so he can do up air combos. Maybe one of the most satisfying, and surprisingly hard combo I've done in a fighting game (I find Vega's combos in Street Fighter 4 to be easier), but it's still only a single combo. If I didn't go around trying to do that combo, you're basically trying to do the equivalent of killing your opponent with light punches/kicks with a fast character in street fighter due to how easy it is to hit enemies, but so little damage and not converting into anything meaningful. In Smash 4, Link was an early main, but the transition to Ultimate was a weird one because no Link in Ultimate felt like Smash 4 Link. It's almost like he got split into Young Link with his focus on combos and BOTW Link with his emphasis on range and power. When you want to increase the speed at which you improve at a character you need to stick to just one. Liking both styles of play, but also wanting to try something new with Toon Link just led to me dividing my attention between 3 characters that a similar, yet very different. So I had to drop Link in Ultimate. Of course, some characters get better overtime. With my newbie skills in Melee, I didn't know how Samus worked, and I couldn't do tilts at the time, so she felt bad. Then in Brawl I got better at the game, but she was pretty bad in that game. Smash 4 however, she felt absolutely amazing because I started using tilts, and she wasn't total garbage like in Brawl. Also got addicted to just having charge shot charged, but not firing it, because I love seeing people panic and worry about the idea that they might get hit with a devastating attack at any moment. Ultimate simplified Samus and made her a bit stronger. I kinda liked Smash 4 Samus a bit more because I feel like I had to think a bit more to get what I want. Pichu was a joke character in Melee, and at the time I though I couldn't like an adorable character like Pichu at the time. Overtime though, I started accepting that I like adorable things, then Pichu was very powerful in Ultimate's early meta. So going a character I'd never consider in a million years, to being a character I often consider to be a duo main/secondary pair with my current main. Sephiroth is my current main that I play and has been my main since he got released. He's like the perfect main that I thought that could never happen. Gameplay fits me very well since he feels like a weird hybrid if many gameplay styles despite a first glance making him seem so simple on the surface, which also makes me feel good because he's quite popular, but no one else seems to understand how to use him at all. Then based on what I've read in wikis, and the cutscenes I've seen, I can relate to him, and is basically a representative of my "gamer self". Though I still have to play his game to learn more about him. Also watched Berserk recently, so now I'm even more curious to see the similarities and differences between him and Griffith since Sephiroth gave me some spoilers for some things in Berserk. Loving a character is essential for making me stick to a character to main them so I will want to improve with them, especially since I'm so used to adapting to every gameplay style in every game I play over the years, I have no real set in stone playstyle that I can default to. So anything that gives me another reason to pick a character over another is important. I'm shocked Sephiroth made it in, so whenever a Smash 6 is made, I'd be shocked if Sephiroth returned. So I may replace him with Marth (who was my Melee main). However time will tell, I may end up maining Ridley, Meta Knight, Pits, Inkling, Lucario, or even R.O.B. depending on how their gameplay looks like in the next game.

I still have hope for Kum in this game, I feel like she would fit perfectly.

This is easily one of the greatest thumbnails I have ever seen on RU-vid

As a +r Baiken player im excited to see how she really turns out in Strive

I think developers face a really tough problem where often times their audience want things to change with each new release, but also stay the same. I think it's a really tough balance for developers to hit because everyone likes different aspects of each character. A lot of people take pride in playing high execution combo monster characters, and they associate a character's identity with being cool and hard to pilot, but a lot of people also really like the visual design of these characters but wish they could play them without feeling like they have to invest hours and hours in the lab in order to play them effectively. The balancing act is even harder in Strive because they've decided to simplify a lot of the game's mechanics to make the skill floor lower, which attracts a newer audience who've been intimidated by the reputation of fighting games, and especially Guilty Gear, being difficult, and a lot of older characters would have an incredibly hard time fitting into the direction that Strive wants to take the series. I'm interested in how characters like Johnny would turn out in Strive, and though I really want Slayer in the game, I think his backdash cancels will probably be removed, and I'd be lying if I said that it didn't damper my excitement for the character a little.

Respect for the ANIMORPHS thumbnail!

The only time I ever have an issue with a character being changed is if it's a part of their initial identity that got changed, like with BBTAG Susano'o, yeah the moves were the same but the fact that he had all seals from the start just kinda killed it for me, honestly BBTAG wasn't very good at keeping a characters identity intact imo but this new Baiken, the rope is a cool idea I will give them that

Love the animorph style thumbnail

A lot of people tend to forget that pressure in strive has a lot of hole/frametrap if the parry is 1 frame startup it's already insanely strong and will force player to adapt their pressure to baiken like in the old gg...

I'm on the side that feels some changes between games are good. Gives people new things to learn or an excuse to play someone else. I feel like if we tried to keep everything the same each game people would wonder why they need to pay for a new game that might just feel like a roster update.

Play what you like. But in this case, I just hope Xrd gets rollback so everyone can play what they like.

I'm actually more interested in playing Baiken now that she has the tether and isn't as defense-focused. Hopefully Baiken mains from the older games can still enjoy her. As a Faust main, I was initially disappointed with how they changed him but I ended up falling in love with his Strive version too.

Baiken smoking two blunts is a fantastic mod idea

Agreed but just imagine people who are obsessed with their charecters who like that charecters gameplay looks themes etc and they just main that charecter for that game. And in that series next game that charecter who they dearly loved changed . Regardless of the change was good or bad its just sad to see something you love turning something else . Who knows they might even love that charecters new version more but they will always miss what they were used to.

The day Kermit the frog smoking a blunt with two katanas is added to GG humanity will have reached it's peak

I don't play fighting games anymore but I stay for those gat damn thumbnails. Masterpieces.

People should remember that, even if your character is the same, their kit may be way worse in new games with new mechanics. As a melee Jigglypuff player, shes basically exactly same same in Project +, but she's bottom tier instead of top tier, because the rest of the cast is so radically different, and in ultimate, you could add melee jigglypuff to the game and everyone's highly increased recovery would still make her pretty bad.

Moste how the hell do you make such godlike Thumbnails EVERYTIME. Man never misses.

That thumbnail is godlike

with Strive Baiken, she didn't just change , It's not that she's missing a bunch of specials and it's not that she's been simplified, she lost her gimmick of having all these cool defensive options unique to her and had it replaced with a dime-a-dozen parry, I was hoping she'd just be a simplified version of herself and not an entirely new character simply wearing her skin, It would be like if they replaced I-NO's hoverdash with a standard run and gave her a decent command normal overhead to compensate, the only other characters that had there whole identities morphed like this were Ramlethal and Jack-0 with that said, I hope people, play and enjoy her

You can repost this one with a new thumbnail when SPD is a half circle motion in SF6.

Batman mains such as myself got to eat glue going from Inj 1 to inj 2. I will never forget the first month injustince 2 my buddy came over to take turns playing online, and I was literally doing batman combos with my back to the tv mid match and my buddy loosing his mind. I didnt play superman but I felt that was the most direct 1-1 transfer of a character for a sequel

If all returning characters played the exact same every time people would just complain about that too so they can't win. I'm glad characters get remixed over time. I can't wait for this version of Baiken.

I think it would be better for people to wait and play her before we start discussing of the change was problematic or not. The agian most of the complaints from Guilty Gear and fgc old heads , so good luck on getting them not emotional about anything Guilty Gear strive related

I get that the characters have to be changed from game to game to shake things up, as well as fit the mechanics that are imbued in the game at the end of the day. Still, to strip Baiken away from what made her stand out from the other characters in previous games, I think they went a bit overboard. They removed so many of her moves to the point she feels barebones, and the tether thing just doesn't look interesting or fun enough to make up for that imo. I wish they managed to find any other solution for her, but I suppose it fits the design philosophy for GGST. At the very least, I hope those who pick her have a good time.

The big thing that other legacy players need to get is that if we got her basically how she was in Xrd(parries specifically, not really talking about tatami, youzansen or kabari being different) is that in the current way Strive meta has been developed by the player base she'd be way too OD. I can think of maybe a few characters from the current roster that would be able to deal with Azami or Suzuran in neutral(Or during pressure) without getting blown the fuck up. Now granted I will say this, if you were getting blown up by Azami or Suzuran in Xrd that's on you, play to the matchup, don't autopilot and you'll be fine, but given how Strive is, it just wouldn't be that easy and she'd probably be top tier easy if she kept all of that. Honestly the fact that she still kept her mix and also one of her better moves mid screen means a lot for her offensive gameplay(which people seem to be forgetting that she had) and what it'll do for the game. I'm bummed Azami and Suzuran are gone but I was also bummed that I couldn't alpha counter in Xrd when she came out there. Still played her and enjoyed her there. Really hoping I can play and enjoy her here too, luckily she's coming out in the first batch of DLC and not the last.

Yeah sure, I should expect characters to change, but not their main appeal???

Is that Kermit the Frog with Two Samurai Swords smoking a Blunt???

characters don't need to change. nago is exactly the same in strive as he was in his debut game

the thumbnail is the peak of art

There was someone on twitter that he was fine even (or expecting) if arcsys reworked her entirely, but the problem was that (according to him) she is half copy pasted, like basically same kitt but cut down. I can't say if that's true or not, just bringing up what he said to add another point to the conversation (As I said, I don't really know about it but I thought it's interesting to discuss, at least for you people who konw)

Sick thumbnail, Moste.

So I just had a thought. You know how people said Sol was busted at the beginning of strive? Why not take a look at how everyone was broken in The Missing Link? That game is ridiculous. Axl is unfinished, Pot is unusable, Justice owns the entire screen at almost all times, and Sol can schmix you harder than Millia, who zones harder than Happy Chaos. And that's the stuff that doesn't involve system mechanics and exploits. Stupid easy infinites, Desperation state, Respect cancels, CC Cancels, and IK's defining some characters entire playstyles as opposed to being a dumb gimmick. Also the best option select music since Sonic Spinball.

The changes to Pot are why even as long as the game has been out, I'm struggling to find a character to stick to. I LOATHE how he plays in this game...

The Ice Clone dipping out for MK11 hurt me so much I couldn't play Sub in it anymore.

If my man Johnny doesn't get released in Strive completely unchanged from REV1 then I'm suing Arcsys and Japan omm. On a serious note, though, Baiken actually seems pretty interesting in this game. The parry is rewarding but also has a far more intuitive way to deal with it aside from basic idea of mixing up your offense and I've always been a fan of a samurai character, so now that she's more similar to my playstyle I might give her a try. Although I still want to make Faust work, but he's got a lot going on to make him feel good and I don't have a ton of time to play.

I think part of it is quite simply, biaken is hard af to really get comfortable with in general, especially +r biaken . Soo some of it is learning all that tech to have it obsolete now

Whoever made the thumbnail needs a goddamn raise

Animorphs guest dlc when???

It’s weird for me. I choose my characters like 90% off of gameplay. If I like a characters gameplay, I will probably play them unless they have an aesthetic that I really hate. I played Raiden in MKX and really enjoyed his playstyle but he went from a rushdown mixup/vortex character to a midrange/footsies character going into MK11 and I really didn’t find the character fun and ended up never really liking any character in that game and dropping it. I prefer the more legacy fighting game approach of like Tekken. I really liked Baiken in xrd because I thought her guard cancel mechanic was cool. Having Strive take it away is disappointing. Although, she looks to be a somewhat similar archetype. I can see myself enjoying her parry depending on the strength of it. If it’s like 1f startup and I’m able to PRC it on whiff like Leo’s BT parry, then I might enjoy it as it could potentially fulfill the same role as azami but in the context of strive. One thing I hope they add is for her to have the ability to hold the parry for up to a certain amount of time, like Hakumen in BBCF.

so..changes like this happened in kof, but did stay for sie kensou, but did for kyo(although they brought clones of him, up to versions of him back for the fans)...snk doesnt have drastic changes like that for it's chars i think. like, kim is kim, king is king...regardless of gains & loss of moves.

Imagine complaining about getting a frame-1 METERLESS strike counter out of a quarter circle forward input. Couldn't be me. This message from Kachoufuugestu Kai gang.

I mean, just looking at the street fighter series, I main a different character in ST, Alpha 2, Alpha 3, 3S, SFIV, and SFV. And, other than Abigail and Q, they are all staples of the series like Sakura, Vega, and Blanka. Hell I've only played 3 GG games and I main a different one in each. Sometimes the thing you like about a character is not the direction they're taken. Or the mechanics of the specific game don't fit how you played them. May clicked with me in +R, but never did in Xrd and Strive

I was disappointed at first, but now Idc if they change characters anymore. I’ll still like em and use em in tournaments. Im just gonna fucking adapt.

Strive is intended as a very fast and aggressive game, and the Baiken changes reflect that. I get not liking the changes and I respect that, but i *for the life of me* cannot understand being surprised by them. A lot of character changes in Strive speed up the game. Ky lost Sigil, Leo can cancel Stance whenever he wants, and Strive Sol is just a thing that exists. The new characters from base game are a Rushdown and *Nagoriyuki*. The game's very fast, and Baiken just wasn't going to keep moves that slowed the game down. Tether only speeds things up even further. I think people can miss that character's don't get reworked on a whim. Baiken's changes reflect a central design philosophy of Strive

I never expected Baiken to be the same as Xrd. It seems like in every GG iteration she has a new gimmick so the counter and rope are just par for the course. I guess it’s easy for me because I never liked the parry all that much. At its core she still has the same 4 moves she had since her debut in the very first GG and every game there after (Ok, she didn’t have the chain in GGX, but she got it back in GGXX) so you will be doing some Baiken stuff. Throwing your tatamis every second in neutral, TKing your air dp that is now a qcf for some reason, doing the scorpion cosplay and hopefully sweep into tatami launcher into air combo. Tbh she’s far closer to her Xrd self than let’s say Ram Jack-O imo.

" is that kermit the frog with two samurai swords smoking a blunt!? "

I've accepted strives design is pretty gimmicky and is very willing to just completely gut what characters are know for. I just wish people would just stop trying to downplay it with oh you're just not use to change. Like yeah obviously its difficult balance between keeping the character intact while trying new things. But when you have to rework characters just so they work with the wall break mechanic I think its safe to say you goofed a little. I still have fun with the game for what it is. I just don't like takes like this because I think it does a lot of long term damage in terms of devs knowing what the player base even wants from them. I think it's exactly how SFV reached such insane levels of hit and miss characters. Like yeah you have your Bisons and Akumas... but then you have SFV Juri and I don't wish that upon anyones favorite character lol.

The fucking kermit with 2 katanas smoking a blunt

Dan changes in SFV were filthy. Character is so cool for no reason. SFVI is gonna be the FFVI of fighting games

I’m extremely excited to try her out in strive, I’m a bit sad to see Izami and suzaran leave but I’m open to change. And if I’m being honest I wasn’t great with her in xrd even though she was the only character I played, hopefully dustloop still exists that would be criminal

Im so lucky strive is my first GG, i don't have to give shit about legacy. And seeing people complain so much really feels like where I'm at is very lucky.