Let's learn about fighting games and get murdered together.

[LarryTyphoid]

I'd like to play Virtua Fighter, but there seems to be no way to play it on PC, so I'm stuck with the Accent Core weeb game like everyone else, plus Darkstalkers.

 

[Nutmeg]

I'd like to play Virtua Fighter, but there seems to be no way to play it on PC

You can play VF5 using teknoparrot

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I think they did this re-release of VF5 on Playstation 4/5, it was apparently given away if you were on their subscription service but unsure if it maintained any sort of popularity.

 

[GhostCow]

KB&M is way better than a controller for fighting games. Especially 6 button ones.

The Mixbox seems like the best of both worlds.
https://www.mixboxarcade.com/

Or just make your own for a lot less.

This is almost exactly what I've wanted for years but the price is retarded. Cut the price in half and make a left handed version and I'll buy it.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Shin Samurai Spirits is my favourite SNK game of all time, by far. I played the hell out of it at arcades (got a lot of competitive play here back in the day) and it was just packed with so much stuff. A true labour of love. The art is incredible, so is the music. I still remember being blown away by Wan-Fu's theme and Sieger's sprite.

I've had more than my share of scrub Ukyos to last me multiple lifetimes, but I'm always down to play the game. It's wonky, not balanced at all (especially by modern standards), but none of that matters. It's incredible.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I think they did this re-release of VF5 on Playstation 4/5, it was apparently given away if you were on their subscription service but unsure if it maintained any sort of popularity.

No, the game died soon after release because of the awful delay-based netcode, despite being downloaded over 10 million times. It was a tragic missed opportunity, but that's just par for the course for Sega. They're the kings of bad decisions and missed opportunities. I mean, for the game's first year anniversary they released a Tekken-themed costume DLC. It's like they're trolling.

Anyway, the only place with a decent playerbase is Japan, but VF has always been very popular there. I still play it from time to time with RL friends that I've been playing VF with since 3, but the game's super dead otherwise.

However, As a proof of concept for a Dragon Engine VF, I think it succeeded and there's a good chance VF6 is in development now, something I thought impossible only a couple of years ago. But Sega will probably fuck it up like everything else. They should get Harada to consult and produce (even though Tekken is shit, Harada knows it's shit, he's a huge VF fan). That dude knows how to make money.

 

[Matador]

Oh, this thread is back. When looking for it the other day, and despite coming up on the search and Google, whenever you clicked on it it was gone.



Project L is unsurprisingly going to be free-to-play.

The MultiVersus open beta has been going on for like a week now. Also unsurprisingly it's already like the biggest fighting game home release of all time. It routinely has over 100,000 players on Steam, and is one of the top games on there...and I'd guess the PS4 numbers are even higher.

Only a matter of time now before there's more big F2P fighting games. Still a surprise it took this like for F2P fighting games to happen.

Free to play is the only way to franchises in this genre, except Street Fighter and Tekken, to have a player base at all one month after launch.

I think is a good thing devs are realizing this, but I hope they don't abuse the format. They were abusing DLC models so I don't think it will be very bad except some greedy examples.

 

[Great Deceiver]

GG Strive has a reasonably healthy playerbase one year after release (1k-1500k players online on PC daily, probably more on console).

I don't think F2P is a good idea for players or the game in general - although it's a very good idea for the companies themselves, and Riot is the king of nickel and diming. The current FG model is already bad with season passes, broken DLC characters on release and so on. F2P will only exacerbate that issue.

 

[Matador]

GG Strive has a reasonably healthy playerbase one year after release (1k-1500k players online on PC daily, probably more on console).

I don't think F2P is a good idea for players or the game in general - although it's a very good idea for the companies themselves, and Riot is the king of nickel and diming. The current FG model is already bad with season passes, broken DLC characters on release and so on. F2P will only exacerbate that issue.

Think about fightcade and how has conserved pretty old and great games.

I think F2P can also not exacerbate that issue. They can focus in skins and shows of gamer status pretty successfully like DOTA 2 and Counter Strike have proved.

Also the player base you mention is not enough for new players to have a decent learning curve with similar skill players.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

The player retention problem is not exactly something that you can just easily fix and I have high doubts going F2P will solve anything and instead only make companies become shameless in their monetization. They did try F2P years ago with Tekken Revolution and KI, both of which didn't catch on with TR being shutdown completely and KI being dead. All F2P is going to do is give a company like Capcom that has had a history of shitty business practices to continue exploring those shitty business practices under a new guise.

As for player retention, the truth is this: the modern day gamer is a bitch. That's all there is to it. You can make one button specials, one button supers, F2P, tutorials that go into every painstaking detail, rollback netcode, rank based matchmaking, etc. and it won't matter because the modern day gamer fears failure and in a one-on-one fighting game which requires you to be the one to solve the problem your opponent presents it just doesn't work out for most out there these days. There's no team to fall back on or get carried by, there's only you. And when you are new to a fighting game and you're facing veterans, you're not only going to know it but you're going to feel it's insurmountable to ever get to that level.

Fighting games and RTS' in particular are brutal when it comes to the new player experience. It's why the best time to learn any fighting game is always going to be in the first two weeks of a fresh launch since you will at least have people either on a much more level playing field or have other new players to bounce off of.

But it's not something you can just enforce or make people do, they have to want to do it themselves and come to terms they're likely going to get fucked hard on the way to becoming proficient or decent enough to eventually present a realistic challenge to better players. Single player doesn't funnel them to online, F2P will at best result in a curiosity trip for an evening and then an uninstall the next day, making the inputs braindead easy just makes a good player no longer have to worry about execution and blow these new players up even quicker.

Reason why a game like Smash or this Multiversus thing are thriving is because of the huge brand recognition and that those party-brawler or whatever you want to call them games in particular are so easy to pick up and play it's feasible that a novice could steal rounds or entire sets off a more experienced player. Now imagine a novice in KOF XV or Tekken 7 trying to get victories over a veteran of the series, it's like they're playing two completely different games and crossed over into one another's world by accident.

It's even why battle royale games are so popular. The idea that "anyone can win, they just need to be at the right place at the right time" makes people feel they have a chance to win regardless. Fighting games don't have that because to win in them you need to actually learn and practice and most players out there don't find the idea of studying frame data and standing in training mode practicing counters or combos or set ups for hours to be worth the time investment for a rush they could easily get elsewhere with far less hassle.

If you really want player retention, make crossplay the standard going forward.

 

[Matador]

If you really want player retention, make crossplay the standard going forward.

Good comment. I agree with the crossplay observation specially. That would help a lot fighting games without risking shitty business practices.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

If you really want player retention, make crossplay the standard going forward.

Good comment. I agree a with the crossplay observation specially. That would help a lot fighting games without risking shitty business practices.

Yeah, I don't see what gallivanting around in costumes brings to the table, but Generic-Giant-Spider knows what he's talking about so I guess he has a point.

 

[BLOBERT]

What's your guys' favorite fighting game and why?

BRO I LIKE THE LAST BLADE 2 MECHANICS AND GRAPHICS AND ESPECIALLY MUSIC IS MANY AWESOME

FOR THE MOST FUN IN YOUR LIFE YOU MUST PLAY DONG DONG NEVER DIE

 

[DJOGamer PT]

I'd like to play Virtua Fighter, but there seems to be no way to play it on PC

Have you ever heard of emulators?

 

[Great Deceiver]

The player retention problem is not exactly something that you can just easily fix and I have high doubts going F2P will solve anything and instead only make companies become shameless in their monetization. They did try F2P years ago with Tekken Revolution and KI, both of which didn't catch on with TR being shutdown completely and KI being dead. All F2P is going to do is give a company like Capcom that has had a history of shitty business practices to continue exploring those shitty business practices under a new guise.

As for player retention, the truth is this: the modern day gamer is a bitch. That's all there is to it. You can make one button specials, one button supers, F2P, tutorials that go into every painstaking detail, rollback netcode, rank based matchmaking, etc. and it won't matter because the modern day gamer fears failure and in a one-on-one fighting game which requires you to be the one to solve the problem your opponent presents it just doesn't work out for most out there these days. There's no team to fall back on or get carried by, there's only you. And when you are new to a fighting game and you're facing veterans, you're not only going to know it but you're going to feel it's insurmountable to ever get to that level.

Fighting games and RTS' in particular are brutal when it comes to the new player experience. It's why the best time to learn any fighting game is always going to be in the first two weeks of a fresh launch since you will at least have people either on a much more level playing field or have other new players to bounce off of.

But it's not something you can just enforce or make people do, they have to want to do it themselves and come to terms they're likely going to get fucked hard on the way to becoming proficient or decent enough to eventually present a realistic challenge to better players. Single player doesn't funnel them to online, F2P will at best result in a curiosity trip for an evening and then an uninstall the next day, making the inputs braindead easy just makes a good player no longer have to worry about execution and blow these new players up even quicker.

Reason why a game like Smash or this Multiversus thing are thriving is because of the huge brand recognition and that those party-brawler or whatever you want to call them games in particular are so easy to pick up and play it's feasible that a novice could steal rounds or entire sets off a more experienced player. Now imagine a novice in KOF XV or Tekken 7 trying to get victories over a veteran of the series, it's like they're playing two completely different games and crossed over into one another's world by accident.

It's even why battle royale games are so popular. The idea that "anyone can win, they just need to be at the right place at the right time" makes people feel they have a chance to win regardless. Fighting games don't have that because to win in them you need to actually learn and practice and most players out there don't find the idea of studying frame data and standing in training mode practicing counters or combos or set ups for hours to be worth the time investment for a rush they could easily get elsewhere with far less hassle.

If you really want player retention, make crossplay the standard going forward.

Great points.

Re: crossplay, it's really a crucial thing to get around the fragmented playerbase problem. For example, KOF XV's playerbase on PC is shit, probably much better on PS4/PS5.

However, implementation varies greatly across games and can lead to potential significant disadvantages for console players - i.e. 5 frames of input delay on PS5 Strive vs. 1 frame on PC; Strive crossplay beta is coming later this year. Even so, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives.

I don't think games like Multiversus should be discussed in the same terms as actual fighting games. The only reason some "famous" FG players are picking it up and playing it on stream is because they're getting paid for it.

You hit the nail on the head overall. Modern players especially just want instant gratification (as demonstrated by the popularity of the Battle Royale stuff; no consequences for dying, hop on another match in 2 seconds flat, can play while alt-tabbed looking at something else, if you win great whatever). Fighting games are essentially antithetical to that and all efforts to "casualize" the experience are completely misguided; removing the execution barrier doesn't benefit new players at all, it merely means better players will make less mistakes. This is exemplified by DNF Duel, an extremely punishing game where novices have absolutely no chance at all against veterans, regardless of one input specials (there is a reward for doing proper inputs, but it's not good enough most of the time). One input invulnerable DPs doesn't make the game better; in fact, it makes it a lot worse than it could have been. Pulling off reversal DPs in other fighting games can feel rewarding; in DNF it's just perfunctory. Another issue are the ubiquitous safe jumps in that game, but that's another discussion. The gist of it is that new players have absolutely no chance at all against decent players, and it was a game ostensibly targeting "casuals".

Another thing is that even if players hop in a new fighting game immediately after release, since current development trends often include open alpha/betas, they'll often be playing against people who have been playing the game for months (again, the case of DNF duel, but also happened with SFV, Strive, etc.). There's no way around it - if you want to get good in FGs, you have to mostly lose a lot, and lose horribly, with no one to blame but yourself.

I think one of the best things FGs can do to boost player retention is to put in more work on player lobbies as opposed to focusing exclusively on ranked modes. People can get anxious when seeing their winrate, they might feel discouraged from playing altogether if they're tying their matches to these statistics, and there's no way to improve in a FG without playing a lot against a lot of different people. Although it's obviously not a perfect solution, having a robust lobby system can help with that. It should be just as quick and easy to find other people to play in unranked lobbies as it is in ranked. Ideally, players would organize themselves into skill-appropriate leagues and so on.

This ties itself with another issue: I think fundamentally, FGs are indissociable from arcade "culture". Back in the day, players of any given game would gravitate together and friendships would inevitably be formed. Some of my best friends today are people I met 25 years ago playing arcade games. They would lab together, play together, discuss strategies and generally lift each other up. This really doesn't happen in an online environment. Maybe games could have a sort of "mentorship" functionality whereby veterans could take up novice players and help them get better. Of course, given that everything is tied to a reward mechanism these days, there would need to be a reward built in the system, but I'm sure it can be done on some level.

At the end of the day, developers are just lazy and people have the wrong notions about player retention. Simplifying inputs and removing options was never the answer. Scrubs will always be scrubs, they will always make excuses for losing, no matter what. Squishing the skill floor only makes it worse for new players.

 

[anvi]

the modern day gamer is a bitch.

It's so true. I play MTG Arena and the game showers you with free gifts just for playing, even if you lose the match... And even so, half the people are such bitches that they troll if they are going to lose. You're supposed to just lose and move on, or you can concede the game if it's too painful to even handle... but these bitches go afk, alt tab, or quit the game, so the winner has to wait for it time out before they can move on. It's really pathetic.

MOBAs have the same problem. People can't handle being killed or something bad happening to their team so they have full blown mental meltdowns, often ruining the game for everyone. HoN was awesome originally because it was "buy to play" so there were consequences to trolling. Once all those games became F2P it was just a shitfest of people being assholes on free accounts.

I always think about the new player experience for these sorts of games, they do such a bad job of it. MOBAs are way too hard to just jump in and check it out. The controls are so different to other games, the camera is like not much else, so new players are just shiiiit. And for ages, like months or years. They made a ranking system but it just doesn't really work. And again with free accounts people are coming and going all the time so often day 1 newbies are playing against nerds that have been playing for a decade and are on a new account because they got banned or whatever. I loved HoN and that game recently died and it was mostly because of this. I was convinced they could create a happy place for newbies and then ease them into harder games. They have AI and bots and stuff to play against, and practice modes, but everyone hurries into the real games and then gets owned and rages. Such a mess. Sounds like fighting games are going through similar shit.

 

[Max Damage]

Fighting games always were hard to just casually play growing up before internet and GGPO blew up, speaking as someone who grew up in a country where arcades weren't a thing. If you can't handle losing and learning fundamentals, you'll find any excuse to stop playing, which is why dumbing down tech and inputs won't solve anything. Hosts/guests just didn't want to play if they lose too much, none of us knew or could perform combos back in the late 90s/early 00s, but there sure as hell was lots of complaining about grabs. 1v1 in general is hard sell to most people, which is why barely anyone played RTS besides team vs team too (assuming they didn't stop after finishing campaign), it's inherently more stressful than sharing struggle and blame with someone else.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Yes, it's also the same reason why competitive FPS shifted from stuff like Quake 3 Arena, which was focused on individual skill, powerup and time management, and intimate spacial awareness across multiple, sprawling levels, to team-based pap like CS and more modern crap like Valorant, where the burden for winning/losing is diluted across the entire team and losers will always find ways to deflect blame onto other people, and it's actually possible to win by being a bad player in a better team. Not that these team-based games don't require skill (they do), but it's an entirely different mindset and they require a different set of skills.

In oldschool FPS games, it's just impossible to win as a new, unskilled player against a significantly better opponent. Simply can't be done.

Dota and its derivatives are much the same. There's a different set of challenges to be overcome in properly designing team-based games, and I think the advent of ranked modes and little numbers next to people's names is incredibly bad. I'll honestly say that ranked Dota killed the game for me - it drove the quality of the games sharply down and made it so people would throw hysterical fits in the first 5 minutes of the match if things weren't looking so good. It might be alright to give up in a frivolous , throwaway battle royale where you can be in another match in under a minute and rounds are usually 99% luck, but in games where an average match takes upwards of 30 minutes it's unacceptable. Introducing a surrender mechanic doesn't fix anything either, because people then vote to surrender as soon as it's available if things are even remotely going south.

Anyway, not to derail the thread too much - fighting games are one of the last bastions of skill in games, and it's always been a hard road. It's not a popular opinion, but actually think it's much harder for beginners now than back during the arcade days (despite the contrary often being thrown out as fact by people who weren't even alive back then), because there's no cost associated with rematching and information is just everywhere. This means that newcomers will frequently face optimal combos and setups the first day they play a new game, and get obliterated. This was never the case in arcades, because everyone was subjected to more or less the same learning curve (of course there's always been individual talent and other factors, but still). You couldn't just grind out hundreds of online ranked matches or spend 20 hours in training mode doing setups in a new fighting game, you just had to put up your token, do your best, and there was a real cost to losing - both in monetary terms and timewise. If the game was popular, you had to go back to the end of a huge line. These incentives cannot be replicated in modern games, and I think they were a crucial part of the experience. Part of what made me stop playing FGs entirely for many years.

 

[luj1]

Anyone likes Last Blade 1-2?

I'm no FTG expert, but Shin Samurai Spirits is my favorite weapons based 2D FTG. It's basically Ninja Scroll, the video game.

In the same vein, I also really like Samurai Spirits 3 and Golden Axe the Duel, although I think they're considered broken af for serious play (SS3 has some tournies).

Last Blade series feels very conservative in comparison with the above games - standard fighting games where the sprites happen to have weapons. Again, no expert at all. Just my observation and thoughts after casual mame play with my wife and neighbor's kids.

LB shits on SS

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Anyway, not to derail the thread too much - fighting games are one of the last bastions of skill in games, and it's always been a hard road. It's not a popular opinion, but actually think it's much harder for beginners now than back during the arcade days (despite the contrary often being thrown out as fact by people who weren't even alive back then), because there's no cost associated with rematching and information is just everywhere. This means that newcomers will frequently face optimal combos and setups the first day they play a new game, and get obliterated. This was never the case in arcades, because everyone was subjected to more or less the same learning curve (of course there's always been individual talent and other factors, but still). You couldn't just grind out hundreds of online ranked matches or spend 20 hours in training mode doing setups in a new fighting game, you just had to put up your token, do your best, and there was a real cost to losing - both in monetary terms and timewise. If the game was popular, you had to go back to the end of a huge line. These incentives cannot be replicated in modern games, and I think they were a crucial part of the experience. Part of what made me stop playing FGs entirely for many years.

Don't forget back then arcades were hardware wise far ahead of consoles up until the Dreamcast released (or Neo-Geo if you were rich, possibly Saturn for 2D fighters but that was a dead system in NA) so even home ports were inferior and only good for practice to a certain point. Playing Marvel Super Heroes on PS1 with slowdown and missing animations was drastically different from playing it in arcades which suffered none of those pitfalls.

And yes, in the heyday of arcades it was a real shark tank. People wouldn't even tell you how to do fatalities in an MK or intentionally feed you bad information, most times you had to hope you made friends with someone that was really good or rely on game magazines for even the most basic shit. This even helped influence what sort of characters I'd tend to gravitate to which were usually ones that had really strong neutral/good normal buttons to press so at least I could try and bully back. My philosophy as a kid was if the character was tall or had long limbs they were probably "beginner friendly" since their basic attacks will cover more of the screen, lolz.

 

[Nathir]

Thread is back, nice. I bought DNF duel because I wanted to try it out. It's not the worst thing in recent memory, but it has problems that plague a lot of modern fighters. A lot of characters have moves that move them half a screen forward and are really fast. Or are even fullscreen projectiles in some cases. Said moves have zero risk and can lead to 40% off of your hp easily. Neutral thus becomes a frantic mess where you are spamming the same moves over and over and if you stop holding block for a second you might just get hit instantly. Reminds me of DBFZ in a way. Inputs are VERY simplified. Special moves are just special button + direction. Each character can do a shoryuken by just pressing down+special. Jumping is really bad in this game. Not sure if I am right on this, but the unique roll mechanic felt bad and way too risky. Characters also didn't feel all that different gameplay wise.

The game has actual combos though, and some grimy stuff, which I can respect. But the core is just too simplified. I think a lot of modern FGs put way too much effort into creating a game that can play itself. Everything needs to be undersandable upfront and a below average player should be able to flowchart his character in a week of playing. And single buttons do way too much. Devs should focus more into creating a game with solid mechanics first.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Have fighting games learned yet to punish disconnectors and award the win to the person who was fighting the disconnector? I played so many fighting games, various MMA, boxing, and some random others, that when the opponent disconnected, he didn't get a loss, and you didn't get a win. Even in games where the person who disconnected got a loss, the other player rarely got a win. So of course poor losers would ragequit and disconnect in the last second of the match to deny you the win like 75% of the time. And if you called them out, half of them were like "just protecting my record bro".

I mean, you have to expect people to take advantage of any system, that's just stupidity on the part of the game devs.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Have fighting games learned yet to punish disconnectors and award the win to the person who was fighting the disconnector? I played so many fighting games, various MMA, boxing, and some random others, that when the opponent disconnected, he didn't get a loss, and you didn't get a win. Even in games where the person who disconnected got a loss, the other player rarely got a win. So of course poor losers would ragequit and disconnect in the last second of the match to deny you the win like 75% of the time. And if you called them out, half of them were like "just protecting my record bro".

I mean, you have to expect people to take advantage of any system, that's just stupidity on the part of the game devs.

Sometimes, I know DNF Duel had it so the disconnector didn't suffer any penalty whatsoever and it's often how you'd see really shit players at high ranks. But most of the time the more well known fighting games have some sort of disconnect penalty attached to it these days. Usually you wait anywhere from thirty minutes to a whole day or some such before it expires. Some games also put you into a "rage quit hell" queue where you face other people that also are known to disconnect frequently.

I heard if you disconnect in KOF XV often it prioritizes you getting matched with people well above your ranking but honestly the matchmaking in that game is fucked so who knows.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Thread is back, nice. I bought DNF duel because I wanted to try it out. It's not the worst thing in recent memory, but it has problems that plague a lot of modern fighters. A lot of characters have moves that move them half a screen forward and are really fast. Or are even fullscreen projectiles in some cases. Said moves have zero risk and can lead to 40% off of your hp easily. Neutral thus becomes a frantic mess where you are spamming the same moves over and over and if you stop holding block for a second you might just get hit instantly. Reminds me of DBFZ in a way. Inputs are VERY simplified. Special moves are just special button + direction. Each character can do a shoryuken by just pressing down+special. Jumping is really bad in this game. Not sure if I am right on this, but the unique roll mechanic felt bad and way too risky. Characters also didn't feel all that different gameplay wise.

The game has actual combos though, and some grimy stuff, which I can respect. But the core is just too simplified. I think a lot of modern FGs put way too much effort into creating a game that can play itself. Everything needs to be undersandable upfront and a below average player should be able to flowchart his character in a week of playing. And single buttons do way too much. Devs should focus more into creating a game with solid mechanics first.

I didn't like it very much at all. I'll never understand why they didn't even put air dashing in that game when it would have made a huge difference in enjoyment considering how shit mobility is. Also thought it simply stopped becoming fun to play once you begin to hit Diamond/Terranite and you're seeing the same few characters being played the exact same way and these are some obnoxious playstyles too. Striker putting you in forever blockstrings, Crusader able to get the easiest infinite I've ever seen, Hitman having X-Factor, Swift Master playing a different game entirely, etc. Having to work my balls off with Inquisitor only to get two touched by a Grappler was fun too.

The simplified specials making your character operate off some goofy cooldown/magic bar system felt awkward as well. Flashy game but little substance.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Thread is back, nice. I bought DNF duel because I wanted to try it out. It's not the worst thing in recent memory, but it has problems that plague a lot of modern fighters. A lot of characters have moves that move them half a screen forward and are really fast. Or are even fullscreen projectiles in some cases. Said moves have zero risk and can lead to 40% off of your hp easily. Neutral thus becomes a frantic mess where you are spamming the same moves over and over and if you stop holding block for a second you might just get hit instantly. Reminds me of DBFZ in a way. Inputs are VERY simplified. Special moves are just special button + direction. Each character can do a shoryuken by just pressing down+special. Jumping is really bad in this game. Not sure if I am right on this, but the unique roll mechanic felt bad and way too risky. Characters also didn't feel all that different gameplay wise.

The game has actual combos though, and some grimy stuff, which I can respect. But the core is just too simplified. I think a lot of modern FGs put way too much effort into creating a game that can play itself. Everything needs to be undersandable upfront and a below average player should be able to flowchart his character in a week of playing. And single buttons do way too much. Devs should focus more into creating a game with solid mechanics first.

You're not wrong, roll is easily punishable and very situational, and yes, jumping (outside of safe jumps) is awful in this game (there's a 4f execution, plus when landing from a jump you can't move at all for 3f, just block or attack) - all defensive options are bad/terrible. It's an extremely offensive-oriented game with incredibly limited defense. Neutral is crippled because of it.

I don't think it's a terrible game, but clearly the developers intended for some mechanics to be in that aren't. I think the game would be much better if the guard counter cost 50 meter instead of 100 and/or if there was some sort of pushblock mechanic. As it is, it's like playing Marvel without any tools other than simple blocking.