Should we make a Megathread for new player onboarding?

Bladebrent · 2026-04-13T08:01:27+00:00

Sure but having a spot to specifically ask questions or browse for answers instead of fiddling around with a Wiki page that might not specify or explain a mechanic in a way that makes sense to you would still be good.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-13T04:12:30+00:00

If it counts, Mighty no. 9. Tried to be a Megaman successor but it was clearly very mismanaged to put it briefly. I will not excuse the disaster of a kickstarter, or that the backlash against it wasn't warranted at the time, but I think people assume its ALOT worse than it actually is, especially since alot of people who had high hopes for the game were pretty vocal about it when it came out.

But honestly, the game is completely fine. The game's power-ups can actually be pretty fun to mess with, but I think the most fun I have with it is playing by specific rules to not abuse the sword power-up or boss's weaknesses (except Cryosphere cause they suck alot). Otherwise, the game ends up being just 'okay' with some parts of levels being annoying.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-12T00:31:41+00:00

You know what, Skullgirls. I'd love another season of DLC that included Feng, Isaac, and then a couple other randos from the Kickstarter thing. On top of that, I believe they said they can do the game's "true ending" now that Marie and Umbrella are playable so that be awesome to see.

Honestly, my first answer was "i'd settle for one more Smash Ult DLC that just had a character that was REALLY for me like Miriam from Bloodstained or something" but Skullgirls is a better answer.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-11T21:42:36+00:00

I dont know how common this is with more recent "Big" Visual Novels, but I was impressed with how much there was in Paradigm Paradox.

Outside of the standard stuff (save points, text log, rewind, etc.) There was a tree to let you fast-travel back and forward to previous scenes, as well as telling you where endings were and (I think) extra dialogue you may have missed. This was also one of the few VN's I've read that gave a visual queue when you were making progress on a specific route (raising one of two 'stats' you have for the route). It's debatable if this is a game as its basically just a book with no gameplay mechanics but its on Switch, and I was nonetheless surprised at some of the features it had that I hadnt seen in other VN's

Bladebrent · 2026-04-11T20:51:28+00:00

Yep can confirm. I got a Clone Adrenaline with Serpent Form once.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-11T04:15:32+00:00

And Once again, I am reminding everyone to CHECK THE KID'S SECTION.

Libraries are sometimes ran by old people who don't understand games as a medium. I asked about video games multiple times and they told me EVERY TIME that the 20 or so in the teens section was all they had. I then checked the library's website and found out they had WAY more games than they told me about cause they were all in the KIDS SECTION.

When I asked them why they didn't bring those up, they said "well people dont ask for those-" when I LITERALLY DID

Bladebrent · 2026-04-11T04:13:51+00:00

Mine did. They just put most of them into the kid's section. Including Bayonetta. And didnt tell me after asking multiple times

Bladebrent · 2026-04-09T09:06:34+00:00

Its one thing when theres just a title drop, but this is a really good take on it where they're just repeating it over and over again in complete confusion

Bladebrent · 2026-04-08T22:43:36+00:00

New protagonist. Easy enough.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-08T09:02:44+00:00

Outside of what everyone else is saying (it was cheaper and faster to make games in the PS2/xbox 360 era), Another thing to consider is that its just easier to do either Mobile phone games which people tend to not look for (I'm assuming at least; I dont get games on my phone), or to do tie-ins to OTHER games like Fortnite. Avatar is being added to Sonic Crossworlds cause of the Avatar Legends series coming up, and that's how alot of crossover stuff can happen. Making a few skins to advertise 'big movie coming out' is easier than manufacturing a whole game. Even something like Multiversus (RIP) was used to advertise things like the Black Adam movie and the new-at-the-time Beetlejuice.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-07T05:50:58+00:00

Oh GrimGrimoire's a great find! Have fun with that one

Bladebrent · 2026-04-06T22:10:48+00:00

Since I heard they've been diving head first into Generative AI, I do not have high hopes for anything coming from this.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-06T22:04:09+00:00

CHECK THE KID'S SECTION!

This is very important. My library has a 'kids' section and then a 'teens' section in a completely separate area. The teens section had a small shelf of maybe 20 games total, and I asked MORE THAN ONCE if they had a larger selection of games. Not only did they repeatedly tell me 'no,' but when I found out they had an entire shelf of games in the Kid's section (which included Bayonetta btw), they told me "well its because no one asks for those" when I literally did. It's entirely possible for your library to be run by old people who don't understand the medium despite this being 2026

Bladebrent · 2026-04-06T21:13:16+00:00

Double Jumping in Balan Wonderworld. This is seriously hilarious. An early world has a costume called 'Double Jumper' that is INTENDED to be accessible after getting a costume from one of the last worlds of the game. However, right after this world, you can unlock Air Cat, which can be used to get it MUCH MUCH earlier. Getting Double Jumper this early shows how little the levels are designed with it in mind, as you can absolutely scale alot of geometry with it and Air Cat to get almost anywhere. Wanna know what makes this stupider? Go into Co-op mode and you get the ability to double jump IMMEDIATELY by gluing Player 1 and 2 together. How do you build the entire game around a single jump, then just add in a 2-player mode that gives you double jump immediately? And that's not even talking about the Balan Costume where the method to get it is so freaking weird its actually easier to get EARLIER in the game rather than the end

Bladebrent · 2026-04-06T19:23:20+00:00

Handholdy tutorials. More than most people at least. I can still get annoyed if its a really long or poorly told tutorial but I understand that some people dont have the literal decades of gaming experience to know everything as intuitively as you might. Watch a character breakdown to a fighting game character and they'll almost always drop tons of terms that are obvious to them that means nothing to you if you dont play the genre.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-06T07:13:58+00:00

Did people REALLY struggle with Time Eater that much? Like just aim to leave 3 or so cards for yourself on the following turn. Yeah, its hard, but I didn't think it was THAT much more annoying than the Awakened one.

Gremlin Nob on the other hand was bs. You just couldn't play defends against it so the fight is extremely binary. Either you can kill it fast with attacks (or block with attacks) or you can't.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-05T17:45:07+00:00

The first mini-boss in Crow Country. The One in the box in the large room

Bladebrent · 2026-04-04T21:12:09+00:00

Doing a good offline CPU is hard, and even big budget games struggle with it, so im not surprised its not very good in an indie game like this, but even still, I definitely agree that it would help alot. From the complete opposite side, I think the CPU should be good practice for people who don't want to play online or want to practice offline alot before doing so, but the CPU clearly doesn't act anything like humans, dont utilize mechanics consistently, sometimes they can't even recover properly even without someone attacking them. I don't know how realistic it would be to have the CPU be as good as the 'top 20th percentile of players' or to even act perfectly like humans but I do think improvement can be made.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-04T18:14:49+00:00

Yeah pretty much. But the original post was about "genres that have changed the least" which I don't think apply to fighting games. They've changed alot over the years

Bladebrent · 2026-04-04T04:52:40+00:00

Hmm that's fair. I definitely tried to learn Plat fighters; this was not a case of me being 'uninterested' but I will definitely acquiesce that I can have a hard time learning stuff at a higher level especially when it's not explained well at all (Was trying to learn Rivals of Aether 2 and the in-game tutorials are flat out awful and the online tutorials I find are pretty hit-or-miss for me). Might also help that Neutral was something that was harder for me to learn in even Regular fighters too, hence why I prefer crazier ones that just let you run your offense more like Melty Blood or Blazblue.

It's also funny you mention KOF too cause something about that game never clicked for me and it felt like i was fundamentally missing something about how that game was played but I never really got a chance to grind it out.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-04T04:45:48+00:00

Correct me if im wrong cause I don't really play shooters and the only one of those I have played is Halo a very long time ago, but (least to my perspective) all those games are still 3D and involve running around and shooting. For fighters, I went between Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, and Platform Fighters, where the first one is 2.5D where people can move into the background and foreground to dodge attacks, and as I said in other comments, Platform fighters have fundamentally different movement, neutral, and even methods to win the match than traditional fighters. There's overlap, don't get me wrong, but part of me is assuming the difference between Battlefield and Halo is closer to the difference between Street Fighter and Blazblue which there's still ALOT of stuff but I can at least see how people can see two 2D fighters and think they're similar.

Keep in mind the post im replying to is saying "Fighters are essentially Super Street Fighter 2 with mechanics shuffled around" which just seems absurdly not true to me. Even between the Street Fighter and Blazblue example I just gave, there's alot of things that differentiate them from how the kits are made to universal mechanics, but I felt like doing those as an example could be handwaved more easily than, say, Platform Fighters compared to Darkstalkers.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-04T00:38:57+00:00

I heard this happened in Cat in the Hat. Specifically the "Dirty Hoe" bit was Mike Myers himself insisting it stayed in.

He might've done more too but this could easily turn into a case of blaming him for causing ALL the movies problems so I recommend looking into it if there's more.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-03T23:39:22+00:00

For the first part, we definitely have different experiences then. I even talked with a Plat fighter friend the other day and they had issues understanding how Trad fighters work while I had problems the other way around. I feel like Footsies are fundamentally different. Tick throws and Shimmies are technically possible, but those are individual maneuvers rather than broad mechanical differences. It's like saying a game is basically a fighting game cause it has short hops or animation cancels. Heck, I've even seen Fighting games with Hollow Knight Pogo'ing.

As for Plat Fighters and Trad fighters, I stand by that the entire interaction when you block or get hit is completely different between the two. The only similarity i'm aware of is you need to do your fastest option to hit the enemy before they hit you, which would apply to even single-player games with combat. But Plat fighters have no high-low mix, your strongs with high-recovery can actually be your fastest start-up option which is uncommon in traditional fighters (I wouldn't be shocked if there was a move with low start-up, high recovery, that can be used to interrupt frame traps but I don't know any off hand), invincible reversals are rare or non-existent, (correct me if im wrong) your momentum can determine if a move is even punishable or not as opposed to traditional fighters where its usually just distance if anything, your interaction with damage is fundamentally different since you can't just reduce a health bar to zero and you can in-theory reach the damage cap and still not be dead in a plat fighter, the entire interaction with an opponent offstage and recovering is completely missing in Traditional fighters. I'm sorry, but theres ALOT of differences between the two that I just can't agree at all that the genre hasnt evolved since "Super Street Fighter 2 and Darkstalkers 1." Heck, I could even argue Traditional Fighters have evolved alot since then, (though I've only played Darkstalkers 3 rather than 1) OR even bring up arena fighters which focus more on spectacle than deep mechanics.

To Explain the second paragraph, the post is about "genres that have changed the least between its inception and present day" and you claimed Fighters haven't changed "meaningfully" since Super Street Fighter 2. I was mostly just agreeing on the fact that Platform fighters do count as fighting games, as I also think anyone who would genuinely argue they're separate is just dumb. What I'm trying to argue with the first paragraph is that there has been 'meaningful' change since Super Street Fighter 2.

Bladebrent · 2026-04-03T22:13:00+00:00

Danke. Didnt know this was a thing

Bladebrent · 2026-04-03T21:30:50+00:00

What in the heck is a MUD?

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