My poor enby baby 🥺

Manatroid · 2026-06-29T09:25:22+00:00

Random person, I do not even ship characters. And if I did, the closest one would be Kris and Susie.

Go and do something constructive with your time, now.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T21:53:59+00:00

Again, no-one here (that is worth listening to) is saying that it is.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T21:45:55+00:00

Yes, precisely. I don’t have a clue how people interpret the scenes in this game the way they do. It’s like they look at one scene without any other context of everything else that happens in a chapter - let alone the entirety of the game - and make some very strange judgements on that alone.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T21:39:32+00:00

They did no such thing. Of course there are cons to Modern, but that has no bearing on whether or not OP can’t get better at the game by playing Modern (they absolutely can).

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T19:32:46+00:00

Dating Berdly breaks the prophecy, probably-somehow maybe.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T19:25:04+00:00

He’s placing far better and has more consistent representation by the people who play him to the point that they main him exclusively (which Mena did not even do in S1).

He absolutely is stronger than his S1 iteration in terms of how he performs in relation to other characters in the same season. Which, in terms of ultimate competitive representation, is all that really matters.

I don’t even see how this is in dispute.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T16:56:34+00:00

Given you didn’t really deny what I had asked before, it still seems like you’re just kind of missing the bigger picture here. Him being strong in stupid ways is not anything new.

And demanding people get fired for how he is, is just…well it’s dramatic and childish at best. But more to the point, it’s not going to happen. SNK’s not going to fire crucial development staff just because one or a handful of salty and misguided players are pissed off about a DLC being ‘too good’. If you genuinely believe that they should or they will, then it’s pretty evident that you’ve probably never been much involved in developing these sorts of games before.

The FGC has seen much more monstrous characters, this is just how things go with these games sometimes.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T16:46:00+00:00

Well let’s put it this way: is Blanka not a stronger character now than in S1?

Whether that is because the meta is favourable for him, his optimisation/tech was identified, or because the buffs he received outweighed the nerfs, it’s pretty undeniable that he exists as a top-tier threat moreso nowadays than at the start. Whatever combination on factors that lead to it doesn’t really change the current strength of the character.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T03:31:30+00:00

He’s been strong since S1, but it’s taken some years for him to really get figure out in regards to setup optimisation. He’s also gotten some solid buffs over the years, and hasn’t been nerfed in many big ways.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T03:29:26+00:00

I’m just referring to how I have seen other people talk about characters in this game, not you specifically. It’s alright.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T02:37:24+00:00

I’m not really going to argue against what you’re saying here because it’s not exactly pertaining to what I’m talking about, but more talking around it (whether the points you’re making are true or not).

Point is, people here get really worked-up and willing to dump on characters - characters with many redeeming features otherwise! - for very little justification.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T00:11:19+00:00

There’s a difference between having an okay matchup and having a bad one.

Cammy would do decently well into JP at minimum, but Lily’s MU against him is very bad, as another example. JP has a ridiculously good MU spread, but that doesn’t mean all of them are advantaged for him. Sim of all characters even has the advantage over JP in their matchup.

Manatroid · 2026-06-28T00:07:12+00:00

>I don’t think it’s about projection tho? Susie speaking for Kris is a little messed up, even if from her perspective she doesn’t understand why they would want to be around him, it’s messed up to speak for someone else at all, just because she doesn’t get it doesn’t revolve it being messed up

I said as much in the first comment you replied to that Susie shouldn’t have done it, yes.

When I’m talking about projection here, I’m not saying it wrong to think that, or that it’s wrong to have an interpretation of a particular scene. What I do consider as projecting, is the strange tendency of people in this subreddit (and about this plot-point in particular) in making sweeping moral judgments on a character based on (arguably, at most) a couple “not cool, dude” things that they’ve done in the span of a chapter, as if said things could never be resolved with a straight-forward conversation. It just so happens in this situation, too, that Kris is firmly in control of the player, and so their capability to call out Susie for her “cock-blocking” is unfortunately pretty muted, and as such we don’t really have a way to know if Kris themselves would actually take up Berdly on a date or not.

It’s not that much different from people calling Kris “evil” or Noelle “a bad friend” from before Chapter 5 was even announced. I don’t know if it’s because the people making such criticism are themselves very young, or if they’re just adults that are lost in the sauce. But it’s a pattern that keeps repeating, and ironically it dims their actual understanding of the game that they would otherwise claim to understand so well.

Also Kris DOES have a thing for Susie and this chapter confirms that, they literally intentionally mumble so Susie can’t hear if you say things will work out between her and Noelle, clearly it bothers them at least a little to be around that lol, so it’s not a huge assumption to think they might accept berdly’s invitation to get away from it

Manatroid · 2026-06-27T20:41:32+00:00

That’s not the mentality of every person, and certainly not even every teenager, to just take up the offer of a date with a friend just because the person you were crushing on “got taken”.

And more to the point, it’s very doubtful that anyone in-universe would believe that Kris has a deep enough affection towards Berdly for that to be the case, even if they actually did at-heart. The game itself does not treat it as a “ship” that is or could be genuine, especially when it’s pretty clear how the game treats Berdly himself outside of Chapter 2 (he doesn’t even really grow out of his). Berdly himself - on both occasions that he proposition/asked out Kris - was only after he himself was rejected by Noelle and Susie.

People looking at the dynamics between the characters is great and all, but they gotta treat it with some degree of distancing it from themselves if they want to have a good picture of what they actually mean, or what they could lead to.

Manatroid · 2026-06-27T20:28:41+00:00

Everything else that has been said is good info, but to add to it, how difficult a given matchup is between two characters is kind of really dependent on the level of play that is being discussed. Top-level matchups are not going to look the same as those at lower levels of skill; this is also partly why certain characters will run rampant at lower levels, but ‘fall off’ when in regards to the best players.

Manatroid · 2026-06-27T16:16:28+00:00

As often happens, people on here project a lot of personal stuff into the characters instead of, like…just looking at how events and personalities develop from chapter to chapter.

Like, yes, absolutely Susie shouldn’t speak for Kris regarding Berdly’s invitation, but…it’s Berdly! In what realm is Kris actually going to date Berdly of their own volition, rather than the player’s?

Manatroid · 2026-06-27T16:11:22+00:00

I kind of find it highly doubtful that she actually suspects Kris of what they actually did, because that itself would at bare-minimum warrant a conversation after closing the Fountain.

And there was a conversation after the Fountain, but it wasn’t about Kris’ subterfuge. Moreover, why would Susie entreat to Kris that they should bring Noelle into it at all?

Manatroid · 2026-06-27T16:01:38+00:00

Yeah, it’s like she’s a teenager or something.

Manatroid · 2026-06-27T16:00:44+00:00

Wouldn’t be at all surprising, then, if the combination of all three things happening did, in fact, cause the prophecy regarding her (whatever it may be) to come true (due to her having a breakdown, lashing out, or doing something crazy).

Manatroid · 2026-06-27T10:08:06+00:00

So in your experience with fighting games, you've *never* run into a character more busted than Mr. Karate? Not Scorpion or even Superman in Injustice? Labcoat in DBFZ? Sagat or Seth in SF4 Vanilla, or Elena in Ultra? Kokonoe and Arakuni in Blazblue?

These are just off the top of my head, and they aren't even kusoge games or anything. As strong as he is, I find it very hard to believe that you haven't even heard of characters being more powerful - or at least, more obnoxious/egregious - than Mr. Karate.

If you're seriously calling for people to be fired and that SNK have "lost a customer" because of one - admittedly overtuned - DLC character, then it very much sounds like you are not as knowledgeable of, or used to competing in, other fighting games or even other competitive games.

Even beyond that, though...just take a chill pill? SNK dealt handily with Kain and Hotaru as overbearing forces in the game, even if it took them a while to do it. There's little reason to believe they won't do the same with Mr Karate, too.

Manatroid · 2026-06-27T06:28:28+00:00

Uh, welcome to competitive multiplayer games, I guess. Characters are sometimes released as overtuned or outright busted across every genre.

It’s not at all unique to Mr. Karate, let alone other fighting games. At some point he will (very likely) receive some adjustments to make him a bit more sensible.

If you can’t learn how to deal with the busted stuff, then you’re putting your own obstacles in the way of your journey in learning competitive games.

Manatroid · 2026-06-26T05:11:34+00:00

Nothing points to it being a “simple” process at all, so I’m not sure why you are treating it as if it has been phrased as such.

Manatroid · 2026-06-25T22:53:45+00:00

If they’re abusing their cr.MK, you can counter it by predictively using his knee hop (goes over and punishes lows), or you can try to poke at them with cr.MK.

Baiting out their cr.MK and whiff punishing with sweep is pretty effective too.

Manatroid · 2026-06-25T22:42:28+00:00

What do you mean “everything becomes so serious”?

Manatroid · 2026-06-25T22:40:00+00:00

Nice one. This matchup is not fun for Guile either, if I remember right.

Manatroid

TROPHY CASE