Yvl9921

Skullgirls is a very one dimensional and over all weak release. While there is a mediocre, combo dependent game hiding at its core, the barrier to entry in this game is far too steep, and the tutorial gives you none of the help you need to reach its potential. While this game, and this studio, has tons of potential, the game isn't anything remarkable in its present state (at release). While it is solidly constructed, technically, many of the decisions seem shallow or poorly thought out. There are only 8 characters at launch, and each of those characters has only a handful of skills available to them, causing them to feel far too much alike. Yet, somehow, these characters manage to be unbalanced. A few of the characters have extremely limited mobility, and a few of them, like Parasoul, relentlessly keep you at range. No matter who you choose, you're either going to be frustrated or be frustrating someone. What confuses me the most, however, is how this game has been toted as a beginner friendly game, when I've never seen a fighter that's been harder to get into. The tutorial teaches you how to play fighting games, but it doesn't teach you how to play THIS fighting game. After you're done learning concepts like poking, comboing, and so on, the game leaves you completely on your own to figure out each character. Because of the lack of skills, you're supposed to chain regular attacks in combos that are frustrating to use and to have used on you. However, the game does not give you any indication what skills are available to you. Instead, the game directs you back to your computer to look up all of their special skills online. Even the character guide that is provided online gives no indication what regular attacks (which are the backbone of the gameplay) are available to use, nor how they interact with each other, leaving new players far more lost than they deserve to be. The only people whom I would recommend this game to are people who are huge fans of combo heavy gameplay, and fighting fans who are on a budget. Hopefully this studio will have better luck with its future releases and DLC.

I have to say I'm extremely impressed by Dynasty Warriors 7. I went in expecting an uninspired, mind-numbing time killer like most of the rest of the games in this franchise, but it seems like Koei finally took a long hard look at the franchise, looked at what worked, what didn't work, and used it to make a very solid experience. The game feels fully polished, and its story-telling rivals that of industry giants, and they have added many more battles and events than all of their previous games, though the story and setting remains the same. The learning curve strikes a perfect balance between features you start with and features you need to earn. The only lament I have for this game is that the battles still haven't returned to the tactical depth that they once had in the PS2 era, but the combat system has been improved enough to make the game fun enough that I can barely notice. I highly recommend this game, especially if you enjoyed other Warriors games, because this one is by far the finest to date.