Can anyone show me what's cooler in Xrd than in +R?

[GooieTheGreen]

I'm a very new FG player (200 hrs in +R, 100 hrs in Xrd), and I can't find anything to like in Rev 2 that isn't just cooler in +R. I don't care about the better graphics or input buffer, or anything like that.

 

I play Baiken in +R, and she looks dumbed down in every way in Xrd. I can manage going through Azami before accessing the GC, and the existence of Azami is absolutely hilarious, but beyond that, I don't like one change. Her GC options are less varied, her execution is largely dumbed down, her combos are way less cool, etc. Compare 2H in both games: ones is an AA, a pressure tool, and a situational side-switcher in combos, and it does that all in a unique way. Xrd 2H? Pretty standard call-out low profile-- fine in its own way, but I find it less saucy. And things are similarly less saucy to me like this wherever I look.

Additionally, I like chars who have a wide variety of options to represent in any given scenario and high execution, and I can't find anything in Xrd that isn't clearly inferior in both departments to +R. Baiken, again, falls victim to this in my eyes: For example, the flop on Tatami being gone removes a valuable option on pressure and neutral, with not really anything to fill the void, leaving BA simplified in my eyes.

I've tried AN, BA, LE, EL, RA, JA, JO, and CH, and have found nothing that dispels my opinion of Xrd being less cool than +R in every department I care about. Closest was EL with her admittedly genuinely unique and rad versatility and oki, but I dislike her mundane defense too much for me to want to main her in a game I dislike.

 

I really do want to like this game, but I just fail to find anything to like about it due to +R always being there. This week's play sessions have just been focused on finding that thing to like about it, and it just won't show up. Can someone point me the right way?

 

Edit: changed "crappy defense" to "mundane defense" to better reflect I'm sharing my opinion of playing her, not making a judgment call to the power of her defense.

[Frogster88]

There's a general consensus that Xrd is simpler than +R in 99% of aspects. With that being said, there's still plenty of depth, with absurd combo routes as usual and some interesting mechanics like Blitz and the expanded Roman system which let you get away with more than usual, especially with projectile > Yellow Roman oki for mixups and whatnot.

 

There is an element to be known that Xrd is built off the Accent Core build rather than the +R build. This is most prevalent in characters like Pot, who was absolutely insane in +R but relatively weak in Xrd, because AC Pot was pretty bad. Extend this to the rest of the cast, and comparatively, +R was a lot more, for lack of a better term, unhinged than AC which lead into the Xrd design philosophy. Xrd was the first game that was built more to suit a newer player that would see some of +R's crazy fast and complicated execution and be scared away from the game; remember, Xrd was also the first primary console version and trying to stand out amongst the other games available is insanely hard.

 

All that to say, yes, Xrd is overall simpler than +R, but it still has plenty of complexity. Whether fortunate or not, however, most of its complexity is left to the quick decision making in scramble situations or trying to figure out how to get in through walls of zoning or dealing with insanity like invisible high-lows. Combos are generally simpler (albeit still absurd compared to modern games like Strive) in exchange for equally (and sometimes crazier) neutral and pressure.

 

Xrd also tends to have more interactions per round courtesy of the insane guts scaling, giving more emphasis on the neutral and on optimizing combos, which, at high levels, leads to crazy routing there's no reason to have at lower levels.