TAI-X

If anyone's ever dealt with attempting to buy games from NG:DEV Team, who infamously had one of their releases mysteriously "held up in customs" for over a YEAR after being "shipped", I'm getting a serious case of deja vu here. Must be something about Germany... At any rate, I'm even more glad now that I didn't bother with this turd.

The apparent lack of a challenge/trial mode is pretty damning for such a combo-focused game.

Where did I say they did? They would have to censor the fatalities again, but I think fans would be a lot more forgiving if it wasn't a steaming turd like the original MK vs. DCU.

You probably already know this, but Kilik is an unlockable character in SCV, and his redesign and stage are pretty cool. He's nothing more than a gigantic tease, though, since they trolled everyone by turning him into one of the game's THREE Mokujin characters. At least you can give him Xiba's moveset and pretend you're actually playing as Kilik. Also, about Lost Swords, if you're going to release a F2P fighter that has a full-priced packaged equivalent, the only proper way to do it is to integrate the two. DOA5U Core Fighters should have set the standard for the format.

So the new Unicorn variant can't use purged armaments at all again until respawning? You got Armored Core in my GvG!

If you're not going to treat it as a demo, what's the point of making a F2P version of SCV when the full game goes for less than $20 new? I didn't hate SCV. It's incredibly polished and playable (in every sense other than game balance), and still generally fun. Some of the new characters were cool and interesting to use, particularly ZWEI. But they took too many steps backwards, in an ill-advised attempt to court the new blood that SFIV pulled into the genre. If they're really going to do SCVI for next-gen, they should return to SCII's movesets and use those as a base again. Also, no more silly guest characters, please. Ezio was the only acceptable one, because he actually fits SC's setting and standards of character design.

I edited my post to include the possibility of Aksys being blocked by Microsoft's regulations. Still doesn't explain why they failed to give the game any kind of physical release here, if its European publisher could manage one on both consoles. I guess they just had less faith in it. While the 360 had a huge marketshare in the US then as now, its main demographics are perceived as being rather different from the PS3's, and not so interested in girly anime games. The stereotypical 360 user is a Mountain Dew-chugging, Dorito-scarfing, Call of Duty-playing bro dude. There is no such easily defined stereotype associated with the PS3. Its userbase has always been seen as being more receptive and "friendly" to niche Japanese games, regardless of the frequently overlooked wealth of quality Japanese exclusives that exists on the 360.

If BB's Tager is any indication, Waldstein is going to be heavily used by US netplayers. He's the most "badass" of the cast, is less reliant on long combos, and his moveset will likely prove to be advantageous within lag, as Tager's is. Of course there will also be Gordeau scythe spammers, and the requisite shoto scrubs attempting to play Hyde and Akatsuki like Ryu/Ken. The character balance has changed so frequently across the game's arcade history, that I'm probably not going to have any idea of who I want to main until I actually have it in my hands.

There was actually a very Engrishy partial dub of KOF XIII made for the arcade version, but SNKP wisely decided not to finish it. (Check out KOF 2006/Maximum Impact 2 to hear one of the worst disasters ever in fighting game dubbing, where Iori awkwardly asks "What's wrong?" when throwing fire waves.) It was pretty much the same situation with XII, where some characters had English voices in the dub and some were unchanged, except that made it to consoles. I'm pretty sure Aksys skipped on the 360 version of AH3 Vanilla simply because they decided there wasn't enough of a market for the game on 360 in the US. And with the exception of Deathsmiles IIX, Microsoft has never allowed Games on Demand releases for games that have not been sold physically in the same region.

Aksys does a physical release for Arcana Heart in the US? Guess times have changed. Looks like they're either ignoring the Vita version or it will indeed be download-only, though. Still not canceling my JPN preorder. The US release is coming out after classes have restarted, when I won't have enough time to play it anymore. I don't care about the story content of this series, and considering their recent efforts, it's likely that Arc/Aksys are going to completely botch the localization in some way again.

Sequel should be MK vs. DCU 2, combining assets from MK9 and Injustice.

Color me surprised. I assume Arc is just publishing the game and not actually handling the port. It won't be region locked. That was Atlus who did that, and they're never going to do it again after learning their lesson.

I really hope that Bamco hasn't given up on packaged fighting games, and that this F2P silliness isn't all we're ever going to get from them from now on. If they have to go the F2P route, they should do it like DOA5U on PS3, where the game has both a packaged and F2P incarnation that can play with each other.

I have had smooth connections with Japanese Virtua Fighter 5: FS players before. Sega doesn't get enough recognition for being netcode wizards.

I don't think there are any others in English, sadly. I'd like to know what combos can be done out of Catherine's Love Power Coming Out.

"Bragging?" What would it prove that I beat shitty AI, other than that the game sucks? I shouldn't be able to completely walk all over the opposition right away after cranking the difficulty up to max in ANY game. It should at least be on par with Blazblue's Score Attack. Of course, ASB's problems don't end there. Underneath all the polish and fanservice, ASB is hardly any better than the endless procession of sub-mediocre, disposable DBZ and Naruto fighters. It's a pale shadow of Capcom's Stardust Crusaders game (which, may I add, was largely made by the same team as the SFIII series). No matter how many times they put out patches, CyberConnect2 can't escape their lack of talent and experience with real fighting games. This was obvious long before they staged that absurd AI tournament for ASB. Also, 30 FPS is a dealbreaker for any fighter, especially when it can't even stop the framerate from dropping significantly further during elaborate animations.

This was my first reaction. A framerate like this is absolutely unacceptable in a fighting game played offline. It puts it on the same level as Castlevania Judgment. Not to mention that I completely devastated the CPU on Very Hard with my cheesy, button-mashy combos that I was pulling off almost right away. The constant cinematic cut-ins got aggravating after ten minutes. This is a neutered dog of a game compared to Capcom's sublime take on the JoJo franchise, and I can safely ignore it from now on with no regrets.

I'm pretty sure the game was translated by native English speaking Westerners and not any staff from ASW or their US branch, though. It seems quite unusual that they would have specifically told this outsourced studio beforehand "yeah guys, don't even bother with Library mode, it's filled with kookoo-nutty terminology and language that those dumbass gaijin will never understand."

Works for me. I have very little experience fighting human players, and strategy games are a weakness of mine in general. Maybe we can get Kaabii in for a 3P.

Fair enough. It was completely outsourced to a third party localization studio, right? I still think ASW was covering someone's asses.

Are they ever going to add any Sega characters besides Akira (who isn't even playable ATM) to justify the stages? Aesthetically, this game is the biggest random hodgepodge since Playstation All-Stars.

On principle, I always watch or play any media with the voices of its original language, so Japanese 100% of the time.

Did you ever get your internet and XBL Gold subscription back, Fenrir? We still have yet to play.

Looks like I'm going to continue importing ASW games from now on, rather than throwing money in support of their piss-poor localizations. This isn't the 1990s, you can't get away with shit like this anymore. The GameFAQs and NeoGAF kids will ensure that everyone and anyone with an interest in the game knows about it. They should have just been honest and said that they didn't translate Library mode because it was too long and hard to work with on a deadline while juggling multiple other projects. I could at least respect them on some level for that. I suspect ASW may have been trying to cover Aksys' ass with their explanation, so as not to rock the boat with their Western business ventures.

I've given up hope that UNIB will ever recieve a console release, and FB's contractual obligations with Sega and Dengeki are probably to blame. I think its only remaining chance for making it out of the arcades would be a latecomer PC release at least a couple years from now, after the game's arcade scene has completely dried up. They may need the urging of a Western indie publisher to put it out. The PC isn't a good platform for fighting games but it's a whole lot better than nothing.