Wow. Uh.
My first impression is that I think I'm disliking this more than J-Stars.
LET THAT SINK IN. THEY SOMEHOW MADE J-STARS LESS FUN.
First off, the presentation feels soulless. At least in J-Stars, as weird as some of the UI choices were, it at least embraced the fact it was all about the fact they were all from manga. This just feel like "NO, THIS IS SUPER SERIOUS, THIS AIN'T NO COMIC OR CARTOON". I've also never been a fan of games where they need to feel as though they need to get rid of a normal menu & have you walk around a giant area just to select what you want to do. If it's just for the online lobby, I guess it's fine, but I don't want to have to walk to one place to another just to play the game offline. I disliked this in BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle & always used the menu option, and I dislike it here as well.
Also I guess I already knew this, but the fact all 3 characters share the same lifebar is kinda lame. It makes it feel like there's no point in choosing two other characters unless they're suppose to be used for combos or assists, but it just encourages me to just stick with one character. As a fan of the Marvel Vs. Capcom games, it just goes against everything I enjoy about crossover tag games, that each team member matters because they're most likely going to partake in the fight, but here, it just seems at the moment that I can get by with one character if I'm good enough with them.
I tried playing as Kenshiro & Hisoka, and while I'll give it a few more tries to get a better hang of the controls, they don't feel fun to control? It's hard to explain, but I think how Sparks & Tharp explained it seems to be the best way to describe it at the moment:
Was only able to play it briefly, but from my experience the controls seemed pretty experimental in a way? And there was so much flashiness for such little input, it was like I was engaging in a 10 second cutscene with every button pressed. It was very hard to tell what was going on, but maybe with time it becomes deeper? I don't remember too much else, but I just remember being blown away how much I did not enjoy it. Curious to hear others opinions.
I haven't played it a ton yet, but I know what you mean, it has an auto-combo feel going on but with some of the characters having slow/long animations, it can feel a bit like you're locked in. I haven't tried all the characters but I find myself enjoying the faster characters like Rukia more since they feel more snappy.
So far, I'm now very likely to cancel my pre-order of the deluxe edition, even with the 20% discount from Best Buy. I guess if there was one good thing, it doesn't seem like it'll have the annoying long super cutscenes that J-Stars had like when you powered up & HAD to see all three team members charging every single match.
