Hmm, I see your points, though Im not super happy about them since I’ve heard loads of disappointment from people who play the games you mentioned. I really wanna join the fgc, but my timing seems to be very unfortunate, because I’ve heard loads of complaints from series fans who play those games.
Street Fighter V is wildly unbalanced and has only barebone features; Injustice controls stiffly and has a way too big buffer window; Mortal Kombat… Yeah okay, I’ll admit that my issues with MK are mostly me disliking the idda of having to press a button to block, but nonetheless, I don’t think I’m imagining things when I say that a lot of the big fighting game series’ are at some fairly low points right now.
It’s not just the ones you discussed either, I’ve heard all about how Pokken requires you to buy a seperate controller that is always low in stock, expensive and only works on that one game or how awful KoF XIV looks etc. Etc. Even Marvel vs. Capcom, one of the most hyped fighting game series’ of our time just had a new installment released yesterday and its already received a widely “meh” response, sitting at an unimpressive 6/10 average score on steam. I don’t know if I’m just hearing the wrong things, but it seems like most of the current fighting games are not all that favored with players and that makes them a lot less appealing to me.
Of course, it’s not like there aren’t any bright spots. Probably the best example is Arc System Works, who seem to be on fire right now with their smart handling of Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator and its expansion, the great reception from beta testers of their new Dragonball game and the incredible hype being generated over their upcoming crossover game. These guys seem to be putting lots of smiles on the fgc’s collective faces and they deserve recognition for that, but their games are very daunting for a noob like me. All their franchises have a reputation for being highly complex and after watching a little gameplay it isnt hard to see why. According to Core-A-Gaming, Guilty Gear takes MONTHS of training to play with intentionality. That’s a little scary for someone’s first attempt at going competitive with a fighting game (outside of smash, in my case) but with the much less positive buzz so many of the other fighters of today seem to be getting, I kind of end up being turned off by then too so idk where to go from here.
Sorry for all the rambling.