Recent reviews by Red

Only a few minutes in and I can already say this seems to be a quality release.

Visually speaking, it's not perfect since some artworks look a bit odd on a big screen, and the game's PSP roots do show especially in 3D models. However, assets still got an obvious upgrade and the remaster apparently targets 4K, so it looks good on modern displays. Plus actual fights are in 3D, and thankfully the internal resolution isn't locked at something that would make it blurry.

Gameplay-wise, I trust it to play the exact same as the PSP version but at 60 fps and with added features (including online with rollback netcode). Note that I haven't played the original, but this style of game seems harder to actually mess up than something like 2D fighting games that heavily rely on frame data.

Do I like the game? Kind of, as someone who has yet to play Falcom games this is more of a curiosity release than anything to me. It's pretty fun but kind of janky, and I think it's a bit expensive for the little I might end up playing it. But considering there seems to be proper care and effort in the port/remaster at all levels, it's the kind of release I want to support regardless.

Well, I can't say I'm impressed by this port in its current state, or rather, I'm impressed it's as broken as it is yet still somehow runs. Having a barebones port is one thing, but this one is also rough around the edges in ways that are difficult to ignore and should have been caught by playtesters and developers alike.

Disclaimer: Aquapazza is a game that I've wanted to play for the longest time but couldn't, since I had no PlayStation 3 and would have had to import the game anyway as a European player. So it's kind of heartbreaking to see it's not getting the port it deserved to get out of PS3 jail, and I genuinely hope it will be fixed soon enough (on many levels) instead of remaining broken forever.

When starting the game for the first time, you're greeted by a 720p window with an ugly horizontal menu. No problem with the resolution itself on paper since that's the game's native res, but that menu should not exist... It's oddly reminiscent of arcade dumps and old-school Japanese indie games.

The port was seemingly handled by a completely unknown company called Safari Ga- Fabulous Works Entertainment, seeing how they replace Examu (the original developers) in the opening logos. No CycloneZero in sight (studio that worked on basically all previous Examu ports).

Once you reach the title screen, the only choice you have is forward: that's right, there is no option to exit the game... EXCEPT in the aforementioned ugly menu. At that point you're better off just closing it with Alt+F4, at least it works regardless of your display mode.

Then comes the main menu, and there you start truly feeling the lack of polish. The "Network" option looks out-of-place since it was very obviously redone to replace the "PlayStation Network" one. And I can't speak for people with an actual Xbox controller, but with a DualShock 4 v2, all button prompts are garbled except in select few cases like in the remapping menu or the pause/restart tip in training mode.

The display settings menu is also really weird. Going borderless or fullscreen seems to still rely on the game scaling the output, so sticking to 720p you end up with something that seems to use nearest neighbour scaling, while 1440p in my case seems to be using bilinear scaling. It even seems to produce different results between borderless and fullscreen, but maybe that's because I tried this out on Linux and not on Windows so far.

The port seems to be a hybrid of the arcade and console versions, meaning the console version's features forcefully added into the arcade build. As such it's mostly functional but has a few things missing from the PlayStation 3 version (like the palette preview in ranked match setup... and that's just from quick comparisons!), and you shouldn't expect any quality of life updates ("at random" to training mode).

Then the very bad, starting with the obvious requested feature: no, there's no rollback netcode, and yes, it's still the same old delay-based netcode (which was allegedly bad even by that standard). I kind of expected that given the radio silence leading to launch, but it wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue if the port was actually good beyond that... Nope, there are game-breaking bugs in battle, crashes, you can manually freeze the game and advance frames with specific keys at least in menus (but apparently even in online matches), character names are untranslated in story mode, and people are reporting unsteady framerates (which will cause hiccups online). Testing on Linux here, the game seems to mostly stick to 60 fps with rare dips on absolutely overkill hardware, though I can't be sure the game's framerate limiter is any good, so it "Works On My Machine" but it seems to be the exception rather than the norm. Keep in mind it's using DirectX 9 at its core too, so on Windows you will have added input delay in borderless fullscreen for example by virtue of not having flip presentation. Oh, and don't expect any kind of proper keyboard support or being able to launch the game without an active Internet connection, we can't have that here.

Finally, the extra jank: for some reason the opening plays correctly when booting the game, but trying to play videos in gallery mode just won't work on Linux, so it's not a codec issue. Not a huge problem in the grand scheme of things, but it just goes to show how poor this port is.
EDIT: Are you seriously still using Windows Media Video 8 to encode videos?! Now I have even bigger concerns for asset quality as a whole, because I assume it's using the arcade assets wholesale instead of taking the best of both worlds...
EDIT 2: I'm losing it, this port is heavier than both the arcade and console versions, yet has recompressed assets that are worse quality or messed up. This Steam version is confusing on all accounts.
EDIT 3: Tested with an Xbox 360 controller, still no proper glyphs in menus. Yeah.


TL;DR: Technically antiquated and clunky port made by a no-name company, with absolutely no QoL improvements, and it doesn't even seem to have been playtested properly. Wait for patches.

4 hours in and we're still on chapter 1, friendships are already being tested as betrayals most foul happen every two turns while we all struggle in different ways. The town of Ural in particular has seen a lot of political unrest between monster attacks and the king outright taking it from another player and giving it to me.

Jokes aside, this seems to be a pretty good game if you can get it on sale (as I did). Take Mario Party and Monopoly, mix them up with a JRPG, and there you have a party game with very long games and a lot of backstabs in perspective. It's mechanically interesting and very fun so far (despite the salt inherent to that kind of game) but really lacking from a technical standpoint, it's an old PS2/Wii game at its core and it shows in the models, textures, and 30 fps cap.

Now I hope Dokapon UP! will come to PC at some point, since Dokapon: Sword of Fury was ported earlier this year...

I can't give a definitive opinion on this game until I finish it (because many games end up being repetitive or faceplanting towards the end) but so far, it's really good! Not perfect, but definitely solid for the price tag. I'll do a quick list of pros and cons instead of a proper review since things might change as the game progresses.

Pros:

• Very solid JRPG-inspired battle system (the Persona 5 / Metaphor: ReFantazio inspiration is very obvious even if just from a visual standpoint in combat) with extra dodge/parry/jump buttons that encourage you to master enemy patterns to take as little damage as possible and even get bonuses out of it. Also Dark Souls-like progression with campfires and respawning enemies, plus a world map that's reminiscent of games like Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler with a very strong depth of field.
  
• Actually pretty well-optimised (and bug-free)! A rare sight compared to many recent games, and especially Unreal Engine 5 ones at launch. On my new rig, I can almost get 60 fps at native 1440p with everything maxed out, and I definitely get beyond that with XeSS Ultra Quality Plus (usually around 90 fps).
  
• Intriguing lore that so far seems pretty unique.
  
• Does not feel too easy or too difficult on the default difficulty: it can be a bit challenging at times (especially if you're not careful), but not enough to truly impede your progress. However going by my recent progress it seems to be leaning towards the "easy" side of things...
  
• Different characters have very different playstyles.
  
• Excellent English dub.
  
• Awesome environmental art.
  
• A double-A game at AA price, one could even argue it's trying to punch a bit over its weight. In any case, it's great to see more AA games being released and getting into the spotlight.

Not pros or cons:

• The Prologue is both the best and worst possible introduction to the game. It does an okay job at giving a first look into the game's lore (if you care about it) as well as gameplay mechanics (if you care about it), but there are also several interactions you can miss including fairly useful battle tutorials if you're not careful even though most of the actually "important" characters there usually stand out (which kind of ties into my complaints on visuals since I didn't notice some of them the first time around...).
  
• Character writing and the overall story seem a bit weak judging by the early game, but who knows, maybe this will improve later on. I'm over seven hours in and both the lore and cast still feel like they could be summed up on post-its despite attempts at setting strong themes (loss, grief, and moving forward) and showcasing the weight of the Paintress's actions. Thankfully I'm here more for the atmosphere, journey and gameplay than for the story and character development, but it is a bit jarring.
  
• Chromatic aberration is weird in this game. On the one hand, I do think it helps reinforcing parts of the game's aesthetics, but on the other hand, it significantly softens the image and makes things harder to parse than necessary. I might disable it at some point...
  
• Hitboxes for world geometry can be a bit funky in places that were not really designed to be extensively checked out, but that was to be expected. It is a AA RPG after all, so it's pretty much all well-decorated corridors.
  
• Remember the dodge/parry/jump system? I personally enjoy it, and as someone used to action and rhythm games I don't struggle too much with it (or QTEs for skills), but if you're here for a purely turn-based RPG this is definitely not it. It can also sometimes feel a bit inconsistent in terms of when enemy attacks actually land compared to visual and audio cues, and when your inputs are registered. The game doesn't tell you if you were too early or too late either.
  
• No manual saves. You have a limited amount of "previous saves" for a given slot, but still.
  
• The soundtrack is pretty great, but it does seem to suffer from the "main theme syndrome", where the same leitmotiv(s) are recycled throughout the entire game in ways that are not always necessarily subtle. It was very much a problem for me in the Prologue, seemed to get a bit better in the first actual area, and now it seems to be back. It really depends on the track but some can feel samey.

Cons (mainly nitpicks):

• The devs probably tweaked a few things, but the game still has that "Unreal Engine 5 look", from colour grading to motion blur to particle effects and all kinds of visual artefacts. Noise and flickering in hair, particles and reflections in particular really doesn't do a favour to the overall presentation. And the colour grading (plus internal HDR, probably) doesn't really let colours shine in some ways, like everything somewhat blends together.
  
• Motion blur feels overly strong... I hope they're not using the engine's default.
  
• From the little I've played with the French dub on, it is good, but not great. It probably doesn't help that the Prologue has all kinds of NPCs that may not have gotten the same care as the main characters, and that lipsync was done using the English script as a basis. I trust that it gets better as the story unfolds with the focus shifting to the core cast, but first impressions are definitely less stellar than expected and I'll stick with the English dub since it's pretty obvious it was the main target here even if it means non-lore-accurate French swear words.
  
• Video compression is far from great. I get that it was probably done to avoid bloating the game's install size, but it would be nice to have higher quality replacements as an additional download because there is some ugly colourbanding and macroblocking in places.
  
• Speaking of pre-rendered cutscenes, they also contain visual artefacts in hair and water rendering, which is a shame. But hey, at least it's consistent with in-game graphics I guess?
  
• I've spotted a few instances of dialogue going slightly out-of-sync with cutscenes; I don't remember whether it was with videos or in-game cutscenes however.
  
• Still about cutscenes, it seems there's uneven frame pacing? Maybe UE5's broken framerate limiter is at it again on 30 fps content?
  
• I couldn't find a way to use DualShock 4 button prompts even by forcing Steam Input on and off, so I'm stuck with Xbox ones sadly.
  
• No menu wrapping in some cases >:(

TL;DR: I can't claim for sure that the game will be great in its entirety, but my experience so far has been enjoyable enough for me to recommend it.

What the ever-loving clunk is this.

Disclaimer: I haven't played the original game, so I don't know how this new version fares in comparison to it. What I can say however is that this looks like a mishmash of assets (most of them being obviously old) thrown together in a way that simply doesn't work.

• There are high-resolution UI elements and character portraits next to pixelated backgrounds and sprites that don't even all scale the same way because some are higher resolution or less compressed than others. Oh and of course bilinear scaling on sprites to make things look even worse.
  
• You have overall crunchy audio featuring an ear-bleeding sound effect when unpausing the game.
  
• The demo doesn't have any on-screen button prompts (good luck keyboard players) and even playing with a controller isn't foolproof as the control scheme changes within menus for seemingly no good reason (I suddenly have to use the stick and Square instead of d-pad and Cross to select my assist?!).
  
• In gameplay, everything feels zoomed in, animations feel like they're stuttering (even the camera; since this is Unity it could be the dreaded 50 Hz update "bug" many games face but I somehow doubt it) and hitboxes seem to be a mess too. It's basically impossible to follow.
  
• The main menu's UI is broken and you can end up scrolling out of the screen.
  
• There is no visual consistency in the UI, you have futuristic-looking assets then suddenly a rather basic comic-like font that looks out-of-place. And it's the main one in battle, and it sticks out like a sore thumb: this isn't UMvC3, this is a game about anime girls fighting one another.
  
• The demo almost aggressively wants to make sure you know there is a Kickstarter campaign for the full port.

I could go on, but in just five minutes of playtime I can tell this lacks polish at every level. Devs, you have a lot of work ahead if you really want this to succeed and especially as a proper fighting game made for PC. In its current state, I'm sorry to say but this is way undercooked with blatant recycling of old assets. Either make it right by figuring out ways to make it work well with the assets at your disposal, or remake it properly and entirely from scratch. Because this, right here, doesn't make me want to spend a cent on the Kickstarter when I've seen original indie fighting games with way more playable demos (whether they managed to get funded or not).

The DLC of all time.

One of the first things I do when I get a new game is to check the assets' quality (if possible) and graphics settings.

This seems to be the original Steam port mildly updated with the Global Match version's features and some touched-up assets for the "Global Match" branding (speaking of which, the opening's encoding is even worse in this release somehow), rather than a clean new port. Either that, or a stitched together new version. This means it's still DirectX 9, with no clear scaling options (it looks like bilinear to the target resolution then nearest neighbour scaling to the output res), and Xbox 360-grade assets.
I haven't tested online yet (even though it's the main selling point of this new version), but from what I'm reading it's broken in all kinds of ways right now. And if it's the same as the console release, you're stuck with static stages online.

Considering the console version of XIII Global Match has been out for some time and that this version reuses the old Steam Edition as its basis, SNK's investment has certainly been beyond refunded. Add to this the technical state this version is in right now: I hoped I wouldn't have to say that, but this should have been a free update.


Update: Aaaand they also removed the old version's Points Shop and ability to sell/buy its cards on the community market. And this version has none of this. Just awesome.

The only way they can truly justify GM being a standalone release is if they actually massively improve it (starting with netplay, asset quality which is a quick win, then rendering and quality of life options for better performance and future-proofing).

The Legacy of Kain series is one I've been wanting to explore for quite some time, and this was an excellent opportunity to do so. From what I've played and seen of these remasters so far, this is pretty good work and I'm leaning towards a recommendation... However, there are still a few problems to address before this can be considered the definitive (and future-proof) release of these two games. As you can guess this is my first time playing through them, and I've mostly been playing with classic graphics, but I've done my homework and extensively checked footage from the original PS1/PC/DC and PS2/PC versions for SR1 and SR2 respectively.

The version of Soul Reaver 1 in this collection seems to be sitting somewhere between the original PS1 version and the old PC port: most of the visuals seem to more closely match the PS1 release, but fog/draw distance looks like it may have been inherited from the PC one. Unfortunately, that also means we're missing out on some reworked effects from the Dreamcast version (such as blue gates barring progress early in the game) with no way to choose; not a big deal but some of them may have looked better on high definition displays.
The intro was noticeably re-rendered, although there are a few differences with the original: it's been cropped (which I can understand, there are often things you aren't really meant to see outside of the original area such as characters not moving or no proper background), it runs at 60 fps (compared to 15 fps on PS1 and 30 fps on PC and DC), but then some new issues slipped in like different textures on Raziel's wings or the bones being clean. Funnily enough they also fixed a shadow disappearing due to a character going out of the screen and popping out of existence, but now it jitters every second or so instead of being a still shadow. It's also "only" 1080p even though this remaster is targeting PC and current gen consoles capable of 4K output, but maybe this was done for parity with the SR2 intro... More on that later.
I have now encountered the same issue as basically everyone else and the "night" part of the day/night cycle (after the first boss fight) is way too dark in most places. It seems to change back to "daytime" the more you play, but it should really be tweaked and be made optional. Speaking of options, there's almost nothing to really tweak even though this is a PC release: volume sliders, and that's it. No resolution (which by the way is extra crunchy in classic mode, with again no way to choose), no anti-aliasing, no texture filtering... It's really barebones.
It would also be nice to have an option to use the smooth camera movement from the remastered graphics even in classic graphics, but I'm guessing that might require more work than other changes depending on how it was implemented.
A quick note on different aspect ratios: the shift to 16:9 seems to have been done by expanding the game horizontally rather than cropping it (unlike the introduction cutscene), which I can get behind. However there are some issues on Steam Deck when playing with its native resolution (which is 16:10), namely the sides of the screen get cropped and this is especially bad on the map screen. I have no idea how other aspect ratios fare (not even 4:3), but I hope this will be fixed through a patch.
Another bug I've noticed was with chunk streaming/loading: under some circumstances, you can end up briefly walking in a black void before the area is properly loaded in and rendered. Nothing too problematic, but this seems reasonably easy to fix and especially on modern hardware assuming that's the issue.

Moving on to Soul Reaver 2 now; I have yet to play it, but going by missing or changed graphical effects, it seems to be using the PC version as its foundation. This includes missing/altered lens flares and transparency effects on a certain staff visible early in the game, but most notably the complete absence of accumulation blur, which simply looks off in many cases including in cutscenes. There also seem to be a few issues with fog distance or some other setting once you go outside since the Southern Lake cutscene isn't 1:1 when looking at the skybox (and I'd trust there are more subtle differences throughout the game). Once again I hope this can all be fixed in a later update, possibly by adding options to toggle these settings.
While the topic is still cutscenes, the intro was AI upscaled in both resolution and framerate, from the PS2 version's file by the looks of it. How am I so sure about this? The PC version has horrible macroblocking and colourbanding artefacts plus somewhat washed out colours (all of which I'd blame on Bink Video), while the PS2 one has noticeable aliasing and weird horizontal line-like artefacts (which don't seem to be present in the old PC port, but it's too much of a garbled mess on most shots to tell for sure). The result doesn't look exactly great in motion or even in still shots, as expected: the artefacts are only exacerbated in the upscaled version, and interpolated animations don't look very natural. In that sense, it's only natural that it was upscaled to 1080p instead of 4K as the source was either 360p or 480p. I wish they had retrieved a higher quality master for this or re-rendered the whole cutscene like they did for SR1, but I understand that it can be difficult to track down the proper assets and have the appropriate tooling functioning as intended so many years after the game shipped. Still, if possible at all, this should be fixed via a patch since it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Another slight concern is that SR2 seems cropped vertically instead of expanded horizontally. Once again, hopefully this can be tweaked and provided as an option via a patch (and possibly more if necessary, such as the camera's point of origin, distance, field of view...). Same thing as for SR1 regarding graphics settings (or lackthereof).
There's also an issue with the health indicator being stretched in SR2 but not SR1, oddly enough; this should also be fixable in a patch since the compass does not have this problem.

What about the actual remastering effort though? Well, it's clear more work was put into SR1 which needed it the most while SR2 gets a less substantial upgrade. You get character model consistency between both games, which in my book is a good thing to better tie them together. SR1 gets upgraded models and textures (not sure if they were redrawn or AI-upscaled, but it's rather faithful either way), and some lighting upgrades like proper character shadows. You even get updated fog/rendering distance in some areas and see them like never before, and this change carries over to classic graphics (ideally I'd also like options again, but I'm fine with this really since it's not like in the GTA III "Definitive Edition" where the draw distance was pushed way too far and problems were noticeable). All in all, it looks like a proper upgrade to bring it a bit closer graphically to its younger sibling without looking "overdone". On the other hand, SR2 looks pretty similar between classic and remastered graphics, and most of the changes are cleaned up or reworked textures (some of which seem to have been AI-upscaled going by visual artefacts) and some remade models. I have absolutely no idea how the audio fares for both games compared to previous releases however, but I'd expect them to be using either the original high-quality assets (unlikely) or the highest available from retail versions (most likely).


TL;DR: Pretty good remasters that make these games more accessible on modern hardware while still being rather faithful to the original releases, but there are still a few problems to address to match the original console releases and this collection really needs to include options for graphics settings and specific features.

I can't say I've played nearly enough to tell for sure whether this game is good or bad, but for now I can't recommend it for a bunch of reasons.

Let's start with what Alien: Rogue Incursion (Part 1) does right: art direction and sound design. Right from the start, it just looks and sounds like a proper Alien game, as it should. And that's about where my praise ends since I don't have enough experience with VR games to judge how good or bad it is relative to other games made in the past few years.

Neither good or bad now: several elements seem to have inertia applied to them, such as the pulse rifle and the flashlight. Your mileage may vary, from the little I've played it wasn't too distracting but it might be a dealbreaker if you're used to snappy movement in VR.

Moving on to the bad:

• Performance doesn't seem great even by playing on settings close to the lowest on my PC (Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB, Quest 2). Note: the game defaulted to the lowest settings with 0.7 pixel density with TAA, if I remember correctly I upgraded to 0.8 and Epic quality textures with TSR (also bumped one or several settings to Medium, probably lighting quality or something).
  
• At 0.8 pixel density the datapad was pretty much unreadable unless I sticked it close to my face since text is very small.
  
• Subtitles are displayed way too low in my opinion. I get that they're not supposed to get in the way of gameplay but even then they're pretty much off-screen.
  
• Physics are wonky, the very first time I tried to grab the first valve in the game my hands just went rogue and it clipped through the floor (thankfully I was able to pick it up).
  
• Locomotion cannot be done via teleportation between waypoints, so I first had to sit down and then stop the game even though I don't remember having this issue in other games I tried before. Although I can understand that design choice to some extent, this is pretty bad for people with motion sickness when coupled to the potentially subpar framerate (which I'll be honest I haven't actually measured).
  
• The patching/packaging strategy is awful: ARI requires me to have as much free disk space as the entire game to update it, and the first two "hotfixes" were respectively around 1 GB and 6 GB (which is enormous for hotfixes, and my Internet connection isn't exactly the best right now). How come I get by just fine with 15 GB of free disk space with Tekken 8, another UE5 game, despite it being over 110 GB and major updates being at least 8 GB? Hint: it uses several PAK files instead of having 99.9% of the game's weight in a single one (I wish that were an exaggeration but it's not).
  
• The game crashes on exit, don't ask me how it does that.

Overall it looks like a game that's ranging from "just okay" to "good", but despite that there's clearly a few bugs to iron out and some really weird choices from the publisher that make me somewhat wary:

• The game was advertised as a standalone experience, but just before launch the store page and a bunch of assets were updated to include "Part 1". They've even admitted it ends on a cliffhanger too, so it's not a "The Last of Us" kind of deal where "Part 1" was originally made as its own complete game and "Part 2" was made way later.
  
• Its price was raised by about 10€ alongside that reveal.
  
• Pre-order bonuses (a classic), except they're somehow not even a DLC and it doesn't sound like they'll be made available to more people at a later date.

Now I don't know if this was always their plan or if the game was split in half and rushed for a Holiday 2024 release, but they had several other options such as being upfront about the split release or episodic format, or announcing earlier that a sequel is already being worked on, or making this a complete story and reveal after launch that they're working on a sequel... And yet they still chose the shadiest, namely "say nothing, stealthdrop the Part 1 branding, but increase the price anyway". At this point I can only wonder what happened behind the scenes, but since I'm not a die-hard Alien fan I'll be refunding this even though I originally wanted to support a full VR Alien game.

I love this game because there's a lot of good things in it and it could be so great, yet it's broken in so many ways that I cannot recommend it right now.

GBVSR looks and sounds great, and it has lots of content. So what went wrong? Well, my main issues with it come from the overall balancing and the new universal mechanics that feel downright cheap despite their potential for being decent.

Balance is a mess and you have really strong characters with tonnes of options and damage on the one hand (and even range in most cases!), and the rest of the cast on the other plus a few dying in the gutter. And to add salt to the injury barely anything has been done since launch to effectively even the playing field out. To give a few examples: Siegfried is still the tournament character, Nier is still very powerful despite requiring to work for her damage more now that she can't have Death at almost all times, Beatrix is still a powerhouse even after being nerfed several times, Belial was left practically untouched... Then you have Ferry, who was nerfed (and arguably considerably changed) despite already being at the bottom of the barrel and requiring to work for her damage on top of being one of the hardest characters to play efficiently, with very committal buttons to boot. I understand that Cygames and ArcSys might not have wanted a repeat of GBVS where she was broken at launch, and I'm definitely biased as a Ferry main (although I'm aware I'm not doing great with her and I need to work on options I'm not using), but you can't seriously tell me she was the biggest threat here when Nier got away with murder for literal months and is still viable and Beatrix can still rush you down like there's no tomorrow.

Universal mechanics introduced in GBVSR are a mixed bag, in that they're technically kind of good ideas in theory but overtuned or unbalanced in practice.

• Despite being a fun idea on paper, dash attacks are still too strong and especially 66L: it's fast, it moves you forward, and you get some knockback on block but if you hit you're pretty much guaranteed a combo that still deals a decent amount of damage by barely taking any risk. And so people spam it whenever they get a chance with most characters.
  
• Bravery Points are perhaps even clunkier and whoever loses them first can pretty much get obliterated since you take more damage in that state. Raging Strike and Raging Chain are comparable to a guard break that's also a combo extender (which is fine I guess), and there's the Brave Counter that is an insanely powerful guard cancel that allows whoever used it to resume acting directly (and as it implies, unlike burst you can only use it while blocking). So you can both be denied an attempt to get in and bite the dust in one fell swoop. There are ways to beat it but it's still VERY powerful.
  
• Ultimate skills... Let's just say I barely use them, but some characters have very powerful ones with fast, far-reaching or damaging attacks, and they get half of the meter they've just spent on hit alongside a potential combo. (But seriously though, why does it give a partial meter refund?!)
  
• This list wouldn't feel complete to me without mentioning changes to the Skill button compared to GBVS. Now you barely have any incentive to use technical inputs for a measly 10% extra damage on raw hit, cooldown differences are gone. The only exception is when the opponent has no BP left where the damage increase cumulates, but it's rather situational and still only applies to naked hits. So the shortcut is both faster and more reliable to input, with the only drawback being that slight change in damage on a raw hit. I assume this was done to make the game more beginner-friendly by removing execution barriers, but it actually affects execution at every level of play, and I do think better execution should be a part of higher-level play since you're supposed to have a better grasp on the game, your execution, and your character. And it makes some very straightforward characters feel even dumber to play.
  
• EX characters don't seem very balanced either from everything I've played and seen, mostly focusing on even more rushdown with fairly safe options in a game already full of these.

I kind of wish they'd add an extra game mode that plays closer to GBVS (though not with Overdrive, apparently that was busted too; possibly without Rush mechanics that were added through the same update as well), something cleaner to play that doesn't feel dragged down by actively detrimental mechanics. But I doubt they'll do that anytime soon if ever, doubly so if they need to balance it separately.

Finally: mandatory rant on bonus codes still not being available on PC while still paying as much as console players. It was an issue in the original GBVS, it's still a problem here, and PC players are still treated as second-class citizens in that regard.
Mandatory rant on the game's English localisation as well, some lines are translated properly and some others just don't match the original anymore in both intent and content (yes it can get that bad). Notably, character quirks and memes are cranked up. I'm not expecting a literal translation (that would be just as bad) and in some cases I understand why they tried mixing things up, but it's very uneven to the point I'd suspect one of ArcSys's usual business partners if Cygames didn't have their own localisation staff.


TL;DR: balance is complete wack and the new universal mechanics hurt the game's flow and balance even further. (August 2025 edit: at this point I'm almost having more fun playing Grand Bruise, and that's not saying much given it's just a passable side game mode.)