Recent reviews by SamuraiPizzaKen

Having played Windjammers on cab this is one of the most exciting things to come out! It feels every bit as fast paced and action packed as an old arcade game. Great fun in 4 player, took it along to a local games night and it went down a blast. Really looking forward to seeing the finished article.

I think the game itself is fun, but I can't recommend the pc version in good faith.

The main plus for this game in my eyes is the character variations, with each character having 3 styles which can change special moves and mormals, to choose from. Some of these variants can feel quite homogeneous e.g. D'Vorah, where the differences between the styles may seem subtle and only really reveal themselves after some time spent honing the character, whereas others such as Takeda allow for almost different characters due to the differences between them.

Whilst still allowing someone to pick up a character and learn them, the variations allow you to potentially cover macthups which your character would normally struggle in. That's probably the intention behind it, and whilst it almost certainly doesn't succeed in every case it definitely feels like it can help some characters be played in a way which better suits how you would like to play a matchup with them. I can see it adding a bit of lifespan to the game as well, as players try to determine which variants are the characters optimal styles, and then which ones should be used as counters to other characters.

I don't really have much to say about the single player content; the story seems as shallow but well presented as I'd expect, as good a way of shoving in your face the reasons the character you want from the last isn't there as I can think of. Krypt is still an annoying way of unlocking things, possibly moreso since it's been turned into a poor mans first person maze game where you'll inevitably waste half your in-game currency unless you check a guide online, also ♥♥♥♥ spiders. Pretty much any time I've spent on single player has been in training mode.

So the negatives:

Even after several patches the game is still suffering from performance and stability issues fairly frequently, and the netcode still leaves quite a bit to be desired ( granted there's only so much you can do with such a variety of network conditions, in a genre which relies on precise frame windows for inputs and reactions ).

In terms of performance, pretty much any stage with particles is going to cause you problems unless you're a nice machine. Even once the settings have been turned down you can expect <20fps on some stages on lower end machines or laptops. Seriously, if you're in a lobby and someone actually picks the Sky Temple as a stage; kick them, they're a ♥♥♥♥.

Stability-wise I've had several crashes and hangs, even after the aforementioned patches. There seems to be a real fragility whenever the game struggles to make a connection with some of the servers, notably the Faction server which seems to be almost permanently down. On some occasions you can end up with a hard lock if you attempt to access the Faction page or Living Towers and the game client doesn't receive a response, which will happen at some point. Similarly I've encountered quite a few issues after matches online, either hangs or crashes, when the game seems to be trying to update standings etc. I haven't encountered as many ( though I have had some ) of these issues when playing training or single player mode, so you may have an ok experience if that's largely what you're going to be playing, but expect some issues if you plan to play online.

The streaming install has to be mentioned as well. It screwed over anyone who actually tried to pre-load the game. That may not be an issue anymore, but the fact that the game cannot be benchmarked initially, and that you won't be able to play even a training match until several of the install packs have been downloaded ( due to the first pack or two not actually including a stage, so the game will crash when you try to load up any match ), seem absurd. I don't know specifically whether the fault lies with Steam or NRS/whoever did the port job, but it is not a good experience.

In summary; pretty much the first line again. If you have access to a PS4 or Xbox One, get the game for that instead. The game seems to run smoother due to fixed hardware specs and also being an NRS inside job, rather than a porting job by whichever sham-merchants did this pc version.