What do you think of fighting game reversals?
They’re cool. They’re a very rare feature of games, something that’s high risk, but low reward, however still being a critical part of a rock-paper-scissors triangle. You get to beat the opponent’s attack or throw, but if blocked, you take more damage than you ever would have dealt.
It’s your only want to beat an opponent’s meaty in a wakeup scenario, the only way to really hurt the opponent instead of just sitting there and taking pressure, but it also carries a big risk.
The downside of conventional reversals, DPs, is that only some characters have them usually, so the rest of the cast just needs to sit there and take it when pressured, and they’re kind of simple. They either beat a meaty, or lose if the opponent blocks. Not the most nuanced range of interactions. It would be cool to see more investigation into other reversal options, like reversal tech rolls, reversal counters, etc. Some games like Blazblue and Smash have more options on knockdown to make their wakeup games more complex, which is also cool, but also feel like they dilute the wakeup game a bit from where it sits in street fighter. I’m not really sure how to balance this honestly.
Still, it’s neat to have something that sits in an unconventional place on the payoff matrix. (as long as it’s not low risk, high reward) It’s rare to see things that are so specialized in that way.
Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints 