#textiro

unfortunately, i don't really know a lot about music so i can't be super detailed with my complaining.

to me, there's a huge style disjoint between the original SOR2 songs and the new segments this person has created.

for one, almost every new segment comes at the end of the original track, which makes the remix structure very formulaic. it also means that whatever new musical ideas are being added don't really have time to develop or feel like they're an organic piece of the song.

again, i don't really have a good way to explain it, but also the new segments just feel... wrong. i think especially, a lot of songs get a new solo (or multiple) and that's like not really a prominent feature of any SOR songs i can think of off the top of my head. the vibe of the song also noticeably shifts during the new segments in a way that i don't know how to describe.

i'm not going to say the new parts are bad in a vacuum (they aren't), but when you tack them on the end of a SOR song, they don't fit at all ("Never Return Alive" is one of the most blatant offenders). but i can't really pretend like they're two separate songs because they're still very much parts of a song and not a full song on their own.

for no particular reason, i just remembered about the novriltataki video on fighting game comeback mechanics. the conclusion it comes to, that comeback mechanics are best when they have little actual effect on the game, is kind of weird. and even weirder is the assumption that comeback mechanics are designed primarily for new players, and the comparison to persona 4 arena's awakening mechanic

so they say that P4A's awakening is bad because it activates at 35% health while you're outside of a combo. it also gives you a huge defense boost, among other buffs. because of this, the ideal strategy is to never get the opponent down to that threshold so that you can eventually take them out with one big combo (or at least, leave them with as little health as possible). this, they say, is frustrating for new players who can't do large combos and limiting of the viable strategies at top-level play.

on the other hand, the guts system in guilty gear is supposed to be good because it basically amounts to visual trickery with the lifebar as the characters gradually take less damage as their health lowers. the actual effect on the match is little and mostly amounts to using altered combo routes because of the damage scaling system (the minimum damage of any hit is 1, and the game's bhealth value is 420).

in the first place, i feel like calling guts system a comeback mechanic is stretching the definition. but also i think that guts works not as well as a comeback mechanic because of the fact that chip damage isn't affected and because of high-hitcount combos? like, certain characters can really easily game the system because they have a natural ability to do high-hit combos (like chipp or ramlethal). also this mirrors the point against p4a "requiring" large combos to defeat awakening, because it's pretty much the same thing as guilty gear "requiring" special combos to defeat guts scaling.

and another thing i think is weird is how they fault awakening for only activating outside of combos, but that actually makes it a strategy to play around awakening. characters in persona can also use their invincible moves to decrease their own HP to deliberately put themselves into awakening range, meaning playing around awakening isn't entirely up to the attacker either.

also, the complaint that you are "punished" for allowing the opponent to go into awakening because you didn't kill them in one big combo is weird, because that kind of punishment happens a lot in GG's guts scaling system, but just to a lesser extent. you essentially get rewarded more for landing large hits near the guts scaling thresholds, but it's rarely possible to actually optimize around this fact because of the combo system of the game and just the nature of fighting game matches in general. sure, that makes it "not limiting" but it's not because it's really a freeing mechanic, y'know... on the other hand, p4a having one clear boundary makes decision-making around awakening a long-term plan that both players can influence. there's freedom in how you value you or the opponent's awakening, in how much you try to manage the opponent's health so they don't get awakening, and in how you manage your own health to potentially get awakening even if your opponent is trying to avoid that

i've actually never used hurricane/tornado toss before but i felt like vi's needle skills were game-trivializingly good haha. they're excellent for general enemy encounters and bosses alike.

i guess this post got sorta long so it's time to put a read more