Rivals of Aether 2 Review, from a Fighting Game Player

Рет қаралды 9,274

Күн бұрын

Despite being an avid fan of fighting games, I know very little about what goes on in the world of platform fighters. So I decided to learn by doing a review of Rivals of Aether II.
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Пікірлер: 97

@MinusMadi 2 ай бұрын

This was a great perspective, thank you for sharing! For crouch cancelling, as someone who has played platform fighter's competitively for nearly a decade, I think it is a good mechanic and implemented well in Rivals 2. However, it probably is just a touch overtuned. The biggest advice I have for how to deal with it is just to change your strategy. At low % grab more often, space your moves so they are safe, use attacks that beat crouch cancelling (like most characters' down air). It's important to remember that crouch cancelling does take up space in the mental stack, so you can use that to your advantage when pressuring your opponent. Even without crouch cancelling, platform fighters have always had moves that are unsafe on hit at low %. The knowledge and skill expression comes in when you learn what moves to use against your opponent at whatever % they are at.

@ZachStarAttack 2 ай бұрын

crouch canceling is not overtuned. It's completely fine

@MinusMadi 2 ай бұрын

@@ZachStarAttack That's fair. When I said just a touch overtuned, I meant by a very slim margin, so it could go either way imo. I'm fine with how it is, but if they nerfed it a little bit I wouldn't be upset.

@Masaru_kun 2 ай бұрын

crouch cancelling always has counterplay with certain knockback angles, so yeah it adds a layer to the mix up. i think if it was much of a problem we'd be hearing more top rivals 1 players complaining about it

@curse5697 2 ай бұрын

crouch cancel counter play has been in the oven since 2 decades ago, so it's only matter of studying it from Melee and applying it into Rivals

@IlIllllllIlIIIIIIlI 2 ай бұрын

@@ZachStarAttackat least it’s not as bad as beta where maypuls are ccing at 60

@Jarekthegamingdragon Ай бұрын

Portland rivals TO here. Portland is one of the more prominent rivals scenes and I've run any thing from small locals to large majors. Winner is allowed to swap characters, how ever, the winner must pick their character FIRST before the loser. So the loser gets the character counter pick.

@mechonis_buster 3 ай бұрын

Really great vid! I'm happy to see traditional fighting game players delve into or learn platform fighters through Rivals 2. Despite the limited content at launch, the core of the game is polished and fun as is. You covered pretty much everything any potential new players would want to know and really well too. Here's hoping the game and your channel continue to grow!

@trevor4723 2 ай бұрын

Rivals 1 had the best platform tutorial ever. It will cover all their advanced mechanics I’m sure

@cyprienramis1304 2 ай бұрын

My intuition was right, floorhugging is indeed not enjoyed by tradiotional fighter players too. Honestly I feel like the role this mechanic has is not that stupid, in a game where ejection distance matter it is normal that if you use weak moves at low percent the oponent will be near enough to counter attack, however the problem is it's still usable even on some kill moves at kill percent, which is to me the only big problem I'm having with this game so far.

@bucketman3095 2 ай бұрын

Yeahhhh negating a hit that would’ve been a clean kill just feels entirely wrong to me

@Calebanton 2 ай бұрын

@@bucketman3095Bro you literally have a melee fox profile pic. Do you hate the mechanic in melee too? 😭 It’s arguably worse in melee

@bucketman3095 2 ай бұрын

@@Calebanton I just like the funny fox man :(

@Calebanton 2 ай бұрын

@@bucketman3095 Oh lmao. Yeah, in melee, you can survive hella hits. I think this is just a matter of having an indicator that tells you when people are CC’ing/floor hugging. It PM, it was way way worse

@curse5697 2 ай бұрын

Crouch cancelling is completely fine, floorhugging is way more abrasive tho, but it's not something i've ever saw someone using yet.

@KriskayART 2 ай бұрын

I'm surprised about how in depth you went with this game for somebody who usually only plays non plat fighters! Great video!

@kathijinks 2 ай бұрын

jumpscared by being in this video at 16:28 LOL I’m glad you’re enjoying the game I’ve been enjoying it a whole lot!! Good review!!

@Extracredittttt 2 ай бұрын

Three more quick things 1) Gotta push back that shields and ledges make this game more like smash than it is like rivals 1. In my opinion, everything that makes rivals 1 special/good is kept or expanded - movement quirks, parry mechanics, hitfalling, insane terrain-affecting moves etc 2) without crouch-cancelling/floor hugging, there are some nasty infinites that feel terrible to get trapped in. It also weights the value of percentage more which i think is good in a format where you can die so early and live so late. It is a trade off of taking damage to get an opening and it creates interesting meta spaces where you start going for things that beat crouch cancelling (like grabs which are amazing) and so the person stops crouch cancelling to escape this counterplay and then you start getting the fat openings without the grabs etc etc 3) to answer your question on changing chatacters being normal: in tournaments, the first chatacter pick is blind. Then the winner of thar game bans a stage, the loser picks a stage, then the winner can choose to change characters if they want and then the loser can do the same. So it is part of the counterpick meta and can create interesting mindgames. In rivals ranked it just remains blind the whole time. This is how online works in most of ghe time, but it is different from tournaments Again great video! Thoughtful, well articulated, well organized, and well edited! I am subbing

@theviralmelon 2 ай бұрын

I feel like the system changes make it very much more like smash than rivals 1 tbh. The main carryover is the characters; r2 also has parries, hitfalling, platboosting, babydashing, and...that's kind of it. No drift DI, no JC landing lag, no ledgeboosting, no walljump upb...neutral is fundamentally different because of weakened movement, CC/FH, and shields; punish is fundamentally different because of weakened movement and a lack of drift DI; recovering and edgeguarding are fundamentally different because of the ledge and lack of walljump upb. All of these gamestates are moved closer to what you'd find in melee or especially PM. I don't think that's a fundamentally bad thing at all, but saying it's more like rivals 1 than like smash strikes me as a little bizarre. I'd be curious to know your expanded reasoning on the subject.

@Extracredittttt 2 ай бұрын

@theviralmelon it is closer to melee and pm than rivals 1 was, but it is still so much closer to rivals 1 than it is to melee that I find this take rather baffling The movement is *extremely* similar to rivals 1, much more so than it is to melee. Moreover, having hitfalling, lower tech ceiling, and the entirely unique character designs are like MASSIVE differences that affect the game at its very core. Plus, being able to wall jump out of side-b and act out of air dodge creates an edge guard flow that, while closer in some ways to melee, is still unique and in a similar vein to rivals 1 And the new additions of special pummel and special get up double down on these differences. The character movesets alone change the type of game your playing so radically - but you add in hitfalling, add really strong parries, take out SHFFLing, change wavedashing and add RAR and you have quite a different beast

@theviralmelon 2 ай бұрын

@@Extracredittttt In what way is the movement similar? I know the skillfoor is lower, but I wouldn't say that itself changes how tools are used. The main movement changes I know of in this game compared to its predecessor are: - Wavelanding has 10f lag, unlike rivals 1 and like PM - You can't platdrop during a waveland, unlike rivals 1 and like smash in general - B reversing is in the game, which is great, but that is also in PM and not in rivals 1 PM also has movement options that both rivals games have, like RAR and dacus. Walljumping exists for sure, but it's toned down significantly, and from my experience playing and viewing the game acts more like an addition to the fundamentally smash-like recovery system rather than ledge being an addition to a fundamentally rivals-like recovery system. You say "change wavedashing" towards the end, and I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly; afaik there are no changes to wavedash that are wholly different from both rivals 1 and smash, I'm curious what you mean by that. Character design definitely carries over, I'll give you that, but that's only one part of the game, and notably rivals 2 also only has a small part of the rivals 1 roster - right now, mostly the part that doesn't really care about stage elements, with the only ones that really matter a lot being puddle and lily in the current game. Even with the full roster, I wouldn't say that those resources fundamentally change how neutral or advantage is played the way, say, not having shields does. Pummels and the (imo fairly inconsequential) ledge/getup specials are different from smash but they aren't in rivals 1 either; I think those mechanics are by and large positive additions and having unique mechanics is good, but they don't really matter for the sake of this comparison. Parries don't strike me as being "really strong;" I don't see them used that often. Most of the cases where parry would be used in r1, shield fills the role better. From my experience playing and watching the game, they seem to be more of a comfortable niche option to against projectiles or certain multihits out of shield. Parrying is a rivals 1 mechanic, and it is very similar here, but it's a small part of what rivals 1 is and just one mechanic amongst many others that were altered or replaced with less rivals-like versions.

@Coco-qy6st 2 ай бұрын

Very well made video. I also appreciate the Slap City clips, very underrated game.

@nacligang 2 ай бұрын

My personal opinion on cc is that it's fine for those coming from older plat fighters that have played against these features before but it feels out of nowhere if you haven't dealt with it before. A lot of characters have crazy kill power at mid percents (between 40 and 70-80) and it can sometimes feel like you have no chance of surviving their attacks so it's needed for Rivals, but like others have said it feels overtuned especially at early percents which can allow undeserved reversals in a game that's very combo and advantage based.

@mxyzptplk 2 ай бұрын

As someone who played Smash for several years before Rivals, the tutorial in the first game helped SO much. I don't think I would have gotten into the game if not for the tutorials, because I was expecting it to be Smash when it isn't.

@Jowannabe 2 ай бұрын

This is a really good video man, the editing and the information is so well put. You did such a good job! Thanks for sharing. I'm also stuck in silver but I love the game and to be honest I don't mind being stuck in silver. I mean, of course I want to improve and I'm trying to always get better, but my point is that I'm having a lot of fun even being stuck in this rank.

@shantheman9922 2 ай бұрын

Fun Fact: If you grab someone and throw them, they have a regrab shield that prevents you from immediately grabbing them again. You can see this when your character gets thrown and they turn orange for a bit. BUT, if you grab someone and normal pummel them, they lose that shield. So, the 50/50 is between getting hit by the special pummel, or getting normal pummeled, thrown, and regrabbed where you then have to face another 50/50.

@femaleclerka4092 14 күн бұрын

Thanks for this! I've been looking at this game lately and this is helping my decision making ahaha!

@camelonthecase8084 2 ай бұрын

great video, really reasonable take tbh, and thank you for informing me that I can mash b when grabbed to avoid special pummel (very useful vs Clairen who seemingly has powerful autocombos otherwise) also soulja boy braid reference lmfao

@chimichangle 2 ай бұрын

U can also just hold A or B, no mash required

@RichardBlaziken 2 ай бұрын

YOOOOOOOOP

@anachronity9002 2 ай бұрын

7:33 you can see your frame data in "frame advance" mode. It will tell you what state you and the training dummy are in at the bottom of the screen. Combine it with the hitbox view to determine how many of a move's frames are startup, active, and recovery, and how many frames the dummy is in shieldstun/hitstun. It is a bit less handy than just being told outright, but it's there.

@hesho24 2 ай бұрын

Really great video! As a long time rivals/platfighter player (not good just long time) and massive fighting game fan I just wanted to make a couple points on some things. The biggest thing is I thought it was interesting you made the comparison of the pummel system to MVC3 because if you look at Dan Fornace’s website he was actually temporarily a dev on Killer Instinct which if you’ve played you already know has a combo breaker system that I would bet money was the main inspiration for how grabs work. If you love the movement in this game you would not BELIEVE how good it felt to move around in rivals 1. I cannot describe the amount of whiplash I got when I finally got to play rivals 2 and combined with the character changes it honestly still feels like I can’t control myself in game the way I want to even after getting more used to the engine. Crouch canceling does indeed suck booty but they put it in to appese the melee player how will insist they every mechanic in melee is good even though about 90% of them were accidental bugs that occurred because of a rushed development cycle (they are wrong) Orcane is canonically a god (confirmed) Wrastor is canonically racist (technically not confirmed but heavily implied) If you have any interest in exploring the genre further I would HIGHLY recommend keeping your eye out for Combo Devil which is coming on the horizon. The game is looking to shake the genre up in a big way and is coming along amazingly. The only think that can stop it is not enough people knowing about it. The devs are huge fans of Rushdown Revolt which is the single most cracked out plat fighter you can play (other than nasb 1 but that’s cracked out in an entirely different way) and you can really see the design philosophy in how crazy the game in shaping up to be. Sentinels Inc is looking amazing too but it seems to be much further away for getting anything substantial. Still a notabile name to keep an eye on though!

@chimichangle 2 ай бұрын

In Rivals 1, movement was your primary defensive tool. Different games now so it's only natural that the movement has changed too

@hesho24 2 ай бұрын

@ I understand that but man if I don’t miss it

@NamielLion 2 ай бұрын

For your complaint of not being able to tilt out of a run, all you need to do is crouch. Crouching stops run and you can immediately perform a tilt. And since you said you're using tilt stick, that should be even easier. Also, I don't know any of the characters referenced, but the "a third, more sinister thing" tier is wild XD

@ZachStarAttack 2 ай бұрын

You don't need to crouch at all you just need to let go of the stick

@splish8869 2 ай бұрын

About the state of crouch canceling and floor hugging: First: The game already significantly leans to favour offensive and high mobility. If you’re CCing you generally aren’t taking advantage of the many strong offensive and mobility mechanics you have. A defensive mechanic like this being on place is necessary to balance out the offensive and mobile sides of the game. Second: Grabs beat floor hugging, most of the good combo starter moves pop opponents up which beats floor hugging, and using moves lone disjoints or generally spacing moves well neutralizes the being counterable on hit effect. Third: it’s still very early in the game’s life. Strong options are still being found, and the game could have a very well balanced counter to floor hugging already in it that isn’t currently understood. And fourth: the devs likely know it’s overturned in its current state, and generally not a very fun mechanic. They’re very in touch with their community and have a good track record of listening to them, so they’ll likely tone it down. Also for the confusion around being able to swap and counterpick characters, think of the first to two of a traditional fighting game’s rounds (first to two rounds in each game), as represented in plat fighters as the stocks/character lives system. In traditional fighters there’s a first to two rounds in a match and however many matches in a set, and in rivals fighters there’s however many stocks in a game and 3 games in a set.

@acheiropoieta1691 2 ай бұрын

this video is goated

@atomicmelodies 2 ай бұрын

Please slow down when reading your script! Lowering the music a bit and doing a final EQ pass will help a lot as well. Really loved your insight! Hope to see more rivals content!

@MrNigel117 2 ай бұрын

awesome vid. also, character assessments were spot on. loxodont is quite literally a tyrant who framed forsburn for murder so he could take the throne of the fire capital, in the future he gets a robotic body engineered so he could rule forever. clairen is from said future, tried to kill him but failed and went back in time to try to kill him. her pod on match start is her time machine. kragg is a guardian of the wall that protects the forest. they essentially devote their whole life to rolling around the wall. one time there was a breach and he stopped to fix it, beat up anyone who interrupted him on fixing his wall. maypul is just an inhabitant of said forest. she has a pet plant named lilly, and now two more with terry and poppy. she's just trying to protect her forest from bad things. she hasn't had much personality given to her in the first game or any of the side stuff. orcane is dog yes. more importantly he's probably the diety of joy. more mechincal stuff. framedata isnt something talked about a lot in plat fighters. a big reason is aerials can have such wildly varying frames that it can look like +5 to -15 or something. how it happens is imagine ranno nair-ing. nair is a very long move, if ranno does a full hop nair while rising on your shield it'd probably be super negative, cause he's got the whole animation to go through. if he waits to do that nair until he's really low on your shield when the move hits, he's no longer gonna be like -20 flying through the air, he might not even be negative anymore. your shield stun is going on during his landing animation. it's just not a concept that translates well with all the different variables. fox and falco in melee can actually punish shield grabs by purposefully hitting low fastfall'd aerials into shine, a frame 1 move. also, just about every move in a plat fighter lingers, a lot of the time with weak and strong hitboxes. a strong that hits it's strong hitbox on shield will cause more shield stun than it's weak hitboxes, which again makes a situation where the frame data varies really wildly. same with hitting the end of a move instead of the beginning of one, that's like built-in frame variance - then throwing in that aerial example to add even more. the frames are a muddy mess that takes a lot of experience to just get a feel for the different situations. imo it's a feels based thing which some people may hate. though, that doesn't mean you can learn that certain more common hits can be punished. if the input buffer is the same as rivals 1, it's 6 frames. there's also ledge snapping, so if you airdodge a few centimeters above or below a platform it'll snap you to it. the airdodge has to not be neutral or have any upwards direction. only down and horozontal works.

@Extracredittttt 2 ай бұрын

Also worth mentioning that the free events that run every month offer a ton of possibilties to get more bucks and infinite levels to get more coins. Bucks are relatively scarce still, but you can get a LOT of coins by playing ranked or teams during events.

@dominicjannazo7144 2 ай бұрын

Someone else probably already said this, but rivals 1 had a very extensive tutorial, so it feels extra lacking to not have one in 2. Hope it's added soon.

@T_Man 2 ай бұрын

I will never escape Touhou. It finds me whereever I go.

@frigomaniac 2 ай бұрын

the thing with crouch canceling is that its a holdover from melee. so cc and floor hugs basically act as a premium block+ basically. you trade damage for better frame advantage. floor hugs specifically become way riskier because they require a timed down input. it's the most frustrating thing ive ever seen a platform fighter dev get away with but goddamn is it fun to chaingrab people for turtling lol

@disaffected_npc 2 ай бұрын

I honestly thought Lox was super simple say first glance, but have you seen what people are doing with his boulder? You can change it's trajectory with all of your moves - bounce it off the floor with a down air to spike it and have it pop up over you, gently bounce it with a jab, launch it backwards with that tilt. He's got surprising depth :o

@De_an 2 ай бұрын

Just a small touch that I like: Ranno is canonically a pacifist, and a lot of his gameplan revolves around running away from the opponent and waiting for them to approach in order to get an opening. I just think that's cool.

@disaffected_npc 2 ай бұрын

Also, if you crouch out of run and then tilt with CStick - you can tilt out of run

@Zeroicdota 2 ай бұрын

I was gonna type this but its here already

@quarium5681 2 ай бұрын

I like the Koishi fumo icon

@flatfacefumo 2 ай бұрын

Thanks! I don't usually bring this up here but I've actually got an instagram page for photos of my plushies (@flatface.fumo)

@citizenofhyrule 2 ай бұрын

in my experience, as a platinum player. crouch cancelling exists to not make every "start of racking up percent" play out the same way where if no one could crouch cancel youre just gonna go for a ride until they're done and youre gonna eat that 43% on average without really being able to do anything against it. crouch cancelling in this scenario incentivises more rock paper scissor gameplay where you can mix in a start with a throw instead of poking with your normals. and ofcourse at a lower level of play it just looks outright mean, again im used to project m and melee so it just makes sense to me once you reach a certain percent threshold (usually around 50% for most) that crouch cancelling as a option gets too weak, and you get to play the game "normally". either way i think its only a netgain for good players and a netloss for players that arent as good, yet yeah, hitting it is a "oh shit" moment, but thats why you attempt to poke with less commitment to feel out if youre opponent is gonna abuse crouch cancelling or not. its all part of the fighting game i do feel for the players that are casual though since it just goes against everything basic about game design. "you won a little, so here, you lost becuase you just did something good" the game currently imo is not worth its pricetag becuase of the lack of casual gamemodes. i am casual at heart, just have enough platformer fighter experience. i really want a subspace emissary of the kind within the rivals universe. i just wanna play funny game with funny animals.

@crossptn 2 ай бұрын

Love this review

@KP_Uravity 2 ай бұрын

the main reason i play wrastor now is because he can tilt out of dash since he doesnt have grounded smash attacks. you can wavedash into tilts like you said but you can also dash, crouch for a frame then tilt attack as well. and tbf in smash ult you have to have cstick set to tilts, dash, flick the stick in the opposite direction and then use the cstick for the tilt to be able to tilt out of dash. so its not like rivals is actually that different or difficult to dash tilt

@matthgic1428 2 ай бұрын

10:09 you can babydash and tilt right after, it is not easy especially if your left joystick has snapback but feels so good when it hits :p

@Greg-ix4nu 2 ай бұрын

smash player here -- do FGC tournaments generally not let you change characters on a win? in smash (at least the tournaments i've gone to), we do winner picks character first, then loser gets to counterpick.

@Greg-ix4nu 2 ай бұрын

cool vid btw

@flatfacefumo 2 ай бұрын

Usually you can't change characters after a win. In team games like KOF the winner can change team order, but the loser can change characters and order. And in 3D fighters like Tekken only the loser can swap character and stages are random selected, which seems kinda wack but I haven't competed in those so idk.

@EaseLoser 2 ай бұрын

Dude this was a really great review! I started in the FGC as a platform fighter player with Melee, so I sorta have the opposite kind of experience coming into Rivals 2, and that's why I loved hearing your thoughts on it. Genuinely really great stuff man keep it up!

@curse5697 2 ай бұрын

amazing video wtf

@hekset 2 ай бұрын

around 7:06 there's video tutorials, really good! that's one thing i woulda mentioned

@HyperFreak89 2 ай бұрын

You can check your frame data by pressing Z or R1 (if im not mistaken). But it should pop up

@dragonweirdocreap 2 ай бұрын

Rivals of Aether 2 is definitely has so much potential 🙏

@spookypeople 3 ай бұрын

look ma!, im in the flatface video

@scylla2784 2 ай бұрын

water dog, dog with the water

@BurnsyRuns 2 ай бұрын

Small correction, Forsburn also lacks a projectile, it’s not just Clairen

@mentalrectangle Ай бұрын

clones?

@BurnsyRuns Ай бұрын

@ ehhhhh I guess a case could be made for clone/clone explosion but it’s but that really feels like it’s stretching

@GalletaGalletosa 2 ай бұрын

i cant wait to be released on console, hoping is on 2025 and not 2026

@Marisu_Prada 2 ай бұрын

As a Rivals 1 player. The singleplayer campaign used to have a story, but it was implemented poorly and none of the battles reflected what was happening in it, except for the last stage. A lot of people complained about it over the years, so it seems that all the story was phased out in favour of a more "classic" version of an Arcade Mode, at least for the moment. But in any case, it appears Rivals 2's story is the same as 1's, so if you want to learn it, it's all in the first game. _(and the trailers... and the comics... Yeah I also don't like when stories are split up this way)_

@pandrions 2 ай бұрын

Ең жақсы KZbin

Rivals of Aether 2 Review, from a Fighting Game Player

Пікірлер: 97