LogFAQs > #906586426

Yeah, kateee summed up my thoughts pretty succinctly. Especially the part about it being fun to play and not fun to watch. I actually like the game a lot. It's amazing both visually and aesthetically, and the story mode is great by fighting game standards. That being said, my biggest problem with the game as a spectator is the character uniformity. The core universal mechanics of the game are so strong that characters barely feel unique. Every character has access to a completely safe super dash that goes through projectiles (which renders characters like Beerus and Frieza almost worthless since it makes keepout playstyles nearly impossible to perform well with), every character has access to a safe vanish, every character's 2H serves the same function as an antiair, etc. Hell, most characters' combo sequences are nearly identical. If you learn the ins and outs of one character, you pretty much know how to play the whole cast, with a few minor adjustments. Almost every character plays has the exact same general gameplan and playstyle. From a casual perspective, this makes a lot of sense since it makes the game much easier to pick up and play. But from a spectator's perspective, the lack of gameplay variety makes the game ungodly boring.

My second gripe with DBFZ is the ridiculous damage scaling. So, okay, you finally managed to score a clean hit and open up your opponent. Great! You hit him the same combo you've practiced in training mode a million times. So after a 15 second combo (the same combo everyone's seen a million times since there's disappointingly little combo variety in this game), you use your level one super and DHC into your next character's level 3, which takes another 10 seconds, and then you look at your opponent's health bar. It barely went down 40%. What the fuck? Why on earth did all of that do so little damage? You have to open up your opponent like 3 times to kill a single character. Honestly, the damage scaling in this game is outrageous. I almost want to say they need to increase the damage by like at least 125%, maybe more, to make the game more watchable. The lack of combo variety combined with the ridiculous amount of time it takes to finish a single game makes watching DBFZ a mind-numbing experience. I swear to god I saw Bardock use his level 3 at least a hundred times in that top 8, and every time it took 10 seconds and and did <15% of his opponent's health. It was awful.

The sparking mechanic only exacerbates this problem. For as much as people shat on X-Factor in MvC3, I think sparking would be so much better if it functioned more like X-Factor. As it stands now, sparking only exists to make excruciatingly long matches even longer, since the health recovery is so crazy and lasts so long. It can be used offensively in combos, but it's rare to see since the burst is incredibly valuable as a defensive option, which brings me to another point: the lack of defensive options in DBFZ. As far as I know, the only real options for defense are the initial burst of sparking, reflecting (which is incredibly risky for very little payoff), and using the armor of a level 3 super. That's it. During one of the matches, Sonic Fox did nearly a 30 second blockstring with Zamasu. What part about watching a blockstring for 30 seconds is exciting? Is it the suspense of seeing if he'll finally open up his opponent? Well, spoilers, he did, because his opponent could do fuck all about it. Shouldn't there be some kind of push block mechanic or something to prevent that kind of nonsense?

Another problem is the lack of comeback potential. Sure, coming back from a 3v1 character deficit is possible, but pretty damn unlikely because damage output is so low. You still need to open up your opponent 7 or 8 times to be able to successfully comeback, which is exceptionally difficult without assists. People got crazy hyped about Shenron showing up, but both times he showed up in top 8 ultimately led to nothing, because overcoming a one to three character deficit is a monumental task.
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It's not so impossible!