Been playing Absolver more lately, it's been fun to make up my own fighting styles. Otherwise it's been Tekken 7 practice.
What's Absolver? Have you ever tried a game called "Toribash"? It's genius in its simplicity.
Some Indie developer crew of like seven people made it. It's currently abandoned by them while they're working on a game they were hired to implement a similar battle system into, and in the meantime the game's still being hosted for people to play (with some notable balance issues the fans are holding out on patches for).
Things of note about it:
You can make your own fighting style using a positioning system, one that's made for a system that's easy to learn but hard to master:
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The four positions correspond to your footing, and when in that position you can go into the combo for that row or utilize it's alternative attacks for mix ups to throw your foes off. If you end a combo part-way through, your footing will reflect the technique you last used for which combo you'd then be open to enter, and with alternate attacks and the end footing of the combo itself you can chain them together into even more combinations.
This game goes into pinpoint iFrame properties, a simple system that adds a lot of complication to the actual gameplay:
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'Start up' is how long it takes (in this case for Back Twist Turn 10 frames, so 1/6th a second), and 'Advantage' is related to how many frames you stun them for if they take the hit (or if they block it for a reduced amount). As such, if you prep a bunch of slow moves as combo starters there'll be people just jabbing you rapidly in the face, but with the
right faster moves you can use advantage to offset their ability to block or otherwise respond to your combos.
This game is secretly about math as opposed to just learning pre-set combinations and applying them to your muscle memory like what we see with Tekken, Street Fighter, etc. While frame data is becoming increasingly common with fighting games, I hadn't seen one where you
made the combinations before (at least not in a way that's polished). My only complaint is over the lack of realism for some of these moves, as while many appear to have been motion captured to allow for body kinesthesis to play a part in the gameplay, they don't always chain together as well as they would in real life.
There's no chat on the player HUD, and even just watching it can get pretty serious:
As can be seen with enough of these videos, the sound effects and graphics are satisfying, the timing and pacing's on point, the only real thing to worry about's lag.
The player base if you're not on their forums or discords are entirely governed without talking, having you get to know people through their clothes (with a fan base who handle it pridefully in a game where your costume pieces are 9/10 looted from enemies and randomized), username, fighting skill, etc. It also features a Dojo system that at first seems like a clan tag system, but you can be a fair weather kind of student and just stick around long enough to pick up the techniques you need. You don't even need someone to approve you, you just need the five digit code associated with every dojo, which you can get either by examining players, through forums and youtube, even guessing at random and hoping for the best.
Speaking of which...
Every technique is acquired through what's essentially an an 'Enemy Skill' system, similar to
Blue Magic from Final Fantasy:
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You get some starter techniques based on what fighting stance you choose to start with, and you can learn new moves by using techniques from a 'rigid dojo' set made by the dojo's masters understanding as opposed to your own, but beyond that you can only pick up techniques by either blocking an enemy using it
(including other players) or otherwise using a stance ability to dodge/absorb the hit.
Such a system makes the ability system feel more like treasure hunting, it hits me in the collector.
It's seriously a really fun game, only complaints are over the world map being super small and the storyline being both short and garbage, but the multiplayer's really solid with other players phasing into the same instance of the map as you on the fly, rather than through invitations, and the 1v1 duels can get pretty heated and newer players are being baited to it through Youtube personalities showing it off.
The environment's chill and the gameplay's pinpoint, which without people being able to grief with words is a fun combo. If you feel like playing sometime I'm about three days deep into the game now.
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