putting this here mostly because this has been sitting on my mind lately and i want to write something shorter than a medium article but can't fit it over on hive.
i want to talk about guilty gear strive for a second, and how i think it's done a really good job keeping the spirit of the characters right even with less moves in their kit (at the moment). this is especially pertinent because of the new dlc character sin kiske, who i've heard people call "boneless/flavorless" in the context of his movelist. i yelled about this on my last fighting friday stream a bit, but now that i've had some time to marinate on it i can phrase my points more eloquently & use sin himself as an example of this "keeping the spirit" stuff.
so. in his previous form from guilty gear xrd, sin was a character whose main gimmick focused on being able to cancel his various special moves into each other in whatever order you wanted so long as you didn't try to do the same special move twice in a row--and so long as you had a not-empty calorie gauge, as each time you do a special move sin consumes some of the calorie gauge. if you tried using a special move on an empty stomach, you'd be forced into a super-long recovery animation, so you had to balance going hog wild and pressuring the opponent with ridiculous damage with stopping to eat and replenish his calorie gauge.
guilty gear strive has retooled sin like so:
- sin's calorie gauge is now a 3-chunk stamina gauge, and he can no longer cancel special moves freely into each other. instead, pressing specific buttons after 4 of his special moves gives one followup that will take one chunk out of the stamina gauge.
- the stamina gauge replenishes automatically, but the regeneration rate slows down the more full the stamina gauge is.
- after using a special move or a followup to a special move, you can burn 1 chunk of stamina with a dash input to use "gazelle step", a move that makes sin dash forward and puts you right in the opponent's face.
now, unlike in xrd, sin doesn't get lots of long combos from his stamina gauge extensions unless you use extra resources (roman canceling primarily), and at first that can be a bit jarring. it's definitely at least one source for why some people just assume he's sauceless (the others being their dislike of strive's general mechanical direction). however, sin still has:
- absurd damage
- an invincible and highly mobile reversal super (R.T.L for the win)
- fairly long-reaching pokes
- the ability to convert casual hits into combos (even short ones) or corner carry
- closing in on opponents after hitting them
the "spirit" of sin's gameplay is, generally speaking, about "maintaining pressure on your opponent so long as you mind your resources and don't get too overenthusiastic". in xrd, this is accomplished by having to track your calorie gauge and the cost of chaining special moves together. in strive, this is accomplished by the variable recharge speed of the stamina gauge. moreover, with the existence of gazelle step to use after special moves or their extensions, you can compensate for not having a bunch of special cancels at your disposal to create pressure by burning more stamina to get in close and potentially sit on your opponent. this looks different in strive than it is in xrd, but it didn't go anywhere.
guilty gear strive is very deliberately going for gameplay that is more committal in a lot of ways, and that also kind of ratchets down the tempo and length of combos outside of specific circumstances. sin's design changes fit that bill too (because, yeah, they could've kept it, but nagoriyuki already kind of does what sin's old design did and still isn't as ludicrous as xrd sin's stuff), which may make it seem like he's lost what made him special, but the existence of gazelle step and the other aspects of his kit don't invalidate the idea that sin is all about "damage and pressure for as long as you have the resources to burn on it".
the performance of the characters has to be based on the game you're playing, not the game you're not.
