adept7777

Trans Mermaid

  • she/mer

Tired lesbian barely able to do much outside of survive work.


soleilraine
@soleilraine

honestly i know that a lot of people have problems getting into fighting games (for many obvious and valid reasons) but i do genuinely think it's a shame so many people with such an eye for game design don't play fighting games. there has never been a genre that is even half as good at making you understand and embody how a character thinks and behaves through sheer gameplay than fighting games.


soleilraine
@soleilraine

even if I knew nothing about the lore, if you asked me "what kind of a person is Anji Mito, just from your years of playing him?" I would be able to tell you that he's a person who prioritizes looking effortless, when really he is trying extremely hard. Yet, it's not because he's inadequate, but because he finds the effort fun. Because he thinks the exertion of skill is fun, he treats combat like a dance, a back and forth of rhythmic flow where one person leads and the other must keep up with their tempo, and he sees life as much the same way.

This is literally all just a description of what it is like to play Anji, what it feels like to play him, and it says so much about the person he is, and I've never seen anything like it. It's such a shame that such brilliant ludonarrative goes overlooked by most people because it's in a competitive game with a skill floor higher than most are willing to scale. (And in Anji's case, to some degree because of that skill floor.)


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in reply to @soleilraine's post:

i have problems getting into fighting games for some of those obvious and valid reasons, but i've always been fascinated by how much they can communicate about their characters in that way! I can't say that i've played any other videogames that accomplish the same thing so directly, viscerally, and efficiently.

I guess some character action games come close? (they share so much dna with fighting games, after all) But the context of going toe-to-toe with another human is especially illuminating, i think.

All this to say that i Strongly Agree ig

You know what, character action is a REALLY good comparison, because it does absolutely get the closest. I think the only thing it's missing is sheer Variety, you don't really get to experience more than 2-3 characters within a single game, so the impact of each of them don't really have the same hit as a fighter.

in reply to @soleilraine's post:

it's fun because different characters can make you feel like them in turn? like, you're right - anji looks effortless in animation, but anji also makes winning look effortless even while you're working incredibly hard! it's something that our altar really loves about playing him specifically, because of that feeling of being extremely smart and working hard and looking beautiful and like it took nothing at all.