played like 50-60 offline uni2 matches today. i kind of gave up on this game back in the day because...i wanted to play vatista. i got whichever version it was on around the same time i got my ps4 (in 2015) and i was convinced immediately she was ridiculously good, probably best character in the game.
and i both couldn't do the execution nor parse the gameplan of a projectile heavy character in a game where the enemy can get so much meter for blocking things that are easy to block. but i wasn't wrong either, she was bananas. i just thought i would never agree with grd
and i still feel like it's a bit of an inelegant mechanic; it's certainly something that discourages runaway and zoning more directly than tension pulse/negative penalty in guilty gear, which is really saying something, lmao. but i had learned some basics on every character back in the first console release and i still remembered most of that shit, so i tagged around the whole roster while playing against mostly linne. at one point my gf was like "last one" (where "one" seemed like it meant a 2-3 game set) and then we played like 4 more of those
i still really wanna play the hard characters though, ugh. orie is the practical pick-up-and-play ky-character for me, but i've decided that's not how i want to xrd going forward either, so i really might give yuzuriha a real shot...
most "lmao maybe i was never just dumb and these characters are just inherently really hard to fight against" characters are eltnum, merkava and carmine btw. i felt like i was just doing anything i wanted and it was super hard for a newer player to contest. i assume gordeau is the same way but he and mika (who i don't know anything about) are the characters in the beta who i didn't actually make it to today