Volta

Early impressions from labbing A.K.I. as someone who's very bad at labbing stuff.
 
Her only plus button is fHK, what used to be F.A.N.G's stHK, it's +2 on block. Literally everything else is minus, but generally also pretty safe. Like, even standing Heavy Kick is just -3, and her sweep (which is done with punch, not kick) is -8, which I think is on the safer end of things as far sweeps are concerned (Not that you'll ever be able to make that sweep safe because she moves forward a ton with it). QCF+HP seems like her best special. It's an anti-air, it leads to juggle on anti-airs if the opponent is already poisoned, it combos from everything, it moves A.K.I. forward so it has a little more horizontal range than you'd expect for a fully vertical move, upon landing it on a grounded opponent you're +44, and that's without Toxic Blossom. You're massively plus and your opponent isn't thrown very far at all, in fact if they don't recover backward they'll be within range of her command grab and with time for A.K.I. to waste. If you double dash after you're +6, since A.K.I.'s forward dash is 19 frames long, and I've messed around to see what you could do there. It feels like you could have a lot of options to try to sneak in or that are very much real, but I'm not an expert at all. Her overhead and especially her command grab are on the slower end. It says it's 23 frames of startup, but I think it's not counting the frames of getting into the stance, so overall it seems the fastest the command grab can come out is 33 frames. Her overhead is 24 frames, which I think is also pretty slow. Fortunately it seems you get a bunch of situations where you have a lot of frame advantage to threaten with them. Her EX Slide is indeed completely invincible for the entire duration to both fireballs and strikes. There seems to be a case where she turns vulnerable by looking at the in-game training tools, and it's when you touch your opponent toward the end of the animation, too late to cross on the other side. So, when used defensively you should be fine, that seems to be an issue if you were to try to use that move to get in your opponent's face rather than run away from him. The way I'm thinking I could play her is use her fireball into command dash/Drive Rush to open people up and poison them, find a good opening and then try to snowball them. At least conceptually that's how I'm envisioning her gameplan, but I haven't gone online yet because her combo routes are complicated and I hate not knowing what I'm doing when playing online, so I'm practicing in trials and training mode.

https://www.streetfighter.com/6/buckler/fr/information/detail/battle_change20230927
 
Patch notes bros

It’s frustrating as fuck and on top of it dr seems to put me into some weird ass  twilight zone where if I manage to get a light button to come out it’s too early whiffs and I eat the drive rush or bigger button it doesn’t come out in time and I eat the drive rush lol.
 
 Patch notes seem to only be small tweaks but that was already confirmed that we’re not getting a balance patch until after cpt I’m pretty sure.

I would settle for DR not eating inputs. I think it's perfectly doable to react to them with a long range normal, provided it actually comes out when you press the button. Cr. fw. xx DR is still annoying, but I can live with it. 
 
What baffles is me how people complained endlessly about SFIV's FA (never mind FADC) but seem perfectly fine with DI. Two hits of armor and safe on block? Who the hell thought that was a good idea? 
 
And yeah, parries in 2D games will never be a good idea. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

Oh I think parry is a terrible mechanic and SF3 is GARBAGE. But it’s one of those things where it’s in the game and I think people are right to exploit it as much as possible. 

Perfect parry/parry is in a good spot, if anything parry is slightly OP ( has  zero requirements for anything - low/high/bad timing accepted/less push/dont have to parry multi hits - best parry in any game IMO). I don't think any one has mentioned it, but you could make it so you could not throw ( but could still command grab) from a PP punish. This would get rid of the dreaded side switch. 
 
Drive rush though....I think they need bigger hurt boxes or a bigger punish window. The amount of times you die by trying to react to DR but get hit is insane, the game almost presents to you a situation where taking plus frames deliberately  ( even though you think you can stop it) is better and that's not a good design. 
 
People say "punish counter" on hit, but after thinking more about it, that wont stop anyone doing drive rush. They will just do it again. 

Because you really don't want to play a game where someone scoring a random perfect parry leads to you losing 40% of your life, at least, and then get cornered as well.

Whatever OLD MAN.
 

People who can't handle big rosters are old people who can't handle learning match-ups anymore. 👴
 
I have no such issues.
 
The final version of Melty Blood has 93 chars and it's glorious.

I like large rosters.  New characters add hype and keeps things spicy.  6 characters a year means it's more likely I get my favourites added, and even if they aren't - it's still going to create buzz for the game.  

I like huge rosters. I have a better chance of finding a character I will enjoy playing with a huge roster over a smaller one. There nothing more annoying than having a game I want to play but having no character that clicks.

Haven't played the game yet, but damn it if it isn't the prettiest fighting game out there by a mile. MK11 looked great, but this is exquisite. They've obviously put the resources that MK11 generated to good use, Boon and friends have really outdone themselves this time.

Animation has never really been NRS's strong suit, but it's reached a level as to where it is acceptable now. MK11's animation was decent. Also, the rest of the game looks incredible, from the stages to all the little details on the characters. I know it's a trend in the FGC to be condescending towards MK, but every entry is a labor of love with an amount of content and polish that leaves most other fighting games in the dust. MK11 is the best-selling fighting game of all time for a reason. 
 
I am definitely buying MK1. 

SFV wasn't even close to being as player expressive as 6 is but I still like neutral in 5 more than 6. Cr.medium into DR is aids. DJ/Juri/Marisa/Ken random DR is aids. DR eating your jump inputs is aids. Defense is aids. V-Shift was fucking based and V-Reversal actually fucking worked. SF6 is obviously the better product this is objectively fact but my issues with 6 were never that it lacked sauce. I just think the game has cool ideas but how they were implemented feels like darts were thrown at the wall. Why doesn't everyone have the same DR speed? Don't give me some BS reason about muh balance. Why does Lily have no cancelable fucking medium? Why does she not get a combo into light spire off of cr.light combo without meter? Why does Marisa get to two tap you? 
 
AH SHIIIIIT MUH NIGGA BUT DAH SAUCE DO LOOK AT THIS TWITTER VIDEO OF MARISA JUST SAUCING YOUR LIFE BAR OFF 1 HIT BRO. YO MUH NIGGA MY JP SO CLEEEEAN I DID OBSERVE AND THEN I DID OBSERVE AGAIN BRAH LOOK AT DAT SHIIIIIIT
 
I'm playing AKI because I'm gonna make everyone seethe. ALSO PLEASE CAPCOM BRING KOLIN BACK FOR SEASON  2 PLEASE
 

Don't give @Doctrine_Darkany ideas...

Joey was a Mika player and I guess he's not finding that in Manon. 
 
Regardless of how you feel about SF6, there's no way anyone can say SFV has it beat in player expression. Even with the low forward DR, it's not even close.

I get cr.mk drive rush is annoying AF. Honestly buttons into drive rush (specially when you can confirm them now with a one button input) might be the most off putting in the game. With all that, this is still leagues better than 5.
 
Dudes losing all match but got a v-trigger that gives them bullshit mix and then act like they outplayed you? Yeah, dope, don't need that back in my life ever again.
 
I feel like outside of the way some special moves work, and figuring out what to do with Drive Rush in neutral (Maybe have it cost a bar and a half?), there aren't really any major problems with the game. There's some instances where I think doing parries is better than blocking. In some ways it maybe that at its core blocking should be the safest option defensively, and if doing something else is better than it could point to there being issues; the logic here is that doing stuff on defense should always be riskier than blocking, and if doing stuff is safer and better than blocking then the stuff isn't all that risky.
 
This is still leagues better than 5 by a lot.

Shakunetsu, I'll get you tomorrow. For now though, people really just log on to say shit:
 
 
 

Don't give @Doctrine_Darkany ideas...

Haven't played the game yet, but damn it if it isn't the prettiest fighting game out there by a mile. MK11 looked great, but this is exquisite. They've obviously put the resources that MK11 generated to good use, Boon and friends have really outdone themselves this time.

Don't give @Doctrine_Darkany ideas...

Don't give @Doctrine_Darkany ideas...

Don't give @Doctrine_Darkany ideas...

Don't give @Doctrine_Darkany ideas...