I recently saw this card fighting game officially authorized by SNK on tap. I originally thought it was an ordinary emotional IP game, but after actually experiencing it, I found that its competitive environment and balance design are more worth talking about than I expected. After all, I usually watch KPL and LPL more, and I am more sensitive to game mechanisms such as version changes and hero strength. Let me tell you my feelings after playing this game.
Let's talk about the lineup first. The game brings together multiple series of IPs such as The King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, and Yuehua Swordsman, and the character pool is very deep. The current mainstream lineups in the arena include traditional high-explosive suppression like Yagami-an and Kusanagi Kyo, and slow-paced controlled play like Haohmaru and Ukyo Tachibana. The key is that in the current version, there is no such rhythm that "it must be a certain character", which is rare in fighting cards. Some characters, such as Daimon Goro, who are more defensive, may not feel so fierce at low levels, but in high levels, they are effective in tug-of-war and resource consumption, which shows that the role positioning has been differentiated.
In terms of balance, the game's lossless inheritance mechanism alleviates the pain of lineup iteration to a certain extent. This is actually a good thing for the competitive environment, because unlike some games, changing a version will not force you to spend money to raise a new lineup, causing the arena to solidify or be crushed by numerical values. In "Fist Soul Awakening", the training cost has been reduced, everyone is more willing to develop different systems, and the dimensions of the game have been enriched. There are definitely still people who can defeat people purely by krypton, but at least you have to think carefully about the lineup, otherwise the lineup restraint will directly teach you how to be a good person.
Let's also mention the new “Fighting City” and “Ichiban Street” gameplays. Although it looks like casual content, it actually has a positive effect on the competitive ecology. The acquisition of daily basic resources and fatigue management have become more flexible, and there is no need to go online at a fixed time every day to clean up your physical strength. For competitive players, reduced time costs mean they can focus more on studying practice matches and ranked play, rather than spending energy on repetitive work. I think this design is quite smart, and it is also an important reason why I think it provides a clean competitive environment experience.
The other thing is to give out 648 every day. To be honest, it sounds exaggerated, but in fact it mainly flattens the starting gap between small and medium-sized R players and heavy Krypton players, and is very helpful to the activity of the arena. After all, these days, no one wants to be hacked through as soon as they enter a cross-server competition. Certain daily benefits allow low-level players to at least play until the system establishment stage, and then have the opportunity to use their understanding to fight back. This is also something I highly recommend. Giving away numerical values is not as good as giving away space for trial and error.
Of course there are still problems. At present, the skill forward swing of some characters is too short, making it difficult to achieve stable dodge and counterattack operations under high latency. The impact of network fluctuations on judgment will be amplified. It is hoped that the synchronization logic will be optimized in the future. In addition, some old characters, such as Robert and Terry, have a flatter numerical growth curve than popular characters in the later period, and their appearance rate in high-end games will drop significantly. I hope that subsequent versions can fine-tune the old system characters and the environment will be healthier.
In general, if you are an experienced player with fighting feelings and like to use your brain to study lineup games, the current version of "Fist Soul Awakening" is worth trying. In the fighting card category, there are not many that can achieve such a good balance. The follow-up will depend on whether version updates can continue to maintain this momentum. 🔥