Indie Focus @ #Evo2017

Among the massive amount of tournaments and vendors, there was a huge Indie Game presence at Evo. The best part is that it wasn’t just fighting games available. There was a new Dark Souls-eques action Sinner yet to be announced. I had a chance to play it and it had a lot of potential and promise. I also got to play the Valkyrie Profile inspired Fallen Legion: Sins of the Empire. The Developer Spencer Yip provided a special “Evo Only” demo which was incredibly difficult and challenging. Our review for Fallen Legion: Sins of the Empire will be dropping sometime today so please stay tuned. It’s great that there was a wide range of games to try out. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to get to all of them. But I did play a good amount of them while attending Evo. I’ll give my impressions of each game I had a chance to play.

I was very excited to play this game. I’ve been a huge fan of the Street Fighter EX series. When they announced a new game was in development I was eager to see how they would transition the game into the modern era of gaming. The game is promising but it does have its flaws.

Pros:
The visuals for the game have improved even more since its initial announcement back in April. The game looks great. The environments and textures have a richness to them. The particle effects are flashy and vibrant. The character models look amazing. Hokuto’s face has even seen some improvements. The gameplay feels very reminiscent to the early games. DHC’s are back as they were in the original game. The new mechanic added to the game Gougi. You could pick one of them before the match and like the Gem system from SFxT, you get new abilities like Guard Break and Guard Cancel. At present, these abilities for each Gougi are set. Hopefully the Gougi system gets refined and re-tweaked as the Location Tests roll out.

Cons:
The only real con I had was the gameplay felt a bit odd and off. The worst offender was running or dashing. When you are in run animation and then you attack, your character is still sliding forward. It makes the combos seem awkward. For me, it didn’t feel like this was the intention at all.

I didn’t have any real expectation for this game. It seemed quite quirky and fun. I did have a long time to play this game. Probably more time than any other game I tried.

Pros:
This game has an interesting gimmick of having 8 points of damage per character. Each single strike has 1 point of damage. So, a combo can have 5 to 6 points of damage depending on damage scaling and whatnot. Super Moves have a fixed amount of damage of 2-3 points. It doesn’t matter how many hits a sequence has, the damage is calculated based on the attack. A Super Move can have 8 hits but only 2 points of damage. It’s a very interesting take on fighting game vitality and stamina. Also, the game has very simple inputs so it doesn’t require a lot of precision to play. It’s very reminiscent to Dive Kick. It focuses on fighting game fundamentals like footsies, spacing and setups.

Cons:
Visuals definitely need to be fine-tuned and polished. The cel-shaded art style is great but it can look less impressive if the visuals aren’t polished. The animations were a little wonky but this was a very early build of the game. There were a lot of familiar animations as well. One character had a lot of Slayer’s (Guilty Gear) exact move set. There were other examples too. I just hope the game isn’t heavy on the “inspired” move set and animations. Also, Jaine feels a bit too overpowered right now with her ability to chip and zone.

I got a chance to play a good amount of this game. I definitely wanted to see how this game improved since its reveal last year. I was pleasantly surprised.

Pros:
I found the visuals to be very pleasing. Using the Unreal 4 Engine definitely helped make the game look good. The backgrounds of the stages were pretty as good as well. The Forest on fire stage was incredible. The character models weren’t bad either. Though Caleb looked like a Sabrewulf clone and Zafkiel looked too much like Sonya Blade. The game plays well for the most part.

Cons:
The game was a bit strange. The game rewards you for aggressive/rushdown play style. And if you’re too defensive it gives you a penalty called Doom. While in Doom, some of your moves are locked and unable to use. I didn’t really like this mechanic. You also can do Ex moves and special cancels called Bold cancels. However these take away from the blue gauge and leads you closer to Doom. I think the risk is way too high for the reward. There’s definitely some balancing issues that need to be worked out. Also, comboing and just the overall style of gameplay was not that easy to pick it. It seem very specific on what you can and can not do.