Yeah, I have to agree. Parrying adds a level of difficulty/risk/skill that I was hoping would be there. Still could be lots of fun of course, but disappointing.

I've heard several times that most people just want to hit buttons and do cool stuff, and you can win with safe play and punishment. It's a good point to winning, but it's hard to accept when I see top players not playing this way. It feels like I'm learning how to only play the average person. I guess that's something I'll have to accept until I can get myself good enough and high enough to play a more thoughtful match.

On the side, I think Sajam's doing a great job of trying to demystify fighting games for new players.

Even with all the jank, the terrible combat, etc....I loved the first game. It had such a great atmosphere to me. I really want this second game to succeed, but I hope it focuses on that vibe first and foremost.

I picked it up to start to get into multiplayer but have found myself spending more time in the singleplayer World Tour so far. The amount of hilariousness I run into with my custom character who looks totally out of place for the cutscenes, master poses, and the like is almost worth the amount of admission on its own.

I wonder if a big part of this is that you are against a wall at the time. The game designers probably want having your back to the wall to be dangerous. They don't want it to be like neutral, and combining that with all the mechanics happens to lead to throw loops. They don't want to adjust that because it might make the wall less dangerous.

One thing I've heard people say as a rebuttal is that if throw loops are an important mechanic/strategy, why can't all characters do it? So in my mind that supports that idea that it was a result of making the corner dangerous, and I'm not sure there's an easy fix for that.

I remember playing this and thinking the idea was cool and I liked the atmosphere, but the game felt barebones. I literally can't remember if I finished it. For free, I'd say it's worth a look. I don't think it was supposed to be very long. Just expect lots of slow, atmospheric time.