554: Fighting EX Layer PS4 \\ Darun (Hard) - Kumite highlights the generic AI
0Playing my first concentrated "Kumite" session in the Training mode of Fighting EX Layer on PS4, as Darun:
0:00 - start
4:45 - Command List
5:56 - Normal difficulty
34:26 - Hard difficulty
1:14:41 - wrap-up!
(There's a jump cut at 6:39 where I cut out a really stupid tangent I started babbling about.)
Akira Nishitani, director of the original Street Fighter II, is the head of Arika, who made this game, and the pedigree is pretty obvious here, with Darun being a clone, at heart, of SF's wrestler Zangief, and a character such as Allen being a more effective version of Dan Hibiki, for instance.
I in fact just played a Zangief session in SFII: The World Warrior the night before ( https://youtu.be/ZAoek6m2ezM ), so I can definitely say that playing Darun here in this Survival-style mode of FEXL felt somewhat like playing Zangief in SF2, except that in FEXL movement and attacks feel less well defined, and the AI feels much more generic. Also, FEXL's sound engineering is terrible, with mostly forgettable or bizarre sounds, and volume levels all over the place.
FEXL's AI doesn't feel like it has a cohesive fighting personality for each character, but more like they just run through flow charts of whatever moves they happen to have; when they hit upon the right ones--particularly the low combos, which I always fail to block--they look like geniuses, but when they don't, they look like idiots. They're kind of good at shimmying and meatying when it's your turn to stand up, but when it's their turn to stand up, they can usually just fall for the same command grab (the lunging "GANJIS DDT": uppercut-motion+K)repeatedly, and it's game over.
Once I learned to abuse low chains and command-grab-on-wakeup with Darun, I had to raise the difficulty from Medium to Hard (the highest setting) to keep myself awake; on Hard, the AI is more aggressive, meaner on your wakeup, and a little better at blocking, but their overall offense and defense still feels disorganized and clueless.
Kumite selects random opponents with random Gougi decks for you to fight, but their colors are always the same--based on *your* color selection, maybe?--which feels like a real missed opportunity; I was always facing the same white/pastel-green Skullo, and white/gray Terry, for instance.
Allen's AI felt a little more defined: he definitely fought like a typical "shoto" SF character, relying on lots of uppercuts and fireballs; that strategy was of course originally designed by Nishitani and the old SF2 team to demolish non-shoto characters like Zangief/Darun, and it still does the job here; having my consistently toughest opponent be the Dan Hibiki clone felt pretty weird! And the AI's uppercut use falls into the most annoying SF scheme of just hitting you with them perfectly pretty much all the time.
So, this session, my first hard look at Kumite, definitely pushed me toward thinking I won't be playing FEXL for too much longer--against the spotty AI, there was no compelling reason not to spam low chains and that command grab over and over--except sometimes against Allen and his perfect uppercuts--and it got somewhat tiresome.
Low combos are *way* too dominant in this game, I don't know what they were thinking there; maybe they just didn't realize it? Because I can't imagine that having the AI dive at high speed almost all the way across the screen, hit you in the foot, and turn that into a full combo into super(s) was ever anyone's idea of fighting game fun; it pushes me into doing madcap jumping and sweeps 100% of the time--anything to avoid the perils of standing, where you'll just get hit in the foot and force-fed a max super combo from full screen. I feel like I can't stand and fight, and this too gets old.
Maybe it'll feel different playing a non-grappler--although I can't say I hold out much hope.
On second thought... I went back and watched my play of guys I was holding out hope for, like Terry, Jack, and Skullo, and I was just doing jumps and sweeps with them, too. I could be playing SF2 or CvS or Marvel or something instead. Yeah I don't think I need to play this any more.
7/27/21
#fightingexlayer #fexl #darunmister
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