Technical impressions based on the PS4 version.
Marvelous/Tamsoft can't quite seem to grasp 3D fighting, can they? Estival Versus can be seen as the sequel to Shinovi Versus, with developers apparently not caring in correcting the major flaws that game had. I'm speaking about the camera, and anyone who played Shinovi Versus knows how painful camera be at times, and it's the same camera here in Estival Versus.
Aside from 5 new characters, developers added some mechanics, hoping to spice up the combat: dual battles are borrowed from Shinku, but items, parries, and wall jumps are brand new.
Walk over an item (like a bomb), and you can throw it with triangle. One would expect that the throw will be aimed at the locked enemy, instead items are thrown where characters are facing.
Parries are executed by pressing the block button at the right time, and the parried enemy will be stunned. The problem is that the screen is filled with enemies, and it's impossible to track all possible sources of an attack; it also creates a huge lull in the fighting, as enemies take some seconds to attack a still player.
Wall jumps are explained in a tutorial, but I doubt they'll be of any usefulness, as you'll want to stay the f**k away from any wall, should the camera decides to swing to egregiously bad point of view.
As with Shinovi Versus, this game is similar to the Musou games: enemies arrive in waves, all of them composed by large numbers of very passive opponents just there to increase your combo counter. The problem is that a lot of playable characters are better suited to 2D movement, and feel very stiff, not really well suited to fight hordes of enemies all around them. The feeling is similar to Shinku, characters with high attack momentum (like Katsuragi, Renka, Ryona) just don't seem right for this kind of game, where enemies die like flies and you have to constantly adjust direction.
Lock-on is there for...I don't really know. Locking on don't lock the camera angle, nor it does auto-aim special attacks or dashes (unless as homing air dashes mid-combo). Lock also changes to a random enemy when the previous croacks, but you can actually attack, move, and dash all around without caring about the locked enemy. I've found that lock is useful during the initial phases of an enemy wave, when they are plentiful and you can attack many at once; after that, it's mostly about keeping the camera on a somewhat fixed angle.
Graphics are hit and miss: characters look great, the framerate is a constant 60fps whatever number of enemies is on screen, and animations are very well done; on the other hand, environments look bland (and some are carried over from Shinovi Versus), the interface is rather uninspired, and lip-synching is non-existent.
Loading times are excellent, more so than Shinku on the 3DS, which is quite the achievement.
Right now Estival Versus feels like a mere update to Shinovi Versus, with new mechanics added without the necessary thought. It also feels like a step back from Shinku, that tried to solve the problems in Shinovi Versus (both mechanical and graphical, as the game put environments and interface on the same level as characters).
Marvelous/Tamsoft can't quite seem to grasp 3D fighting, can they? Estival Versus can be seen as the sequel to Shinovi Versus, with developers apparently not caring in correcting the major flaws that game had. I'm speaking about the camera, and anyone who played Shinovi Versus knows how painful camera be at times, and it's the same camera here in Estival Versus.
Aside from 5 new characters, developers added some mechanics, hoping to spice up the combat: dual battles are borrowed from Shinku, but items, parries, and wall jumps are brand new.
Walk over an item (like a bomb), and you can throw it with triangle. One would expect that the throw will be aimed at the locked enemy, instead items are thrown where characters are facing.
Parries are executed by pressing the block button at the right time, and the parried enemy will be stunned. The problem is that the screen is filled with enemies, and it's impossible to track all possible sources of an attack; it also creates a huge lull in the fighting, as enemies take some seconds to attack a still player.
Wall jumps are explained in a tutorial, but I doubt they'll be of any usefulness, as you'll want to stay the f**k away from any wall, should the camera decides to swing to egregiously bad point of view.
As with Shinovi Versus, this game is similar to the Musou games: enemies arrive in waves, all of them composed by large numbers of very passive opponents just there to increase your combo counter. The problem is that a lot of playable characters are better suited to 2D movement, and feel very stiff, not really well suited to fight hordes of enemies all around them. The feeling is similar to Shinku, characters with high attack momentum (like Katsuragi, Renka, Ryona) just don't seem right for this kind of game, where enemies die like flies and you have to constantly adjust direction.
Lock-on is there for...I don't really know. Locking on don't lock the camera angle, nor it does auto-aim special attacks or dashes (unless as homing air dashes mid-combo). Lock also changes to a random enemy when the previous croacks, but you can actually attack, move, and dash all around without caring about the locked enemy. I've found that lock is useful during the initial phases of an enemy wave, when they are plentiful and you can attack many at once; after that, it's mostly about keeping the camera on a somewhat fixed angle.
Graphics are hit and miss: characters look great, the framerate is a constant 60fps whatever number of enemies is on screen, and animations are very well done; on the other hand, environments look bland (and some are carried over from Shinovi Versus), the interface is rather uninspired, and lip-synching is non-existent.
Loading times are excellent, more so than Shinku on the 3DS, which is quite the achievement.
Right now Estival Versus feels like a mere update to Shinovi Versus, with new mechanics added without the necessary thought. It also feels like a step back from Shinku, that tried to solve the problems in Shinovi Versus (both mechanical and graphical, as the game put environments and interface on the same level as characters).
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