Had an all-night session with a couple of my local fighting game friends tonight. First time in a couple of years. We played: SFV, GG Xrd, Dengeki Bunko Climax, and ended with some Blazblue Chrono Phantasm Extend.
It was interesting. SFV was solid for everyone, but no one really loved it (I think I'm the most positive on it in our group). At this point after some time with SFV I appreciate the paired down back to basic approach, but the first impressions of my friends who've been playing fighting games for 20 years were "wait, where is X move for my character that I'm used to?", the smaller movelists, changed movelists for returning characters made it a little less fun because no one knew what they were doing and it wasn't easy to pick up like SFIV was. I'm cool with the changed movelists because it helps make some of the returners feel fresh. Feels kind of crazy to not have charge characters after some time with it. Like I'm so used to a db position with guile/nash/remy, learning to counter jumping attacks with new non-charge Nash is pretty different.
After a couple hours of SFV, we changed up to Xrd. People liked Xrd (loved the graphics), but thought it felt kind of off compared to GGXX. Mostly the slower speed. Was still fun and everyone loved the new characters like Sin/Bedman/Ephelet, but after about an hour or two, moved on. Dengeki Bunko was fun for a bit as a simple fighter just to check out the characters and supports. The basketball loli was hilarious, since it just looked like a loli and then suddenly she's dunking on characters and turning them into basketballs and it was like holy shit this is the best movelist.
Then we finished on Blazblue Chrono Phantasm Extend, having not played Blazblue since the first Blazblue release with like 12 characters. Man, had amazing matches. Everyone agreed it was the best fighter of the night. The combat just felt good. Fast, exciting, large cast with really interesting diverse movelists and playstyles, great combo stuff. Had some of the best fighting matches in years. Got me back into BB. Gonna play it SP and go through all the trials and learn all the new characters. I was playing as some new guy with a big sword and multiple air/stand/low/f-standing stances each with unique A/B/C attacks coming off them + charge character sonic boom/flash kick attacks + good normals. Dude was crazy fun to play as. Also was playing the Valkyrie girl who was pretty interesting as well. Such a great series. I love GG, but I think BB may have become the stronger game between the two.
But yeah, looking forward to spending a lot more time with SFV and BB CPE. Everyone had such a good time, we talked about getting back to regular fighting nights once every few weeks, though who knows if it'll actually happen. Everyone's married and working full time and stuff so it's harder to get together to play games compared to our 20s.