In a way that kinda sucks. With only 12 characters I would've thought they would have put plenty of effort to make it as balanced as possible.  Poor Carl :(

Well at least the game is still uber fun (well, as far as I can see)

Well, Tager is good against Noel.

Carl is good against Bang, and I can beat most Jins pretty easily.

I think you'll like Taokaka, nimble, quirky, and devastating in the right hands.

Don't worry about it. It's actually pretty damned balanced. It's just like all fighting games where there is a ton of talk on match ups and tiers, but skill is still the most important aspect. Tager is bottom tier compared to V-13, but that just means in tourney play V13 will consistently beat tager more than 50% of the time. It doesn't mean Tager can't win at all. And this goes double if you're playing at a moderate sane person's skill level (rather than a tourney player training for five to eight hours a day). If you're a bad ass Carl Player (like dio is, that tourney player owns ass hard with Carl) then you can beat anyone. I'm maining Tager and if I lose I never blame it on the match up, or a tier list. My opponent just bested me. And if I could play like the guy in that video I just posted, I would've kicked his ass. Which is why it always comes back to skill. The game is actually very balanced.

The thing that I think gets alot of people's goats are that some characters are just "noob friendly". Lichi is a bad ass, but it takes alot of practice and understanding of how her staff works to make her the combo queen. Noel however, you can just hit "D" over and over again and she acts like she jumped out of a scene from "Equiliberium". That doesn't mean a halfway decent player can't step in a shove that "D" button up their ass, but the person playing noel will get more out of her from the get go than somebody that just picked Hakumen. V-13 and Jin are the same way. Very easy to step into and do something, but once it becomes a battle between people that have been playing for more than a few hours, Noel can get owned just as easy as anyone. But on that noob level, you will be pissed as hell at the person just mashing D and noel is flipping all over the place shooting you across the screen in a blue blur.

And yes the game is uber fun.

Shadowblind, I use Ragna as my main.  I wanna use Litchi as my occasional other character.  I wanna play all you guys to get better though.  Back to the training mode. lol

Thanks for the replies.
I think sometimes I do think too much on the 'insane', or tier level, when in reality that level will probably never affect me... so I should just focus on having fun.

I think Taokaka's grown on me even more, can't wait to actually try her out for myself.

BWAHAHAH! Then you are now my enemy! Honestly though, I've been fighting and fighting and fighting against Ragna as Jin this whole time on Hell mode and have been getting my ass kicked nearly every time.

He's like Jin's anti-drug needless to say I don't know what will happen if I hop into an online match where someone knows how to use him yet.

Ok, I don't think I understand counters. From the way the AI fights, I assume that counters allow your character to stop incoming attacks without taking damage and IMMEDIATELY use one of your own. It has never worked in my favor before, so I assume there is a button I should press besides the attack button to do this?

I can't stand how fun this game is. If anyone wants a match, just throw an invite my way. But be warned. I'm new at this.

Sure, join http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=79042&page=1 and get added to the list.