What makes a good fighting game?

[Ganoncrotch]

Mr_No said:

Ease of button input. SSF IV was a nightmare for me just because of that. A lot of people had an advantage over me because I wasn't fast or accurate enough to execute the most complex moves. Charge moves? Spinning circle moves? Even the less complex moves were impossible for me to input them under pressure. Tekken is a bit more forgiving on the inputs. They are lengthier, but easier to remember and execute.

On top of that, the game needs to be easy to pick up and hard to master. Something that SSF IV isn't. You either became good after losing 300 times or you didn't. You basically get thrown at the wolves if you go online.

Character design is probably the least important to many, but if a game looks too 2D'ish, I'll probably ignore it completely. Alternate costumes and outfits are a must for me. This is why I preferred DOA 5 Ultimate over the rest. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 decided to be extremely lazy with the alternate costumes in quantity and look; they were worse from the much superior Tekken 6.

Story isn't definitely the fighting genre's strength, but many of the games haven't even tried to get a decent story, so it isn't worth choosing a fighting game for the story. Mortal Kombat being an exception for this.

you mean like Pauls really hard input for his 1/2 to 3/4 health punch? of Back and both punches? Or Yoshimitsu's impale move which if it lands is going to take half a bar of health... which is back back and square. I know those are long wind up moves but there is very little if any inputs in Tekken which are more than a direction and a button combination, Angel/Devils Eyebeam/Flying Beam is either both punches or Kicks but as projectiles in a Tekken universe they can be abused to hell and aren't really soft on the Health bar either. I know a lot of Kings combination grapple moves have massive inputs but in Tekken land he is very much the minority when it comes to commands.

As for my main thing about what makes fighting games great is the ability to keep things even, if a fight is going sour for one player to have something like the revenge bar in SF4 that fills from being hit (or focusing attacks) but where if you happen to get caught out badly and lose a chunk of Health it gives you ammo to have some shot at coming back into the game. Heck some fighters just ruin certain play styles once they have some revenge, don't considering the air to be your friend if you've kicked Hakan a few times for example.