Just look at Street Fighter and do that.

Killer Instinct is a lot like Street Fighter but with a more elaborate combo system.

And crappy art direction, sluggish feel and 35 hits combo everywhere... Erk.

I think the art direction thing is your opinion. Many 2D fighters can feel sluggish compared to more modern fighters. Combos are a big part of KI and makes it unique.

Lastly, how dare you mock art direction with that avatar.

Easy to pick up, hard to master. Great set of interesting characters. And most importantly balanced characters.

Tekken, while almost perfect as far as I'm concerned for a 3D fighter (if it wasn't ruined with juggling gameplay, TTT2 is a mess), has huge balance issue where by I play online and will fight Law, Kazuya, Asuka or Jin 50% of the time and the other 50% from the other 30 characters. Spamming moves and unfair advantages are exploited and need to be removed. Ryu and Ken are used more because they are the most versatile and people have been using them for years.

I think MvC3 had a great balance, most the characters had advantages to their play style.

Yeah it's not like Haraki is one of the most influential japanese artist of the 20 last year huh ? 

Killer instinct has too much effect after a hit is landed, too much things going on screen, characters that make no sens and dressed like bad cosplayer, average animation... I don't think those things are matter of opinion. At least not as much as you make it sound. 

Long combos kill the intensity of a fighter match. Everyone who invest in fighting game community a little know that... And this is nothing exclusive to KInstinct. Alpha 3, SFXT, MVC2, UMVC3, Blazblue 1 and 2 have combo long as f*ck too.

Also, KofXIII, Blazblue, Skullgirls, mvc3 does not feel sluggish at all. They're all recent 2D fighter. SF2X, third strike, kof 98 UM, MVC2, SF zero 2 and 3 does not feel sluggish too. 

This has nothing to do with age, and nothing to do with 2D genre. Killer instinct just feels "off" from what I've seen of the game. By the way, if you want a cruel prediction : It will bomb hard, and the small amount who bought the game will be highly disappointed. 

Man i really liked death match mode in world heroes 2, u gain the energy the opponent loses.

I Never understood why it never picked up, i found that awesome.

I also like in battle arena toshinden that you could win by kicking people over the edge, dont understand why every hated the game, but maybe it wasnt so good my memory is Not the best.

But for me the favorite fighting games are still Street Fighter 2 snes, fatal fury and samurai showdown

I thought killer instinct sucked on snes

Well that character in your avatar looks awful and uninspired. Looks like someone vomited green on a typical Japanese drawing. Maybe this Haraki guy has done better work. But hey, not everyone has the same taste. Deal with it.

A lot of what you're saying could apply to Mortal Kombat, yet that is still one of the most successful fighting franchises ever. It should be noted KI was also a great selling franchise. Not just by casual fighting fans, but hardcore fighting fans love KI as well.

Most of the games you mentioned came after Killer Instinct 1 and 2. KI2 defintely feels tighter than KI1. Perhaps if Rare released a KI game year after year like Street Fighter and KoF, the gameplay might have gotten even better. Rare only had two stabs at it and they're classics.

Your prediction isn't cruel, that's just your opinion. I think the new KI can do well given the price scheme. Its biggest hurdle is being a X1 exclusive. It would be a guaranteed hit if it were on the 360 given the massive userbase.

1- It needs to be balanced. Over powered characters ruin games.
2- It needs to have a nice amount of depth. Games that you can perfect in a few days get boring quickly.
3- Variety of characters. It's no fun when all characters are almost the same but have a different look.

Like before it's about balance. In MvC3 (the only of the above I've played, other then original KI), there was less urgency because you could come back from a beating from a long combo because it was limited in some way, they needed to power up their bar or it could be countered, or because of it's Tag system, you could tag someone in t break it up or swtich a character out and have a chance of doing the same on your opponent.

It's part of the reason why I think Tekken is broken with a juggling system. One hit that throws you in the air and suddenly you are screwed, for your opponent it's just a sequence of buttons and you can't do anything to stop it. They could fix it by allowing you to somehow get out of a juggle. TTT2 didn't help in this as combos were longer, certain characters have confusing move sets so what looks like it'll be a mid is actually a low. Infact TTT2 is just broken, I was once laying on the ground not moving and my opponents hit my character and they bounced into the air and they did a combo from it, stopped playing after that.

Oh, to return the glory that was Star Gladiator.