ONAR - Off World Fighter

A fun fighter that while looking amazing, reminds me of some early PS1 era fighters like Battle Arena Toshinden mixed with maybe an Tobal vibe... back when the big fighters weren't completely cemented in how they operate and people were still creatively feeling out the genre. Still needs work, but that's what early access is for =D

This is fun. Nice to see a developer trying to add something unique to the genre. It's early access so its easier to forgive some of the improvements needed. I also got a PS1 vibe from the gameplay and direction. Looking forward to the updates. Good luck.

This is maybe the fastest I've ever asked for a refund for a fighting game, and it's deeply upsetting to me because 3D indie fighters basically don't exist, and there's a rich history of 3D fighters from the exact era the early access reviews claim this game is emulating that I think is fertile ground for aspiring indie devs to iterate from. As someone that loves Sci-Fi and has spent much of his life traveling the world just to play other people in 3D fighting games, I feel like I am the exact person this is probably made for, demographically speaking. This is, first foremost, so absolutely nothing like PS1 era fighters in general that I suspect the people that were giving the developers beta testing feedback were, if I'm being charitable, either not intimately familiar with the genre, or if I'm expressing myself fully, straight up illiterate on what PS1 3D fighters played like. Tobal 2, cited in the early access reviews, was something of a VF clone that broke apart its buttons into L-M-H-G, and added a jump button to give a twist onto 3D movement. The jump was kept relativity low to the ground and had noticeable start up and recovery, but it also had 8Way direction, giving it a unique identity among other 3D games at the time. If I had to force myself to understand what those reviews were trying to equate this with in regards to ONAR, I had to guess it would be how ONAR has a (on paper) pretty interesting block mechanic where you can parry an opponent by using "Depth Block" to intercept an incoming attack, but only if you guess which side the attack is coming from. None of that matters if Tobal 2, or VF, or Star Gladiators, or whatever the hell PS1 game you're referring to isn't also a carefully animated and structured game, though. 3D fighters are, by their nature, animated a little slower to allow expression in lateral movement, and to give more visual clarity when you're moving in and out of the third dimension. Visual clarity is obviously important in any game, but it's especially important if you're literally moving in and out of the foreground. Animation, and more importantly hitbox/hurtbox assignment, is where ONAR crumbles. Nothing moves at the speed you would think it should, characters snap oddly into weird positions when they recover, hitboxes appear and disappear inconsistently (and you can confirm all this on your own with the hibox viewer in training mode, btw), and that's assuming they are even assigned correctly at all. (The first character you have access to has a crouching uppercut, for example, that looks like it should be a MK-esque "♥♥♥♥-it-we-ball" sort of move, but they put the hitbox for this SO FAR INSIDE the character model that it is incapable of hitting an enemy even if you are point blank and they are standing still.) Also, for some... insane reason, jumping is LIGHTNING fast and covers most of every stage, faster than any PS1 3D fighter you or I or anyone else has ever played, and it both just straight up looks bad and makes no logical sense for what the rest of the game is presumably trying to do. Double frustrating is that you'd logically think that if any game could make a strong argument for having a slower, more deliberate and interesting jump mechanic, it'd be one set in space!! Lastly, uh, it really does seem like AI voices are used in this, and that's not mentioned anywhere in the description of the store page and I wouldn't have even given a second of my time to this if I knew AI assets were involved. Frankly, I worry about what amount of this game is even really made by human hands at all, given the early access reviews clearly don't know what they're talking about and this game feels like it wasn't made by someone with a particular interest in either old fighting games or offering something new.