Rivals of Aether II

Unfortunately while I absolutely loved and adored the first Rivals Of Aether it feels like everything they changed for the sequel made it lose everything I liked about the original. The changes to the defensive mechanics make it feel so much slower and uninteresting compare to the limits to parrying and dodging that made the first one so aggresive. And the stage backgrounds are so empty and bland by comparison I thought the game was still in early access. Also there's no story mode which was one of the main things i was hoping for from a sequel, especially with all the additional world building from the spin-offs and character trailers. I think the only thing truly unique to this one I like is having two ledge attack options. I really hope one day i can come back to this game and enjoy it but it has so much I dislike I can't bring myself to play it.

Im not gonna lie I had hoped this game would be better I purchased it awhile back and refunded. Then I tried again recently, I cant refund it anymore so Id like to make a disclaimer. THIS GAME IS NOT RIVALS 1 it is a shoddy attempt at melee. If you were hoping for anything similar to rivals 1, dash those Ideas. The character choices feel lackluster as well in comparison to the first game. I don't foresee them truly adding a workshop (even though it was promised). Save your money there is about the same amount of players daily on rivals 1 if you really wanna play it.

Coming from Rivals 1, I do think this game fails as a sequel. Adding Shields, grabs, ledge, FLOORHUGGING, all things that vastly inflate what RIvals one was doing already. It feels so incredibly different, and lost alot of that casual appeal that made the first game so appealing. Even the switch to 3D, while cool, is going to hurt alot of the Workshop making potential for this game too. I don't think this is a bad game, but if you loved rivals one for what it had to offer, this is not a rivals 2 for you. This is Furry Melee 2, which had to add a few more mechanics to justify its own existence over just Melee. Even just playing the game feels bloated, every single button on my controller has to do something different to get the full range of moves plus shorthop, while not being able to change any of them to be dodge in the air. It is frustrating to want to have more buttons to arial dodge, but I am limited to one, because the rest use ATTACKS in the air for some reason?? Combined with floorhugging being a pointless annoying mechanic, combined with the community featuring pretty much exclusively people who treat this game competitively. If you wanna play the game solo, you have to go to 1v1s it feels like, every other mode does not have a good enough system, and even in 1v1 you still can sometimes fight people leagues better than you for no reason. That and a bunch of minor things just make this game so much more frustrating and less fun than the original, the ledge being blockable, and also just kinda slippery feels bad compared to ultimate, which is a fair comparison I think, considering this game is also just trying alot more to be smash bros. Pummeling is also just kind of a bad feeling system, most of the time you are gambling a 50/50 on throwing away an entire throw to get like a few minor percent bonus, and because special pummels are usually so much better, the opponent will never let you do them. Especially bad feeling for someone like La Reina, who needs to win 3 50/50s to get her super pummels, which seems a bit unreasonable. Perhaps if you could block throws too out of a grab so the opponent has to pick one of three options? And then failing the first time they don't get to, unless its La Reina I suppose. They don't even have shovel knight in this one, shark dude is cool, but he is not half as fun, Recovering in general also just feels worse, you can still walljump, but from rivals one where alot of characters could use their moves twice, people can only use them once here while most of them feel like they would need 2 to recover. There is also just alot of unreasonable kill moves it feels like in this game, mostly on Claren and Zetter you can just die at like 75 on a heavy to something random. I don't think this is a bad game at all, just disappointing compared to what Rivals one was. They don't even have all the characters from Rivals 1 in here yet and they are still adding different new characters. They have icons for Elliana, but still no Elliana! (Side note, weird that one is, they have 'elements' as categories for the characters, then proceed to fill out water and earth before air ever even got a 4TH). I think the removal of things like floorhugging and reworking some other systems would make this game alot less bloated feeling and needlessly complicated compared to rivals one in so many ways that it turns off people like me from the game. I want to like it more, and I will probably continue to put more hours into it now and again, because these characters and (most) of their kits are appealing and interesting (Not looking at you Zetter and Clairen), but it feels like it gets harder to want to with each session

BUTTBOY LIKE

great game, love all the charecters and comunity is very active :D

Playing this game overall makes me feel like me and other casual players are not the target audience for this game. This feels like it was meant for super competitive players intending to go pro. If you don't have a group of friends willing to play this game with you, you're not likely to have much fun. Rivals of Aether II took out almost everything I loved about the Aether series and gutted it down to an everyday generic Smash Bros-like game.

If you loath the concept of casual play and love sweating your balls off, like to watch hours worth of YouTube University on how to "git gud", like the brilliant design of [NEGATIVE ON HIT], or are just looking for a way to get arthritis, look no further than Rivals of Aether II. This game is a circus, and the developers are clowns.

The ranked point system is really really bad, so I cannot recommend the game if you want to play ranked. "Oh you won against an opponent 200 points above you? Here take 8 points." "Oh you lost against someone 50 points under you? -16". I also find it to be inconsistent as you can get 16 points out of someone super close to your points (+10/-10), while also just not getting that benefit against people higher than you.