Rivals of Aether II

TL;DR: I get to beat up my best friend in the most complete Smash clone on PC.

Best thing since sliced melee.

Bro this game is actually unplayable. I cant think of a single good thing about it.

Great platform fighter where every character: 1. is an anthropomorphic animal 2. has a very strong identity in their gameplay 3. handles one of 4 elements (fire, water, earth or wind) There are copious amounts Smash Bros DNA here but also fighting game DNA: things like low input lag, characters of similar strength, and risk-reward favoring the better positions. Skins are premium but new characters and game modes are free, so even if you just want to try out the abilities and keep an eye out for new content there's a lot of replayability here

Bruh why is there a battlepass and 8 pound skins in this game?

honestly one of the best Smash-likes i've ever played

I've gone back and forth on whether to recommend this game or not a lot, and had neutral reviews been a thing I'd definitely have gone for that, because it is a well crafted game. It looks pretty, plays smoothly and so on. But it is a game for a very particular audience, and while adjacent, I am not part of that audience. I love Smash bros and other platform fighters, including Rivals of Aether 1, but RoA2 just has too many mechanics that are fully intentional and aimed at a particular crowd, that are frustrating to anyone outside of it. There's a lot of moves that are unsafe on hit, augmented by the newly added "floor hugging" mechanic. I think this is meant to promote the new grab mechanic but mostly feels like an unnecessary limiter on what moves you can use in neutral. Many moves have a low knockback angle, leading to a very high incidence of tech chasing. Definitely a thing that sounds good on the surface, but RoA2 takes it far enough that it becomes annoying. Most of the cast have insanely good recoveries so offstage situations are limiting and a definite disadvantage but ultimately not much more deadly than being on stage. I've had recurring issues with the game getting locked on the game results screen, reacting to no inputs and forcing an alt+f4. I also had some issues with stuttering which seemed to be caused an old USB I had connected to my computer, which isn't RoA2's fault, but it is weird that it's the only game I've played where that caused an issue. For those who aren't put off by this, or even think it sounds interesting, this is a gorgeous and seemingly well-balanced game with some really interesting character designs.