Rivals of Aether II

Rivals of Aether II is the worst game ever made. That being said, Rivals of Aether II is also the best game ever made. I would never recommend you buy this game because that would be like trying to sell crack to a 5 year old. However if you already have you'll probably never put it back down. I tried to quit 5 times by now and failed each time, i just accept this as my life now.

Anyone who is a fan of the platform fighter genre should consider giving Rivals of Aether II a chance. The way the developers treat this game is second to none in the fighting game community. Since launch they have been dropping two patches a month, a new character every 3 months, and actually listening to feedback from the players. Cherry on top, there is no predatory pricing or battlepasses that you might expect from a live service game. It is clear the developers really believe in their game and refuse to take advantage of it's dedicated playerbase. The game plays most similarly to Melee & Project M than its predecessor. Because of that, many active players have been competing in the genre for years prior to picking up this game. I mention that because the learning curve can be steep. The community is tight-knit and very welcoming (imo), with many discords and online tournaments to spectate and compete in. It's an extremely rewarding competitive game, that at it's best, highlights the best of what a platform fighter has to offer. The developers are continuing to add new characters, stages, and items, and at some point are planning to make a story mode for as long as they can. They also released full workshop support for the game, meaning overtime we are going to see custom characters similarly to RoA1 workshop. If you do pick up the game, I would be happy to answer any questions you may have! Feel free to add me on Steam.

It saddens me to have to negatively review this game because I genuinely love the Aether franchise and I played so much Rivals of Aether throughout its various phases of Early Access and its updates. I even backed the release of Rivals 2 on Kickstarter, I was that excited to play this game. And to its credit, this game does a lot of things excellently, the characters' transition to 3D has been done spectacularly, the character designs, environments, music, and voice acting are all A+, as always. So why am I giving this game a negative review? It's simple: Rivals 1's controls were snappy and smooth, whereas Rivals 2 feels like I'm constantly playing with 200 ms of ping. Inputs feel so much worse in this game that it's genuinely unplayable for me after 100 hours of Rivals 1. I was holding my breath, hoping that my Rivals 1 mains making it here would make a difference and that everything would just click, but even if Absa does feel a lot better than the other characters, probably due to my own experience with the first game, she still feels terrible to play in Rivals 2 compared to her Rivals 1 incarnation. I'll keep an eye out for future updates, and I do genuinely wish this game succeeds because apparently its cosmetics fund various side projects for the Aether franchise like Dreams of Aether (genuine masterpiece btw more of that please). And hey, if my other mains (Elliana and Pomme) come out, or they release any characters that catch my attention, I'll at least give them an honest shot, and if somehow one of these future characters happens to click the right way, I'm more than welcome to amend this review. But for now, it's a sad no thanks.

Backed the $100 kickstarter because I loved the ♥♥♥♥ out of rivals of aether and when the game came out I ended up dropping it because cc/floorhugging turned the game into a boring slog. Well after coming back for the fun for all update I'm happy to report that cc/floorhugging is just as prevalent as before. Its genuinely so sad how we turned what was such a flowy and combo expressive game (RoA) into a hold down and spam jab combos game. It really sucks because the music and models and everything is actually extremely high quality. It's just this one mechanic that makes playing the game feel so bad and I have no idea why a year+ later they havent changed it or removed it in a substantial way because it was by far the #1 complaint on the discord server. Fighting games are so cool man but you have to pray to god that your fighting game of choice doesnt get ruined by some lame ass character or mechanic that just makes it really hard to enjoy. Sm4sh had bayo, ultimate has steve, guilty gear strive has wild assault and happy chaos, etc. It seems this games kryptonite is going to be cc/floorhugging. If you cant get around this one mechanic you're just not going to have fun playing

Great game, but impossible to play against a human as a new player. The sheer knowledge and skill gap between Stone 300 and Stone 350 is immense (this is the lowest rank tier). Even if this wasn't the case, there are so few new players that I was constantly up against people not even in my rank. If you already play platform fighters I think this is a great option. But if you don't have experience don't expect a fair matchup, unless you are willing to dedicate many hours to close the massive skill/knowledge gap. Unfortunately, unless a game like this has a massive player base, it is doomed to only accrue players from similar games who have hundreds of hours of experience, as there is no respite for players like me. That's not on the devs at all. It's just an unfortunate reality.

I really wanna like this game but its just not for me atm. I dont think I like the fundamental direction of where the characters are developing. It's like a monkeys paw where theres 50% of a character and it's moveset that I love and then suddently it has a load of stuff that feels like it's getting in the way of that fun. The game doesn't feel like it has a nice flow to it for me to get into a rhythm and enjoy much like how Rivals 1 played. It feels very stilted and unenjoyable unfortunately, I really like the dev team, I really like what they've made in the past. But I feel like after playing around with this latest patch I've sort of been turned off it which I feel really sad about. Anyway I wish them the best of luck but I think it'll take something significant for me to check out this game again in the future.

I'm not good at this game but shmoving is fun so i play against my one friend who plays the big elephant and i go 1-20 against the big elephant i hate the big elephant

going to this from playing smash ultimate every day for the last couple months drove home how transformational a game with just low input delay alone is, let alone good online LOL feels insanely good to play and pull off combos, just pure fun