Digimon All-Star Rumble announced for PS3 and Xbox 360!

[Bombfuse]

Just got my copy in the mail! Putting it in right now to play it, so pumped!

 

[Touya]

Mine arrived an hour ago, but no time to play it today! I have a TCG tournament to go to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I have tomorrow off to play, and this week I might be able to get some friends over and post videos of the multiplayer.

 

[OmniShoutmon]

Enjoy the game! I'll be playing a few hours tonight for the review.

 

[Bombfuse]

I've only been playing a few hours so far, A couple free matches and started gabumons story. And from what I've experienced, this game has the worst fighting mechanics I've ever played.

 

[OmniShoutmon]

Agreed. After playing all of the characters, I enjoyed fighting with Shoutmon, Wormmon, and Impmon. Gatomon's Dive Kick is pretty sweet, but you have to plan against the distance. Wormmon was my favorite for air attacks.

Digimon All-Star Rumble Review http://blog.samuraicast.com/digimon-all-star-rumble-review/

 

[Bombfuse]

This game could have been a better fighting game if the hit stun wasn't so long, as well as being unable to move for 2-4 seconds after being knocked down. The knockdown and hit stun is what makes this game broken. The hit stun basically guarantees your combo to go through, unless they teleport out of it. And the knockdown makes it so you can wait for them to get back up and combo them into another knockdown. If anyone knows any ways around this please let me know, I'd love a way to make this game more competitive for my friends and I. Right now this game feels like it's easy to snowball once you've hit a knockdown.

 

[tofumon]

The hit stun basically guarantees your combo to go through, unless they teleport out of it.

So? You can teleport as many times as you want provided you have the SP right? And it doesn't cost that much SP does it?

And the knockdown makes it so you can wait for them to get back up and combo them into another knockdown.

Can you not block immediately as soon as you get up? (I don't have the game yet sorry so I'm just going off of what I've seen)

 

[Bombfuse]

[/QUOTE]So? You can teleport as many times as you want provided you have the SP right? And it doesn't cost that much SP does it?
Yes, that is true. It's still not a good mechanic IMO as opposed to blocking at a given time in the middle of your opponents combo and being able to counter.
[/QUOTE]Can you not block immediately as soon as you get up? (I don't have the game yet sorry so I'm just going off of what I've seen)[/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure you can, but that's easily countered by a knock up move. I've been playing Gabumon, and Gabumon's air-B is a knock up. I've been able to continuously knock up opponents as they get up. Knock up moves break guards, so being able to time them when an opponent gets up is pretty over powered. Unless we find something that can be used against this method.

 

[Jessicat]

Blocking is difficult to time and sometimes not worth the effort as you don't know when it will break or when certain attacks are unblockable. I have no idea how to teleport, but it probably costs sp. There isn't even a tutorial mode, just a half-assed set of slides in the pause menu when you're in training mode.

 

[tofumon]

Yes, that is true. It's still not a good mechanic IMO as opposed to blocking at a given time in the middle of your opponents combo and being able to counter.

I'm pretty sure you can, but that's easily countered by a knock up move. I've been playing Gabumon, and Gabumon's air-B is a knock up. I've been able to continuously knock up opponents as they get up. Knock up moves break guards, so being able to time them when an opponent gets up is pretty over powered. Unless we find something that can be used against this method.

I see, thank you for the reply. When I get the game I will see if at any point strings are interruptible. I'm sure on block there should be a way to interrupt a string but on hit you're probably stuck in it until the combo finishes, like you said. I can see what you mean about being able to counter it with a well timed attack but I love me some guaranteed combos so I guess we'll see how annoying I think it is when my game arrives in a couple days. I saw in a video that a knock up move broke blocking but I wasn't sure if that was guaranteed or not. If what you said is true, then that is very troublesome. I'll try to figure out countermeasures for that too if I can.

 

[Bombfuse]

I'm curious as to how much time was put into this game, considering they suddenly dropped it on us. Does anyone know?

 

[Shadow Shinji]

Agreed. After playing all of the characters, I enjoyed fighting with Shoutmon, Wormmon, and Impmon. Gatomon's Dive Kick is pretty sweet, but you have to plan against the distance. Wormmon was my favorite for air attacks.

Digimon All-Star Rumble Review http://blog.samuraicast.com/digimon-all-star-rumble-review/

Nice Review and nice videos!!! Could you make a video or something to show all the DigiCards collection when you have it?

 

[OmniShoutmon]

Thanks for the feedback on the review. I currently have 37 cards (32 shown in the Game Menus video). I can try to collect more and do another video. Card collecting is the most time consuming (and annoying) feature in this game. I am completing all of the Battle Mode trophies today and will start card collecting round tonight.

 

[Touya]

Echoing the sentiments about the recovery. I still haven't unlocked Wormmon and Impmon, but I've tried training with all of the other characters and noticed that Agumon has a combo string that leads directly into an air battle--▢▢OOO lets you send them up as if you'd charged an O attack and then go right into Final Claw (▢▢▢OOO)

The teleport command is L1, it's listed at the bottom of each character's moveset in the pause menu. It costs about a fourth of your SP pool and you start at half SP, so you only get two teleports right off the bat. Unfortunately it tends to place you both on the opposite side of your opponent and facing away from them, so you have to reposition your character before you can counterattack.

Story mode is really poorly balanced, it seems to have been made with Agumon and Shoutmon in mind, while everything except the final boss is the same for each character. Gabumon just can't handle three Tortamon coming at him, I've yet to make it to the Lava Pit with him and trying to beat Agumon in his story mode is an exercise in frustration. I wish we didn't have to go through it to unlock characters and evolutions, it would be better if you could unlock things just by playing lots of battles, because multiplayer or even just normal play with the characters you like is a lot more fun than story mode's wear beat-em-up format.

 

[OmniShoutmon]

I gave up on the Lava Pits after several attempts. I may try again after playing through Story Mode with all of the characters.

To unlock the remaining characters, you can restart Story Mode as another character to find them. I played as Shoutmon (Stages 1 through 7), Veemon, and Wormmon to unlock all of the characters. I hate that the game doesn't allow for multiple Story Mode storage.

 

[CloneWarrior]

Thanks for the videos! Will you be uploading one of the secondary evolutions as well?

 

[B-mon]

It seems weird Patamon isn't in this game. Isn't Angemon super popular? And thanks for the videos in the review; Tentomon's story is fantastic.

 

[Abarekiller]

got done with Guilmon's story

the story modes are so tedious...luckily, you don't have to do the story mode for 4 of the characters

 

[tofumon]

Echoing the sentiments about the recovery. I still haven't unlocked Wormmon and Impmon, but I've tried training with all of the other characters and noticed that Agumon has a combo string that leads directly into an air battle--▢▢OOO lets you send them up as if you'd charged an O attack and then go right into Final Claw (▢▢▢OOO)

So I think the combo that leads into an air battle is square x2 then circle x2, instead of 3 circles. Something interesting I noticed is that it isn't listed in the combo list, and the first circle strike takes 200 SP and leaves the opponent dazed/stunned if it connects, and then the 2nd circle strike (which basically replicates a fully charged launcher) costs another 400 SP. I also found that circle circle square square square circle ends the combo with a kick rather than a mach jab. I wonder if other characters have unlisted combos as well.

 

[Touya]

I must've gotten the extra circle by not noticing the transition to air battle happening before the third hit came out. I believe I stumbled onto that combo by accidentally putting in one of the other character's (V-mon's?) combos in while playing Agumon, not realizing he had this. Hidden combos are cool--if every character can secretly do what Agumon can, it levels the playing field and makes knowing your main more important. I'll test it out when I have more time to play, school's very demanding at the moment.

Unlocked Omegamon, Shoutmon DX, Wormmon, Impmon, Shoutmon X5B and am currently on Dukemon's doorstep. So far me and my friends have noticed a general trend in gameplay, of (on the surface at least) strict character tiers. While any character can make use of long combo strings and projectile camping until the opponent either attack breaks or guards them, some are flat out better at it because of priority moves, superior attack speeds, walking speeds and the relative SP costs of each character. For example, Guilmon has an awful matchup with Shoutmon because of Shoutmon's long reach and fast combos that can come out faster than Guilmon can bring out his own, which leaves White Wings (XO) as his primary offensive lead into knocking Shoutmon down and from there going into a ▢ string to try and trap Shoutmon until he can build meter for evolution to Dukemon. Trouble being that if Shoutmon attack breaks him, he has an immediate lead into his own combos with Fiery Fastball--Guilmon has no such quick approach because Pyrosphere has a long start-up animation instead of coming out instantly like FF.

In general the characters are defined around the quality of their fireballs, walking speeds and combo strings. I've found that Shoutmon, Agumon and Impmon are the best fireball characters. Each of them has a fast long-range fireball with knockback that has a low SP cost. Impmon's is the best because it has long-term homing and will chase the opponent across ~60% of a stage's horizontal range before expiring, tracking them and having two angles of attack. It can also be fired while moving, and Impmon moves quickly. Guilmon's could be good if it didn't have the long startup, because even though it costs 100 SP like Dorulumon's, Guilmon actually has the means to rapidly gain back the meter 100~200 SP at a time from White Wings hitting. He's not the worst though; Stingmon can't hit things that are standing right in front of him with his, they have to be at a distance to connect. By contrast, Wormmon is more interesting because his fireball comes out fast but lingers for several seconds on the stage, not moving through a lot of space and instead occupying it like a cloud and trapping the opponent in a stun while dealing small amounts of damage that don't grant mercy invincibility. So while with the others you're throwing it out to knock the opponent down and hopefully start a combo string right when they get back up, with Wormmon the fireball is a tangible lead into an actual unblockable string right away. As long as Needle Thread connects, your combo will go off.

I have a big issue with how the game handles its guard system; you don't build any meter off of guarding successfully. Neither the evolution meter nor the SP meter fill up when you guard, which means that playing competitively comes down to exhausting the opponent's defensive options as quickly as possible, and it's a pretty swift process. You don't get back SP when you respawn, so once their limited number of attack breaks have been exhausted it's a matter of getting the opponent into a corner with a semi-infinite combo string leading in from a weak attack into a fierce. (ie the ▢▢OO we were talking about) Some characters like Shoutmon seem to have strings they can land right out of a successful guard, but not all of them. Guilmon is SOL if his SP is empty, so for him the only option is to take the lead early in the match and maintain it constantly.

Some preliminary ideas about valid stages for tournament play;
-Factory Town, Coela Beach, King's Castle, Digital Station and Lava Pit are out because each of these possesses some form of stage hazard that can be camped to lock a losing player into an even worse situation. Lava Pit is the most subtle, its hazard drains the HP of any character standing in the outer part of the arena when it's up, while Factory Town's doesn't do direct damage but has a hole near the bottom of the stage that will teleport any character that falls through it to the top of the stage and dizzy them, leaving them open to throws, charge attacks etc. The Locomon does the same thing but with damage added on.
-Digital Plains, Native Forest, Toy Town, Tilly Valley, Proton Shrine lack hazards and each provide some kind of varied geography. Proton Shrine is this game's equivalent to Final Destination, a completely flat, featureless arena with no geographic variation. Digital Plains has different elevations for the upper and lower sections, Native Forest has more dramatic elevations plus a bottleneck at the bottom of the stage that favors fireball characters (not necessarily a bad thing when you have a loser's pick format for best of 3), Tilly Valley is similar but with the bottleneck near the top, while Toy Town is a circular incarnation of Proton Shrine with an elevated center platform. Toy Town also has the only destructible environment that I know of.