Massive company buys you out, stops development on your unique IP the literal next day, and then apparently whisks away your lead developers to try to make GGPO work for 10 people at once when it was designed for 2 tops.

Wildly enough they manage to do it inside of like 3-4 years despite that being in theory black fucking magic of the highest order (what little I've heard it requires something at a scale Riot can afford but works) so now you have to figure out what to do with them and the studio you bought.

Oh wait these are the guys who also founded EVO, the biggest fighting game tournament on earth, and had a fighting game development going. Clearly we should just give them a budget and tell them to do magic again.

So you've told two guys with zero production experience that you're Riot Games and worth a Darillon Dollars so they do what makes sense to them: hire every single FGC old head who has gone into anything computer related and ride the gravy train with zero oversight.

And then your Hearthstone competitor implodes so now you want to know what they've been doing with the salaries you've been paying them which seems to be playing Super Turbo in the office and taking hour lunches.

And then we get 2XKO which has had like two dozen mechanical changes and like two or three distinct identities game-wise and baffling decisions constantly that made sense when you had more budget than you do now, like a tag fighter with grooves but then some of the grooves are now base mechanics and then some of them are different and also 10 characters?

And then yeah, as Sven pointed out in his plurk, Toukon Soul sweeps in to absolutely fucking wreck your shit.

Arc System Works looking at how DBFZ vs. Marvel vs Capcom Infinite went and going "hey you wanna see me do it again?"

I'm sure there's been no amount of panic there.

you know. i forgot this was announced in 2019.

Yeah! Riot bought Radiant in 2014, which was wild because I remember it being Rising Thunder got a demo at EVO, and then like a week later they announced Riot bought them, then the next day that Rising Thunder was delayed indefinitely.

People were rioting about it, I never got around to Rising Thunder but I was adjacent to a lot of people who were deep in it at the time.

A lot of people were genuinely livid.

It really felt like it was gonna be a bridge to something new and also being an indie with a tiny dev team and budget it was a lot more sane in scope than 2XKO has been.

Yeah.

I cannot stress that 2XKO mechanically is ridiculous when you consider the Fuse system, in a way that serves neither of its theoretical audiences.

Because it's mechanically complex in a way that isn't flashy or particularly good for the clever boy good tummy feels a casual player wants, and a competitive player is going to work to a meta that someone sets on like week 1 until it breaks.

Also the two newbie friendly ones Pulse (auto combos) and Fury (comeback mode) just got made basic features so now Johnny Donuts who has played about eight hours of Smash Bros in his life is now going to be trying to figure out if they use any of the three incredibly complicated combo extenders, or the two that lock them out of the 2-player mode.

You know, the whole unique selling point of the game?

Yeah mechanically I have no idea what 2XKO is doing and I dont think anyone there does, either.

So I kind of have figured it out? It's a tag fighter with very strong restrictions. Everyone has simple input specials, 3 super stocks, and a get-the-fuck-off-me button that seems to be more Killer Instinct or Mortal Kombat-styled Breaker than an ASW-styled Burst. Characters have their own life and super but share the Break.

The idea is that combos are limited - they seem to follow Capcom magic series logic (L-M-H) and the usual rules of normals - special - super, with tags and assists being each usable once per combo to extend them.

On that level it's very basic and makes sense.

Problem is on top of that they added every mechanical option from every fighting game they ever liked.

Launchers! Tick Throws! Throw Teching! Parries! Focus Attacks! Advancing Guard! Multiple types of oki! Fast rise! Slow rise! X-Factor! Anime movement! Wavedashing! KBDs!

Just fuck it, all of them!

Yeah that is. So much to keep track of.

The only other game I can think of that just loads in every defensive option possible like this is Koihime Enbu which also has damage on the level of every character basically two-touching their opponent to death.

Why do you need that much?

But 2XKO doesn't have that kind of damage so I promise if this gets a serious tournament scene there's gonna be so many fucking wins by time-out, it's gonna be Street Fighter x Tekken all over.

Yeah that was a thing I was gonna bring up!

I don't know all these options but I do know Advancing Guard because I cut my teeth on MVC3.

And the reason for that defensive option is because it's a 1-to-2-touch hyper tag fighter!

Unless your damage output is through the roof all these defensive options are insanely overkill!

And then you have the fuses where it's 2 Handshake Tags in a combo (essentially Active Change from BBTAG), 2 assists in a combo (to make Marvel-styled cheesegraters), or when you use your ultimate both characters do it to dump damage for the one-or-two player ones.

And then Sidekick which is both the tag and super fuse and also Melty-style damage reduction for reasons I don't understand.

And Juggernaut which gives you one character boosted like they're max ratio in CVS2 and also you can snap characters out like Marvel, again for reasons known only to the Cannons.

It feels like it's trying to be literally every tag fighter and as a result is pleasing literally no one.

Or, even if it's pleasing some people, the sheer number of options on tap will make getting into it nigh impossible.

It'll intimidate more casual players and 90% of the tournament scene is gonna figure out which one is "best" and that's all they'll play.

Like I was saying on discord I do think it's funny that I think most of the fightheads I saw playing 2XKO liked it well enough, but it's really funny how, now that the Tag Fighter audience isn't trapped in The Cannons Dastardly Saw Trap, 2XKO has just tripped over their dick trying to keep pace with actual competition.

[Arc System Works] Wanna see me dethrone the big tag fighter?

[Arc System Works, 2025] YOU WANNA SEE ME DO IT AGAIN?

It is extremely funny that they're doing it with Marvel since I had forgotten the last time ASW had done this they just casually put a bullet in MVC:I's brain with Dragon Ball FighterZ.

I actually do now understand why Sony approached them over it in the first place. This wasn't just "Capcom's busy with Street Fighter 6."

This was "hey y'all fucking put the last Marvel Fighter in the Tombstone Piledriver. You wanna make one of your own?"

I'm legitimately intrigued by the way it looks like Toukon works because if the theories are correct it sidesteps a lot of problems that MvC had.

Yeah?

For one, the characters all share one healthbar so you can play it as any combo of multiple characters to single guy + assists you want.

Second off it looks like you assign them distinct roles by the order you select your characters in, it looking like you pick them as leader/support assist, projectile assist, anti-air assist, rushdown assist.

It's kinda funny, because MvC: I wasn't bad mechanically; its major issue was its roster and overall presentation—which, to be clear, counts for a lot. What I've read about 2XKO is magnitudes above Infinite.

So in theory you can't just fill the screen with bullshit like some of the more meta MVC2 and 3 teams.

Infinite mechanically was solid to downright intriguing but it also looked like ass and had zero budget, and was very clearly being dictated by Marvel.

(Apparently it formed some of the foundation of Ono's pitch for Street Fighter 6 which is probably why he got effectively fired.)

That also sounds like it also circumvents some of the problems with DBFZ, re: distinct roles.

Especially regarding assist types.

Yeah; that's the difference between 90s 'literally filed for bankruptcy' Marvel, and 2010s 'did a fusion dance with Disney, and became one of the biggest juggernauts in the world and with ego to match' Marvel.

My biggest problem with DBFZ was that the matches took a bajillion years. I'm not gonna lie, I was skeptical about Tōkon being 4v4 until I learned that it only had one health meter. (I enjoyed watching MvC3, but that was an issue in some of its bouts as well.)

I played a lot of MVC3 but it was a mess unless you both were very good.