I am a huge fan of the indie fighting game Skullgirls, in fact, it is soaring up the ranks to be one of my most beloved video games ever. Anyone with me here? 
(Information on Skullgirls is here!)
Skullgirls is my first fighting game. I only am an amateur at the game, but it’s loads of fun, and the characters, the locations, and story are fantastic in my eyes! New DLC characters are coming, and I couldn’t be more thrilled!
Any thoughts?
Free weekend on Steam.
Damn! I only have the PS3 version.
Thanks for the heads-up; I may have to check out the Steam promo.
It’s great to see a fighting game primarily focusing on female characters, though they are admittedly still pretty fetishized.
Not nearly as much as some other fetishized characters. Some of them aren’t even fetishized at all (until the fans get to them). Sure, they have large chests and other assets, but I know that that’s not what they’re focusing on. They are focusing on making a great game for fighting game fanatics with sexy characters. (When has that been done before? A whole bunch of times.) And two of the new DLC characters are male. Yeah, it beats the name ‘Skullgirls’, and I was a bit dissapointed, but Big Band looks super freaking awesome and I got over it. They are DLC, and you can choose to have them or to not have them. 
Anyone else hoping it was going to be about girls with skulls for heads, don’t bother. It’s just some anime-looking thing. 
I played it a bit over the free weekend. It’s a generic fighting game with no particular innovation aside from having a larger boob:no boob ratio than most other fighting games.
I’m not a big fan; I find the game makes a number of decisions that simply reduce my interest (and I say this as someone who REALLY LIKES fighting games, overall).
#1: Tag fighter. Yeah, yeah, fine, you CAN play with only one character, but you’ll still be fighting someone who is calling a bunch of assists and has multiple characters bouncing around covering each others’ moves. No thank you. I barely have time to learn one character to any degree of mastery.
#2: Six buttons. Why? Because that’s how Street Fighter does it, I guess. At this point, after a few years of playing around with Blazblue/P4A/KoF, etc, having more buttons than I have fingers just feels awkward and pointless. Why do I need all these attacks? Answer? I don’t, really, except as combo filler, but now I have to figure out which of the two dozen normals for each character are useful, and which are just 'buttons you push to transition from button X to button Z."
#3: Small Roster. I’m not asking for an MvC3 scale roster here, but with only 8, there literally isn’t anyone I care about playing. Yes, mechanically they probably cover all the bases, but there’s more to these games than pure mechanics. I think 16-20 characters is kindof the sweet spot for this kind of game, where there’s enough variety without making the amount of matchup knowledge required completely absurd. Beowulf looks kinda nifty, but he’ll come out in 2016 at their current rate of progress.
#4: Failed attempts at beginner friendliness. “Our game is easy! We got rid of 360 inputs!” Uhm. Thanks, I guess? I was messing around with the tutorial for an hour or so yesterday, and nearly drove myself crazy with the stupid throw-tech ‘lesson’ where it gives you no feedback whatsoever about whether you tried to tech too early or too late. Is there a mechanic that prevents “just mash throw a ton” from working? If so, how does it work?
#5: Humor. I dunno. It seemed to be trying to hard and fell kinda flat with all the puns and stuff.
Incubus - there’s really, REALLY nothing new or innovative about a fighting game focused on female characters. And honestly, I like Arcana Heart a lot more than I like Skullgirls. It’s got several honestly new, unique aspects going on, and a heck of a lot more variety.
Purin血 - if this is your first fighting game, I strongly, strongly suggest experimenting with some others, especially since you have a PS3 and are therefore not limited to the sad little lineup of these games that exists on the PC. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there, and honestly, and I personally find that the only really distinctive things Skullgirls has going on are its art style (Which is not anime, despite what some people think) and its, IMHO somewhat dubious, combo system. It’s solid, but in no way remarkable otherwise.
You make some pretty good points! I agree with most of your comments, although in no way did anyone say Skullgirls was easier because they got rid of 360 inputs. Or, in that case, got easier because of anything! Skullgirls isn’t supposed to be a game for newcomers, really. Sure, it’s got a tutorial section, but I quit after lesson 6 of the first chapter or something like that. I just fooled around until I actually learned what button does what. It was an interesting experience, I just suppose you have to have the patience. Skullgirls is supposed to be ‘punny’, it’s part of some character’s personalities! I find it’s overpunny-ness it’s charm.
Actually, Beowulf is the character i’m least looking forward too. He never caught my interest. Big Band though, he looks so cool.
To me, Skullgirls is a well put together fighting game to play and have a good time. I care about details, don’t get me wrong, but I suppose i’m not too nitpick-y about it. And i’m definitely going to play more fighting games! I’ve grown a liking to the gameplay style.
Yeah; There’s nothing WRONG with Skullgirls, per se (except the roster size IMHO, that’s a serious failing) but there were lots of design decisions that were made for one reason or another, which I don’t agree with. It basically comes down to personal preference.
I somewhat disagree that they weren’t intending to sell it as a beginner friendly game though - when it was in development, they talked that up a LOT, as well as the extensive tutorial (which is, actually, really good as such things go.) In the end though, it’s basically just a less stupid version of Marvel vs Capcom 2, only with more buttons and fewer characters. Since I didn’t like the game that ‘inspired’ it from a gameplay perspective, I don’t like it either.
The humor might work in its favor if it were… I dunno. I feel like it’s trying too hard. Blazblue has lots of humor, but it grows organically out of the characters.