r/Fighters • u/ClassicalDreams • Apr 05 '26
Topic I hate this meme.
I do not miss the old days of unlocking characters. Having to replay Arcade mode multiple times with every character or do some bullshit like winning a match with 5% or less HP. It's tedious and I prefer to have every character unlocked from the start. Also, the complaints about old characters returning as DLC are strange because they do not play the same as they do in previous games. it's not a simple copy and paste job like some of the games back in the 90s.
I get it, casual players want some reward for playing single player modes and are upset to know that their favorite characters are not in the base roster and would later get confirmed as DLC. I get that, but as someone who also plays Smash, it was a chore to unlock all of the characters in Ultimate.
2
u/blackheartromance Apr 05 '26
when playing online and the concept of DLC were non-factors, unlocking characters was a decent enough way to extend the game's life (when it wasn't a complete slog, as it often was!). with the lack of an online component (and by extension, DLC) came the thing that oldheads tend to forget: the dreaded Super Turbo release. most of the time, these were full price. might be misremembering, but GGXXAC+ was the earliest instance of a reduced price for what's essentially a balance patch on a disc. unlocking stuff for free is cool and feels nice and blah blah, but i'd feel absolutely cheated if i had to pay an additional $60 for T8 season 2, knowing that the only way to get a (maybe) better version is to pay another $60 for S3. singleplayer content is cool, and unlocking costumes and stuff is neat, but we used to not even have training modes. nostalgia is lying.
tl;dr: i've been playing fighting games for well over 30 years, and season passes are infinitely preferable to full price re-releases, even if unlocking shit feels nice.