so when they announced that SF2 was going have online, something people had been begging for since MMBN5 DS, people were ecstatic

and then they actually got their hands on the game

so like, there were a bunch of deck building problems. like there’s a card that hits the outer edge and back row of the field, which is reasonable in PvE—but in PVP, you literally can’t move out of the back row of the field. if your counterplay card doesn’t pop up, you gotta block and pray.

but you sure can have three copies of that card. plus three copies of each of the lower tier versions. plus one of each Star Card variant, which increases the base power of the other copies after you use it. so that’s nearly half your deck that’s just auto-targeting damage right there, and hoo *boy* was that deck popular, especially alongside three copies of three levels of Flicker Kick, which would paralyze on hit so that all the rest of your cards could easily connect

but it got worse.

see, you had a whole escalating transformation mechanic. draw the right special cards, and you could start one of three transformations! you could only transform once per turn, though, so you’d have to start out in your first form, then you could hybridize with a second form, then you could finally add the third, completing Tribe King

now Tribe King was stupidly powerful. which is fair, because you had to set it up over three turns. you’d get at *least* double damage from every card, with extra bonuses on top.

while it ostensibly only lasted three turns, I don’t think I ever saw a fight *last* three turns once Tribe King hit the field

but it got worse.