u/Loose-Pineapple5542

I know most of this place assumes Phantom Blade Zero will do amazing but I'm not convinced at all given what we've seen so far.

The game only has around 400K pre-orders on Steam and we're less than a month away. I know millions have wishlisted but that doesn't translate to sales the way pre-orders do. The main audience for this game is China and PC gamers in general so most of it's sales will come from Steam, not PS5.

And no matter how you spin it, only 400K pre-orders for a highly anticipated triple A game for several years does not bode well. Remember, this game is supposed to have a HUGE Chinese audience so where are the pre-orders?

And the lack of demo is a yellow flag at least. These days, even highly trusted developers release demos and long ones at that. PB0 is from an unknown dev people have zero reason to trust and yet they can't bother with even a short/simple demo? It doesn't even have to be permanent, a 3 day timed beta/demo alone would go a long way and drastically increase sales/pre-orders if the game is good.

It's almost as if they are hiding the game and want people to just buy it blindly and don't trust their own product. I'm not convinced all those flashy animations aren't just from a single easy button press and the game is mostly flash, not substance.

I hope I'm wrong, I hope this game does great but looking at things objectively, I'm not really seeing this game live up to the hype so far.

Look, like everyone else here I want this game to succeed and exceed expectations. It's really cool how flashy this game is. But you can't just have flash, you need substance. And people won't acknowledge it has serious depth to it without a demo.

Most people haven't gotten a chance to play it and frankly in this era with a million action games competing with your attention, a demo is a must. It can even be a timed demo, it doesn't have to last forever.

But if the devs don't put out a demo, that's a huge red flag and will indicate to the average consumer they are not confident in their product. Especially given that they have already released builds for certain people to test in the wild so not giving the public access doesn't bode well.

When did the community decide that the best character in the game that 50% of the community either mains, secondaries or has a pocket of, needed more help? Did we really need more incentive in the game for players to pick Fox?

"But all modern fighters allow button remapping, it's the same thing!"

Firstly, zump is not a simple button remap, you need a special controller with a mouse click Z to get anything out of it as the default Z button on GC controllers is garbage. Secondly in other fighting games that provide button remapping, it's done on a software level, not gated behind a 200$ controller upgrade that can breakdown and probably needs to be changed every year making Melee basically pay to win. Thirdly, no other character benefits more from zump than Fox who was already the best character in the game.

"Boxes are allowed so zumping should be allowed"

Boxes have been around for ages, no one has done anything notable with them at the major level. If they were broken we would have seen evidence of this by now. They also come with major downsides including but not limited to learning the entire game again from scratch. Another downside is any action that requires precision drifting is heavily nerfed on box.

"Well pandora's box has been opened we can't close it now!"

Hell yeah we could. Wobbling was legal for almost decades before getting banned. A ledge grab limit was also added very late into Melee's lifespan. If a game breaking tech was discovered tomorrow it would be banned immediately and rightfully so. But apparently nothing can be done about zumping which is objectively bad for the game and hype.

It makes no logical sense to allow zumping at any level of play, it's cheating, always has been and deep down everyone probably realizes it. The top players that are telling you it's not cheating are highly incentivized to lie so they can keep racking up the wins.

If people truly believe it's fine ask yourself a simple question:

Let's say hypothetically zumping didn't benefit Fox at all. Or Falco. Or Falcon. But it dramatically buffed Puff. Would it still be legal?

One excuse Melee players have had for years is that they cannot do any real job because Melee is so hard that in order to compete they need to play it 24/7. It's the only way to keep up with other top players.

But a guy who probably has barely any time to play Melee (residents are super busy) just destroyed everyone at a stacked event. That leaves little credible excuses for anyone else.

Why are top players mostly unemployed, ask for donations, sub goal attending events etc when you can compete at the highest level while holding down a demanding job?

This game is going to be massive. Let's consider the following facts:

• DBFZ is pretty much the most popular single release fighting game ever made in terms of sales outside of Smash Bros (and one MK title). It has sold over 10 million units and has a healthy competitive scene 8 years later which is unheard of for most fighters. This is despite releasing with no rollback and the FGC initially writing it off stating Infinite would kill its competitive scene (the exact opposite occurred). This game is pretty much the spiritual sequel (or the closest we'll get to one for a while).
• Now we all know as popular as DBZ is, Marvel is on another level of popularity right now. Movies are constantly released for the MCU with no signs of slowing down and they are doing incredible box office numbers. If there's one thing that's "in" right now, it's Marvel. Arc Sys couldn't ask for a better brand than this, it will draw in the masses like nothing else.
• Arc Sys has an excellent track record of making deep and dynamic fighting games. Marvel Tokon gives you a near infinite way of playing and assembling your team for countless dynamic situations. Tag fighters tend to already be free from and dynamic but the 4 character potential (especially with how unique they all play) might take this particular fighter to another level of replay ability and player expression.
• Arc Sys at least in recent times doesn't release a game and then abandon it. They support their game for years (just look how long DBFZ got updates for as well as Strive). So even if there are critical issues, they can and will be addressed/fixed/improved.

It's 2026. A fighting game launching without ranked mode wasn't even acceptable in 2010 let alone 2026. Think how many people loved what they saw/played with this game only to be instantly turned off by no ranked mode. And it's not like the game has a ton of casual modes to hold people over in the meantime.

Can someone explain why the game was released too early? Surely, this can't be good for the long term health of the game. The vast majority of players aren't going to wait around or come back once ranked exist, they will have just moved on by then to other games.