> I prefer 99,98,2003, for 2003 I like being able to tag out characters so if you
> chose a bad setup you aren't screwed...

99 Evo is my fave KOF, but that doesnt make it the most balanced or deep, its been proven that 98 and 2002 are. That guy in kof2003 with the twisted leg (Woolong ?) on the new team is so broken that he was banned from the first few tournies, and if you have to resort to banning characters you can forget about having the game in a major tournie.

> And Soul Calibur 2 better than its predeccessor? I thought you could button mash
> too much in Soul Calibur 2 compared to Soul Calibur.

There both button mashers, and SC1 has some strong points over SC2 and vice versa, its just the arcade version of SC1 is nothing like the DC port. And as fun as the DC port is, characters like Maxi are very over powered, where as in SC2 whilst characters like Mitsurugi is top tier the gap between him and other characters isnt that huge.

> I also think Dead or Alive 2 isn't too bad.

Its prolly the best in the series, but whilst the whole series is fun none of them are considered good enough for major tournies (though there have been some DOA only tournies, there nothing major).

> And Tekken 5? What's great about that game? I haven't cared for Tekken since
> Tekken 3/Tag even though I have Tekken 4 for the PS2.

5 is considered the best Tekken yet, closly followed by Tag. 4 is considered the worst due to Jin being god tier.

Every game has Tiers (as in if 2 players of equal skill play the game enough you notice certain characters will come out on top more then others), but games like 3rd strike and VF4 are different. VF4 Evo/FT the difference between the characters is tiny, though for what its worth Akira and Shun are up at the top and Lion is considered the worst character in the game, however the worlds best VF player uses Lion so nuff said. 3rd Strike has its tiers, I play the game a lot so the list is as follows

1.)Yun (SA3)
2.)Ken (SA3)
3.)Chun Li (SA2)
4.)Urien (SA3)
5.)Makoto (SA2)
6.)Dudley (SA3/SA1)
7.)Oro (SA3/SA2)
8.)Ryu (SA1)
9.)Akuma (SA1)
10.)Yang (SA2)
11.)Elena (SA2)
12.)Necro (SA3)
13.)Alex (SA2,SA3 against Hugo)
14.)Ibuki (SA1)
15.)Remy (SA1/SA2)
16.)Hugo (SA1)
17.)Q (SA1/SA2)
18.)Twelve (SA1/SA2)
19.)Sean (SA1/SA2)

Watch any tournie vids, and its almost all Yun Chun and Ken with the odd Urien or Dudley thrown in. There are exceptions though, there's a Japanese player called Yamazaki who uses Twelve and finished 4th in the last major tournie, which is amazing seeing as Twelve is the 2nd worst character in the game. What makes 3rd strike so balanced is the Parrying system. If you can parry, you allways have a chance.



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