Recent reviews by Airtuscy

Too many super good people, not a lot of people in the middle so it's hard to catch up. Aggravated by the fact that getting the cards for the OP card combos takes way too long. Lastly, there is no way to see which cards were played that lead to the instakill, so it's hard to learn what is actually happening. I have extensive FPS experience, also in hopping games like this or OW, but this game just makes it too hard for new players. And in the end, I am not convinced whether the game itself and its balancing is worth the grind to get to that high level.

I have been playing this game on and off since open beta, so for about 4-5 years. In my peak I used to be one of the top 10 players, now I usually hover around low diamond. This review will not be based on any mechanical or balancing issues this game might have, since this game will probably feel very different in a years time. Instead I will be focusing on the problems this game has had from its earliest version, which will never be fixed. Namely: The game feels like ♥♥♥♥.

Now don't get me wrong, Brawlhalla is definetly better now than it has ever been. I still cannot recommend this to anyone who wants to seriously get into a platfrom fighter. So, why does this game feel like ♥♥♥♥?

(Most of this is not by myself, but rather from online forum threads, of which I picked the examples that are still problems in this current version.)

Buffered Input Issues

The first main point I wish to bring up is the fact that Buffered moves do NOT poll the direction on the frame the move is buffered on!

This is easily reproducable with picking Katars, and doing a simple string: dlight > gc dlight

Demonstration:

https://streamable.com/200zr

As shown, the second dlight is buffered from cooldown, but because of letting go of the direction before the buffered attack went through, an NLIGHT went through instead of a DLIGHT as inputted.

Press / Release System

This is an issue in which the engine deals with all inputs as a "press / release" system, meaning that inputs are polled as a central toggle that gets enabled when the game receives a [key press] from the keyboard, and disabled when the game receives a [key release].

This raise quite a few problems, such as

You cannot press a control once its been pressed down by another key, until it's released by any of the configured controls.

Directions sometimes do not register due to either ignoring a "press" in some way, or receiving a "release" from a separate control (even if the initial control is still "pressed")

Some other issues that I will address in "Other miscellaneous input problems" as I don't exactly know if this is part of the issue.

To elaborate,

If you were to press a Jump key (in my case, SPACE) without releasing it, and press another jump key (I.e. [W]), the second jump will NOT register whatsoever. It will only register when any key configured as "jump" gets released and pressed again.

Demonstration:

https://streamable.com/l50tb

As you may see, pressing the [Spacebar] without releasing it, and pressing [W] (a different jump key) later, the second jump was completely ignored by the game.

This problem has been partially fixed in a really weird way. If you press space for a first jump and then press W your keypress will still be ignored. However, even if you keep pressing spacebar, any further presses of W after the first one will be correctly registered. Keypresses are still being swallowed though, so this is still a problem.


General input inconsistencies across different attacks

This has been brought up previously, whereas some moves in different kits have completely different behaviors with the same exact inputs, namely Axe ground-pound versus any other ground-pound in the game.

It was dismissed as Axe does not have a downward impulse, however it still is generally confusing that you have to release your [heavy] button to release Axe's ground-pound, and you have to release your [down] key to release literally any other ground-pound.

(You can test this, use any weapon (except Axe) and use it's ground-pound and don't release your [down] key. The ground-pound will continue until you release the [down] key. Now try it with Axe.

I have also often found myself intuitively assuming that my GP will stop if I let go of the heavy attack key, which made it feel like my gp takes way too long to end, oftentimes ending in a lost stock. This might just be a personal problem, though.


Inconsistent startup frames / invisible countdowns

This is a general theme for balancing in this game: balance through making things feel ♥♥♥♥. For exmaple, when juggling with the lance nair was getting out of hand. The first nair comes out normally, but afterwards a silent frameclock starts ticking, and if one uses the nair again, there will be a 1 frame delay before it comes out. This is not the case for blaster nairs for example, since juggling with those is not seen as too strong. This just makes some of your attacks seem sluggish and too slow for no reason, which can be very tilting.
This game also frequently uses those invisible counters, which don't get indicated in any way. Most notable, the airdodge. In Brawlhalla, you can still move, jump etc. after an airdodge. You can also do more than 1 airdodge without getting any jump reset (like touching the ground or the edge), but only after an unshown countdown. This can lead to some pretty frustrating and janky situations.


The Flash engine's prioritization issues

Lastly, the biggest issue of them all.

As we all know, Brawlhalla's game engine is Flash, which is obviously not meant to handle a game with frame-perfect inputs in this manner.

To explain this as simply as I can,

The Flash engine "listens" to changes from your Keyboard, Mouse, and other Input devices as often as it can, but as soon as the Frame-rate dips below the main game's frame-rate cap, the engine completely stops listening to these changes in favor of showing another update to the person playing the game. During this time, the changes are "queued up" to be played back all at once after the update gets sent out.

This doesn't sound all that bad, but we have to remember a few things:

--

#1, The Flash engine can NOT use as many resources as other engines, and thus frame-rate spikes below 60 (fps cap) are VERY prominent and will happen on ANY computer, no matter how powerful.

#2, Brawlhalla uses a separate environment that caps the game's framerate a second time to the monitor's refresh rate. This means that players that use 60hz monitors or below will ALWAYS be capped below the framerate cap, and thus will always experience massive input delays and general input issues. (This is what Rivatuner & Overclocking changes and attempts to fix, my guide can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Brawlhalla/comments/6q1rk1/tutorial_solving_input_lag_on_60hz/)

#3, Almost any vertical sync, recording software, or anything that can modify the frame-timings of games can and WILL cause the flash engine to delay the listening of inputs and cause massive issues to those users. (Many reports of turning off OBS, Nvidia Shadowplay, FRAPs, and deleting the XBOX app have been shown to dramatically improve the user's input experience.)

It must be known that ANY micro-stutter whatsoever will cause input issues for the user and this simply cannot exist any longer.


So, in conclusion. This game is great, lots of fun can be had. However, of all competitve and fighting games I've ever played, this one, by far, makes me tilt the hardest. This is simply due to the fact that, while playing, it frequently feels like what I'm inputting is not happening in the game. It is infuriating and has been the reason I stopped playing this game every time. Once the memories of frustration from the controls fade enough the fun parts make me want to play again, but that's a different story. I did play this game a lot, and enjoyed it a lot, but I just cannot recommend this to anyone looking for a competitive fighter to sink their teeth into. It is just not worth it.


Source of big chunks of this review:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Brawlhalla/comments/8hln5d/megathread_input_issues_in_brawlhalla/

Gets a bit repetitive after the first 1000 hours, but it's fine I guess