Rivals 2 Steam Charts & Stats

$30 for an online multiplayer-focused game. It's much more mechanically different from Rivals of Aether 1. It's like Smash Bros.; fast like eSports Melee, tech-convenient like Ultimate. The game looks good visually and feels good mechanically. Rivals 2 is heavily competitive and eSports focused. Much practice and study is needed to get exceptionally good. If you're coming from competitive Melee, the environment will be familiar. Wavedashes, no L-canceling, crouch canceling, tech chases, ledge grabbing/guarding, etc. If you're not into this type of gameplay with this niche type of community, this game isn't worth it for you. Just go play Smash Bros. Many free ways to play Smash Bros out there. Or stick with Rivals 1. Single player content is limited, just a basic arcade mode with a few mini games. Plus training modes. If you are getting this to play alone and not online, or exclusively for the solo content, you're wasting your money. In fact, single player is more of a warm-up / intro into using the characters for online multiplayer. A veiled tutorial and practice session. But I suppose, what more can you ask for in a competitive-multiplayer-online-focused game? As of writing this, the average player count is 500-600 across the world. Unless you desire the competitive atmosphere, you will not enjoy playing online against try-hard randoms. You will have much more fun if you only play with people you know. But then this defeats a main aspect of this game, online multiplayer. Unless you are experienced in this game and/or SSBMelee, if you play online, you will likely get combo'd to death, or will be very unable to even hit the other player. You will be taunted or t-bagged if you suck. If you want to give up and Self-Destruct off the stage, you will be taunted. The small community eats itself alive. Other noteworthy mentions: (1) There's an in-game shop using in-game currency and/or actual money. (2) As of writing this, the tutorials are unfinished. (3) Every so often, they patch, nerf, and buff many specific things about the characters and mechanics, which can lead to a forever-changing meta and character capabilities. (4) The low player count can be a detrimental aspect of desiring to play this game online. TLDR; this game is for you if (1) you really liked playing and grinding competitive SSBMelee, but you want an alternative to Melee, and you don't mind learning curve and toxicity/frustration, and/or (2) you plan on playing this game exclusively with friends as a Smash Bros. alternative. But (3) I don't recommend this game, especially in its current state.

Devs made it clear that this isnt rivals But it isnt Ultimate it isnt PM It isnt Melee WHAT is it? Its floor hug simulator featuring rivals of aether 1 cast.

If you want Smash with real netcode unfortunately this game won't hit the spot for you. It's made by and for a very small, very self indulgent community of extreme sweat platform fighter players. I am sure the couple thousand people that idea appeals to are still having a blast with it, but you wouldn't need to consult the reviews if you were one of them. Trying to play this thing as a casual is like showing up to a local boxing gym and stepping in the ring when your appetite for violence actually levels off somewhere around light roughhousing.

Reviews will tell you the problem is the balance. The problem is not the balance. The game is honestly quite well-balanced and the devs do a pretty alright job of keeping everything reasonably level. The problem is that not one of the characters—not a single one of them—is fun to play against. Whether this is due to the design of the characters themselves or due to system mechanics—likely both—is beyond my purview. Either way, where certain other well-respected platform fighters allow its players to be identified through their playstyle alone, here there is simply just an optimal way to play every member of the roster. Options are simultaneously very powerful yet very limited, and each character is simply incentivized to hone in on the one bread-and-butter strategy that will win so long as it's executed more often than the opponent executes theirs. The rest of the software would be excusable if only the core gameplay weren't so mindnumbing. The UI is a buggy, inconsistent mess that borders on unusable sometimes. The matchmaking is questionable at best. The art direction is underwhelming and lacks the soul of its predecessor. Non-competitive players have essentially no reason to play the game whatsoever, something which the previous entry had in spades even if you were to totally ignore the workshop. Credit where credit is due: The visual design of the stages, while lacking the charm of the first Rivals of Aether, is solid and has excellent visual clarity in a genre where newcomers to 3D often struggle to create readable layouts in compelling environments. The monetization is extremely reasonable and is unlikely to make one feel as though they absolutely need to break out the wallet for cosmetics. The team's rejection of FOMO-driven battlepass monetization is extremely refreshing, and the defiance of convention when it comes to making DLC characters totally free is a godsend to a community which values competitive integrity. It's clear that the team cares dearly about this game and there's a lot of love going into it, even if parts of the game have yet to get the attention they deserve. That's what makes it so sad that the game simply just isn't fun as is. I really, truly wanted this to be the thing I could feel good about investing time into improving in but the climb feels like all pain and no gain even as the number goes up. Here's hoping an overhaul can revitalize it.

This games a good ass time coming from melee, don't be afraid of patches the dev teams doing great it feels better than ever

This game's falloff needs to be studied. And no this isn't just a case of "other games come out so it's hard to retain playerbase" that is only a part of it. It takes up to 30 minutes to find a match in the 2v2 queue sometimes. Obviously launch popularity isn't going to last forever, but a lot of bizarre balance decisions accompanied with the larger system changes which dropped the unique identity of Rivals 1 in favor of trying to grab Smash's market share (which is impossible to do without Nintendos IP/Brand Recognition anyway) has hurt the game more than it has helped. Sure, the game looks FANTASTIC, huge shoutouts to the art team, and the music is again absolutely incredible, following up on a lot of motifs from previous games and expanding upon them. The whole presentation is sick. But the game itself? Insanely frustrating to play in multiple ways, some matchups feel like putting your hand in a blender, and they keep buffing Zetterburn stop doing that!!!!?? But fr someone get on dubs, dubs still fun as fuck (most of the time, anyway)

Drumming up fake drama about a review bombing that never happened to artificially inflate your positive review count through fan counteraction is gross. Game is filled with F2P style cosmetic MTX stuff. Overall gamefeel is disappointing especially compared to Rivals 1 and many mechanics and changes made, though technically "balanced", simply make the game less fun. By pursuing more widespread appeal and e-sports, they got rid of much of the appeal of Rivals in favour 3D visuals and more Melee-accurate mechanics, losing its identity as its own unique thing in the process. Lastly, the rollback netcode just doesn't seem to be up to par with other games (especially Brawlhalla) so it just doesn't feel all that great to play online.

pirate software is a dummy but has next to NO involvement in this game this is the best platform fighter that doesnt have "brothers" in the name of the game.

I ain't gonna lie this game is just so... [i]bland[/i], at least in its current state. I don't even care all that much about character balance and whatnot. As long as the orca with limbs is sliding around everywhere I'm having fun (except when i get matched up against a zetterburn), but almost everything from the stage designs to the UI feel so lifeless and unpolished compared to the first game. Most of the stages aren't at all interesting to look at and don't have much depth or detail to them, and a lot of the UI feels very unfinished and unappealing at the moment. It's a bummer there isn't much singleplayer content either. RoA 1 has versus, abyss, training, a LOT of tutorial lessons, a story mode, and even tetherball, wheras this only has versus, arcade (which i wish had an endless mode), some training modes, and a single tutorial level. Abyss and tetherball are fun as hell, but still taught you a lot about the game and gave you good practice, whereas RoA 2 seems to have lost a lot of the soul the original had with the main priority being "make player good at game" rather than also being fun experiences. I know they're gonna get to all the stuff I mentioned eventually (it's on their roadmap), but this game should've released in early access instead of a full game ngl. I'll still keep playing and I'm looking forward to workshop support, but at the moment this game isn't at all worth $30. Get the original if you want a full package (and workshop support)

It's a competent platform fighter to be sure. It's probably very fun as a melee player. But as a successor to Rivals of Aether it fails in most ways. All of the fun movement and quirks of the first game are gone and replaced with overcentralizing, outdated mechanics. The buffer system feels worse, the game has serious readability issues on some stages at last stock (baffled the last stock visuals still cannot be turned off almost a year into the game). The top tiers are incredibly unfun to play against, mostly because drift DI was abandoned in favor of more outdated unfun mechanics. The netcode is unreliable, servers are unnecessary for a 1v1 fighting game, and punishes you for dropping packets (which is gonna happen when you get matched to fucking warsaw for the 1000th time while playing on the other side of the continent, and is also the polar opposite of what rollback netcode is meant to do). All in all, it's a fun game, it's very flawed but I wouldn't be against playing it with friends irl or at locals. It's a miserable online experience as a rivals 1 fanatic however and there seems to be no will to change that.