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Re-review ready:
Fighter Hero is a modification created by 叶小六 (Leaf Little Six) from the Chinese community.
This mod is basically a fusion of the PVP,PVE combat of LF2 with the MOBA experience (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), FH is seen to exploit the LF2 engine to a high extent, in different aspects compared to Neora and Alucard.
As of limitations of FH, I have a few words about this mod:
1. Since LF2 is a 2.5D platform game with only single lane, FH is also single-laned.
2. There are some complications about this version, involving matters that are not related to MOBA games and have large adverse effects in gameplay.
3. (Reschinded for now)
70 Originality
The concepts of this game revolve around these, which differ little from in MOBA games:
Characters are divided into two sides that aim to destroy each other
Each side has defenses consisting of towers and supplies
Regularly generated wave of soldiers assist players in fighting other side
Neutral creatures that give advantage when defeated
An ambush system that is activated when a player stays still in night
Revival system, characters have penalty when reviving
The elements different from MOBA are mostly from original LF2:
Heavy participation of heroes in combat
Usage of (limited) weapons
Heavy reduction of dropped weapons
From my view, I don't think blinding following the path of an existing series of game is good enough to create an outstanding product.
The concept of fusion is easily perceived but a game that only has fusion is generally easily forgotten.
65 Marco Graphics
The new graphics this game uses are generally ripped from other games. The color theme is satisfying but the compromise for battle mode isn't very acceptable to me:
If the author can make such massive mod, he can certainly spend a little more time to fix original backgrounds which are now showing uncolored rectangles due to forced stretching of the game window.
There is only very few backgrounds including Ancient Battlefield that are not glitched. It will certainly be better if some alternative backgrounds, even stationary ones are added to the game.
Ancient Battlefield is the only background that is suitable for the intended MOBA mode. As of current state of the game, Fighter Hero is not designed to play in versus mode. Please disregard all other backgrounds, as I suppose since the menu is partially dimmed, all other modes are not expected to be played at all.
The below comment stays unchanged:
When starting the MOBA mode, the blank areas of map is filled, but the now-completed map is bad. Really not attractive:
The transparency of curtains in middle of map gives huge disadvantage to human players, computers are not affected at all.
Trees are very annoying. They did the job in shielding projectiles but obstruct movement and vision heavily
Crops are also nasty in blocking views
Towers have nice graphics but their apparent bodies don't match the actual body hitboxes.
The death timer isn't easy to see if foreground scenery objects block the view, and if you die there is no way to prevent being blocked from seeing your timer.
The tower of team 2 (right hand side) is heavily obstructed by scenery, while the other tower isn't.
80 Micro Graphics
Projectiles and objects exclusive to this mod have good transitions. The horse is surprising good looking despite its confusing control. Animations are smooth although the words in global timer can be difficult to see.
But I won't take this part as important as other parts in this mod, because most of transitions done are from ripped sprites, that means actual work mostly revolves around processing foreign sprites.
35 Macro systems
This mod revolves utilizing soldiers and using skills to outmaneuver the opposite team.
It means the critical way to assess the mod is how its systems facilitate a comprehensive experience of Tower defense and attacking.
From the book, if a minion dies, experience is given to the opposing team. But since there is only 1 lane, technically whoever kills more minions with heroes or heroes' presence should get more experience. I found that not the case. For instance my team killed 10 enemy heroes and our heroes died 10 times. The opposing team gets to LV4 about 3 minutes before our team does. Apparently hero kill experience doesn't work in this situation....
As I said in the beginning of the review, the author seems to have little awareness in amending a foreign system properly into LF2 system.
Firstly, I will talk about the lethal errors of this mod:
The reward for killing an enemy is john's heal ball which heals no brown portion of HP.
Contrary to this, the milks that are dropped regularly in middle of battlefield have significantly larger endurance (can withstand at least 3 Blastpush) and can heal very large amount (likely at least 250 brown HP, not to forget milk restores MP too)
The milks spawned in middle of map give very large advantage to any player that can steal properly, while it doesn't seem to be problem in 1v1 and early game it got worse in my second experience, slow heroes really have a hard time taking milks towards their own base, this has very large impact once the first tower of either side is demolished. The increased number of minions can be easily ordered to stall around or in front of the milk spawning place, that gives a constantly magnifying advantage which can easily unbalance a game.
The rewards of battling the enemy team and neutral creeps are completely irrational.
While killing enemies can raise experience of a team, the reward for experience seem to be minimal to the rewards for demolishing a tower. Also there is little experience rewarded by killing heroes compared to soldiers.
Control of horse is painful, even after continuous practice. It must be revamped to be as simple as racing cars in RN or NeuerStern or completely removed.
Hitboxes of towers are not properly adjusted, i have hard time to use every projectile to aim for tower, and air attacks always miss even though the tower graphic is high enough for any jump attack to land. Even land attacks have difficulties to aim correctly. In contrary AI characters have exceptional accuracy in using normal punches and projectiles to damage towers. It's totally unfair.
The tribute system does not reward players in a intuitive way, and is very volatile in terms of rewards:
It's not recommended to waste 30 sec of time dragging dead bodies to base to gain a 10 sec reduction of revival time. Even if the dead body can be used as a heavy object to assist attacking, it can easily backfire. If the dead body is left over at the middle of stage, chances are players will ignore it altogether just to clear as many minions as possible. Also the tributes are placed as an inconvenient place away from spawn point, and may attract friendly minions to attack them, disrupting the flow of minion waves. (Tribute monsters can be devastating against early wave minions)
If you are already pushing the lane, even if you are out of health, the proper strategy is to dominate milks at the center and get healed as soon as possible. There is no advantage to run back to spawn point to fight tribute monster and waste output time against minion waves.
45 Micro systems
.... Now to the less evil parts of this mod:
When neutral characters are dead they become indestructible heavy weapons, if you throw them onto trees they will "hug" the tree until someone blasts them away. As game time progresses, minion waves get much stronger and they may throw tributes around much more often, making the battleground chaotic.
Running back to the base for restoration could be hasty, but the worst part is you don't automatically restore health in starting area. I would recommend to put the innermost tower further away from starting area and use a groupheal there. A choice that changes less is to use large number of specialized milks (instead of one at a time) that cannot be taken out from the starting area. Added notes: speciailized milks are limited to 1 per team, regardless of how many characters are in team. More players makes central area milk more nasty in mid-game though, so it's no help.
Death timer is increasing too slowly.
I cannot blame for the lack of health indication for each tower, but it's just an essential feature for any tower defense game.
The ambush feature is not practical: The time you can properly use ambush is very likely when either side has only 1 tower left. The reappearance time interval is too short to make it worth.
Demolishing a tower rewards players with milks. It doesn't improve the quality of your army but encourages stealing for both teams. Again, it further encourages stacking army although not to a serious extent.
... There is a large number of efforts just to make the whole system work, I understand that, but even the minor systems of this game are not comforting to players, it's like only a basic framework is done in the mod and large amount of anomalies swarm wildly inside this mod. In other words, I feel the author is being smug just because he can stick everything he wants into this mod, and forget even the details of making the game fair and manageable.
As I played in Demo and versus mode (the author didn't recommend it) and tried several games of MOBA, I also found out the AI for most characters are glitched, fighters generally cannot use moves except for D>A, and some sub-characters are glitched in different matters, including Mark cannot use D>J and Monk and Justin cannot use any move. At least the readme should indicate the exact change of each type of minions. It is quite annoying to know Knight damage is increased, Mark cannot use moves, but apparently all minions can take Freeze's sword. These are major balance changes that has to be clearly explained.
N/A Balance
There is no balance change in any inherited character. It's strange the damage output is generally lower because AIs are glitched and (I suspect) the overall damage has been reduced. Somehow Henry's critical shot is nerfed (distance limited) but John's disk is not. Energy blasts are generally not exactly nerfed, they just get dissipated if hitting an obstacle. Some blasts like Davis/Dennis's blast can transverse through the whole map if aiming downward.
Could I remind again that the LF2 character AI is hyperactive and can gang on players and instakill them if possible? To counter this, characters with high damage output/crowd control are necessary. A character with superior map presence like Henry, Firen and John can be much more favourable than others because they don't necessarily need to kill heroes, they can just nullify the effort by opposing team by nuking a minion wave.
45 Intuitiveness
The overall flow of the game is visible even without readme. However, neutral creeps and horse are unmanageable. There are a lot of hindrance inside this game even though the basic mechanics work. As I tried in a play as Henry, I am forced to use Run-rowing (>>D) repeatedly to get across trees and to steal milks. Minions both following and disobeying your command is generally hard to master.
40 Replay value
I basically won't recommend anyone who come across to stick to this mod long enough, because the system is generally rigged, having a large favor of stacking soldiers and stealing milks over killing enemies and dealing damage to towers.
I cannot damage towers properly unless at least 10 friendly soldiers allow me to move just below towers, and even that I cannot know how much damage I have dealt to tower at all, I also feel powerless because I am forced to bring large enemies to overpower towers which I think I'm dealing minimal damage to towers no matter which fighter I chose.
I remember some players ruled this mode with Woody. This requires a very high skill level and may make this mod viable if both teams are controlled by human.
54 Overall Score
Ugh. I did try to give a better score. But strategically it's more like an obstacle course instead of a tower defense.
Little Fighter Haha is an ACG version created by Zarec, a Hongkongese residing in London. I will be reviewing v20 released in 2022. Up to April 2023 it's still the newest version.
This version has combination of DC, Marvel, Star Wars and other ACG characters like Keroro. They are unified with a single cartoonistic art style. There are about 3 dozens of playerable characters, over a dozen of NPC, and a bunch of mechanics, including shooting weapons, tanks and stationary artillery.
Personally he should have some modding experience that I don't have, including AI scripting. It's hard to find modders with similar skills (pure ranting), I'm glad I found more people who mod heavy weapon systems effectively.
There is also a full stage mode, with Trad. Chinese and English dialogues.
82.5 Originality
The sheer amount of original high-quality graphics and data is enough to give it 80. There is a ceiling to the score not only because of this version only taking existing materials from other creations, but also some attacks are identical in both graphics and application even though they are used by different characters.
For what it is "expected" to present, it has done a great job: taking characters from MUGEN and other franchises and merge them into LF2. It has not done much more than that, other than occasional cameo and gimmicks which don't stand out much.
Like, if you expect some flying character is faster than others, the game has not presented enough variation, nor does it fully utilize that. But because this is an "Originality" score, I will only take what impacts to the game uniqueness. The score is fluctuating between 82.5-85.
85 Macro Graphics
The graphics style is pleasing. Every character has enough graphical variation to distinct from each other, their unique attacks are easily distinguished, although attacks utilizing common graphics like laser and skull explosion are not so much.
Giving an example, we have Dealpool who can shoot red lasers rapidly. He can take red laser weapons like most other characters, when using the weapon, the animation is easily distinguished. But since both laser projectiles are identical, move at the same speed and they are fast, that will cause a problem in larger fights, especially when against troopers. This poses some clarity problem which I will also further explain later.
The score ceiling is 85 because I see some large column attacks not being polished enough, including Thor and Dr. Strange both using lightning column but they are easily confused (not in terms of just one or two column, but it becomes messy when both characters use them) Their appearance are often abrupt and nearly unavoidable.
77.5 Micro Graphics
The general flow and choice of animation are well done. Taking them part by part, each characters has smooth transitions and appropriate momentum distribution.
There are some animation flow problems appearing here or there. For example, the portion of iron man can get suddenly thicker or thinner when using punches, many dash attacks are shown with both feet pointing downward, but the character dashes are moving very far, which an dash angle like dennis's dash kick is preferred instead.
The background choice would introduce some problems when paired with certain characters, most prevalent at those with white, grey or black color. A lot of sharp lines (horizontal and vertical) are used, it would be difficult to distinguish character in high air. It wouldn't be much problem for ground characters.
As such, a lot of attacks are either looming on ground, or characters are strongly encouraged to dive after reaching sky. It is fine in versus but can get messy in stage mode, when a lot of projectiles are being spammed everywhere.
80 Macro systems
This version took the easy path to present the qualities of characters: making use of LF2 mechanics to ease the load. like iceman has frozen resistance but can deal more damage when on fire. It is somehow understandable, however it is not sufficiently explained some characters have affinity to others because of these qualities.
About moves themselves, they work fine and act true to what readme says, if not a little too complicated. Like Black Panther looks straightforward to use, until you notice he has an passive which grants unbreakable defense. Hawkeye's move list is frustrating to look at but playing him is very friendly to new players.
The weapon and items are easy to memorize, kudos to that.
72.5 Micro systems
Many attacks do not chain properly (apart from those expected to combo, like Thor's DvA. Some attacks are just too weak and only balanced by how little MP they cost, as such some characters feel like they output too little damage and has little way to improve them, even if they are classified as a brawler sort of character. This makes some character much less suitable for stage or battle mode.
While it's common character will nearly instakill others if F6 is enabled, the overwhelming mana cost instead make these heavy hitters reliant on their basic attacks in practice. As such they become one-shot characters which heavily relies on aiming at openings of enemies, but because characters have a lot of passives, it will become some problem especially against agile characters.
Some characters who practice both melee and ranged attacks have problem in too weak or predictable projectiles, even against AI targets.
From my view the most satisfying character to use is Wonder Woman, because she can immediately follow dash attack with unavoidable D>JDvA that deals devastating damage. Many character also have groundflipping attacks but not all with a dedicated mindset on "groundflipping is particularly used on a certain situation, and it is used in a rewarding way, not majorly punishing enemies". Batman is a rather bad example of this: although his smoke gas is unique (cannot be spammed) it gives a lot of time for him to reposition himself, get a weapon, in multi-play he can literally let teammate execute infinite moves by revolving between Airplane and smoke gas. Not to mention he can reset his negative MP state.
80~65 Balance
Every major character is at the verge of being overwhelming powerful when HP is below half.
There are a few lethal loop combos like Superman's DvA+AA, and inescapable over 250HP combos like ScarletWitch's D^A, Spiderman'd D>J. Groundflipping attack loop can be also very dangerous, but damage is lower although can be easily taken advantage of.
There are two scores for balance, one for same-class class character and stage (both 80) and different-class versus involving at least 1 flying character (65, but its weight is same as the 80 before). A flying character is who has Flying move: Jump+J... which consumes MP to quickly transverse in air. Because most character do not have a valid way to chase or counter such aerial characters (not even themselves), this will make melee attacks almost useless and slow projectiles pathetic. Anyone abusing flying will ruin versus experience for sure.
Taking away the flying issues, the balance management is rather decent, although I often experience difficulties in fighting hyperactive AIs. This problem is most easily seen when you pick Red Tornado or Vision to fight AI. Red Tornado is a grapple-based character and Vision is a melee warrior who gains invincibility when attacked from behind. The problem is, they have to move fast to catch up with enemy movements and that makes them often facing their back toward enemies. Although as melee characters they can fight back, missed melee attack still cost hefty MP and they may not have enough reflex to attack on their back. This makes them still susceptible to backstab attacks.
Attacks that utilize a front-area crowd control is strongly favored in this game, both because they suppress the AI and give a good safety range. It's not like one-trick pony like Wolverine is frowned at, he has exceptional damage output, just his option is limited because of reliance to dive.
Fortunately characters who feature crowd control are carefully balanced and won't be abused in most situations. This provides great PvE environment. Melee characters... would have to need at least a ranged support hero or they will suffer in difficult or crazy stages.
In overall although there can be looming issues like spammed ranged attack, players can pick such character and counter the issue and generally have good plays.
I forgot to mention why the 65 has the same weight as 80, it is because the versus mode has a serious attrition issue in both versus (without flying characters but with ranged characters), and in stage mode.
Stage 1-2 are too simple because at the end of each substage, you can refill all dark HP with unlimited supply of milk (Wine), and enemies are too weak to even deal permanent damage to dark HP. This situation get substantially better in Stage 3-5. In versus mode, because most major characters can heal themselves and they cannot deal massive combination damage, the fights can often turn into slog for who survives the longest. Some characters who dominate in ranged attacks are particularly nasty in these aspect, like spiderman can spam D>A in low health.
80 Intuitiveness
80 for readme clarity, 80 for execution.
There are a lot of content in this version. Every single character has his own gimmicks which can even change odds if facing specific hero. Fortunately, moves can be easily memorized because key inputs are easy, although training for extra reflexes to play character effectively requires plenty of time. However, some important properties of moves are unexplained despite a lot of effort done, such as how restore MP/HP move will cause key input be delayed, "Press D to cancel" not mentioned, Air +D>J / (Air) +D>J not properly distinguished (The former one is aerial only)
For execution, each move is easily related to its readme description. I have some problem on because a character is themed after a certain element/force, every move of this character is composed of "Element-stuff" and "Generic stuff" like Scarlet Witch, Everything is red force-X except flying. This trend is applied to many characters. While the readme tells player the projectiles are different, in game they look like reshaped or resized identical objects, which is not well perceived. I suggest taking a further look on the ACG material and pick a more faithful(?) or creative name, and use more unique graphics. Same style is alright, just not resized circles please.
90 Replay value
The main selling point of LF2 haha is its high skill ceiling, and its stage mode (especially in harder difficulty) can be good training and demonstration ground. While it is not as favourable to play versus due to many sublethal combos, unavoidable low health combos and some serious game-breaking issues (only focused in versus), this game has a good ground on PvE content and for limited extent, balanced in versus mode. As such it's easy to see leaning on PvE content would be its future, and it already has done a good job on that. This version has much less problematic issues than some other major stage-based version, which has set itself on a high ground, and is definitely worth to be replayed to improve skills or simply enjoy it.
80 Overall Score
Little Fighter 2 neuer stern is an stage-major version created by the USIT team (Ultimate Studio in Taiwam), composing of Yuan, Thomas and David. This version is still undergoing further development, and I will be reviewing the RIOT update which was released in 2015.
This version has a bunch of character move modification and a complete new stage mode. It has top-notched graphic additions and transitions, however the balance and stage arrangement could be haphazard in some points.
85 Originality
There are a lot of new elements in neuer stern, including new stage items, comboable moves and newly drawn graphics. I see a lot of effort in adding exclusive contents in this version, like Dennis's Dash back attack, Bat's elaborated basic punch and many original mechanics in stage like motorcycle riding system.
It has become a popular inspiration for many later mods and version.
85 Macro Graphics
While some graphics are very suitable for LF2 fights, about 30-50% of other graphics have some lack of perception. This score is an average of 90-80, which the latter score is for criticizing some graphics are apparent recolors of well-known sprites, like firen's explosion, and some rather outdated technique like blinking transparency shades when fighters use some move. However, the base score is still 80 because the major theme of graphics is well done across all sprites.
90 Micro Graphics
Not much to criticize because it has outperformed almost every other versions in terms of smooth transition, flow, and has done great job from overwhelming players visually. Stage 3 and 4 are great example, even though bosses and clone julians have vibrant moves and can setup lots of traps, they are still easy to see even with several enemy minions on ground.
77.5 Macro systems
Each individual system is carefully designed, I couldn't find many bugs even after multiple plays. This also include character edits which means no lethal loop combos or abuse can be easily discovered.
However, there are a bunch of unexplained discrepancies among the systems which can cause discomfort in playing:
In stage 1, the hostile cars can move in z-axis which can hamper players staying on the left side, the cars apparently are aiming towards the player.
Deep (Burst mode) seems to have lost some moves.
A lot of new moves either hamper with existing combo routes, or have a significant change in character properties (in ways that hurt their playstyle in vanilla lf2)
Readme problems will be placed in intuitiveness.
72.5 Micro systems
My major complaint is those moves with transparent shades aren't as powerful as they seem to be, like Davis's DvA and Louis's D>J. The latter is effectively nerfed because it cannot knockoff enemies. Some moves looks identical at startup but are much more powerful than expected, including FIren's DvJ and all moves of Black Davis (I know he's a boss, but normal Davis's DvA is so underpowered it deceived me). All stages with attrition feature are annoying because of a tendency to extend the fight, by lengthening the whole stage (Cars), making infinite enemies (Clone jack in rain drop stages), or just overwhelming number of enemies.
I said bug are hard to find, however exploits aren't that hard. In stage 4 with crystal and arrows, there is a consistent way of hugging crystals to make enemies die on them. In fact this method is strongly recommended because enemies are immune to hostile arrows, unlike cars, and arrows are nearly unavoidable. This problem extends to all stages with a strong environmental effect, and forces players to rely on hit-and-run or just running away forever.
67.5 Balance
The new moves and modification of moves to existing characters are not helping with balancing in general. Some characters like Louis got utility buff, some like Firen get firepower boost, but unfortunate ones like Davis got his attacks and engage nerfed.
Stage has a large problem with attrition and unbalanced affinity. Melee character will definitely suffer because a lot of stages feature position traps which force them to take much riskier way to fight than ranged characters. Some characters like Leo (Ant) have a very strong edge against melee characters. Some mechanisms are strongly favouring ranged characters (again), and because these two are often paired together or featured in half of the whole stage, the stage mode is basically screwing with melee characters.
62.5 Intuitiveness
55 for readme clarity, 70 for stage.
The readme has a lot of stuff, but I need to criticize on its lack of clarity. It's worse then vanilla LF2's readme in plenty of aspects, including a large number of consecutive move commands missing (such as Firen's D>A isn't even properly introduced and Deep (Burst mode) using up HP with moves not being mentioned), a number of important stage aspects not explained (prevalently Bandit, Hunter).
While the text descriptions of stages are sufficient to learn about the basics, it requires a number of plays to familiarize with some vital information about stages, like the raindrop position and laser layout are fixed. Motorcycle minigame needs a lot of practice because it is locked behind half of stage 1 and some of its mechanics are rather deceptive. (Jumping destroys obstacles...?)
77.5 Replay value
I have some issues recommending players to try versus mode, due to considerably large number of character edits. While characters are more or less similar to vanilla lf2 characters in strength, their playstyle are not, they seem like LF2HC with strength toned down to vanilla LF2 level. If you are not concerned about playing half-original character, then this is for you.
Stage mode has a lot of content. However, I should split each stage to discuss individually because they vary a lot in nature.
Stage 1 is attrition course and motorcycle minigame. Basically, you are required to have a good evasion skill more than fighting skill, this trend will be needed in all other stages as well. The motorcycle minigame is fun, but locking it behind attrition course not so great.
Stage 2 requires lots of micromanagement and some sheer force. Ants alone aren't going to be big problem, but in later stage it becomes very risky to destroy jack cloning machines and dispatch extra Jacks in high difficulty.
Stage 3 is good old fight. Even with some rapid movement of enemies, you have a carefully selected bunch of allies which make fight a lot more strategical.
Stage 4 looks annoying at first, but the arrow damage isn't going to kill you right away. You can and should exploit crystal hug so you lessen dark HP loss. The remaining fights are vision-impaired and then a cool boss fight, I would definitely recommend staying till the end.
Stage 5 is unfair because of the high laser damage and high enemy wave strength. Because lasers are unblockable and have indefinite range, there is little you can do to save your hostages. Actively killing off enemies is not an easy option, you will have hard time memorizing when to stay away from certain lasers, leading to even more micromanagement than in Stage 2.
All stage have high amount of attrition. Although you can get a lot of milk in stage 1 and stage 3-4, Stage 1 has instakill in first motorcycle substage which nullifies purpose of milk.
In overall all stages have a difficulty rating of one-step higher than original lf2: If you play neuer stern in normal difficulty, it is equivalent to hard in vanilla lf2. If you play as ranged character it's fine, as melee character this difficulty can go even 0.5level up. Even so, players are not obliged to play stages in order, there should be at least 2 stage as favourite for single person. It's just playing with a slightly off moveset than original fighters may bug some players.
77 Overall Score
54 - Fighter Hero (Click to View)
Fighter Hero is a modification created by 叶小六 (Leaf Little Six) from the Chinese community.
This mod is basically a fusion of the PVP,PVE combat of LF2 with the MOBA experience (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), FH is seen to exploit the LF2 engine to a high extent, in different aspects compared to Neora and Alucard.
As of limitations of FH, I have a few words about this mod:
1. Since LF2 is a 2.5D platform game with only single lane, FH is also single-laned.
2. There are some complications about this version, involving matters that are not related to MOBA games and have large adverse effects in gameplay.
3. (Reschinded for now)
70 Originality
The concepts of this game revolve around these, which differ little from in MOBA games:
Characters are divided into two sides that aim to destroy each other
Each side has defenses consisting of towers and supplies
Regularly generated wave of soldiers assist players in fighting other side
Neutral creatures that give advantage when defeated
An ambush system that is activated when a player stays still in night
Revival system, characters have penalty when reviving
The elements different from MOBA are mostly from original LF2:
Heavy participation of heroes in combat
Usage of (limited) weapons
Heavy reduction of dropped weapons
From my view, I don't think blinding following the path of an existing series of game is good enough to create an outstanding product.
The concept of fusion is easily perceived but a game that only has fusion is generally easily forgotten.
65 Marco Graphics
The new graphics this game uses are generally ripped from other games. The color theme is satisfying but the compromise for battle mode isn't very acceptable to me:
If the author can make such massive mod, he can certainly spend a little more time to fix original backgrounds which are now showing uncolored rectangles due to forced stretching of the game window.
There is only very few backgrounds including Ancient Battlefield that are not glitched. It will certainly be better if some alternative backgrounds, even stationary ones are added to the game.
Ancient Battlefield is the only background that is suitable for the intended MOBA mode. As of current state of the game, Fighter Hero is not designed to play in versus mode. Please disregard all other backgrounds, as I suppose since the menu is partially dimmed, all other modes are not expected to be played at all.
The below comment stays unchanged:
When starting the MOBA mode, the blank areas of map is filled, but the now-completed map is bad. Really not attractive:
The transparency of curtains in middle of map gives huge disadvantage to human players, computers are not affected at all.
Trees are very annoying. They did the job in shielding projectiles but obstruct movement and vision heavily
Crops are also nasty in blocking views
Towers have nice graphics but their apparent bodies don't match the actual body hitboxes.
The death timer isn't easy to see if foreground scenery objects block the view, and if you die there is no way to prevent being blocked from seeing your timer.
The tower of team 2 (right hand side) is heavily obstructed by scenery, while the other tower isn't.
80 Micro Graphics
Projectiles and objects exclusive to this mod have good transitions. The horse is surprising good looking despite its confusing control. Animations are smooth although the words in global timer can be difficult to see.
But I won't take this part as important as other parts in this mod, because most of transitions done are from ripped sprites, that means actual work mostly revolves around processing foreign sprites.
35 Macro systems
This mod revolves utilizing soldiers and using skills to outmaneuver the opposite team.
It means the critical way to assess the mod is how its systems facilitate a comprehensive experience of Tower defense and attacking.
From the book, if a minion dies, experience is given to the opposing team. But since there is only 1 lane, technically whoever kills more minions with heroes or heroes' presence should get more experience. I found that not the case. For instance my team killed 10 enemy heroes and our heroes died 10 times. The opposing team gets to LV4 about 3 minutes before our team does. Apparently hero kill experience doesn't work in this situation....
As I said in the beginning of the review, the author seems to have little awareness in amending a foreign system properly into LF2 system.
Firstly, I will talk about the lethal errors of this mod:
The reward for killing an enemy is john's heal ball which heals no brown portion of HP.
Contrary to this, the milks that are dropped regularly in middle of battlefield have significantly larger endurance (can withstand at least 3 Blastpush) and can heal very large amount (likely at least 250 brown HP, not to forget milk restores MP too)
The milks spawned in middle of map give very large advantage to any player that can steal properly, while it doesn't seem to be problem in 1v1 and early game it got worse in my second experience, slow heroes really have a hard time taking milks towards their own base, this has very large impact once the first tower of either side is demolished. The increased number of minions can be easily ordered to stall around or in front of the milk spawning place, that gives a constantly magnifying advantage which can easily unbalance a game.
The rewards of battling the enemy team and neutral creeps are completely irrational.
While killing enemies can raise experience of a team, the reward for experience seem to be minimal to the rewards for demolishing a tower. Also there is little experience rewarded by killing heroes compared to soldiers.
Control of horse is painful, even after continuous practice. It must be revamped to be as simple as racing cars in RN or NeuerStern or completely removed.
Hitboxes of towers are not properly adjusted, i have hard time to use every projectile to aim for tower, and air attacks always miss even though the tower graphic is high enough for any jump attack to land. Even land attacks have difficulties to aim correctly. In contrary AI characters have exceptional accuracy in using normal punches and projectiles to damage towers. It's totally unfair.
The tribute system does not reward players in a intuitive way, and is very volatile in terms of rewards:
It's not recommended to waste 30 sec of time dragging dead bodies to base to gain a 10 sec reduction of revival time. Even if the dead body can be used as a heavy object to assist attacking, it can easily backfire. If the dead body is left over at the middle of stage, chances are players will ignore it altogether just to clear as many minions as possible. Also the tributes are placed as an inconvenient place away from spawn point, and may attract friendly minions to attack them, disrupting the flow of minion waves. (Tribute monsters can be devastating against early wave minions)
If you are already pushing the lane, even if you are out of health, the proper strategy is to dominate milks at the center and get healed as soon as possible. There is no advantage to run back to spawn point to fight tribute monster and waste output time against minion waves.
45 Micro systems
.... Now to the less evil parts of this mod:
When neutral characters are dead they become indestructible heavy weapons, if you throw them onto trees they will "hug" the tree until someone blasts them away. As game time progresses, minion waves get much stronger and they may throw tributes around much more often, making the battleground chaotic.
Running back to the base for restoration could be hasty, but the worst part is you don't automatically restore health in starting area. I would recommend to put the innermost tower further away from starting area and use a groupheal there. A choice that changes less is to use large number of specialized milks (instead of one at a time) that cannot be taken out from the starting area. Added notes: speciailized milks are limited to 1 per team, regardless of how many characters are in team. More players makes central area milk more nasty in mid-game though, so it's no help.
Death timer is increasing too slowly.
I cannot blame for the lack of health indication for each tower, but it's just an essential feature for any tower defense game.
The ambush feature is not practical: The time you can properly use ambush is very likely when either side has only 1 tower left. The reappearance time interval is too short to make it worth.
Demolishing a tower rewards players with milks. It doesn't improve the quality of your army but encourages stealing for both teams. Again, it further encourages stacking army although not to a serious extent.
... There is a large number of efforts just to make the whole system work, I understand that, but even the minor systems of this game are not comforting to players, it's like only a basic framework is done in the mod and large amount of anomalies swarm wildly inside this mod. In other words, I feel the author is being smug just because he can stick everything he wants into this mod, and forget even the details of making the game fair and manageable.
As I played in Demo and versus mode (the author didn't recommend it) and tried several games of MOBA, I also found out the AI for most characters are glitched, fighters generally cannot use moves except for D>A, and some sub-characters are glitched in different matters, including Mark cannot use D>J and Monk and Justin cannot use any move. At least the readme should indicate the exact change of each type of minions. It is quite annoying to know Knight damage is increased, Mark cannot use moves, but apparently all minions can take Freeze's sword. These are major balance changes that has to be clearly explained.
N/A Balance
There is no balance change in any inherited character. It's strange the damage output is generally lower because AIs are glitched and (I suspect) the overall damage has been reduced. Somehow Henry's critical shot is nerfed (distance limited) but John's disk is not. Energy blasts are generally not exactly nerfed, they just get dissipated if hitting an obstacle. Some blasts like Davis/Dennis's blast can transverse through the whole map if aiming downward.
Could I remind again that the LF2 character AI is hyperactive and can gang on players and instakill them if possible? To counter this, characters with high damage output/crowd control are necessary. A character with superior map presence like Henry, Firen and John can be much more favourable than others because they don't necessarily need to kill heroes, they can just nullify the effort by opposing team by nuking a minion wave.
45 Intuitiveness
The overall flow of the game is visible even without readme. However, neutral creeps and horse are unmanageable. There are a lot of hindrance inside this game even though the basic mechanics work. As I tried in a play as Henry, I am forced to use Run-rowing (>>D) repeatedly to get across trees and to steal milks. Minions both following and disobeying your command is generally hard to master.
40 Replay value
I basically won't recommend anyone who come across to stick to this mod long enough, because the system is generally rigged, having a large favor of stacking soldiers and stealing milks over killing enemies and dealing damage to towers.
I cannot damage towers properly unless at least 10 friendly soldiers allow me to move just below towers, and even that I cannot know how much damage I have dealt to tower at all, I also feel powerless because I am forced to bring large enemies to overpower towers which I think I'm dealing minimal damage to towers no matter which fighter I chose.
I remember some players ruled this mode with Woody. This requires a very high skill level and may make this mod viable if both teams are controlled by human.
54 Overall Score
Ugh. I did try to give a better score. But strategically it's more like an obstacle course instead of a tower defense.
80 - Little Fighter Haha (Click to View)
Little Fighter Haha is an ACG version created by Zarec, a Hongkongese residing in London. I will be reviewing v20 released in 2022. Up to April 2023 it's still the newest version.
This version has combination of DC, Marvel, Star Wars and other ACG characters like Keroro. They are unified with a single cartoonistic art style. There are about 3 dozens of playerable characters, over a dozen of NPC, and a bunch of mechanics, including shooting weapons, tanks and stationary artillery.
Personally he should have some modding experience that I don't have, including AI scripting. It's hard to find modders with similar skills (pure ranting), I'm glad I found more people who mod heavy weapon systems effectively.
There is also a full stage mode, with Trad. Chinese and English dialogues.
Spoiler (Click to View)
A lot of vulgar words in chinese version.
The sheer amount of original high-quality graphics and data is enough to give it 80. There is a ceiling to the score not only because of this version only taking existing materials from other creations, but also some attacks are identical in both graphics and application even though they are used by different characters.
For what it is "expected" to present, it has done a great job: taking characters from MUGEN and other franchises and merge them into LF2. It has not done much more than that, other than occasional cameo and gimmicks which don't stand out much.
Like, if you expect some flying character is faster than others, the game has not presented enough variation, nor does it fully utilize that. But because this is an "Originality" score, I will only take what impacts to the game uniqueness. The score is fluctuating between 82.5-85.
85 Macro Graphics
The graphics style is pleasing. Every character has enough graphical variation to distinct from each other, their unique attacks are easily distinguished, although attacks utilizing common graphics like laser and skull explosion are not so much.
Giving an example, we have Dealpool who can shoot red lasers rapidly. He can take red laser weapons like most other characters, when using the weapon, the animation is easily distinguished. But since both laser projectiles are identical, move at the same speed and they are fast, that will cause a problem in larger fights, especially when against troopers. This poses some clarity problem which I will also further explain later.
The score ceiling is 85 because I see some large column attacks not being polished enough, including Thor and Dr. Strange both using lightning column but they are easily confused (not in terms of just one or two column, but it becomes messy when both characters use them) Their appearance are often abrupt and nearly unavoidable.
77.5 Micro Graphics
The general flow and choice of animation are well done. Taking them part by part, each characters has smooth transitions and appropriate momentum distribution.
There are some animation flow problems appearing here or there. For example, the portion of iron man can get suddenly thicker or thinner when using punches, many dash attacks are shown with both feet pointing downward, but the character dashes are moving very far, which an dash angle like dennis's dash kick is preferred instead.
The background choice would introduce some problems when paired with certain characters, most prevalent at those with white, grey or black color. A lot of sharp lines (horizontal and vertical) are used, it would be difficult to distinguish character in high air. It wouldn't be much problem for ground characters.
As such, a lot of attacks are either looming on ground, or characters are strongly encouraged to dive after reaching sky. It is fine in versus but can get messy in stage mode, when a lot of projectiles are being spammed everywhere.
80 Macro systems
This version took the easy path to present the qualities of characters: making use of LF2 mechanics to ease the load. like iceman has frozen resistance but can deal more damage when on fire. It is somehow understandable, however it is not sufficiently explained some characters have affinity to others because of these qualities.
About moves themselves, they work fine and act true to what readme says, if not a little too complicated. Like Black Panther looks straightforward to use, until you notice he has an passive which grants unbreakable defense. Hawkeye's move list is frustrating to look at but playing him is very friendly to new players.
The weapon and items are easy to memorize, kudos to that.
72.5 Micro systems
Many attacks do not chain properly (apart from those expected to combo, like Thor's DvA. Some attacks are just too weak and only balanced by how little MP they cost, as such some characters feel like they output too little damage and has little way to improve them, even if they are classified as a brawler sort of character. This makes some character much less suitable for stage or battle mode.
While it's common character will nearly instakill others if F6 is enabled, the overwhelming mana cost instead make these heavy hitters reliant on their basic attacks in practice. As such they become one-shot characters which heavily relies on aiming at openings of enemies, but because characters have a lot of passives, it will become some problem especially against agile characters.
Some characters who practice both melee and ranged attacks have problem in too weak or predictable projectiles, even against AI targets.
From my view the most satisfying character to use is Wonder Woman, because she can immediately follow dash attack with unavoidable D>JDvA that deals devastating damage. Many character also have groundflipping attacks but not all with a dedicated mindset on "groundflipping is particularly used on a certain situation, and it is used in a rewarding way, not majorly punishing enemies". Batman is a rather bad example of this: although his smoke gas is unique (cannot be spammed) it gives a lot of time for him to reposition himself, get a weapon, in multi-play he can literally let teammate execute infinite moves by revolving between Airplane and smoke gas. Not to mention he can reset his negative MP state.
80~65 Balance
Every major character is at the verge of being overwhelming powerful when HP is below half.
There are a few lethal loop combos like Superman's DvA+AA, and inescapable over 250HP combos like ScarletWitch's D^A, Spiderman'd D>J. Groundflipping attack loop can be also very dangerous, but damage is lower although can be easily taken advantage of.
There are two scores for balance, one for same-class class character and stage (both 80) and different-class versus involving at least 1 flying character (65, but its weight is same as the 80 before). A flying character is who has Flying move: Jump+J... which consumes MP to quickly transverse in air. Because most character do not have a valid way to chase or counter such aerial characters (not even themselves), this will make melee attacks almost useless and slow projectiles pathetic. Anyone abusing flying will ruin versus experience for sure.
Taking away the flying issues, the balance management is rather decent, although I often experience difficulties in fighting hyperactive AIs. This problem is most easily seen when you pick Red Tornado or Vision to fight AI. Red Tornado is a grapple-based character and Vision is a melee warrior who gains invincibility when attacked from behind. The problem is, they have to move fast to catch up with enemy movements and that makes them often facing their back toward enemies. Although as melee characters they can fight back, missed melee attack still cost hefty MP and they may not have enough reflex to attack on their back. This makes them still susceptible to backstab attacks.
Attacks that utilize a front-area crowd control is strongly favored in this game, both because they suppress the AI and give a good safety range. It's not like one-trick pony like Wolverine is frowned at, he has exceptional damage output, just his option is limited because of reliance to dive.
Fortunately characters who feature crowd control are carefully balanced and won't be abused in most situations. This provides great PvE environment. Melee characters... would have to need at least a ranged support hero or they will suffer in difficult or crazy stages.
In overall although there can be looming issues like spammed ranged attack, players can pick such character and counter the issue and generally have good plays.
I forgot to mention why the 65 has the same weight as 80, it is because the versus mode has a serious attrition issue in both versus (without flying characters but with ranged characters), and in stage mode.
Stage 1-2 are too simple because at the end of each substage, you can refill all dark HP with unlimited supply of milk (Wine), and enemies are too weak to even deal permanent damage to dark HP. This situation get substantially better in Stage 3-5. In versus mode, because most major characters can heal themselves and they cannot deal massive combination damage, the fights can often turn into slog for who survives the longest. Some characters who dominate in ranged attacks are particularly nasty in these aspect, like spiderman can spam D>A in low health.
80 Intuitiveness
80 for readme clarity, 80 for execution.
There are a lot of content in this version. Every single character has his own gimmicks which can even change odds if facing specific hero. Fortunately, moves can be easily memorized because key inputs are easy, although training for extra reflexes to play character effectively requires plenty of time. However, some important properties of moves are unexplained despite a lot of effort done, such as how restore MP/HP move will cause key input be delayed, "Press D to cancel" not mentioned, Air +D>J / (Air) +D>J not properly distinguished (The former one is aerial only)
For execution, each move is easily related to its readme description. I have some problem on because a character is themed after a certain element/force, every move of this character is composed of "Element-stuff" and "Generic stuff" like Scarlet Witch, Everything is red force-X except flying. This trend is applied to many characters. While the readme tells player the projectiles are different, in game they look like reshaped or resized identical objects, which is not well perceived. I suggest taking a further look on the ACG material and pick a more faithful(?) or creative name, and use more unique graphics. Same style is alright, just not resized circles please.
90 Replay value
The main selling point of LF2 haha is its high skill ceiling, and its stage mode (especially in harder difficulty) can be good training and demonstration ground. While it is not as favourable to play versus due to many sublethal combos, unavoidable low health combos and some serious game-breaking issues (only focused in versus), this game has a good ground on PvE content and for limited extent, balanced in versus mode. As such it's easy to see leaning on PvE content would be its future, and it already has done a good job on that. This version has much less problematic issues than some other major stage-based version, which has set itself on a high ground, and is definitely worth to be replayed to improve skills or simply enjoy it.
80 Overall Score
77 - Little Fighter 2 neuer stern (Click to View)
Little Fighter 2 neuer stern is an stage-major version created by the USIT team (Ultimate Studio in Taiwam), composing of Yuan, Thomas and David. This version is still undergoing further development, and I will be reviewing the RIOT update which was released in 2015.
This version has a bunch of character move modification and a complete new stage mode. It has top-notched graphic additions and transitions, however the balance and stage arrangement could be haphazard in some points.
85 Originality
There are a lot of new elements in neuer stern, including new stage items, comboable moves and newly drawn graphics. I see a lot of effort in adding exclusive contents in this version, like Dennis's Dash back attack, Bat's elaborated basic punch and many original mechanics in stage like motorcycle riding system.
It has become a popular inspiration for many later mods and version.
85 Macro Graphics
While some graphics are very suitable for LF2 fights, about 30-50% of other graphics have some lack of perception. This score is an average of 90-80, which the latter score is for criticizing some graphics are apparent recolors of well-known sprites, like firen's explosion, and some rather outdated technique like blinking transparency shades when fighters use some move. However, the base score is still 80 because the major theme of graphics is well done across all sprites.
90 Micro Graphics
Not much to criticize because it has outperformed almost every other versions in terms of smooth transition, flow, and has done great job from overwhelming players visually. Stage 3 and 4 are great example, even though bosses and clone julians have vibrant moves and can setup lots of traps, they are still easy to see even with several enemy minions on ground.
77.5 Macro systems
Each individual system is carefully designed, I couldn't find many bugs even after multiple plays. This also include character edits which means no lethal loop combos or abuse can be easily discovered.
However, there are a bunch of unexplained discrepancies among the systems which can cause discomfort in playing:
In stage 1, the hostile cars can move in z-axis which can hamper players staying on the left side, the cars apparently are aiming towards the player.
Deep (Burst mode) seems to have lost some moves.
A lot of new moves either hamper with existing combo routes, or have a significant change in character properties (in ways that hurt their playstyle in vanilla lf2)
Readme problems will be placed in intuitiveness.
72.5 Micro systems
My major complaint is those moves with transparent shades aren't as powerful as they seem to be, like Davis's DvA and Louis's D>J. The latter is effectively nerfed because it cannot knockoff enemies. Some moves looks identical at startup but are much more powerful than expected, including FIren's DvJ and all moves of Black Davis (I know he's a boss, but normal Davis's DvA is so underpowered it deceived me). All stages with attrition feature are annoying because of a tendency to extend the fight, by lengthening the whole stage (Cars), making infinite enemies (Clone jack in rain drop stages), or just overwhelming number of enemies.
I said bug are hard to find, however exploits aren't that hard. In stage 4 with crystal and arrows, there is a consistent way of hugging crystals to make enemies die on them. In fact this method is strongly recommended because enemies are immune to hostile arrows, unlike cars, and arrows are nearly unavoidable. This problem extends to all stages with a strong environmental effect, and forces players to rely on hit-and-run or just running away forever.
67.5 Balance
The new moves and modification of moves to existing characters are not helping with balancing in general. Some characters like Louis got utility buff, some like Firen get firepower boost, but unfortunate ones like Davis got his attacks and engage nerfed.
Stage has a large problem with attrition and unbalanced affinity. Melee character will definitely suffer because a lot of stages feature position traps which force them to take much riskier way to fight than ranged characters. Some characters like Leo (Ant) have a very strong edge against melee characters. Some mechanisms are strongly favouring ranged characters (again), and because these two are often paired together or featured in half of the whole stage, the stage mode is basically screwing with melee characters.
62.5 Intuitiveness
55 for readme clarity, 70 for stage.
The readme has a lot of stuff, but I need to criticize on its lack of clarity. It's worse then vanilla LF2's readme in plenty of aspects, including a large number of consecutive move commands missing (such as Firen's D>A isn't even properly introduced and Deep (Burst mode) using up HP with moves not being mentioned), a number of important stage aspects not explained (prevalently Bandit, Hunter).
While the text descriptions of stages are sufficient to learn about the basics, it requires a number of plays to familiarize with some vital information about stages, like the raindrop position and laser layout are fixed. Motorcycle minigame needs a lot of practice because it is locked behind half of stage 1 and some of its mechanics are rather deceptive. (Jumping destroys obstacles...?)
77.5 Replay value
I have some issues recommending players to try versus mode, due to considerably large number of character edits. While characters are more or less similar to vanilla lf2 characters in strength, their playstyle are not, they seem like LF2HC with strength toned down to vanilla LF2 level. If you are not concerned about playing half-original character, then this is for you.
Stage mode has a lot of content. However, I should split each stage to discuss individually because they vary a lot in nature.
Stage 1 is attrition course and motorcycle minigame. Basically, you are required to have a good evasion skill more than fighting skill, this trend will be needed in all other stages as well. The motorcycle minigame is fun, but locking it behind attrition course not so great.
Stage 2 requires lots of micromanagement and some sheer force. Ants alone aren't going to be big problem, but in later stage it becomes very risky to destroy jack cloning machines and dispatch extra Jacks in high difficulty.
Stage 3 is good old fight. Even with some rapid movement of enemies, you have a carefully selected bunch of allies which make fight a lot more strategical.
Stage 4 looks annoying at first, but the arrow damage isn't going to kill you right away. You can and should exploit crystal hug so you lessen dark HP loss. The remaining fights are vision-impaired and then a cool boss fight, I would definitely recommend staying till the end.
Stage 5 is unfair because of the high laser damage and high enemy wave strength. Because lasers are unblockable and have indefinite range, there is little you can do to save your hostages. Actively killing off enemies is not an easy option, you will have hard time memorizing when to stay away from certain lasers, leading to even more micromanagement than in Stage 2.
All stage have high amount of attrition. Although you can get a lot of milk in stage 1 and stage 3-4, Stage 1 has instakill in first motorcycle substage which nullifies purpose of milk.
In overall all stages have a difficulty rating of one-step higher than original lf2: If you play neuer stern in normal difficulty, it is equivalent to hard in vanilla lf2. If you play as ranged character it's fine, as melee character this difficulty can go even 0.5level up. Even so, players are not obliged to play stages in order, there should be at least 2 stage as favourite for single person. It's just playing with a slightly off moveset than original fighters may bug some players.
77 Overall Score