Rivals of Aether Review

So I LOVE Super Smash Bros. In fact, it's probably the franchise that's affected me the most. I've owned all four of the games, and I currently play Melee competitively (even though I'm really not that good at it). It's such an iconic series. So when I heard about Rivals of Aether, I was pretty excited to see what it had in store.

Let me take a moment to go over how Rivals of Aether's gameplay works. It's nearly identical to Super Smash Brothers, which is by no means a bad thing. 2-4 players beat the crap out of each other and build up each other's percentage meters. The higher your percentage is, the farther you'll get knocked back by attacks. The objective of the game is to knock your opponents off of the screen. You have large array of attacks to use, but none of them are difficult to execute at all. At most you'll need to press, like, 2 buttons to use an attack. The concept of "easy to learn, difficult to master" applies to this game. Essentially anyone can play the game and can have a good time doing so, but the people who want to take it a bit more seriously can do so as well. Super Smash Brothers pioneered this concept in the fighting game genre, and Rivals of Aether executes it in the exact same fashion perfectly.

So when you start the game up you have access to a few different menus: local, which has a versus mode with up to four players and an AWESOME training mode which I'll get into in a bit, and there's an online mode, which is actually really good. I almost never encounter any lag. It's probably more solid and reliable than Smash 4's online, but that's probably because there aren't as many people playing Rivals as there are playing Smash 4.

Probably the most unique thing about the game is the characters. They're so different from any character you'll ever see in Smash. They each have their own unique mechanic that really sets them apart from each other. Wrastor can only use smash attacks in the air and has multiple jumps; Orcane's gameplay revolves around his water puddle, which he can teleport to and spawn damaging bubbles from; Zetterburn, who can hit enemies with fire which causes damage over time; Kragg, who can throw a rock on the ground and can destroy it in a multitude of ways; Forsburn, who not only can spawn a clone of himself to fight, but he also can spawn a ton of smoke to cloud the stage; and Maypul, who can tie up enemies with her (his?) rope.

The gameplay feels super fluid and, in my opinion, feels very reminiscent to that of Smash 64. But it also throws in mechanics seen not only in other Smash games like wavedashing, but it also has new mechanics like parrying, which completely blocks out an incoming attack and stuns whoever got parried for a few seconds. The biggest similarity I can see to Smash 64 is the fact that it has a very volatile combo system. One good hit can lead to taking a stock, as hitstun is super high and it's easy to juggle people in the air for extended periods of time. This is NOT a bad thing by any means, but it can definitely be frustrating to deal with if you're new to the game and don't know how to deal with it (like me). The gameplay is just addicting in general. You start to play online and you get completely destroyed, which motivates you to get better at the game. And because each character's movesets are so deep, you'll spend hours trying to figure out just one of the characters. And with even MORE characters on the way, you'll be quite busy trying to figure them all out.

And to help you figure out all these characters is the super awesome training mode I was talking about earlier. You have so many options that help you analyze the characters and help your gameplay in general. You can enable all the hitboxes for the characters and their attacks, so you can see how big they are; you can change how much damage the computer character has to test out different scenarios depending on percentage; you can set how the CPU uses directional influence, which is the ability to choose the direction you fly in after you get hit by an attack; you can also set how the CPU techs, which is the roll that you perform if you hit the trigger as you hit the ground; and, probably one of the most notable functions is the ability to pause the game and view it frame by frame. Frame data is HUGELY important in fighting games, and knowing how many frames each attack is, and how each attack behaves on which frames is essential to getting good at the game. That's something that not even Smash, this game's inspiration, has. To me, having a powerful training mode in a fighting game is imperative to its viability as a competitive game. Obviously this doesn't apply to Smash because, well, Smash is intended to be a party game; but in a game that's SUPPOSED to be played competitively, this is absolutely huge. This game's training mode is probably one of my favorite aspects of it.

So in conclusion, Rivals of Aether is a great load of fun to play. If you want to play a game that's similar to Super Smash Bros, but different enough to be its own thing, this is the game for you. Never before have I seen a game take what Smash does so well and emulate it to a tee. And let me remind you once again that this is absolutely NOT a bad thing at all. In fact, I welcome the similarities. As someone who's interested in game design and possibly pursuing it as a career, I think it's awesome that someone took what makes one game great and put their own spin on it. To me, games are an art form, and anyone who is willing and capable to improve on what already exists gets a pass in my book. Of course, this doesn't apply to every instance of this; a lot of the time this concept is put into play solely to make a quick buck, like all the Minecraft and Flappy Bird ripoffs that floated around for a while. But when a genuine attempt to improve a concept in game design is made, that's a very commendable decision. So anyway, give Rivals of Aether a try, and chances are you'll have a great time playing it. I know I have.