The sound effects are crap online.
You too? I was wondering about that. I thought it might have been just me, or that session.
Otherwise the game is phenomenal. Easily the best new fighter entry this past 5 years, if not decade. Very interesting in how thye melded the two styles. They didn't just take the Tekken characters and completely 'street fighter-ize' them. They retain a bunch of their signature combos, and more Tekken like gameplay. I don't really like the Tekken style combos, but the concept of melding them is solid and I can appreciate the effect they achieved. The idea isn't completely foreign, as some SF characters have always had a few commonly known, if not officially documented, chains that in the past. Likewise, the SF cast got dotted with some Tekken style techniques.
The switching, the matchups, the customization, the music, all great. Awesome switching mechanics, so many ways to switch. A must buy, even at full price, without any of the DLC, totally worth it.
I'm a total Tekken noob, but so far I've taken a liking to Asuka. Heihachi, and Jin are pretty cool too, but their moves are weeeeeeird. This will take time getting use to. My one friend is getting good with Raven.
I do have some gripes though.
First off is the fact that the time limit is a little low for this kind of system. Online I am running into a lot of time outs. That coupled with the lack of an infinite time option online, really can muck things up. The fact that there are double the characters, and a recovery mechanic can lead to intense battles going far past the 99 limit.
Another is the fact that the match ends with only one person on the team being defeated. This is just a terrible idea in a whole. I had three friends over to celebrate the release and get some 4 player 2v2 going. All of them said the same thing; why the hell does the match end with only one character down? I know Capcom wants to pay homage to Tekken in this title, but this was one of the worst things to take away from the Tekken series. We've done 2v2 4 Player before in SFEX3. It was great, that was a good system. Why mess with it now? If anything they're going to fix in the first real patch, I honestly hope its adding an option to have to KO both characters. It's literally the worst part of the game for me.
Oh also, for the most part, Pandora mode is useless. Sure you get a recovering Cross Gage, but you could barely get two supers off by the time you drop dead anyway. It should NOT kill you, or should last longer. But as is, useless.