Things LF2 Remastered is missing - Do or die

[Lix]

Hello Marti Wong,
I am glad you made the right decision to publish LF2 remastered on Steam as it presents the great opportunity of making the LF franchise available to the west again after HF and LFO. Judging the game by the steam pages current state there's still a lot left to be done to meet modern quality expectations. I recognize, that you're a 1 man team and that your resources are limited, that shouldn't however hinder us from delivering a good product.
As many others I grew up playing LF2 and wish you the greatest of success.

1. Reconsider using AI for portraits

AI portraits reek of low effort and a non-neglectable amount of players upright boycott games with image generative AI as they consider AI theft. A small yet loud group that will mention this fact whenever your game is talked about, significantly reducing spread of mouth. Compared to hiring a artist at eg. Fiverr using AI may seem cheaper, but could cost you more in the long run. It's a bit shortsighted.
I think people would notice and mind the AI generated backgrounds a lot less than the portraits.

2. Consider simplifying controls for gamepads

LF2s controls were made for keyboards, not gamepads. Executing LF2s abilities on gamepad consistently is too frustrating. Consider other fighting games like Tekken where attacks are mostly made in sequence and buttom combos like X and B (xbox controller) are avoided entirely. This is a bit unfortunate, since LF2 could play really well on gamepads. There's a lot of people that enjoy playing on gamepads.

3. Flesh out the game screen

Currently the screenshot with Firen and Dennis looks very barebones.
With small adjustments the game could look a lot more exciting and more in line with what people would expect of a 2025 release.
Here's a few suggestions:

• Stylize the Health Border more. You could add a dangerous background, maybe tilt the health bar, add a aero animation. Anything but a basic game maker tutorial health bar.
  
• Add wavey grass blades in the foreground that "woosh" when players walk past them here and there. Purely aesthetic, but it makes the map look a lot less barren.
  
• Add more variety of elements to the background elements, like a occasional bush

4. Encourage network play

One thing LF always struggled with is network play activity outside of china.
HF had horrendously high ping while LFO wasn't even really available outside of Hong Kong iirc. LF2 didn't have a lobby browser and relied on VPNs like Hamachi. HFX didn't have multiplayer at all afaik.
It is absolutely crucial to make full use of the Steam API to allow players to connect without the need for a VPN. A regional lobby browser for both Stage Mode and Versus Mode would be very commendable.
Having a profile with basic information like a ELO, KDA and winrate would go a long way to motivate competitive players and shouldn't be too much trouble to implement.

5. Ease of Modding

LF2 back then had a ton of variety.
Players would create the most wild characters, items and maps. Some groups would go as far as to create entire games based on LF2s engine like Naruto The Setting Dawn.
Custom content should still be as easy to add as back then.
Be it with the steam workshop, nexusmods, moddb or heck even with lf-empire again.

[Ori-Baba]

2-5 are great suggestions the Dev should consider

[Chris Drakin]

Good suggestion, I hope that the game will have a Steam workshop and modding is as easy as it was in LF2.

[smobydick]

Personally I don't care of ai generated content if it'z well generated. No stupid bot voice, or hand with 7 fingers

[LArc7thHeaven]

For no. 1 at least give us option to use AI upscaled old picture

[LeGheed]

we need full screen mode and an online multiplayer lobby, everything else is secondary in my opinion

[Shadow EX]

Full screen, the ability to freely assign keys (without restrictions), easy and transparent online function for multiplayer, Steam or other workshop for modifications, and for me also optimization. Let's be honest, when playing the normal version of the game or modifications on newer systems, the game sometimes crashed and lagged due to excessive animations, which made it very difficult to do anything freely in skirmishes (especially in Stage Mode).
May everything be successful.