Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax first tournament stream impressions

Disclaimer: My experience with the game was from the first two day location test at Club Sega in Shinjuku, I'll be posting my impressions of the stream based on my experiences from back then.  There are some obvious changes now, like two moves per assist (thank god, it was so limiting before), and a ton of new assists, plus the two new characters Tomoka and Kirito.

I think there is a nerf to some of the DP super armor in the game, I saw Shana's 2AB get beat on wakeup, though I think it's because the guy didn't mash the followup fast enough instead of it being safe jumped.  However I do remember seeing Shana's AB? get outright beat on startup once.

Revision: There is a new move called Impact Break (AB and 2AB are called Impact Skills) which is done with 4AB, it's basically a very fast overhead with a launcher followup that automatically breaks AB/2AB super armor HAS FUCKING SUPER ARMOR OF ITS OWN.  This is what Xie meant by people doing meaty 4AB to prevent AB/2AB on wakeup.  Unfortunately I am an idiot, Xie wasn't referring to 4AB breaking AB/2AB super armor, rather he was referring to using 4ABs OWN SUPER ARMOR to absorb the reversal.  This explains the highly increased spam of what looked to be short hop instant overheads in the game, it's people actually spamming the crap out of 4AB.  Think 3S universal overhead that has enough super armor to win air to air and leads into a launcher.

Let's get this out of the way ASAP, Shana is still the best character in the game.  I only saw BUFFS and more stupid shit from that character from the last time I played her.
1.  Her Roman Cancel has INVULNERABILITY meaning she can use it as a reversal or pause the game midscreen like UniB, this might have been present in loctest but the tournament winner abused the shit out of it to the point that he always sat on his trump cards instead of using them for meterless combo extenders out of AB.
2.  Her revised ground EX236 super CAN BE RELAUNCHED AFTER and cancelled FROM THROW, meaning in corner she gets throw -> EX236 -> 5B relaunch starter.  Midscreen she gets throw -> EX236 -> BC (roman cancel) -> super.
3.  She now? has a rejump chain on standing characters, meaning she can land a jC or jB, do 5AB, jump cancel into a rising jB and come back down with a jC, already extending her on average very long combos.
4.  The gradual meter gain system is THE SAME from the location test, but she has a RC, meaning she is one of the few characters who can just combo supers into supers.

So yeah, game spits out meter for free, but Shana's one of the few who can use ALL DA BARS, plus rejump combo, plus revised EX236 relaunch off throws, plus empty Roman Cancel is actually an amazing reversal/pause button/whiff punisher/meterless combo extender/meterless anything.

Tomoka looks actually interesting in an uninteresting game.  She sort of plays different than the rest of the super homogenized cast (besides Kuroyukihime, who plays different in a bad way), the fact she has all those cancellable ex assists and such means she has a lot of interesting delayed mixups and such instead of just mashing sword normals/specials.  Her instant overhead is pretty fucking fast as well.

Kirito looks top 3 easily, maybe 2nd behind Shana.  His Dual Weild BC is not a straight Roman Cancel, he can't do it on block so it's not nearly as broke as Shana cancelling her DPs safely, but he can do it on hit and it gives a substantial damage boost plus improvement to his normals after he pulls out the second sword.  He does really long combos when he's dualweilding so it's a good combo extender for the delayed assists like Wilhelmina.  Also Dual Weild also HAS INVUL on startup as well, so it can be used the same way as Shana's where you reversal with it or run at someone -> hit BC -> if they have a normal in your face you're fully invul and can punish them with a combo.

Kirino looks better now that people have found a combo that ends in hard knockdown and does decent damage, her aerial chain before sucked unless you ended with EX volleyball and even then it was techable compared to Shana getting guaranteed knockdown off EX214 after jBC jBC.

Didn't see enough of Biri biri, Shizuo, Kuroyukihime, to make a judgement.  Asuna still looks the same, amazing movement options and normals and approaches.

That's all I think of the moment, I really want to see if they nerfed AB/2AB super armor some how, I saw a lot less of that being spammed in neutral as poke punishes.  I know Shizuo's still has a bazillion super-armor frames.