YMMV / Vargverse

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Dance Master Duane returns, as a regular playable character. Because he can only attack by filling his meters up, his presence is significantly weaker than before. Unlike Bonzi.
  • Pantherk is the penultimate boss of the game and he's tuned to fit his presence, but his A.I. didn't do him enough justice, especially at lower difficulty.
• Broken Base:
  • Removing several characters from the previous game. Justified that Brergsart wants to add his other creation to the game and trying to make the roster more sense (for example, Joel never streams NES Godzilla, or Pope Benedict and Senator's plot were a non-canon addition of what happened to his previous stream).
  • The Duke Nukem that's included in the game is completely different compared to the previous game, having mechanics based on Duke Nukem 3D game and better voiceover courtesy of John St. John himself, but the character is clunky to control in comparison to other characters in the game. Not many welcomed the change.
  • Similarly to Duke Nukem, Tuesday the Tuna replacing the regular Tuna from the previous game is met with mixed reception. Tuesday the Tuna has more polished spritework and controls, but it ended up being an annoying Fragile Speedster that makes it significantly harder to hit on top of the A.I. being able to exploit it's small frame.
• Crosses the Line Twice: CBT Wizard Johnson, full stop. What else can you get from a wizard specializing in Groin Attack? And there's the part where he flirt on Jerma in the intro...
  • The last thing Not Shane does upon leaving the Town With No Name is to shoot a child for mistaking him with someone else, then fly off to the hyperspace.
• Demonic Spiders: In arcade mode or A.I. survival mode, these characters tends to be more pain in the ass to fight even on lower difficulty.
  • Bulk already have a strong attack modifier on part of several new toys he brought from Cyrodiil, but now that his Breakdown mode can be activated manually through his Vine Trigger, he will run you down fast and delete your entire healthbar without a sweat. His only saving grace is that all of his attacks cannot be cancelled, allowing you to exploit his mistakes.
  • Arch-Vile A.I. tends to be rather smart enough to carefully zone you out from the distance. Expect to see them burn you down in flames before even laying a hit on it.
  • Tuesday the Tuna not only has the smallest hitbox of all the characters in the game (including the Final Boss), but they seems to hit particularly hard and were able to exploit their natural shape to the highest degree, even on lower difficulties.
  • DIO's normally would be rather standard in comparison to other characters above, but the fact that he can become virtually invincible through the power of his Vine Trigger suddenly turns into a 50/50 game where you had to carefully hit him so that it won't fill his trigger bar much faster.
• Even Better Sequel: The first game were just compilation of various barely related MUGEN characters in a simple edit of MUGEN 1.1 default screenpack. This game not only has more related roster that makes sense in Joel stream's compendium, but the screenpack were also crafted to be more like a legitimate fighting game, on top of having better production value and more original characters with interesting mechanics and specialization than just your standard fighting game controls.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Aside of what's broken from the first game, the addition of Vine Trigger turns even joke characters into gods when activated.
    • DIO takes the cake by turning himself practically invincible as his Vine Trigger allows him to stop time and counterattack whenever he's about to get hit, then replenishing significant amount of health on top of that.
    • Carlos is relatively underwhelming character with few movesets and only 1 super. His Vine Trigger turns himself untouchable thanks for being able to instantly teleports behind the opponent upon attacking when it active. You can spam your attacks to your hearts content whenever the meter is up.
    • Pantherk turns into Fun-sized Pantherk and significantly harder to hit, on top of making his attack power and hit range higher.
    • Kenshiro simply empties his opponent's star gauge, allowing him to finish off the opponent with Hokuto Hyakkuretsu Ken as long as you have the power meter up and running.
    • Already a massive pain in the ass to fight, Arch-Vile trigger simply allows him to summon two another A.I. controlled Arch-Viles and make the battlefield even more grueling.
  • Remember Tuna, the character that only has two moves and has a relentless A.I. that can juggle you when given the chance? Introducing Tuesday the Tuna. Not only he's faster and has more polished moveset and controls, he's also much, much smaller compared to the other combatants, making it harder to hit him.
  • Bulk is already powerful combatant on his own, but now that his Breakdown can be activated on demand through using the Vine Trigger, on top of having more toys in his disposal, Bogan becomes even more powerful than even Joel.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Any character with small size, because there are a lot of tall characters that can't reach them without having an attack that has large hitbox. Tuesday the Tuna, Dr. Thunder, and Tim Taylor stands out in that regard. Tuna is the smallest character in the game and has an excellent zoning power on top of pretty decent defensive kit. Tim Taylor is essentially a zoner type character with a rushdown mindset that can freely spam his attacks switftly. Dr. Thunder is a strong anti-air combatant on top of being pretty easy to use and has respectable firepower comparable to Joel. All three characters has pretty nasty A.I. that can exploit their small frame to their fullest potential, especially at higher difficulties. The only one that avert being the scrappy is Jill, who's pretty balanced on her own while her small frame is just a nice bonus.
  • The three balanced streamers, namely Papa Jobel, Sauceboss Vinny, and Jerma are very solid combatants with all the tools needed to face anything the game throws at you. Vinny focus on juggling and air game makes him dangerous because no characters in the game were capable of teching, Jerma is just all rounder with easy to exploit i-frames, while Joel's highly aggressive playstyle allows players to be downright unstoppable, as the AI could attest.
  • Despite the manual showing a lot of commands to master, players find out that Kazuma Kiryu isn't that hard to pick and play, especially if you're already familiar with the control schemes of his games, specifically Yakuza 0 and Kiwami. Being able to rapidly mow down opponent up close and being very mobile with it on top of very punishing grapples and the legendary "Tiger Drop" squarely puts Kiryu in the top of the tier list.
  • DIO one of the most annoying character to fight against not because of his kit giving him too much power (in fact several gameplay cruft from the original HFTF game remains on him), but because of being way too safe thanks to his Vine Trigger, which makes him practically invincible whenever he activates it, while also recovering some health everytime it activates.
  • Skeletor is one of the game best zoner in the game for how punishing and save his kit is. Not only he can zone the enemy out of their short range restriction with high damaging spells with large hitbox, but if they can close their gap between each other, he can push them back with "Havoc Staff Protection" and his throws.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Arch-Vile might caught you off guard for the first time, but once you realize that all of his attacks are blockable, on top of having him being dead vulnerable to anything when attacking leaves him at the low spot on the tier list.
  • Carlos fell off the short end of the stick despite of having massive firepower and thundering speed, as his lack of defensive movement and generally too squishy just dive him straight to the Joke Character territory as many combatants can easily rush him down or zone him without having the ability to fight back. His simplistic and braindead gameplan makes him very vulnerable when he failed to lock his opponent down.
  • Pepsiman's own mechanic turns him into more of a hindrance than anything, as his tactics forces him to play defensively and is very vulnerable to grabs, which a lot of character have in their moveset, leaving him a sad case of Crippling Overspecialization that relies too much on his traps to fight.
  • Dance Master Duane requires you to slowly accumulate enough power before he could even attack. On top of slow movement and not so high HP makes him a pain in the ass to play with.
  • Through tall characters have a hard time fighting most of the roster who's not even their shoulder height like DIO, Kenshiro and Shockmaster, they still have multiple tools at their own disposal to handle most of the roster with ease. Jotaro however fell to the short end of the stick because of his almost one dimensional gameplay from his home game doesn't translate well to this game because on top of lacking a consistent overhead options to hit the short ones, his gung-ho close ranged playstyle can be easily zoned out by most of the roster on top of other characters having much better time going up close than him.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Killing off the enemy using Joel's Fist of the North Star plays the Combat Theme from the latter's anime. It's as satisfying as it sounds.
  • Jotaro gets to override the background theme with his theme when unleashing 3-page Ora to his enemies.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Compared to the first game, it's obvious that a good amount of work were put into the screenpack. Combatant moves fluently and their VFX are generally a step up from the previous game, especially from characters like Joel and Bulk.
  • Jerma is one of Brergsart original creation with sprite ported from Jerma's own Greenscreen streams and it shows. It manages to turn several greenscreen scenes into fluent and intricate animation that syncs well together as a cohesive fighting game character.

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