I believe this is the first time seeing Smoke, Rain, and Kung Lao in the game, as well as kameos for Frost, Cyrax, Sektor, Scorpion, and Kung Lao. In the livestream, devs acknowledged that they’ve received the feedback on the movement speed and are working on it. You can also use kameos for movement, like equipping Kung Lao’s kameo to give a character a teleport that wouldn’t normally have one.
“I tend to prefer games that minimize knowledge checks with their system mechanics” - I am curious what games fit this mold ? I’m newer to mainline FGC games. I’m a former ssbm/ssbu player. Honestly I respect MK for having an easy entry into playing compared to other games.
They’re usually the games with the best defense. Street Fighter 6 has its Drive system with three different defensive mechanics tied to it that are intuitive to determine which one you should use in a given situation. Skullgirls has pushblock, which not only reliably creates space, it also allows to you disregard blockstun entirely if it goes on for longer than 25 frames, and you can just take your turn back, no matter what pressure your opponent is applying. Guilty Gear Strive has Faultless defense, YRC, and burst, which will all pretty reliably get you out of bad situations by spending a resource. However, I will say that Strive has introduced some more knowledge checks over its life by buffing offense but not buffing defense by the same amount; personally, I’d improve the situation by increasing the input window on Instant Block and Instant Faultless Defense, but ArcSys rarely solves problems with the way I think they should, and usually they come up with something more clever. Hopefully Strive gets some good defense buffs with the next patch.