I can see what you mean, but it's the same for VF isn't it? There is punch, kick and block and anyone can pick up the basics of that, just as anyone can pick up the basics of light, medium and heavy.
Just using those three buttons you can do some simple combos and moves. I don't really understand what you find convoluted about VF's controls. I can agree at high levels, sometimes there is a lot to take in, but at it's most basic you really just need to know the three buttons and maybe P+G is for throws.
You mean you can just mash buttons wildly if you don't know what you're doing? Sure, but you can do that in every fighter. I think Soul Calibur does a much better job at being button mash friendly than Virtua Fighter. If you want to play mindless casuals with people who don't normally play fighting games, just pop in Soul Calibur.
I know that all fighting games should have a good amount of depth, but the VF series reduces gameplay to boring combo trees. I don't bother trying to master Virtua Fighter because it would take too much time away from having a job, friends, and so forth.
I didn't mean mashing actually, what I meant was every character has some basic specials and combos that anyone can learn. Like the Brad ones I pointed out for example. I use Wolf mainly, and he has a bunch of throws that have simple inputs, even his chain throw is really simple. Just F+P+G, then you can input another throw from there and they are all really simple too, like F or B+P+G as well. For his regular moves he has some really simple and effective ones like Grizzly lariat which is just D+F+P+K. That's easier than doing a Dragon Punch or a Spinning Piledriver for example. All you need to do is find a handful of moves that work for you to play with friends. You'll naturally pick up new ones and learn ways to combo them together, just like you find ways to use and set up specials and supers in Street Fighter.
Obviously every character has some really huge combos and complicated moves too, but so does SF. Like I said, it's probably just as hard to consistently pull off the more complicated moves and combos in SF as it is in VF.
As another example, I find the combos in VF much easier than stuff in SFIV even. Some of the combos require 1-Frame links or similar very strict timing, whereas VF combos can be done through juggles. Get the opponent airborne and you have lots of options, as opposed to SF where only certain moves have juggle properties etc.
You keep on mentioning how VF would take away from friends and work etc, but nobody here is trying to become masters at the game, we are talking about playing for fun. And besides, if you want to be as good as the best SF players, KOF players, Tekken players or any fighting game would would need to sink in just as many hours anyway.
I think it is just coming down to you growing up with that series and only playing VF a few times
Joke's on you. I own Virtua Fighter 4, and I tried my hardest for a while to get into the game... in fact, I tried twice to get into it, both times for over a week. It didn't matter how much I wanted to enjoy myself. The fighting is too slow and the gameplay revolves too much around boring combo tree cramming. The game has now been collecting dust in my collection for years.
I really wanted to love the game, seeing as how there was so much hype surrounding it and SEGA fans were giving it endless praise... but it turned out that Virtua Fighter's greatness was exaggerated.
I think maybe you just have a very competitive mindset when it comes to these games or something. I remember on Sega.com you mentioned not wanting ot pick up a game because you didn't have time to 'Master it', as opposed to just play it and have fun. I never had a problem with playing VF for pure fun, once again, just learning the basics at first then moving into the more complex stuff later (and even the more complex stuff is just scratching the surface of what I could go into later). I never bothered remembering huge combos for characters, the worst I can think of was Wolf in VF which was B,F+P+K, HCB+P,P, B,F+K+G.
It's a simple combo to remember but effective, and couple that with some of his better throws and strikes and I found myself enjoying it a lot.
As for slow paced, I don't know how you can say that, the game moves really quickly. I mean, the game has only a 45 Second timer and it still hardly has any time-out wins.
As for it's greatness being exaggurated, I very much disagree with that. Even if you don't like it, it still has tremendous balance and depth, and I still find it lots of fun to have casual games. I can understand you not liking it persoanlly, but to say it's overrated is a bit unfair to the game I think.
