Exceed Fighting System

Andy has been telling me about this game for years. Like, with glowingly high praise. Andy also thinks Dr. Who is a legitimate show.

OK, that last part isn't very fair. I couldn't keep watching after Rose left, she was my favorite part of the show.  

The point is, I ignored Andy. It wasn't that I wasn't interested, I just had my own rabbit trails I was following and didn't want to take the time to jump onto another. I'm like that a lot.

But when Lv99, the folks who make Exceed, decided to mail out completely free decks of Ryu and Ken from Streetfighter, I decided to take the bait. I didn't even have to pay for shipping! Even that minor excuse was unfounded! And besides, if I didn't like the game, I could donate it to a Goodwill or something. What was there to lose? Legitimately nothing.

About a week later everything came in. I was impressed with the rulebook. It reads pretty well and I was able to ascertain the following from it, with few questions.

There are nine "range" cards, which set up the physical space your characters are fighting in. Players place their character cards on this make-shift range of cards. There are mats that you can buy. I think I may get one, because goodness gracious the cards are annoying. The physical space demand surprises me every time, and not for the better. Besides, the cards are always moving, which also annoys me.

Characters in this game are compromised of a thirty-card deck. Cards have two different abilities on them: a strike and a boost. If you play the card as a strike and hit with it, it goes into your Gauge. If you play it as a boost you discard it. Your Gauge may be used to either power the Critical abilities on some cards, or to get you into your Exceed form, which amplifies your character, sometimes exponentially.

There are a wide variety of actions you can take, but you can only do one action a turn, so turns usually go pretty rapidly. If you do any action other than one that involves a strike you get to draw a card at the end of your turn, which means that striking all the time is generally a pretty bad idea. You have the option to Wild Swing, which is where you just pull a card off the top of your deck and pray to God it works, but that's a pretty crappy option. You can do it if you need to, but why would you want to when you can swap out cards from your hand to draw more, or just draw more cards in general, or move, or activate your character ability, etc? There is a surprising amount that you  can do, but the options never really felt overwhelming.

This game encourages card counting. And it would fall apart if it didn't. When you play your strikes against each other you play them face-down, which means that you have to have a reasonable way to figure out what you opponent is up to. Half the cards in your deck are completely universal, and the other half are summed up on a handy little card that you can reference at any time!  You also have the right to check each other's Gauge and discard piles, meaning that you can create a reasonable picture of what your opponent is capable of as time goes on. Of course they can reshuffle their deck once a battle and throw you off, but more on that option in a minute. The point is that you can actually develop a pretty legit strategy, even while praying that they didn't play that one card PLEASE NO NOT THAT ONE OH GOD NO.

I stand by the decision to use this picture. It is appropriate.

I drafted my brother, who is definitely not a gamer, to try it with me. He very politely sat down with as I raved about how interesting I found the rulebook and that I wanted to see if he would pick it up as quickly as I did. I asked him which character he wanted, he picked the defensive Ryu, leaving me with the offensive Ken.

He beat me two times out of three.

And I won the third by the skin of my teeth.

Yeah, I think he picked it up.

The interesting thing about the game is how you have to be willing to completely embrace what the character is about. Ken's special moves were mostly up-close and personal and granted a lot of closing ability. The game where I won I had to willingly trade enough blows to get my Gauge up, so that way I could get to my Exceed ability, which turned Ken into a tank of death and destruction. My brother only needed a few questions after being taught a few of the rules to settle right into playing Ryu. Yeah, he wasn't exactly playing very deeply into the mechanics (neither was I), but he certainly got the basics! And that's not nothing. We had a great time and I found myself wanting to try out other characters to see how they played.

Exceed is a bit crunchy, but the system is designed well enough to where I could get someone who thinks himself not a gamer to play and thrive. The physical set up is something I dislike, but that's a pretty small nitpick for a game that produces an experience like this. It's fast-paced, technical, and deeply rewarding. I'll definitely be getting into this more. A lot more.