the only time i've played missing link was for a couple "credits" on a ps1 sitting around at magfest. i got a few matches into the single player as millia and then may instant killed me at the start of round 1, giving a game over. that's an unforgettable moment, to say the least. after that i tried zato, who is pretty baffling in that game given how much i was expecting something a little more like the later versions.
x i know virtually nothing about. midnight carnival is one of the most fun fighting games to watch, ever, with the marriage of xx's complex systems to a lot of really, really janky and unbalanced characters; footage is also virtually impossible to find through any real means on youtube due to the fact that searching anything like "ggxx" "guilty gear xx" etc. will just pull up tons of matches on newer versions, while the specific name doesn't turn up a lot of versus footage. i spent quite a long time training moding accent core (and later the update) when i was in a bit of a dead spot with fighting games many years ago, frustrated by everything, and it was pretty fun all the time even not playing anyone, enjoying all the characters and trying to see what i could understand about it on my own. when xrd: sign came out i was nearing my college graduation and didn't want to commit to buying it; i went to a casual night and ran over all the blazblue players with my AC knowledge, but six months later i felt impossibly far behind. i played for a while, but midway through revelator my usual "main character crisis" ended when i decided i was just done with the game.
setting aside the profound feeling of failure that the game elicited for me (i've never stopped whining on twitter, so there's no need to relitigate that right here at the moment), i just also really dislike the feeling of the slowdown mechanic. even to the extent it's supposed to be really powerful and "fun" to use, i just think it's annoying and disorienting, and then basically feels like a huge lag spike on netplay to be on the other end of. so i can't say i'm feeling optimistic about strive, which looks to be playing up a lot of the zoom and slowdown effects at least as much if not more. i don't think i'll play it. at the least not when i can't step outside the back door of the barcade and scream for a bit (before it shut down, currently temporarily, i was playing a lot of third strike and vampire savior, with the latter being a game that doesn't even have pauses when you use super moves...i really love that feeling, but in general the quick and speedy feeling of older games, even when i don't especially think they're "good", just makes playing more fun and losing less frustrating)
so hey, acr ggpo patch, huh? i'm looking forward to it, and already thinking i'll try and spend some time messing with it tomorrow if i can decide a character to start focusing on. which has always been a difficulty, although i think a better understanding of my sense of personal aesthetic has made the list of "characters i'm considering" a lot shorter than it used to be. order sol and zappa are kind of up at the front, particularly for not having been in the newer games, but regular sol and dizzy have some stuff i really like that also didn't cross over, and dizzy was already one of my favorites (as well as having a great combination of huge complexity but getting a lot of reward from relatively easy stuff; i definitely felt like she was my strongest character in the rare cases i've played before). millia's way up there too, just feel straightforward and fun to do stuff with. and then there's bridget...who i'm a little less inclined to go for than before, but the yoyo stuff really is a great combination of two of my favorite mechanics ("do this weird move" and "put something on the screen you can manipulate later") so i can't really fully ignore the option
of course there's a lot of other characters i love design-wise or in game concept (like aba, testament, or venom) but at this point i know i'm not really gonna have the heart to play them.