FIghting Games with Good Stories

[carnex]

Depends on two things. First is does the story has to be told in its entirety during gameplay or the additional info counts and what exactly counts as good story. King of Fighters games have a huge canon behind them with both stupid shit and nice stories but player learns nothing of that while playing the game.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Under Night In-Borth has a pretty good story. It's not as expansive as BB but the chars are all very charming and interesting and it lays the foundation for more depth later on.

 

[FPLOON]

Well, you did say "good" and not "great" nor "awesometacular", so I can at least be behind fighting games such as Skullgirls, Persona 4 Arena, and basically anything that came from Aksys, in my opinion... However, I would also say that most exceed more in the [individual] character's story than in the overall game's story, especially in Skullgirls and P4A's case, to a certain extent...

With that said, the only problem I have with fighting game stories, especially when it comes to their sequels, is finding some way of bringing those that are just getting into the game's story mode up to speed to what's been going on since the last game(s) in question... and I applaud BlazBlue for doing something like that in both Continuum Shift Extend and Chronophantasma in their own right... I'll also applaud Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for example, for basically just acting like this is the only story you would need to know for that game in particular...

Overall, OP mentioned some pretty boss choices beforehand and I feel like most work better at telling [individual] character's story than they do at the overall story with only a few exceptions that others have mentioned... Any other details were stated better than I ever could, anyway...

 

[Danny Dowling]

i think the problem i have with most of the fighting games that try too hard to justify itself with story is that it goes so in a way that get's in the way of the most important part of the fighting game; the fighting.

I mean let's look at Blazblue; there's way too much text over picture pre and post matches, it's not even animated stuff so it's like listening to a podcast or something, and as i mentioned before it just tries too hard to justify itself. So to be honest with you i think the anime fighters just do it worse. i'm not surprised that skimming through this thread Blazblue has been mentioned positively. but i think what it does is it portrays an elaborate story, but it doesn't present its okay story in a good way. that isn't really the question of the thread but meh, it's meat to the discussion.

alternatively you have a series like Tekken which, up until 6, were doing things swimmingly. a back story that you can read in the game manual, and an ending when you win. then you either use your slouthe skills or wait for the next game to see which ending is cannon. up until 4 that was the way it was, then when 4 came out there was pre tournament explanations and post tournament results for why they entered Iron Fist and what they got from winning with maybe one tiny tiny cutscene in the middle (split with 4 fights each way or so). That, to me, is okay. a bit of info first, split it up after 4 fights, then some more info after.

And through the years Tekken has managed a very interesting story with quite a lot going on, and yet they barely explain anything. i like that.

 

[Calum_M]

I don't know about the best 'story', per se, but as far as I'm concerned, Tekken 4 has the best story MODE of any fighting game. It's basically arcade mode, but with cutscenes, and battle choices depend on which character you play as. I'll take something like that over some clumsy 'campaign mode' type thing like the latest Tekkens and Soul Caliburs.

A shame the actual fighting was sluggish as hell in Tekken 4.