Yesterday at Capcom's New York Comic-Con panel for Street Fighter X Tekken, producer Yoshinori Ono unveiled the game's new Gem System. And I'll be straight with you: Some of the audience groaned. Some heckled. But the world of fighting games is like that, isn't it?
The truly outrageous Gem system gives fighters power-ups that they can mix and match. You'll be able to choose from dozens of gems that modify abilities and stats. This lets you sort of cover your ass with perks -- it's like Materia (Final Fantasy VII) for your fighter! More groans? Those are my fault.
With this system you'll start out with a combination of Attack, Defense, Speed, Cross Gauge, and Assist gems. As you'd guess, having the Defense gem on increases your fighter's defense stats. That's exactly what casual players like myself have been needing, and according to Ono, that is exactly the point of this new feature. He's working to bring this game to as many gamers as possible.
Other news tidbits came out of the event. First, a release date: March 6, 2012. Also, a PC version of Street Fighter X Tekken is being worked on. Finally, Street Fighter's Rufus has been added to the line-up.
Gems, huh? What do you think about this new system?
Contest:
10:52 AM on 10.15.2011 | 
I don't expect it to be too balanced, either. It'll probably be like MW2 where theres tons of perks but everyone just picks stopping power anyway.
Balance is a lie.
We'll see if that changes on March 6th
I'm guessing if you were a FIGHTER,they'd go in your POCKET.
Those EMRALDS will draw some CHAOS in the fighting game community.
This game feels like an INFINITY waiting for it to customize GEMS.
I can't be happy about a victory when I had an advantage like that.
Make it a feature for casual mode, or just for singleplayer, so that new people have an easier start, or at least give everyone the same gempool to choose from.
Exclusives in a 1on1 Multiplayergame are just nuts.
Also rumored is that some gems are a miss fit for some characters, and will actually have a negative effect on their status.
The upside is their songs are better.
Still keeping my fingers crossed for Eddy/Christie and Lei though. Maybe future DLC.
I mean, both SSFIV and TTT2 are in the "Serious competition" business, so the only way to set this apart is to make it batshit insane.
Also, from what I've seen of this game, Street Fighter fans should be right at home, but Tekken fans are going to hate it. Every SF character plays exactly the way you would expect them to, but the Tekken cast has a huge learning curve.
My guess is that basically all of Tekken cast is going to have serious difficulties competing with the Shotos.
If the gems are balanced, if they don't break the game, we could see mirror matches where players are able to face off with completely different, yet legitimate, builds. The individuality could be an incredible addition.
I am worried, I won't lie; but I also see the huge potential.
If you can just turn it off, it's still all good though.
Not to mention the fact that this will make changing up the metagame easy. Too many players rely on rote memorization, and this will throw that into question, which is a good thing.
At any rate this will be good for training etc. Learn to do one thing whilst covering your other weaknesses.
It will also be quite handy for when I force my non-fighting gamer friends to play fighters with me. I'll have no gems, they can have gems. Suddenly an equal playing ground.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXUOotOH2gA
Best part is knocking out the soul (life recover) green gem from your opponent and scrambling to use it lol...