User blog comment:DE-Note/RWBY Game idea/@comment-32598036-20150804014542/@comment-25555436-20150806142638

Mmm....doesn't look too complicated as I thought. 3D visuals animated in the same way one animates a 2D Anime Fighter. <In those, I don't know if you've realized Maki, the animations kinda "jump" into each other. In, say Tekken, if you make a punch you see every frame with the character moving their arm and making a punch.

But in Anime Fighters, you don't. If you make a punch, it's like the character made the punch instantly with nearly no frames between before and after making the punch. Pay enough attention to Blazblue, or Persona4Arena, and similar games. They use less frames, and as such the animation looks like they did the attacks almost instantly. You told me more frames=slower and less frames=quicker. Well, they really hate frames, and goes from quicker to instantaneous.

And that's exactly what they did there. Just made 3D versions of the characters but use the same number of frames and such, and combined with it still keeping the mechanics and apparently the movement, leads to it "looking" like 3D that looks 2D. But it's just 3D. The only 2D things are the effects in their attacks, or at least the basic ones such as slashes, only so it doesn't feel too different.

Technically, it's not innovative as many games were like that in the 90s because of limitations, and even if 3D they looked pretty 2D. However, ASW actually aimed for it and made it look good, and for that they get creativity points.