THE BUZZ: With the upcoming Street Fighter X Tekken, pairing up two unlikely rivals in the fighting game wars isn’t the only new idea the game will present.

Another is Pandora mode—an option where you can sacrifice your partner character in order to give the tagged-in character a huge boost in strength.

While the basic premise is simple, the finer details of Pandora mode—as well as its effect on gameplay—is looking to be rather complex. Unfortunately, not everybody is agreeing that it’s an added layer of complexity in a good way. There’s been a lot of fan feedback already about this new option—feedback that Capcom is indeed listening to.

In fact, Capcom’s in-house fighting game fanatic Seth Killian himself isn’t totally happy with how Pandora is at this point, stating as much in a conversation he had with Destructoid.

“Pandora [mode] right now I would say is pretty weak-sauce,” he told the website. “I would not activate it. We’re still playing with it and trying to figure [it] out… This is not the final form.

“We’re going to try to make Pandora more interesting or just cut it. I’m not above cutting it even though we just announced it.”

EGM’s TAKE: Even if this comment comes as simply a “we could” type of comment, that’s still a rather large statement to make. Pandora mode is one of the big new features put into Street Fighter X Tekken to help it stand out from other fighting games, so to even hint that there’s the potential that it could be dropped is a surprising thing to hear.

It’s also one of the problems with fighting games: fans know what they what, they know what has worked over all of the years, and bringing in new modes or options can have a serious threat to that familiarity that makes for good tournament play. At the same time, of course, new options can also provide spice to a genre that at times can find itself tasting a little bland.

I’ll also say that while Pandora mode certainly has been a hot topic in discussions about Street Fighter X Tekken, I think the bigger point of contention among fans is the whole gems system.

Source: Destructoid