There is an audience for games in the vein of Banjo-Kazooie, but the people who wanted to make another Banjo-Kazooie game were unable to, and had to settle with making a spiritual successor instead. But obviously a sequel to a series you aren't a fan of wasn't going to interest you, so of course a spiritual successor wouldn't. If that type of game doesn't appeal to you, then it doesn't appeal to you. I'm not seeing why some people find this so irksome.
I mean, most of my problems with the trend don't really apply to Fightin' Herds, and,
really looking at it probably explains why I don't dislike the project all that much.
I guess for one, I disagree with your point about sequels. It's not the best example, but it's the most pertinent one to me at the moment, I recently played Yakuza 4 having never even looked at any of the previous games, but because the main story itself is self-contained (the backstories are not, but the central plot it) and because it doesn't expect you to know the gameplay mechanics right off the bat. They even have all the cutscenes from the previous games to fill you in, if you really desperately want to know what happened, because the game markets itself to more than just the people who played the previous games.
But I think for what really irks me about a lot of these crowdfunding projects, not all of them but a lot of them, was best worded by Zero Punctuation "The developers are almost always fans who in their eagerness to show 'respect' for their beloved franchise prefer to lavish it in tongue baths in place of any significant evolution" (and yes I'm counting Inafune in this), a sequel is expected (or at least should be expected) to expand upon the concepts brought up in the first game, either by adding more mechanics, adding more characters, or developing a theme, even remakes play with these concepts to an extent, but a lot of these projects don't feel like anything more than "do this game again, but change the character design slightly so we don't get sued".
It's also why I disliked Mega Man 9 and 10 reverting back to original sprites, it's a take on nostalgia that's harmless enough and the boxart gags were pretty cute, but it's ultimately a regressive design decision that doesn't add anything to the game.
Really, most of my whining only really applies to something like Mn9, projects like Yooka-Laylee or Bloodstained seem to aspire to be sequels or spiritual successors than anything else (and I'm down with spiritual successors. Bioshock took the gameplay of System Shock and improved upon it. And Skullgirls experimented around with how mechanics established in MvC2 could be tweaked or changed), but,
that's why I'm hesitant going into crowdfunding projects where the goal is to make a game "like x but not". Not why I automatically dislike them.
We're not actually 100% certain that is the case yet. That isn't to say that I would be surprised if there did end up being some mix-and-matching in that regard. But the main reason we're calling some of these characters things like "Not Applejack" and "the Fluttershy expy" in the first place, aside from not knowing everyone's names yet, is because it is apparent that a lot of their moves, if not all of them, resemble those of their counterparts in Fighting is Magic. Which I can't say I blame them for, considering that they put so much time and effort into the original for roughly 2 years only to have it shut down.
I wouldn't say that. There's a lot you can glean from things like body language that tie the two together. I'm not expecting Arizona to actual be non-confrontational and dainty because she has a strong stance, a cocky, aggressive facial expression, and she utilizes the strongest parts of a cow's body in her attacks, the horns and the back legs. Likewise, I don't see Velvet starkly contrasting Rarity's haughty and (physical) distancing attitude because of her tilted head, thin legs, near nobility levels of upright posture, and her one physically hitting attack 1) having a very fluid animation and 2) being one of her least damaging attacks.
