I'm going to necropost in this thread because Prochara did a whole video about why the 52 isn't overpowered!
I saw this video the day it dropped. I always like seeing higher-level players break down weapons like this and I think that aspect of this video was done very well, but the title doesn't do the video justice at all. If a .52 Gal main that wasn't super active in the community were to click on this video wondering why people hate their weapon, they'd basically get a one-off comment about how it's probably only from k52 and that the weapon's a little bit stronger than it should be, but fine and not worth complaining about.
I like the more optimistic angle there but it's very misrepresentative of the community and if this is what the video's trying to touch on then I'd argue it failed to do that. Funny enough I took a break from typing this message to go check the video's most recent comments and see for myself and sure enough, people were complaining about that exact thing.
I don't personally hate 52 but I totally get it. It has a strong case to be made as the absolute easiest weapon in the entire game, and the vanilla kit also has a strong case to be made as the single best weapon in solo matchmaking. I would fully understand someone taking those two points by themselves and explaining why a weapon should never have both of those things. I personally hold the opinion that they don't really go well together and maybe it's because I'm a midline player that will play around a 52 just as I would with any other weapon that has a Splash Wall, but I see a bit more in this weapon than that.
Gonna go a little bit away from the main point of the thread here but going off of what Chara's video explained and seeing the way 52 is right now from that, the specific thing I don't like about its big list of buffs is that they make it seem a lot more similar to other Shooters. I never knew they lessened the shot accuracy issues to the degree they did.
This is going to be a hot take and a half but I think accuracy problems are fine if they're in the player's control to at least some degree. In Pokemon's competitive singles scene, there are some Pokemon that rely on inaccurate moves to make progress. A lot of Pokemon's RNG is horrible but this is the one thing that I think it does amazingly because specifically picking these Pokemon will force you to think about the game differently.
Obviously it's ideal for your moves to hit but before you even send out these kinds of Pokemon, you need to already have a plan for what will happen if you miss and need to have it lined up before you even send it into battle. Sometimes you won't need to use this backup plan, sometimes you'll have too few options to even make a backup plan, and some games may feel like you're getting screwed over, but these will all even out with other people using the same stuff over time. This may not sound like fun to every person reading this post but not every weapon is going to fit with every person out there and I think this lends itself to a very interesting idea that a lot of people, myself included, could easily click with.
Ultimately, these end up being some of the hardest Pokemon to get the most use out of in the game. You could absolutely go in and click your inaccurate moves without considering what happens if you miss, and these Pokemon might feel very overpowered and brainless if that ends up working. But people who play like this will run into a lot of games where this doesn't end up working and will end up with either similar value to a "more normal" Pokemon or even might end up losing the interaction in a way that ends up dooming them later on. Winning like this is cheesy and definitely not unheard of but the good and bad players still get weeded out in a way that's honestly pretty cool to me.
52's insane kill time for its range opens itself up perfectly to have this idea, except apparently according to this video, accuracy isn't nearly as big of an issue for 52 as it used to be. Most weapon classes don't have shot accuracy problems period so this left the Gals filling a pretty unique place within these games. This is also just the right place to make it work as well since Splash Wall intuitively gives newer players a "backup plan" for if their shots miss. Just have enough ink to throw out a Splash Wall at some point during the engagement.
Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this since I haven't mained this weapon since 2022 before I was even in S+ but without this weakness 52 ultimately just plays like other Shooters. The only differences are that it has one massive strength in its kill time, a fire rate weakness that doesn't matter, an accuracy weakness that rarely if ever comes into play, and the fact that the kits likely won't be as strong since there are so many other short-ranged Shooters out there. Even balance aside, doesn't that sound boring to you, and doesn't the mental game that playing a super inaccurate .52 Gal would force you into sound much more interesting? Imagine being forced to use Shooter movement and evasive play during basically every fight to make up for the bad accuracy, doesn't that sound fun?
Everything else I could say about the weapon has probably been talked to death at this point. I don't care to touch this weapon because of how easy it is and it's not something I'm super pressed over. I just like talking