Becoming an Action Survivior

[TripleSRank]

So, I finally bought this game. I was originally going to wait for the Vita version, and I know release is just around the corner, but I was getting tired of waiting, saw the sale on steam, and thought "why not?".

I played through 95% of the tutorials yesterday and today. My initial thoughts on the characters:

Spoiler

Favorites:

• Beowulf: He's probably the biggest surprise for me. He didn't look very interesting prior to buying, and since I didn't end up liking how Cerebella felt I figured that grapplers wouldn't be my style. Surprisingly, when I got to him in the tutorials he felt very natural. I like his flashy style, the extra options provided by how one uses The Hurting, and the ease of use stemming from only needing quarter-circle commands for nearly everything unique he has. Hype will give even more to work with later on.

• Squigly: I really fell for the cute character aesthetic, and the versatility of stanceling sounds very appealing to me, but since I ended up liking Beowolf so much, I think I'd rather not start with a more technically-oriented character since I can dig into things a bit faster if I don't. I'll probably come back to her eventually. Hopefully.

• Filia: I like her agility, and she seems like she'd be easy to combo with based on how she was used throughout the tutorials. Nice character aesthetic too.


Likable:

• Valentine: She seems nimble, and the debuffs via vials seems like an interesting mechanic. It's mostly a superficial like, I guess.

• Painwheel: I'm mostly neutral about her, but that ability to fly might be awesome enough to make me want to play with her anyway.

• Eliza: Sekhmet adds a bit of intrigue to her playstyle, and her movement/attacks felt very natural even though I'm not particularly interested in her aesthetic/theme.

• Robo Fortune: I like that there's some cool-looking close-range stuff in addition to zoning abilities. I like the buffing via additional heads too. If I ever wanted a character to zone with I'd probably go here. Besides, she's got FRICKIN' LASER BEAMS. Who doesn't like that?


Neutral:

• Parasoul: She's slow and not very flashy. Her close-range stuff is kinda fun, but I don't care for her mid-to-long range (napalm tears) that much. Her specials are kinda meh in terms of personal appeal as well.

• Peacock: While annoying opponents with her playstyle might be amusing at first, I think I'd get bored of playing getaway after awhile.

• Ms. Fortune: Decent aesthetic, but keeping up with and controlling both the head and body seems like it would be awkward, and nothing else about her playstyle seemed very standout.

• Fukua: She's got most of what Filia has, and I've heard she's newbie-friendly, but she feels kinda boring imo. Might be worth considering anyway?


Meh:

• Big Band: He feels even slower than Squigly since he's the size of a tank. His aesthetic is kinda interesting, but moving around and attacking feels all wrong. Probably not for me.

• Cerebella: I'm not entirely sure how to explain why I didn't care for her style, especially since she has some flashy stuff like Beowulf does. I guess I just feel less "in control" with her grabbing mechanics for some reason. Maybe that would change if I practiced with her a bit? Her feel reminds me of Big Band's bulky kind of slow as well; that might have something to do with it.

• Double: Aesthetic turn off and the playstyle didn't feel very interesting either. Probably not for me.

The short of it is that I figured I'd try Beowulf to start with. I've read a general beginner guide or two and played around in the training mode a bit. I'm having a hard time finding a good Beowulf character guide though, so I might have to figure out some of the basics for him on my own. I'd like to practice mostly while holding The Hurting to start with (unless I'm fighting a zoner, I guess, but more on that later). The main thing I need to figure out first is how to get in. While holding The Hurting Beowulf feels a bit defense-oriented since he doesn't have a lot of range with his normals, aside from the (I'm assuming risky) s.HP (good anti-air?) and the j.HP as an air-to-air or jump-in. Wulf Blitzer and Wulf Shoot seem kinda awesome in this respect, but until I've confirmed otherwise I'm gonna assume there's some drawback to that sort of instant space-closer. As for the rest of his with-chair normals... most of them feel kinda dangerous tbh, since Beowulf is kinda slow. I can't see how one would approach via the ground to safely poke. I'm probably misunderstanding his game somewhere there.

Once I've figured out all that, I guess I'd like to learn a couple basic chains before getting trashed my first time. Maybe one on the ground, one in the air? Idk. I haven't looked into what I can chain/link at all at this point.

Looking forward to finally getting my feet wet with a fighting game.

 

[TripleSRank]

Looks like execution of the basics is going to be my main focus for awhile. I need to get used to chaining from the ground to the the air, for one, and I need to be able to easily and consistently go where I want with the follow-ups to Wulf Blitzer. I've caught myself throwing out Hurting Hurl instead of Gigantic Arm a couple times too, so multi-button presses probably need a bit of work as well. I would attribute most of this to using a keyboard hitbox-style when I've only ever used a gamepad before now, but you've gotta start somewhere.

I went online once when I was getting a bit bored of practicing via other ways, faced a Peacock user (I think the username was *Josshu); the keepaway playstyle really is amusing to watch. Based on that match, I probably need to work on defense more, or at least need to become more defensively-minded. I think I was too focused on going aggro and kept blocking or jumping too late-- I got locked down on the opposite side of the screen almost immediately and never recovered. In hindsight, since I'm not even remotely experienced enough to be aggressive, mostly defending and approaching slowly probably would've been smarter.

Going back to what I figured out in training mode, not a lot of stuff seems to chain together. I can chain any non-jumping light -> medium -> hard attack, but beyond that I'm having difficulty. I can launch with c.HP and get a couple more aerial hits, but I still need to figure out continuing from the air back to the ground. Also, c.HP and other hard attacks have a long recovery, so it's not a good end for a blockstring. I'll have to figure out a decent blockstring eventually...

Anyway, I have a lot of stuff going through my head, but I guess I'd best not get ahead of myself: Execution, execution, execution.