I was looking around the “Why You Should Play P4A” thread and I was convinced. The are a few problems that have me deciding if this is a game I should pick up day one or not.
I started playing Fighting Games competitively when Mortal Kombat released in 2011, to expand my horizons I tried different games from Capcom’s branch and I know the basics of most of their games. (I got hooked on 3S when OE came out.) but I never played a game like Guilty Gear, Blazblue etc. on a competitive level. I played Blazblue CT back when I still use to button mash and played with Nu, but Arc’s engine always made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I’ve played an “airdasher” fighting game and it’s hurt me a lot learning how to play UMvC3 since I found the double motion move to make me cramp up and not pull it off consistently. Thankfully UMvC3 had a way to map a button to do dashes with one button so it became trivial after that, but I have a few questions for a newbie getting into these type of games:
Can someone explain some of the basics (or link a useful thread.) with:
Some of the terms/slang that people use for these games. I have no clue what an “oki” is and other terms that mostly airdashing or “anime” games have.
How do I know what’s a true combo and what’s not? I’m pretty good at being creative with my combos but these games seem to have two different combos for some reason.
Can you map airdashing on a button? Or is it something you just have to improve overtime?
What’s a “fatal” counter? I’m not sure if this is P4A exclusive or not.
Any other advice would be golden, going to main Aigis day one since I like the versatility in her character. I tried picking up Skullgirls but as I live in Puerto Rico, GGPO is extremely unfriendly and the game does not go smooth at all Online, lack of offline community over here as the community for these type of games is fairly small here, but I plan to expand it on P4A’s release.
I’ll try to answer you’re questions here, though I’m not the most knowledgeable player so I could have a lot of this wrong.
“oki” is a player’s options on wakeup. It is the time from when you drop the combo to when you start your next one. If a character has good oki, they can force the opponent from one combo to the next without ever going to a neutral position. Akuma/Ibuki vortex, Zero on incoming characters, and Chie in P4A all have good oki. There’s no easy way out even in between combos.
In P4A, you can choose whether to recover or not the first moment you are able to. If you do not recover and your opponent hits you again, the combo counter turns yellow and shows which hit the combo could’ve ended on. It can be advantageous to not recover to avoid certain reset situations but it’s very risky.
As far as I know, there is no “button” dashes in P4A. However, instant airdashing can be performed by jumping up-forward, then neutral, then forward again (956… almost DP motion reversed upward).
“Fatal” counter is just a more extreme counter-hit. [S]Each move has a property which determines how counter hits work against it. (I don’t have the actual data but) If you get counter hit out of 5B you probably won’t trigger Fatal Counter, but if you’re hit out of certain specials you’ll get hit with fatal counter which adds additional hit stun.[/S] Actually, I may be wrong about this, and instead certain moves will cause a Fatal Counter if they hit counter-hit the opponent. Regardless, extra hitstun so you can get better combos.
Double tap dashes can be difficult to get used to if you’re coming straight from Marvel, but it doesn’t take that long to get used to with a little practice and time with the game. I always did the double button dash when I was playing MvC3, but after going back to it after playing some Blazblue I just instinctively reverted to double tap dashes. (Not to mention numerous other habits that were far more detrimental…)
Fear makes all hits Fatal Counters. (It also makes throws inescapable.)
I’m kidnapping the thread for a while to ask a simple question:
Do you think I should play some BlazBlue (I own Calamity Trigger) to get used to the style and everything, would this help me in any way for P4A or are the games too different from each other? I still got a month before the game releases here in EU.
Oki is short for “okizeme”, or wakeup games from the attacker’s perspective. It does not refer specifically to performing a mixup on the enemy’s wakeup, but okizeme may (and often does, in ASW games) include mixups. Similarly, it does not necessarially involve a setup, but it may and frequently will in P4U. In a game like Melty Blood, though, there are characters from whom you will almost never see a setup or mixup for okizeme because it’s better (for those characters) to just start back up their pressure.
Here is a basic tutorial on Chie’s okizeme (which is very setup + mixup heavy). it’s in Japanese, but you can see what’s going on. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtEN7XcwBDs
Look at the color of the combo counter:
Red: “Real combo”
Yellow: Enemy could have teched at some point. Where they could have teched is shown with a (/) sign and a number by the combo counter. There are some cases where Yellow Beat combos are “legitimate”, because teching would mean eating a reset. AKA Black Beat (because of Guilty Gear) and Blue Beat (because of Blazblue)
No, just get used to hitting :f::f: in the air. Instant Airdash (IAD; an airdash as low as possible) can be performed by tapping :uf::f: (with a neutral between the directions) since :uf: registers as the first :f: in the :f::f: in addition to being the “jump” input.
Fatal Counter is a system which was first introduced in Blazblue Continuum Shift. Basically, it’s a special property which (once connected) adds additional hitstun to every attack in the following combo. It was +2 frames of hitstun for each attack in BBCS, but I don’t know if it’s exactly the same in P4U. This makes confirming existing combos easier, and may also make previously impossible combos possible.
Moves with the Fatal Counter property inflict a Fatal Counter on counterhit rather than a regular counter, but it is possible for certain attacks to inflict Fatal Counter without a counterhit or even in the middle of a combo. In P4U, the only normal-hit Fatal Counter attacks are the perfect followups to All Out Attacks (AoA is a universal overhead command).
Additionally, “Fear” status causes all of your attacks to become Fatal Counters for its duration (and also prevents the enemy from teching throws).
Get familiar with “number pad” (international) notation;
:ub::u::uf: [_]:f:
:db::d::df:
is commonly written as
789
456
123
So 236 is a quarter circle forward, 214 is a quarter circle backwards, and 1632143 is the SNK pretzel motion which is so annoying to notate in “english” notiation. There aren’t any complicated inputs like pretzel in P4U, but you can expect the numerical notation to be pretty standard in combo listing threads so you should know what it means, haha. Also, check out Dustloop and Mayonaka Midnight for forums more dedicated to this game than SRK.
From what I understand, they are very different games. That said, playing BB might at least get you used to basic things like how jump cancel timing works in ASW games again, so maybe mess around with it a little?
[_]:f: