So I’m about as scrubby as a scrub can be and picked up USF4. I haven’t had a fighting game myself ever and the few times I’d played it before I was that friend that will play with you but will get his ass handed to him. I always thought fighting games had a certain charm though, I just never really got around to actually getting into them. I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment since I quit college a while back, so I figured now’s the time. But that’s enough backstory.
I want to get good. Best I can be. I decided to pick up Sagat as he seems fairly easy to pick up and his footsies seem natural in a sense. Then I got to practising combos. I can’t for the life of me get the uppercut - FADC - ultra combo off and I’m noticing that the mistakes I make are starting to become a pattern. I basically end up with uppercut - FADC - EX uppercut (I figured tiger cannon is the way to go, feel free to correct me on this) every time and I’m afraid it’ll get muscle memory. How can I avoid this? Do I practice the combo backwards (as in try dash ultra, then fadc ultra, then actual combo until it’s second nature), do I just keep going until I get it right, do I forget about the combo at all until I’m more used to it, is there some magic formula or potion I don’t know about? I’m kind of lost here and some opinions would be a big help.
PS: Since I’m poor as hell I’m stuck without an arcade stick and this won’t change for a while. I figured I won’t buy one until I’m really sure it’s worth the money anyways. Don’t want to be one of those bikers that buys all the pro gear, only to stall his bike in the shed after a month.
Slow down. The most likely reason you’re getting EX shoryu is because you’re mashing out the ultra after the FADC. Don’t worry, this happens as you learn a new combo, too many things happening at the same time makes windows seem much shorter than they are.
My advice: Take it in the parts. Do the first part, TU FADC until you feel comfortable with it and get it 100%. Do an ultra until you feel comfortable with it and get it 100%. Then start to mix them together. I remember reading somewhere that practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect - so focus on getting the pieces done well and the whole will come naturally.
another way to train stuff is to do it the same way a musician learns a new piece of music. Slow things way down and fist learn the order of all the inputs. this can be done by practicing then on your controller with the game off. once you get the inputs down, then start working on the correct timings of the inputs.
The input is a double quarter circle forward, this game allows for leniency so you don’t have to be perfect with your inputs.
However a few key inputs are required to te get the ultra instead of an ex dp. The problem you are experiencing is most likely not ending the last qcf actually in forward.
For example the game allows this input: d,df,d,df,f. The most important part is the last input, this way it gives priority over a dp motion when pressing the 3P.
Like others have mentioned, try to slow things down, don’t worry about it not actually comboing, you are going for clean inputs here. With Sagat you are in luck as you can do f.hk after the dp fadc, making the followup ultra a lot more easy to do.
Honestly in priority on forward inputs basically is super->dp->ultra. If you need the ultra just let the stick go back to nuetral before pressing the 3 punch buttons. It’s stupid but once you get it, working around it isn’t to hard. so QCF->QCF->Nuetral->3 Buttons.