Casual to more hardcore

Classic Fighting Games Persona 4 Arena
1

Greetings!

when it comes to fighting games i have played them on and off since the snes/super famicom era. but due to no arcades in sweden, and no friends with interest at all in the games, i have just played on casual lvl over the years when i could.

but now, with 100/100 Mbit/s internet and good network playable fighting games, as well as persona 4 FINALLY ending up in europe, i want to go out on the deep end and actually get into fighting games for once. I got a arcade stick cheep on a sale in the local game store, and will get game in a few days, but i got a few questions i want to ask b4 game arrives to get a good start.

  1. where is a good place to get tutorials and introduction to mechanics etc? if you want to read up on it, also, any good place to see real videos on how to combo and mechanics etc and not just ppl showing skill?

  2. what is a good char(s) to start out with if you are not used to combo or chaining etc? and want to learn semi from scratch to be a better player.

i heard from a friend that this forum aint super active anymore, not for BB and P4A anyway, but more for SFIV and games like it, any tips for other places to look for tips?

other than all this, i would appreciate any help or tips i can get, i want to be better, and i want to learn how to get there effectively!

thx in advance!

2

  1. I don’t know how in-depth you want, but if you want more P4U-specific forums, there’s Dustloop and MayonakaMidnight. Hopefully they have what you are looking for.

  2. Every character is friendly as far as combos go, because every character has auto-combos. For chains, Yu probably has the most and easiest chains. I still suggest testing out every character in training mode to see who you like.

Your questions are pretty vague, so I can’t give a proper answer, which is understandable since you don’t really have the game yet. Once the game releases, I suggest taking a test spin first. Hopefully it will give you a better idea of what the game is about, and then you can ask more specific questions.

3

Made my first post late in the morning b4 i went to bed last night, so might have come of kind of vague due to not being properly thought out, and how to make it go across to the reader.

I am not a super good player as of now, but i want to improve, and want to use a char that is not extremely hard to get into. when i tested and played around with BB, i found hazama interesting and tried him out for a bit, but feel, from videos and gameplay, that he was a tad bit more technical and skill dependant than what i feel i was comfortable starting out with.

Atm from videos i look at kanji and teddy as fun chars to play and don’t seem overly complicated in that regard, and that ice chick and nato.

any chars other than yu that are easy to start out with? any of the once above? are there any chars you should avoid early and come back to when more into how game works?

for tutorials etc, mostly when i look online ppl post combo videos or gameplay videos, but i have a hard time finding videos or guides on how stuff work, and why. how to combo or effective combos and strategy. and asked if anyone knew a good place to find material that is good to learn from.

thx for the forum things, i will check them out!

4

Right off the bat, the only English language community that’s at all active for P4 is dustloop, so if you have questions or want information, go there. The wiki articles on the system mechanics, characters, and frame data are pretty well done, but the combo sections haven’t been updated in a while, so definitely check the stickies for your character to get up to date on combos and tech.

The only characters I would consider friendly to new players with a fundamental knowledge of fighting game mechanics (especially street fighter mechanics) are Narukami, Akihiko, and Chie. As a street fighter player who entered the ArcSys world with P4 back in August, the hardest thing to adjust to is getting around air blocking in a game with instant air dashes. Narukami and Akihiko both have strong 2B air unblockables and air unblockable DPs, which make the transition a lot more manageable; Chie is, at a basic level, a very simple rushdown character with strong oki. I’m a Naoto player, and I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you really love the character which is why I play her. She’s very knowledge based and requires a pretty sound understanding of the game to get anywhere. Teddy is a very strong character, but his item mechanic means that at advanced levels of play you need to know item specific set-ups for each item in the line-up. Mitsuru is arguably the best character in the game and operates mainly by poking and oki, but she has some charge combos that might give a newer player problems if you haven’t played charge characters before.

If you want to talk about the game or characters, send me a PM and we can talk on skype or something.

5

Thx a bunch for all the answers so far! make me feel more and more at home in the fighting game community overall! coming from FPS as a kid, and later the Moba/ARTS communities of late, its refreshing with nice ppl that help each other out and have fun together and not just rage and ppl being mean if you don’t know everything. Feels so refreshing and welcoming!

chie is one of my fav chars from the anime and game persona, so probably will check her out in that case as i start out and work my way from there as i get more comfortable, thx for the tip.

also, might as well ask, i have never played seriously with a stick, but i got one now. is there a good way to hold the stick itself? like, should i hold it like i see on some videos the japs and asians do it a lot from underneath? see some hold it from above or side also, any tips on this? or is it just personal pref?

6

How much experience do you have with fighting games? P4U itself breaks down a lot of the technical parts of fighting games, like execution floors. All characters can be played as long as you have some degree of understanding for fundamentals, all of them applying it differently in some manner. Like I said, I can’t comment further on this unless I know who I’m talking to in terms of fighting game level.

For the most part, I can agree with UncleGary’s description of “basic” characters except for Mitsuru operating by oki, she’s a full on poke/damage character, her only oki is a result of a dropped combo into set-up.

If you have little to no fighting game experience, I suggest staying away from Aigis, Elizabeth, Shadow Labrys, Yukiko, and Naoto unless you find yourself really enjoying them. They all either have some elevated execution floor compared to the rest of the cast and their playstyle is more roundabout for them to win compared to the rest of the cast.

There is no very good way to hold a stick from what I have heard, just hold it the way you find most comfortable.

7

I have in general been good at basic stuff, in the arcade cabinet we got at the uni, if ppl play samurai shodown or king of fighters i usually win by using good movement around the screen as well as basic combos.

but its basic stuff, i have never actually learned to chain combos together, or how to chain supers, combos and attacks, as well as no clue on the terminology of forty and oki and other things i see here and there (thought atm im looking that up).

TLDR; good enough for basic stuff and specials, but don’t ask me to chain more than 2 things together or it falls apart cuz there is what i need to work on. can think of me as a beginner as its where i should work from tbh to get the good practises and stuff from to avoid bad habits.

8

Then you should do fine with almost any character aside from Aigis and Elizabeth. The execution for combos in P4A outside of those two are little in comparison.

Because of that though, I still say to try every character once you obtain the game, at least doing 15 of their challenges if you can and seeing if there are characters that stand out to you. While some characters may have better movement and basic combos than others, it’s not a large enough determining factor for me to recommend you a character straight away.

I suggest taking some time to either watch videos of characters in action or reading about them on Dustloop Wiki while you wait for the game.

As far as terminology goes, you will most likely figure them out as you learn fighting games either way, worrying about them now only serves to complicate things.

9

almost finished a degree in computer science at uni now, being anal on terminology and hell bent on learning stuff like that comes natural now. it is a work related injury xP

10

To be honest…I wouldn’t experiment with the characters to find out what they can do and which fit your playstyle, because it is easily possible to misunderstand or just overlook certain things a character can do.

Watch the best Japanese players play, to see the characters being used at maximum efficiency, to get a good understanding of how they work and if they fit your playstyle.

11

You don’t watch people play their character to figure out your character, especially considering if you are entirely new to the depths of fighting game entirely.
Putting aside improper playstyle or inefficient uses of characters, having an initial choice of character at least sets a base on which all other characters a player plays will be based on, whether this character is too slow, or perhaps too little damage, or perhaps too technical, or perhaps not fun enough, then comparing other characters to the first, and every other character after to the characters before.
If you have more experience in fighting games enough to understand a character based on videos alone, then yes, that is possible, but this is not the case. This is someone who plays fighting games, but not yet to the depths of understanding. Having an introduction to the various elements of the game by dabbling with different character will be much easier than sitting down and deliberating for hours on what character to play by just watching videos.

Furthmore, simply watching the best play a character at their best does not provide the correct base for new players, who obviously will not be able to play off day 1 at their best, nor off day 2, or week 1 or month 1 for that matter. Watching the best sets an illusion that only serves to impair progress because you will start spending time trying to do all these cool things that the best does and not on fundamental things like you should be.
You will only be frustrated at how you cannot perform at the character’s maximum efficiency. Bring the game down to your level. It doesn’t matter if you use a character inefficiently or not, it matters that it works for you.

12

My point is that if you are picking Kanji because you think his air dive throw move is so cool, then you’re going to get a rude awakening when you find out how ineffective it is at medium to high level. Instead of finding this out the hard way, you would watch a top Kanji player play and see what the general flow of the match is and what tools he is using. It gives you a good idea of the metagame of each character and what you should likely be striving to play like with that character, even if you might not realistically achieve it within the first few days, months, maybe year.

13

Reason i was interested in Kanji and Teddy is more that i like the persona 4 game, and the persona 4 anime. and thus looked towards them for initial chars to check out when i start in a months time and asked around a bit about them.

When it comes to guides, videos and streams of games that is competitive (fighting games, mobas, mmo battlegrounds etc), is that its more about guidelines to see what good players does. i tend to copy it starting out, to best of my ability, and try to understand HOW and WHY it works.

as i get better at games, i tend to use guides etc more as inspiration to new ideas than actually learning or copy anymore. but at that point i SHOULD be good enough to actually figure stuff out myself without help so it’s kind of the point.

atm i do watch videos of persona (and other fighters) to get a bigger feel of how ppl play. that said, i know that my skill bar the most basic is lacking at best, but will get better as i play. so even if i see some awesome hasama play (something that made me want to learn the char) i know that at my current lvl he is a bit too hard for me to use well, so play other chars a bit.

a big issue today is that ppl are too used to instant gratification, and issue with that is that ppl got low or not time and patience to get into fighting games anymore. they get angry at slow progression and drop the games. or get bad habits like ranged spam or cheesy moves that only work on low lvl and never grow as players, as its faster results.

i think this is what nihil679 wanted to point at as a issue for ppl looking at the best players and end up jaded at their own skill lvl, and its somthing you need to be careful about imo. but growing up in the nes era of analy hard games and unforgiving gameplay, learning by repetition is just nostalgia :stuck_out_tongue:

14

So what if you get a rude awakening that you are playing your character inefficiently? It only brings you to start wanting to learn of newer ways to play your character to get past people’s ability to disable your technique.

Watch videos and attempt to learn from them AFTER experimenting with characters yourself? Yes, sure, you can learn as Venachar said, copy-pasting their techniques and attempting to break it down yourself. You will have self-experience and have some small grasp on what each character does as you watch now.
Watching videos to find out what character you want to play? Not if you’re only being introduced to the depths of fighting games.
The actions are the same, but the steps aren’t. There’s a difference.

15

If you play to test a char out, and see what you like as a beginner, i see no issue in doing that. you learn as you go along, and if stuff you learn yourself don’t work, well, worst thing that happens is that you lose, so you get a feedback, good or bad.

an issue with watching someone play a char b4 you do it yourself is that, well, some chars looks easy enough or flashy enough and ppl want to play them, but are seriously not beginner friendly. could also end up in a situation where the way they used the char is not how you should, but work due to some reason at the time of the game.

probably just good to try out chars that you think look fun, and see what they can do on a base lvl, then watch videos to see how good ppl do stuff and try and learn parts of it as times go by.

16

Get acquainted with the game mechanics.
http://www.dustloop.com/forums/showthread.php?14134-P4A-Gameplay-Primer
The system map helps a lot with this. It’ll take time to remember everything, but you’ll get it.

Spoiler

http://kurushii.tv/Dustloop/P4U/Primer/System_Map.png

Persona uses a chain combo system where all attacks in a combo can be chained together so they’re isn’t specific timing to them (linking), try picking Yu and pressing A,A,A,A,A or A,B,C and you will see what I mean. After a sequence of attacks, you can cancel just as easily into a special or super.

Whenever I play a new game, I try to pick a character that most resembles a shoto (Ryu/Ken in Street Fighter). In this game, that character is Yu. You can play Yu in order to learn how the combo system and system mechanics work, then make the switch to another character that you feel more matches your play style. Don’t worry about learning hard or optimized combos, just keep it simple for now and get acquainted with the game.
A beginner combo you can use with Yu is:
5A, 5A, 5B, 2B, 2AB, 2D (starts his mix-up). From here you are free to apply pressure onto the opponent because they are forced to block the Yu’s 2D (his persona).

After you played for about a day, decide what character you want to play. Use this to help you out (it helped me choose mine), be sure to watch the videos of each character to see what they look like at high level play.

Use this link to find all the info you need about a character (click their names at the bottom). It lists all their attacks, combos, and gameplay/goal description. It’s fine if you don’t make up your mind quickly, I tried out almost every character before I settled on Kanji.
http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php?title=Persona_4:_Arena

I main Kanji, which is also the character you’re interested in. At face value, he is the easiest character to pick up due to having the easiest and most damaging combos. However, playing a grappler is different than playing a faster poke oriented character. Kanji’s normals are all slow and often get beat/stuffed. This means you have to space yourself properly, bait and punish. Once Kanji lands his command grab, his offense starts and you can apply his mix-up game. However, I feel playing Kanji will help build strong fundamentals, so I recommend you giving him a try.

17

thx brother, this was a LOT of help, not looked back here due to it being like a month till it’s released, but been looking at your links. thx a bunch