Honestly, Cody is a lot of solid blocking, you also have to use unorthodox ways to get out of pressure and just hard reads. Having excellent knowledge of other characters their type of attack patterns and general options helps a lot too in pinpointing weak parts of their offense. Cody is like Ryu just an extremely honest character…only Ryu needs to be respected a lot more when applying pressure on him whereas against Cody you don’t have to worry that much.
Frametrapping is more beneficial in longer sets tbh, in a ft1 ranked match you often don’t have the luxury to feel out your opponent and sometimes have to go for it. In endless there is more room for adjustment but again most players don’t have a risk/reward mentality online. If they feel they are getting pressured and think “this pressure is irritating, i want this guy of off me”, then they’ll just do a reversal, regardless if it will get them killed. This is pretty common for the lower level players.
Cody takes work is all i can say about him but he is also fundamentally sound. He has a lot of tools but they need to be used heavily based on the situation, wheras some other characters can basically go to the same option for different scenarios. Cody is solid and viable but not consistent in his results at high level play, he just gets outclassed in a lot of situations and often requires some strong reads and risks. Not a winning recipe for tournaments atleats.
For intermediate play he’s just fine however sometimes it can feel you need to be twice the player the opponent is just to make it even, this goes for a lot of other characters too though. If you like Cody and his gameplan but find he struggle too real, choose Cammy or Ken.
Cody has options to fight almost any situation, you just gotta adapt and read 10 moves ahead of your opponent. There is not many situations if you have the right read you don’t really have a tool for.
IIRC even BJ said you need to play much better than your opponent to win with Cody, or something along those lines.
If you’re having trouble with a specific MU just try and break down what you can do and what the opponent wants to do. Maybe even play the other character for a bit. Once you do that you can figure out which tool you need to be using. Reads, whiff punishes, and occasional big gambles are how Cody really wins most matchups. Frame traps just build on that.
Since I switched from Ryu to Cody I got more patient after being knocked down or pressured. With Cody you have to choose wisley otherwise you get punished hard.
That way I learned delayed reversal, delayed crouch tech (even though I still suck at this), backdash (seems trivial), focus absorb backdash (especially useful against Ibukis kunai mixups) and latley backjump lp.
As Eternal already mentioned I switched to characters I have trouble against, trained some combos and played casualy with them. This way I learned alot about the characters and their possible gameplans. It’s nice to hear that this isn’t a bad idea after all :-).
IMO Cody isn’t actually a bad character to pull out for a surprise pick. He can adjust to your style and he has some gimmicks that wouldn’t let you run through a long set but work for a little while. Especially if you’re a player of Momochi’s caliber. Cody’s pressure spacing/timing is very different from Ken’s. Plus, Cody - Ryu IMO is a pretty even MU.
crack kick is a neat move, it varies its usefulness in what situation based on the mindset of the opponent. I think Momochi made the right choice, Daigo was biting on a lot of frame traps and playing fairly defensively. Why not pick a character he knows Daigo probably lacks as much experience fighting as he does Akuma/Yun/Ken and also one who can play very aggressive in the spot just outside of where Ryu usually likes to stand. (crLK, crMK, farMK, crack kick, F+MP all work from right around Ryu’s crMK range). Plus the ability to zonk through fireballs since Momochi had shown he had the reactions to punish them with U2 and Daigo was doing as many raw fireballs as crMK fireballs.
Nice thing about Cody is that he can be played so many ways. I think Cody, Ryu, Akuma, and Sagat are probably the characters that offer the most ways to expressive your identity as a player. Next probably Zangief, Ken, Guile, Rose and Sim.
I’m glad Momochi still has his Cody in shape, I think he is a solid surprise pick in many match ups.
Damn it, haha. I was doubtful - thanks for the confirmation though. I really wanted to see Sasaki there this year. Nobody has really repped Cody at EVO since Momochi, and he never really made it deep there when he did.
BJ and Flash Metroid were both in top 64 last year, but I can’t see any Cody getting that far this year. Wouldn’t be surprised if BJ played Guy instead…
Considering the nature of EVO now and how it’s turned into an all-out gauntlet, I can’t see a Cody making it all the way unless they get a lot of good match-ups along the way. I think we’ll see a lot of Cody represented but I doubt we’ll see one get particularly far unless Momochi pulls his Cody out at some point as a pocket. Other than that, I think it’s hard to see any other Cody’s making it past top 64.
