No, that doesn’t work in Darkstalkers. But if you can perform a Link, you can get Buffers.
Example: Bishamon Crouch Jab -> Crouch Short link into Crouch Strong into Sonic Boom + HK.
- James
Can someone set me straight on the different games? For Kawaks I have Night Warriors, Darkstalkers, and Vampire Savior 2, so could someone give me a good timeline for these games?
VS2 is awesome, I <3 Anakaris:)
Allow me to retort.
VH-
- Universalized Guard Reversals. Notice that the characters you’re complaining about (Victor, Rikuo, Felicia, Raptor) are lower middle or last in the Gamest Ranking Chart here, so obviously GR isn’t that effective. (The only exception is Raptor, which I will address later.) The top two characters (Pyron, Bishamon) have DP GRs, and Anakaris (#3) has no GR at all. I think GR abuse is a non-issue; if anything, the weaker characters need easy GRs to compete.
How about damage? (normal pursuit + EXs at other times > ES pursuit) Here’s quite a good reason why Raptor might be ranked #4 (over all the other “easy GR” characters); he has a damaging and extremely easy to land EX (electric hurricane, as juggle of off antiair j.RH). If you wasted your meter on ES pursuits with Raptor, you lost a lot of damage potential. I’d argue that any of the characters with good supers (which is the majority of the cast, except Pyron) would rather use them on EXs than ES pursuits. Furthermore, if GRs are so good, why wouldn’t you use meter on ES GRs?
[more characters conceded, though I don’t think that really means a whole lot… lots of bad games have many characters]
- Promotion of offense. Your “promotion of offense” comes at the expense of decent defensive play. Moves are slower, neutered, and/or removed. Specials as a whole are de-emphasized, turning the game into a chain combo fest. I don’t agree that the goal of the game should be to have both players dashing forward at all times (see GGX) just for the sake of “offense.” And even if I did, some characters (notably Morrigan) had their dash nerfed in VS, anyway.
VS-
-
One round matches. The fact of the matter is, it’s a one-on-one game with one round, and you get half your life at a time. Comebacks are never “out of the question” in any game, but in a game where life is reset every round (2/3 or 3/5), losing one round doesn’t handicap you the next (excluding super meter). In VS, if you’re perfected the “first round”, your opponent just has to make sure that they don’t lose life twice as fast as you do. This is turtling incentive at its best. However, that’s not my point; my point is, in a 2/3 game, you could win Round Two and Three by 5% life each, and you still win. In VS, you have to nurse your one remaining bar through two “rounds.” This is why one round 1-on-1 games suck, even if you only get half your total life at a time.
-
Character changes. If you want to argue that VS versions are better, I’ll take VH versions over VS versions in Vampire Chronicles any day of the week (and VH versions don’t even have all of their real tricks from VH).
Hey, Dan… Picked up right from where we left off from long ago. 
I guess the main thing about where I’m coming from on this is the fact that I play the game purely casual. I’ve never really been able to let myself enter the “top tier” mindset because, well… kinda hard when you have no top tier competition. :(. But regardless, you’ll see how a lot of my opinions are based off of having fun with friends in casual play.
Re: Guard Reversals
I just know that whenever I used to play Vampire Hunter with my friends, Felicia and Rikuo’s Guard Reversals were just really annoying, and once I started getting really good at doing their Guard Reversals on reaction, it started turning their Guard Reversals into something they weren’t meant to be: free Alpha Counters, if you will, at any pretty much given point and time. Granted, they don’t connect often (because theirs happens to be slower Guard Reversals compared to the best Uppercut GRs), but I guess it just never sat well with me that GRs could be used in such a fashion. To me, it’s just silly that it can happen that way. Lots of people who hate the DS series complain about it a lot because of Guard Reversals (they think they are just like free Alpha Counters). That’s one of their main beefs. I would always aruge that they were NOTHING like that before because, well, they really aren’t. But with Felicia and Rikuo, being able to use them like actual free Alpha Counters, it starts to get hard to argue their point because that just isn’t the way they were supposed to be. Again, I wasn’t really as concerned about whether or not such tactics made a character top tier or not. I just don’t like the fact that they can do it because I don’t think it was meant to be that way.
Re: ES Pursuits
You bring up a lot of good points, but it opens up another can of worms, truth be told. I’ll address this later, so I can stick to topic here. I don’t like how ES Pursuits are so guaranteed. Sure some characters have better use for Meters (Bishamon’s Blue Hand, Demitri’s Midnight Pleasure, etc.), but for some characters like Talbain and Pyron, there is no other point. So the fact that ES Pursuits are guaranteed basically renders Talbain’s or Pyron’s EX’s and ES’s worthless. Of course, again, this might not be something that affects top tier play (since, obviously, Talbain isn’t top tier and Pyron is top tier for all sorts of other reasons), but again, in casual play with my friends, its just annoying. It’s really hard pressed for me, at many times, to not use the ES Pursuits because Meter builds up so fast in the Vampire Series.
Re: Lots of characters
Well, Vampire Savior isn’t a bad game by any stretch, so I think it’s unfair to just say "Lots of bad games have many characters). I don’t even think you could call Savior a bad game (Hunter, to me, is still better than 95% of the fighting games out there). Not only that, but every character in Vampire Savior is fun to use and plays very different than every other character in the game. You can’t discount the number of characters just because there are other games with lots of characters and those other games suck. And, again, from me and my friends playing Random Select point-of-view, you can see how to me, Savior would be much funner. More characters = more fun when you play random select.
Re: Offense
A weak argument, at best. On my part, that is. Mainly because Vampire Savior promotes Offense, sure, but so does Vampire Hunter. I don’t think Savior has lost defense, because the defense is still there. But I will say this: Savior is crazier than Hunter. Savior has more of an MvC2 “What’s going on?!? I’m dead!” feel whereas Hunter has a more “Oh, that trick is good” or “That set-up works well!!” type of feel. Hunter has a much more controlled environment like a Super Turbo. Both of them, though, are very offensive-based. But regardless, I do enjoy the Savior feel, more, and for me that’s just a personal preference.
Re: One Round Matches
With the advent of recoverable health, it’s really hard to say everyone has “less life” than a standard game. In fact, some matches last longer than a normal match because of so much health regained. You could do a ton of damage at first, and then the tide is turned, and the character who lost 70% health is now back up to a total of 65% (as a reward for gaining momentum and being really offensive). I hate the Killer Instinct-style Meter as much as the next guy (when I heard they did that to Savior, I wanted to cry). But after playing the game a lot, it’s not bad at all, and actually helps promote comebacks. If Bishamon or Pyron rushes you down to 10% of your like in Hunter, you’re screwed that round (though, yes, comebacks are possible). Of course, the argument here is that once the round is over, you start from a fresh slate (which is my argument against Ratio Matches in CvS2). I’m not really in a position where I’m saying Vampire Savior’s energy system is better than Hunter’s. I’m coming more from a position that it’s not a bad thing like some people think it is. In fact, I think it suits the game well. It adds to the frenetic and fast pace of the game.
Re: Character Changes
In Vampire Chronicles, I would probably pick some VH versions, too. Especially Bishamon, thanks to his cheap-ass Sword (Fireball). ^^ I did love that in Vampire Hunter a lot, but I can see why they changed it. And for characters like B.B.Hood, regular ol’ Vampire mode rocks. ^^ But again, its mostly an aesthetics thing. I like Felicia better with the Sand Splash (a signature move, I mean, why did they get rid of that?) but the new move is really good for a good offensive attack sequence. I’ll learn to live with the changes. I’m not gonna complain just because they changed “my favorite character” or anything. I’ll just accept them and use the new moves the way they were meant to be used. I don’t mind that. I mean, I’m sure most people don’t cry about Kyo losing his Fireball and being turned into Rekka Ken boy. It’s a welcome change. But because I thnk the DarkStalker characters are much cooler than KOF characters (sorry KOF fans), it affects people that much more when they are changed.
Finally: Character Balance
Not saying any thing is unbalanced, but a lot of things in Hunter worked probably not the way they were intended to work. Bishamon’s Sword, at close range for example, was too good. No delay, point-blank fireball. I loved it and abused it, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think Capcom thought about that when they designed Bishamon. Plus, stuff like Bishamon’s Crouching Forward into Blue Hand buffer? If they Block, they get grabbed… If they get hit by the Forward… They get grabbed!! I dunno if this was a Saturn only glitch, but I abused that so much even though I don’t think taht should have happened. Raptor’s Jumping Roundhouse (2 or less hits air-to-air) into EX Electric Hurricane move… that didn’t seem intentional either. You said there are better uses for Super Meters, but if this is how they are better used, I’m not sure if I like it.
I feel like Savior “polished” up a lot of things. Made things more solid. It just feels like they thought about it harder (making Pursuits do only white damage, making Bishamon’s Fireball his flame and not the sword, so he could have normal delays, tidying up the Juggling a bit, made Guard Reversals more used as blocked Combo stopper, not a free Alpha Counter, etc.). So overall, the game feels tighter and more well put together.
- James
Do you think it’s a coincidence that the two characters with the easiest GR motion (QCF) have the slowest GR specials? They could have easily chosen Felicia’s DP or Rikuo’s antiair kick as the GR specials.
First of all, though Talbain may not be top tier (depending on the cutoff), t-4th isn’t exactly scraping the bottom of the barrel. I found that Talbain’s EXs weren’t entirely bad; dragon flame works well in trades (it keeps going) or to chip, and shadow super can be used to bait out GRs and punish.
Actually, when I said that lots of bad games have many characters, I was just trying to point out that because VH has less characters, that doesn’t make it worse. There are bad games with more characters, and bad games with less.
As far as whether or not I consider VS to be a bad game… hmm. I personally consider VS to be on the same level as MvSF. You can look at the game and say, “Oh, they ‘fixed’ all these ‘problems’ (in MvSF’s case, rampant infinites and easy post-throw combos), and there are more characters, and there’s no glaring engine flaws in the game, so it must be good, right?”
Then you play the game, and it’s as boring as dirt. So while neither are “bad” games in the sense of being unplayably flawed, both are “bad” games in the sense of being mind-numbingly unentertaining.
VS is the reason I stopped caring about Darkstalkers.
James, no offense, but this is like complaining about a tick throw. You have plenty of options NOT to get in that position to begin with.
Ironically enough, in the JPN VS tournament footage I have, I see almost exactly two things:
a) Bishamon doing 3987324987 fireballs and ES pursuit when one lands
b) (non-Bishamon) endless forward dashing into chain combo
Now, I’m not saying that the above is necessarily bad. I’m just saying that according to you, Capcom made changes to the engine (white damage) so the above wouldn’t happen, yet in tournament play, that’s all that they’re doing! So why nerf all the other things (good specials, other VH tactics) to begin with? It just reduces the variety in play.
welll anyway VS is my favorite of the series…just all around more entertaining.
Now a question, Is there a better anti-air for Q-bee than jumping Roundhouse. Most of the other things I try trade or get beat. If I can see the jump comming I can use Standing Feirce or time a butt stab (the off the wall dash spike thing) But what is a good “short notice” anti-air that doesn’t end up in their favor or trade? anybody?..
-Retro
EDIT: yes I know push blocking is an option but sometimes it doesn’t help all that much and they are right back on you (Bishamon especially:eek: ) Not to mention if your life is pretty low and you can’t take the white…
If I’m not mistaken, standing Forward is really good anti-air. Not DP-like quality, but decent enough for whenever QBee is caught being on the ground. Frankly, I think QBee should be in the air the majority of the time.
- James
Could very well be, I don’t doubt taht it could have been planned that way. But truth be told, I’m still skeptical about it, because that was their GR’s from the first DarkStalkers, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t thinking that far ahead back then. Perhapd in Vampire Hunter they realized the motion was easier for GR’s, but then thought, “Hmm… Well, Felicia and RIkuo’s moves are slow anyhow, so it’s okay to keep it that way.” That I can see.
Well, that’s all fine and dandy. It’s about equivalent to saying “Well, Sagat’s Standing Forward from far range is useful and can be good.” Regardless, it’s his Fierce that really bugs you and kills you. And frankly, Talbin knocks you down so much (between Razor Kicks and Throws) and his ES Pursuit does so much damage (compared to others) that it’s just way more practical to use that instead.
But this is getting moot. Because it’s only one character, and it’s hardly anything I can base an argument on (one character… oh no!!). In fact, I would prefer it if characters fought slightly differently. As of now, Pyron and Talbain are really the two main characters guilty of abusable ES Pursuits (especially since Pyron’s never misses his).
Okay, I’ll respect that opinion, but I definitely think that Vampire Savior and MvSF are not equatable on any level whatsoever. XvSF’s appeal was the Combos, and MvSF took them away. Vampire Hunter’s appeal was the offense and the characters, and that’s still intact.
Of course. You have the option of not getting into ANY position in any fighting game. But does that make a Wolverine Infinite off of crouching short any more tolerable? Does that make Guile’s Magic Throw legal? “Just don’t get close to him.” Tick throws are totally different because you have the option to stop it during it’s attempt and they are VERY reversable. Besides, again, I’m not claiming anything is cheap. I’m claiming that its just not “polished”. It wasn’t meant to behave that way, I really honestly don’t think it was. So in VS, they fixed it like they fixed lots of things.
Well, the second item IS the good thing: offense. That’s what I said they were trying to promote, and apparently, they suceeded. Lots of dashing at least means people are attacking. I watched some Vampire Hunter vids and they were very entertaining to watch: again, more of a carefully planned and paced game, like Super Turbo. The game is more exact. Demitri jumps with Short, you Block, he either Throw Supers or continues Chain Combo (from Jumping Forward) before he lands. Pyron gets you in a chain combo and then plays guessing games with you after Towards + Fierce, etc. Not saying its bad. I’m just saying that it’s exact. Like Super Turbo. You know that something puts you in a certain position, and you know what the follow-ups are. I just like that Vampire Savior is more hectic. I revel in the fact that the game is different than most fighting games: that it’s fast-paced, very deep, and contains a good amount of all interesting characters. And to simply narrow everyone down to just “Dashing and Chain Combo” is being intentionally short-sighted IMO. Characters like Raptor and Jedah can’t utilize their dashes simlarly. Talbain’s dash doesn’t give him the same type of opprtunities that Sasquatch’s has. Though they may all be used, they are all different enough so that it takes a lot of learn each one of them.
- James
James (Q-bee anti-air): Yeah, thats how I try and play her (aireal mix-up) but sometimes against say bishamon or Zabel you can be knocked out of the air and put on the defensive VERY quickly. when these situations arise I try to get back on the offensive as quick as possible. Jumping in after landing an anti-air (even if I quick recover) is a strategy against Q-bee that I see a lot simply because I havn’t really found counter to it yet, so if anything its almost garanteed block/ chip lock down for a few secounds:confused: I’ll try the Forward though, Hopefully it has a chance at beating Bishamon/Falicia’s jump-ins. we’ll see:D
-Retro
PS I hear all this about Dimitri’s greatness but from what I’ve seen (local and from vids) he losses to most anybody w/ a half decent rushdown. He owns Fireball fights sure, but thats not really that big a part of VS from what I’ve played.
…thoughts anybody…?
I vaguely remember (in a previous iteration of this discussion) that I said something along of the lines of “In VS the specials suck, so the game devolves to a chain-combo fest,” which was responded to with “Well, chain combos do mostly white damage, so you can regain the life” or something to that effect. Maybe it wasn’t you that said that.
In any case, my point was that white damage is “supposed” to deter one from doing those types of moves (because the life can be healed) but people still do them anyway.
I don’t really think that it was ment to “deter” people from doing those moves at all. IMO the reason that they made them do mostly white damage is to give more bonuses to being agressive and keeping control of the match. White damage can still kill you, sure one chain combo after the white is healed is next to nothing but three on top of each other in a row will dead your ass :lol:. It was put in there to give a kind of sesaw effect. Makes everything more exciting.
"Man player 1 is rushing the shit out of Player2, he’s almost completly dead…good try man. OH WaiT!!!Player2 just turned the match in his favor!"
a few secounds later Player2 wins the round, not only that but he now has healed most of his life during his combos/rushes so he’s not screwed next round. boy wasn’t that exciting:cool:
the person who was taking damage/blocking was not recovering his white damage…a penalty for being on the defence.
VS is so fun:D 
oh well…just my opinion…
-Retro
I don’t think it was me who said that. I only say that about ES Pursuits. Chain Combos doing white damage do promote more offense (as Retro stated) because now you want to keep attacking them to make sure they don’t gain any of that white damage back (since even Blocking an attack causes White Damage to not recover). I don’t think White Damage was designed to reduce the usage of Chain Combos. Chain Combos are the number one form of damage in any Vamprie game.
In any case, I think we’ve put up really good ponits for either game, though I still stand saying that Vampire Hunter is a great game and Vampire Savior is a great game + 1. I do agree with most of what you say about Hunter (I’m mostly debating for debate’s sake at this point), but my preferences still fall under Vampire Savior. Unfortuantely, most people on this forum haven’t played Vampire HUNTER, since it’s old now and a lot of the people on these boards weren’t born yet when it was out (kidding… ^^ I just feel old, that’s all). So most people have only played Savior. So I’m really not sure how much of our debate really sinks in with people. shrug Hopefully, they found it interesting to read. ^^
- James
Entertaining , yes , and informative .
Persoanlly I preferred Vampire Hunter better for many reasons including gameplay and less important things like BG design .
The majority of my complaints about VS revolved around excluding old well designed VH characters for things like BBHood but the Saturn version and subsequent VC release on DC alleviated that problem .
Chain combos are a staple of Darkstalker play and I really see little difference in how they are used from VH to VS . White damage or not the chain combo is every characters main combo type .
Good discussion .
Ted
What puts Donovan at the bottom Tier?
Anyone in Los angeles…
Does anyone here in Los Angeles want to get together for some Darkstalkers 3 challenge
Misc. Vampire Savior Tidbits
Misc. Vampire Savior Tidbits
With the help of Gen-An from #Capcom, Savior Library (Japanese Savior website), and Gamest mooks here are some Vampire Savior tidbits.
-
In a Raptor VS BBHood match if you taunt with Zabel his little friend will come out and say something to BBHood you can press LK to annoy him.
-
Raptor’s Unblockable Jumping LK revolves around knocking your opponent down so they can’t roll, and landing a meaty jumping LK ->c.MK XX Evil Scream
A good setup is after a ES Guard Cancel. Simply jump straight up and land a meaty Jumping LK as soon as they get up. Takes time to get and varies on different characters.
-
Bishamon has a very hard Infinite that goes like this [Dashing LK,->+LP,->+MP] repeat.
-
Bishamon also has an unblockable ES Fireball which revolves around hitting an opponent at a certain distance with a
Dashing RH (doesnt matter if it’s blocked) and doing an ES Fireball immediately after.
I’ve enclosed a Kawaks replay which shows this. This will work on the Japanese rom. I did this slowly so you can clearly see that I am holding back to block but the ES Fireball still connects.
Just stick this in the “recinput” folder in your Kawaks directory, load the Japanese ROM, and press and hold Shift+F7
I will try to post up more tidbits ASAP.
Nice tidbits of info there…
I never knew Zabel had an unblockable but then I don’t use jumping short much at all .
Does anyone have any specific method of using the Tech-hit push-block ?
I’m certain that the frame window is very small for using it but after watching the Gamest VS video I was seeing lots of push-blocks off just jabs and shorts which seems very dificult to me .
I’ve read that you must use at least 4 buttons to activate it but I’ve also found that using all 6 buttons has a lower sucess rate…I wish one of the home convrsions had a programmable training mode but alas I have to keep practicing the hard way .
Ted
Misc. Vampire Savior Tidbits
This is why I lvoe Vamprie Savior: so many cool little touches like that. The joke is that Raptor is in love with Hsien-Ko… whenever he sees her, he does the fishbone-thoughr-the-heart, eyes bugging out in hearts stance at the start of the round. This happened in Vampire Hunter (and Savior).
So the joke is that when Raptor fights B.B.Hood, Le Matla has the same reaction to B.B.Hood. And, actually, Raptor will kick Le Malta no matter what (you don’t have to press a button) and Le Malta will turn around and look really sad at Raptor, as if to say, “What?!? Oh…” And, I think, if you Taunt with Raptor from that point forward, sometimes Le Malta will come out and do it again.
Other great Taunts / Tidbits (many of you may know these already, so bear with me if you’ve heard of all these things already):
Felicia’s Taunt up close. A no damage throw. Land THAT on an opponent in battle, and it’s the ultimate insult.
Hold three punches with Anakaris and Taunt. Sit back and watch the fun. If you have another Anakaris, repeat, and you’ll get a different alternate Taunt.
If Anakaris wins a round and spews out coins, I think you can control the little guy at the bottom and try to catch the coins. Does nothing, but is just kinda silly.
Felicia can jump on people’s heads and put them into their “Draw Match” animation
Sasquatch can do fireball + Taunt which plants a Banana on the ground, which either character can subsequently trip over.
I can’t think of anything else for now. I’ll put anything down if I remember them, if people are still interested.
- James
OOOOH OOOOH I remember playing this game when I was like 5 or around there. I play it now either online or regular. I use Jedah and gallon. Any darkforce combos for those two? I have seen videos. But they are very hard to do.
I had a chance to work on the tech-hit push-block with the Vampire Chronicle training mode and here’s what I’ve found…
In order to initiate the push block you must enter 4 button presses in sequential order . It doesn’t matter which button(s) you use as long as they go in order within a very small frame window while your character is in block stun .
There are different methods to input the commands and I’m sure you may have your own but here are three I used and narrowed them down to the best option for me…
-
single button tap
-pick one button and jam on it really fast…four presses is all it takes but this is the loooong method . Make sure you are using a button with good priority and it can be used to counter hit them at the end of the push block . -
the MvC2 mash method
-take your palm and stroke it across the buttons from left to right or vice-versa . This seems to be the fastest means possible but for me there was a certain level of failure if my palm pressed too many buttons at once (the buttons must be pressed then released in sequential order…if they are pressed simultaniously the tech won’t activate) . I was able to tech off single hit Fierces and RH attacks with this method but would sometimes hit an attack I didn’t want which could be dangerous when teching moves like Donovan’s ES Electric Elemental…
(this was the method I previously used but found it to be ineffective in certain situations although it can be the quickest Tech hit push-block if entered correctly) -
The lighting kick method
-I do this much like I do Chun Li’s Lighting kicks (thus the seemingly unrelated title) . Tap on two buttons in an alternating pattern very quickly . I was using the jab and strong buttons tapping them with my forefinger to one and middle finger pressing the other . It is very easy to activate very quickly and accurately and by starting with it like this…
strong-jab-strong-jab-strong
…the last strong will come out at the moment of tech-hit animation and will even counter moves like Donovan’s ES Electricity with a simple crouching strong (this was practiced using Morrigan against Donovan and the success rate was 100% compared to a success rate of only approx 85% when using Morrigan’s ES Guard Cancel .
Think of the Tech-Hit Push-Block as a faultless defence from GGXX (green-block) . It reduces (nullifies?) guard damage and pushes you and your opponet away from each other and ends your guard stun immediately . If you activate the tech-hit during muti-hitting moves and do not attack you will remain in the tech hit guard stance for the full time w/out needing to re-input the command again during the move . This mostly applies to moves like Morrigan’s Shell Super , Donovan’s ES Electricity , Pyron’s Cosmic Super and other multi-hitting moves of this type .
If anyone has any corrections or additions please make them known .
Ted