I am curious as to what the “few things” you are talking about are beyond the obvious mishandling of X-Factor, @Pertho.
Come on. Give us the goods.
I need help t understand how bad X=factor is. I just don’t get why its bad. Its a mechanics hat rewards alt of benefits that can be use both offensively and defensively. Status buffed is nothing new.
I hear people say its poorly design comeback mechanic but I disagree as it not comeback mechanic at its core, it just has the potential to be used as one.
edit:
Its tool that lets play gamble on hal mary plays which i think is acceptable in a High risk high reward game. Examu’s Nitro + Blaster Blast Mechanic is roughly similar with minor limitation and player have no issue with it because it simply compliment the game over all design.
A comeback mechanic is anything which makes you want to be closer to a fail state. So X-Factor is by definition a comeback mechanic and often serves as one. I’ve got no opinion on its value though.
I did like Injustice’s clash mechanic as it wasn’t a comeback mechanic but served well as a once per game combo breaker. Shame it took forever to resolve though
From my interpretation skills, I’m getting the impression your implying its mechanic that rewards you for being n unfavorable or perceived disadvantage position. Is it possible for you to reword it? I’m sure I;m reading it wrong and need help clarifying because that definition puts it in way to broad context. If was to go by that definition then I could say practically anything is comeback mechanics, from hitstop, pushback, to throw invincibility frames, and round intervals.
Basically if a mechanic is such that you’d rather be closer to losing the game than not, all else held equal, it’s a comeback mechanic. I don’t think any of those fulfill that criteria.
Whats everyone’s opinion on mind games? is it just random button mashing or are you actually outsmarting your opponent?
For clarification, mind game characters are characters that have a few moves that have identical startups but require the opponent to correctly adjust his guard to properly block the move that actually comes out. An example of mind game characters are El Fuerte from SF, Ms fortune from scull girls (it’s just one move really), makoto from blazblue, etc.
(patiently waits on Pertho to answer about MvC3 since he is still genuinely curious)
By your own definition, is not a “mind-game character” automatically more than a character that is “just mashing buttons” though? I mean, “mind-game characters”, going by your general definition, tend to have mediocre to outright sub-par normals. Similarly, I am unsure if I would count having just different endings on one’s “rekka” alone as making one a mind-game character given how common that is nowadays.
Getting at the actual question, making a character whose primary design is “mind-games” in the form of “ambiguous, intentionally similarly looking moves” is completely fine with me in most instances. As example of this that you did not raise, I would say that King of Fighter’s Chizuru Kagura would easily count as one. Given that a character in I have an idea is like her for in that game that I keep mentioning despite the fact I will likely never get around to it, i.e. he can either send out light-based illusions of himself as a projectiles or pseudo-teleport to attack, I obviously do not have a problem with it.
I think the sole exception I may have with that type of design is the way El Fuerte was designed. I do not hate the character, but I can see why quite a few people do even ignoring “scrubs”. Ignoring the fact that he has terrible normals (like pretty much all the new characters for SFIV sans Rufus and Seth), which itself was hitherto typically anathema to Street Fighter as a series, all of his mind-games are tied to knocking you down. In theory, this should not make him any more annoying than other mind-game characters, but in practice, it both makes fighting him extremely repetitive and frustrating. It also makes/made his match-ups rather harshly split: if he starts winning against characters without a decent wake-up reversal options, then they are likely doomed to spend most of the match-up on their backs without necessarily getting greatly outplayed; meanwhile, even if he starts winning against characters with decent or better wake-up reversal options, then he almost always has to play far more methodically and risk getting blown-up anyway after he knocks them down given how one-note his game-plan and damage tended to be until the moderate buff he got in Ultra (at least after the nerf his Ultra II got after Super).
That type of mind-game I would personally rather avoid if possible. I will have to think of who else might count as a mind-game character though.
On that note, I will ask a similar question: How do people feel about interface screwing abilities in fighting games? An example of this is an attack, say M.O.D.O.K.'s Jamming Bomb, that reverses your directional inputs for six seconds or so. Should attacks like that exist outside of maybe boss characters? Or should they even exist at all?
Leaving aside the fact that I don’t agree with that definition of “mind game”, (considering pretty much every fighting game character has the ability to these kinds of things, and the definition extends to a LOT of other situations) I’d like you to go a bit in-depth as for why these characters are “mind game characters”. Is it a high degree of reliance on these similar-looking moves that make the difference here?
Not a fan of them. These scenarios are not that common in fighters, thankfully, though obviously they’re ubiquitous in Xrd (YRC time slow can "eat inputs from your opponent), which is one of the few things I think the game could have handled better.
Anakaris’ is actually below bad. Poor damage and you can be thrown out of it ON HIT. And it costs meter to do, there is no meterless version. I guess it’s counterbalanced by his wake up move, but it’s still complete garbage,
I may have oversimplified what mind games really is in an attempt to make the topic more accessible to everyone. I myself do not play mind game characters and I haven’t touched a tekken game in about ten years, so my views on what mind games are could be off.
Here’s an article some dude called Machaboo wrote about mind games, for those who don’t know.
About mindgames in fighting games by Machaboo:
Previously I wrote about the theory of improving in fighting games. I was happy with the positive comments about the post. I’m glad if it helped someone.
There’s one more question that is being often asked, and I thought about writing my thoughts about it. Today’s subject is about the mind games in fighting games.
“I don’t understand mind games”
“What are mind games in the first place?”
"I’m trying to play mind games, but I’m not sure if I’m doing it correctly"
etc, is often being said.
About the definition of mind games, I think that both players must first understand the situation and the options. For example, an easy to understand situation is one with invincible moves such as Shouryuuken involved.
Either the opponent blocks the Shouryuuken, or it’ll win as long as the opponent doesn’t use a move with even longer invincibility. In other words, the amount of things it loses to are fairly limited. The situation is simple, and understandable for both players, and that’s why mind games happen easily in the described situation.
On the other hand there’s neutral game, setplay, okizeme etc where mind games don’t happen as easily.
For example okizeme. For instance, in a Sol mirror, after a knockdown in the corner, with the timing of a safejump Sol did (high) airdash j.P j.HS. Why did the opponent do this? What options does it beat?
Of course people who haven’t played Guilty Gear won’t know the answer, but it’s difficult even for people who play it.
The answer is Volcanic Viper, fuzzy 5k or Blitz Shield.
To explain the situation, first the concept of safejump must be understood. When doing a meaty air move in an okizeme situation, even if the opponent uses an invincible move, the air move recovers during the invincible move’s startup, before it goes active, and thus it can be blocked.
Next, about fuzzy. If the defending Sol presses 5k (3f startup antiair) with the right timing while holding block, it won’t come out if the attacker does a safejump attack and thus blocking occurs, and it beats low airdash, emptyjump low, empty jump throws.
Blitz Shield is a new system mechanic in guilty gear, by paying 25% meter you counter an opponent’s attack.
The example beats 3 examples at once. When both players understand the situation and the options, we finally get to the mind games part. If for example, the defending player only knew that 2 of these commonly used defensive options lose, even with the correct read they still might pick the 3rd option that loses.
High level players realize these kind of things as they lose or understand them after researching the situation in training mode, but for low and mid level players it’s too complex to understand.
The explanation was a bit long, but to summarize, to have mind games, “accurate knowledge” is essential. Without the knowledge, there won’t be mind games, and even with knowledge, without understanding there won’t be mind games. Quite the opposite actually, if you misunderstand things and think wrong knowledge is correct, you’ll steadily advance in the wrong direction.
If either player lacks the understanding of which options beat which, and which options lose to which options, mind games won’t happen. That is the difficult part about fighting games.
The reason why I put the mind games last in the previous post about the theory of improving in fighting is the difficulty. Low and mid level players should worry more about getting accustomed to the game, and being able to control their characters as they wish first!
Well the good part about fighting games is that even without complete understanding of this kind of things, the game is fun even with just playing around, so there won’t be any problems even without perfect understanding. Although, understanding the mind games it becomes a lot more fun. Furthermore, I find investigating about mind games by myself a lot of fun.
For mid level players and higher, if you’re stuck in leveling up, gathering knowledge and learning mind games is my advice.
----END----
I suppose what I was trying to get at wasn’t that mind games as a whole was limited to characters tricking the opponent into doing the wrong block for move X. I was more interested in how everyone felt about mind game moves or characters centered around being random/unpredictable. In Ms fortune’s case, her move is the only way to land an overhead without a jump attack. So it makes sense to give her the ability to train her opponent to crouch guard from the attack string.
But if you want to discuss the broad topic of mind games, go right ahead.
Depends.
There aren’t many interface screwing abilities that work well in the fighting game world. Reptile’s invisibility in early MK games only really gave an advantage to computer players that could still see him. Chipp and arakune had an interesting take on this, to different effectiveness. Chipp is still largely visible, and the player has to sync his moves with his fade out animation to get a move out that a player can’t see. Arakune is a bit more effective. Instead of turning invisible or fading in and out like chipp, He has a “predator cloak” that is only visible to the human eye if you really focus. Because Arakune is a shapeless blob, it can be harder to tell what type of bug he’s summoning or where he’s going to teleport to. Meanwhile, the person controlling Arakune has a pretty good idea what his character is doing as long as he/she doesn’t button mash. While Arakune is the best version of invisibility that I have seen, I’m not sure how necessary it is. Arakune is pretty scary and can make his opponents paranoid block stuff when entirely visible.
I didn’t care for any of those touches in MVC3. From viewtiful joe’s slow super to the jam bomb. Jam bomb Just seems like a gimmick to give dyslexic players a harder time.
Maybe it can be done better, but I haven’t seen a single instance of it where I thought “I’d like to see that again.”
(Ugh. Accursed omissions. Those are fixed now.)
That is typically the response people tend to have about interface attacks. I just figured I would ask given the current topic, especially since for the most part I do not mind them.
Going back to mind-games, I am unsure if you can really talk about them mechanically since they pretty much always exist within a case-by-case confluence of mechanics, as seen in Machaboo–the Xrd Sin player?–example above. I think the closest you can get to talk about them is maybe asking how people feel about safejumps, but even that is not really getting that close to the matter at hand.
Regardless, I think it might be better to call the characters in question “mix-up-oriented characters” rather than “mind-game characters” given how overly broad “mind-game” is. I will grant that “mix-up-oriented” is not much more specific, but it gets at more what the character is trying to achieve. Shrug.
I will try to think of more characters who fit the archetype you are trying to bring up, but otherwise I what I said in the last, omission-laden post still applies.
Interesting read, especially the part about there not being a mind game unless both parties have an understanding of the options involved in a situation. What would people refer to these same situations (like the Sol safejump described above) when one party has incomplete understanding of the situation, then? A trap?
As for the “situations where mindgames can arise”, pretty much every fighting game character can do these things. Fireball characters altering the speeds of their projectiles? Footsie characters using a negative-on-block move from a safe range to bait a response? Walking and blocking a move several times, then taking a tiny step back so that you can whiff punish the move the next time you do it? All of these (and a million other similar situations) use similar strategic concepts. Which is part of why I reacted to the definition used on “mindgames” here.
But for characters whose main gameplan is using moves that look similar but must be responded to differently? If the character has to rely on stuff like that, it’s probably not a character I would enjoy playing. Fuerte is the only clear example I can think of where I’ve tried a character like that, however. It’s literally his only gameplan, because he doesn’t have tools that allow him to play in any other way.
Oh, and about Fuerte:
This stuck out to me, as I don’t agree with that assessment at all. Taking them one at a time:
Spoiler
Fuerte: Shitty normals. Moving on.
Abel: Step kick is one of the three best normals in the entire game, and the rest of his buttons are also decently useful.
C.Viper: Even before her normals got buffed in Ultra, they were decent. Not great, mind, but a lot better than rumors would have it. Post-ultra they were legit good.
Rufus: Passable. Useful in quite a few situations, but I’d honestly say they were worse than Viper’s normals.
Seth: His normals were quite good, as you said.
Juri: Very good overall buttons, at least in Ultra.
Hakan: I’ll readily admit that I don’t know much about him, but his buttons were quite good from my (limited) experience.
Decapre: Slightly worse versions of Cammy’s normals, i.e. really good buttons overall.
I’m still not certain where the whole “newcomers had bad buttons”-thing came from. If anything, almost every character in SF4 had worse buttons than preceding games (sounds familiar to another new SF?).
I fucking love them! They’re fun and add a whole new element to the fight. Now I don’t know how broken they can be, but I’d like to see more fighters utilize that. My favorite use of this mechanic is Phobos/Huitzel’s distortion pulse. That shit blew my mind when I first saw it lol. It left the opponent temporarily in a state where they were suspended in mid air. They could still attack and what not, but due to how they were positioned. It completely changed the way you had to guard attacks, and just play in general. Your hurt box was completely altered in this state. It was just ridiculous lol.
my opinion about mind games: I prefer mind games where both players have proportional risk and reward (examples: vanishing guard in NPB, clash system and guard cancels in AH, hougeki attacks – attacks which crumple the opponent on counterhit and allow high damage combos – in Koihime Enbu) and favors the player who’s consistently better in neutral (for example, by not having lenghty or overly rewarding blockstrings/mix-ups, returning both players to neutral more often). I personally don’t like the idea that one player is allowed to receive any rewards without risking anything (for example, the “if you’re knocked down or are put into defense, this means that you’ve lost at neutral and thus deserve to be mix-ed up” mentality; more often than not, the same people will refuse to play games where they, in one way or the other, can’t rely on mix-ups as much as before – either because the mix-ups aren’t as strong, or because there are ways to counter mix-up autopiloting with much better damage than a reversal or an alpha-counter-like mechanic), and prefer matches where decision making is important (the decision making itself is fun, regardless of the result of the match, and analyzing the decisions that were made, in order to improve, is also fun), and the result doesn’t feel random (for example, the defender having to defend correctly – guessing right – against multiple attack options; to the attacker, it can feel as if he/she chose “the one correct attack option” and thus outplayed/outsmarted the opponent, when he/she actually had a statistical advantage; I’ve likened this situation to a penalty-kick)
my opinion about interface changes: some of them sound fair, some of them don’t (for example, throwing stuff on the screen to intentionally hide your character allowing you to mix opponents up without them seeing what attacks you’re doing, or where you are); I think that if the guessing isn’t overly rewarding, it can be acceptable (for example, not blocking/jumping/backdashing an attack that’s used to cover the opponent’s attacks, or an attack that can be used in a left/right mix-up might make your character be juggled and get you out of pressure, and/or even if the mix-up lands normally, the damage isn’t great due to the attack being guess-based more than a reactable attack); so far I can’t think of examples of sealed specials/supers that sound unfair (don’t know about Persona’s though), but can’t comment much about inverted inputs because I haven’t played much against characters that can inflict them.
(Having thought about it more, yeah, I cannot really think of any more heavy mix-up characters for the reasons that Naeras just said. Sorry DeeQue.)
Is there a character who can seal your moves in the later Persona: Arena games? At present, off the top of my head, the only characters I can think of who can temporarily seal people’s special and super moves are King of Fighters’s Chizuru Kagura and then Ash Crimson after he stole her power for a bit and both of the super moves they used to do it saw little to no use.
As for my own prejudices, it is combination of a) not having played and thus not having really cared about SF IV: Ultra overall, which is why I straight up forgot about Decapre who obviously doesn’t count for reasons you pointed out, and b) perhaps using the wrong word in general. “Terrible” would likely be replaced by the phrase “awkward for footsies”, which again only really apply to Seth, Decapre, Rufus (as awkward as some of his normals are, c. FP is fucking excellent and has far more range than Abel’s similarly go-to Step Kick; also dive kick stupidity), and Oiled-up Hakan. As someone who played Juri for a while before Ultra, she’s on the fence in that she above average ground pokes, but her conversions without her having to store fireballs, a score jump-in with her mostly short-range aerial normals, or being in Feng Shui Engine mode are rather lacking and awkward.
As for the general sentiment, while I am pretty sure that it rose in part just because new characters almost always go through the “why do you exist?” “hazing” type of scrutiny, it’s also because pretty much all of the first four new characters of SFIV, i.e. the ones we were stuck with the longest outside of Seth, kind of suck at the footsie game with Rufus being maybe the only exception for reasons stated just above.
Sure, Abel’s Step Kick is really good, but he has to get in range for it for first, which can be rather difficult given how awkward his other normals tend to be. They are rather decent up-close, but getting there without having to roll or a lucky sweep first can be challenging. Still, I can see an argument for him having overall good normals I guess. Similarly, the most anathema thing he had to footsies, after Tornado Hold option select stupidity, was just (EX) Marseilles Roll, which was not even entirely new to Street Fighter at the time.
C. Viper, on the hand, basically had crappy footsies pre-Ultra or at least had utterly unforgiving footsies if your special-cancels were not on point–I am unsure what changes she got in Ultra. Additionally, the fact that she plays more like a Marvel character than a Street Fighter character is a charge that has been leveled against her from the very beginning and was only given more fuel for the fire when that turned out to be literally the case come the revelation of MvC3. She may have passable normals–her heavy normals probably still suck though–overall, but she does not play footsies in any real “traditional” sense just because of her uniquely cancel-able specials.
El Fuerte’s normals suck for the most part. At least we can agree on that, if only because pretty much everyone does. Same goes for him not being a footsie character and thus atypical to what Street Fighter “should” be about.
What game is that? It actually sounds pretty interesting.
If we’re going to broaden interface screwing abilities to contain ANYTHING that changes gameplay, my opinion changes completely. I’m a huge fan of having special boss stages instead of just fighting a cheap opponent as the final boss.
Enter MvC3: I loved how all of Galactus’s attacks could be dodged or worked around with the appropriate move. I initially found his screen-wide grab annoying because it couldn’t be avoided, but a well timed high-jump is actually the best way to avoid the attack. Trying to figure out how to beat Galactus made me feel smart, and was much more enjoyable than working through a tedious cheap character’s attacks. Not the hardest boss, but easily one of the most enjoyable to fight. The pre-Galactus 2 V 1 battle was an interesting feature of the fight, but how interesting it was depended on what two opponents you were matched with.
Since we all love talking about Arcana Heart 3, that also has an interesting take on the last boss. Yes, most characters will have to suffer through a few rounds with the boss version of Scharlachrot. But those that can finally break through her unblockable attacks, infinite arcana burst, etc, will be rewarded with a fight against Odin. The boss is as wide as the play area, even scaling up into the sky. Using platforms and the boss itself, you have to deal enough damage to all of odin’s weak points while also fending off his minions (yes, more than one!) and his own attacks. You win by diverting the right amount of time and effort between his minions and his weak points, and even need to use the multi direction air dash in inventive ways to stay ahead of his strongest threats. During this fight, dashing also lets you “lock on” to different weak points so that you can block and perform moves correctly. Getting use to the new movement options is surprisingly easy, but Odin is not. This is easily my favorite boss fight of the moment.
What about those stance characters that you love? Surely some of them get a lot of mileage by training the opponent to act a particular way when you’re in a certain stance.
(From what little I have seen of the last boss of Arcane Heart 3, he at least seems relatively fair and interesting too unlike that bonus boss from Arcana Heart 2 who could do 90% of your life total in like one attack. I cannot remember what her name is right now, though I think it was “La P[Something]”.)
Not really. In fact, most stance characters I think off the top of my head have very unambiguous differences in their attacks just by the virtue of whatever stance they are in at the time, especially since pretty much all of them have very visible changes to whatever stance they are in. The most mileage they get out of mix-ups tends to be when they change stances rapidly and punish or confound the opponent by doing that, like how Xrd’s Leo Whitefang or Street Fighter’s Gen can. As Naeras said, however, that does not automatically make them a “mix-up-oriented character” just because pretty much every character tends to be capable of at least a couple mix-ups if they have offense worth a damn; the only real exception might be extremely powerful zoners who can just chip you to death from across the screen regardless of how you block, but those are vanishingly rare.
In fact, the only stance character I can think of off the top of my head who maybe has ambiguity in his some of the attacks from his stances or at least had them at one point was Tekken’s Lei, and that is mostly just because his laying down “stance” was weird and annoying to deal from what I remember (back in Tekken 3); I am unsure if it still applies on top of that.
I mean, the main character I was talking about (theoretically) has basically unambiguous normal move and special move and even super move changes when he shifts stances, with rather visible changes given he is weapon-oriented and with the only things that do not change being his kicks (save for maybe his sweep) and a universally shared set of special moves between all modes. I will put a slightly redacted version of his present move-list below to show how apparent it would be in his case even without knowing what said moves do:
[details=Spoiler][REDACTED/REDACTED] [REDACTED] (v0.3)
-SPECIAL MOVES-
ANY MODE:
-<Ice Breaker>-: QCF + K
-<Survivor’s Dodge>-: QCB + K, hold K(, press P?)
MODE SPECIFIC:
-<“Barefist Mode”>-: [REDACTED]
-<“Spear Mode”>-: [REDACTED]
-<“Knife Mode”>-: [REDACTED]
-<[REDACTED]>-: DP + K in “Spear Mode” or in “Knife Mode” (AIR OK)
-<[REDACTED]>-: RDP + K in “Spear Mode” or in “Knife Mode” (25% of meter only; 4 times max)
BAREFIST MODE:
-<Ice Fall>-: D, D + P, hold P to delay
-<Ice Feint>-: D, D + K
-<Snow Fall>-: 360 + P
SPEAR MODE:
-<Predation>-: Charge B for 2 secs., F + P, (hold P for variations?)
-<Protection>-: Charge D for 2 secs., U + P
KNIFE MODE:
-<Red in Blue>-: QCF + P, P, P (or K for high or D + K for low on last hit?)
-<Red on Blue>-: QCB + P
=SUPER MOVES=
ANY MODE:
=<Less Than Zero>=: HCB, F + K or HCF, B + K (50% of meter)
BAREFIST MODE:
=<Frost’s Bite>=: 360 + K (50% of meter)
SPEAR MODE:
=<Proclamation>=: QCB, HCF + P (50% of meter)
KNIFE MODE:
=<Deep Purple>=: QCF, HCB + P (50% of meter)
[/details]
About the closest thing that I can think of to mix-up-oriented character who cares about “stances” is King of Fighters’s Angel since she has a flexible, flowing series of chains moves that help her break through guarding with at least three overheads, three lows, and three completely unblockable moves. Those do not really count as stances either, though, in part because she literally cannot hold them for any period of time and has to immediately move on to another attack or else start back at the beginning with one of her chain-starting moves.
TL;DR: No, stance change characters are probably as far from heavily mix-up-oriented characters as you can get character-design-wise outside of heavy zoners.
Night Warriors, Darkstalkers Revenge/ Vampire Hunter. And yeah more fighting game bosses like UMVC3 Galactus would be great to see. He really did challenge you in a way bosses from other genre’s would while still maintaining that fighting game feel.
seems like there’s ailments that block specials and supers (and persona attacks), ailments that reverse left and right inputs, and ailments that disable blocking (and more; I remember one that disables jumping) http://www.dustloop.com/wiki/index.php/P4Arena/Ailments
Morgan (from AquaPazza) can shoot arrows that block specials/supers (she has also poison and stun arrows), she has 20 arrows per round, and is normally seen using said arrow as a combo ender (after a stun arrow); Sasara (also from AP) has a super that also does this, and is normally seen using it as an air combo ender (with the help of an assist cancel, thus costing two meters); Nazuna (from Arcana Heart) has a 3-bar super that besides doing a lot of damage, also blocks specials/supers and slows the opponent, however it requires manual inputs upon connecting, and if you misinput them, both players are hit, and Nazuna’s silenced and slowed instead (and the super won’t finish an opponent’s HP this way)
Parace L’sia. There’s also a boss (in AH3LM) that is imho even more difficult (because while Parace kills faster, she has low hp), Kamui in Survival mode (who, like Parace, can quickly teleport behind you). One thing I like about Parace L’sia, Scharlachrot and Chizuru (from AquaPazza’s Score Attack mode), is that they have improved stats but (despite some luck in the case of Parace L’sia) with enough knowledge of the games they’re in (such as specific arcana selection) and some gameplan (like, get out of the line of fire of Scharl’s arcana or dodge – with back homing – its guard crushing shot, or try to stay in the air until Chizuru’s super armor runs out, because air combos won’t hurt as much and you’re less likely to take guard damage and be guard crushed), the boss fights can feel unfair and/or random but still fun (or should I say, “still feel winnable” :D)
speaking of stances and mix-ups, I thought about Xrd’s Leo (who has a standing low, and a standing overhead during his stance, and can walk through the opponent for cross-ups and uncrosses) and Elphelt (who has good frametraps with her stance, can also cross opponents up, though in a set range and apparently not as fast as Leo’s stance, and has a command throw that leads to a high damage corner combo; her other stance, in which she uses a rifle, can be somewhat seen as a mind game – though mostly in her favor – as she tries to aim at the opponent, while the latter tries to move out of her aim). Kagura, Valkenhayn and Hazama have stances that can do mix-ups as well.
speaking of moves that look similar to others reminds me of Garou’s feints and brake moves (and of Real Bout’s fake P.Powers), and some other examples such as (AH3LM’s) Kira’s 5B (if you hold B, she feints it instead) and (NPB’s) Ignis’ 22A (she tosses a grenade near her, but the A version doesn’t detonate); in Soul Calibur (don’t know which game of the series was the first to have it), you could cancel the attacks’ startup with the guard button.
(Ah, I see. I suppose it is fitting that Kamui becomes overclocked via her own Time Arcana since she is arguably an expy of Sailor Pluto.
It also looks like Parace L’Sia is still around in Arcana Heart 3: Love Max in some capacity. Huh.)
I feel stupid for complimenting forgetting about the status ailments of Persona 4: Arena, particularly when it comes to Silence indeed making it so that you cannot use any Persona-based moves. Way to go me. That just shows how long it has been since I have been able to play that game unfortunately.
I similarly feel stupid forgetting that Baiken’s Force Break in Accent Core can seal moves–well, it can seal buttons. In my defense, however, I almost never play around with that character and find her quite annoying to fight despite simultaneously finding her design interesting.
Speaking of Baiken, what do people think of a character like her who essentially gets “stronger” by blocking, at least in terms of the moves they can possibly do?
If we are going to continue this discussion of “stance-changing characters as mix-up-oriented characters”, then I am still not really sure that Elphelt would just because a) she seems exceptionally good at almost everything even after her nerfs and b) she outright unblockable moves, some of which can hit from a distance. There is also the lack of ambiguity between stances, though apparently that close-range shotgun stance has at least some ambiguity (on top of extremely good hitboxes).
Shrug. If I had been able to play Xrd by now, then I would be able to have more of an opinion on her. I similarly cannot comment on any of the others just because I have never played any iteration of Blazblue, though from what I know Valkenhayn would be the closest to a “mix-up-oriented” character. Still, he is completely unambiguous, at least as far “stances” go since he might be the fighting game character outright changes the most between stances given he turns into an outright wolf.