Okay, I’ve finally been in the lab with this game and I have to say that the combo system in Arcana Heart 3 is amazing.
Given how free meter is (Sergio describes the meter system in this game as going to the dollar store and you have $2,000), you can do ANY combo you want.
(for the most part)
Like, at one point, I was a little displeased with the damage output of characters who weren’t Zenia, but then I eventually figured out that all characters have a common way to use homing cancel: it got to a point where I was able to consistently get 9,000-10,000 damage combos with 2 meter in like 5-10 minutes of training mode and not having to look at homing cancel combo threads over at the homing cancel forum…
(I looked at Zenia’s combo thread for a few minutes, then stopped when I realized that I seem to be able to do MORE damage with less work)
I don’t know if 9K-10K damage is a lot or a little, but it’s on par with what I was doing with Zenia, so I assume that it’s very decent.
In any event, I discovered that a lot of the biggest damage I could do with 2 meters was from chaining 2 strong attacks together (usually 5C) using homing cancel and then going into super.
(I tried 5C, homing cancel, 5C, EFC, 5C into super and it doesn’t seem to make things much better, so I assume that it would be counter-productive to use EFC in this way… with Zenia, EFC’s best use for me is for resets or extending damage off of super by going into magic series air combo)
The best damage also comes from not having “A” in the combo, but you might need it after homing cancel in order to continue juggle (like with Lilica, who makes me look like I know how to play the game given how intuitive her combo strings are)…
ALSO, it seems that dive kicks (homing and then pushing B in the air) actually add a lot of damage since they don’t prorate or scale or whatever as badly as mashed A…
With Dive kick B, 2B, 5C into Super, I think I was able to do like 8K-9K damage with Konoha…
And what makes this easy (if not brain-dead) combo great is that it’s a high-low mixup… and if it’s blocked, I can EFC and continue pressure.
TALKING ABOUT EF, while I’m not really using Arcana yet (I might use thunder since I can get clash frames with everything while in EF mode… so like, if you block an attack while I’m in EF mode, it’ll clash and you will have to push buttons in order to not die), EFC is extremely useful for Zenia because if your opponent auto-pilots and lets go of the controller at any point in the animation, you could be crafty and EFC the super sequence and then go for high-low mixup into reset into another super…
(however, if you fail to land the super a second time, your opponent can 6D punish you out of your super, since you don’t have any more meter to cancel)
EFC shenanigans happened for me at one point at SFSU last Saturday when my friend Tasty Lumpia just let go of the controller while waiting for the super animation to finish… he assumed that he was okay to let the super finish because scaling would make it so that he wouldn’t die, but I knew this as well and then went for the reset into another super, which won me the match.
(that said, Lumpia was doing mad salty runbacks with Henry (day 1 Eko user… Eko seems to have complete air superiority and it took me a while to figure out how to deal with it) by the end of the night and we ended up playing until 10:30PM; it was awesome)
Anyway, yeah…
Homing cancel and EFC pretty much allows you to do whatever combo you want in the game…
It’s great.
That said, I will likely spend today going through more Arcana stuff…
I like some Arcana because you can combo into their Arcana Blaze for big damage (you just have to be sure it ends the match since you won’t be able to have EFC for a minute if you screw up).
Like, what I do is:
2B, 5C, EFC, 5C, Arcana Blaze
And this works with ANY character so long as you can chain 2B and 5C together and as long as you have an Arcana that has an Arcana Blaze that you can combo into.
(yes, these Arcana do exist, but I don’t remember stuff at the top of my head… I just remember it happening last night while I had people over)
ALSO, regarding 6D, it seems like it’s very easy to punish it if you just randomly use it to get out of block string pressure: I was in training mode and had the computer on “Block All” and “Guard Cancel forward”… and every time I saw the guard cancel, I would mash out super and it seems to punish the recovery of guard cancel because of the super’s startup.
At this point, I really think it’s best to 6D when your opponent is out of meter (so, usually, at the beginning of the match when you block your opponent’s super attempt).
IN ANY EVENT, what my favorite part of the game seems to be is that combos aren’t actually the most important part of the game (since they seem pretty braindead in terms of execution at this point)… it’s the resets and the mind games, which get me amped given that it can go very quickly:
I’m spamming dive kick B over and over and over and I can condition you to block high… then, when I realize this, I change it up and dive in, but then go to 2B into super.
Shit is mad hype, yo.