Time for the thread about the golden meatball of Japan!
So yeah, I’ve been pretty much using solely Honda in ST since I ever picked it up seriously. I’ve always found he has some great game going if you can ignore his complete inability to deal with fireballs effectively and his relatively slow footsie game.
Honda’s biggest problem is to deal with shotos, Sagat and characters who both have a fireball and a good uppercut. He can easily go around characters with weaker fireballs like Chun and Sim however because of their longer frames when they do a fireball, and if done right he can just go and trounce them around once he’s evaded one of the fireballs. His best way to deal with fireballs in my opinion is to simply get in range for a short or forward buttstomp and just wait for the new fireball and buttsomp them down. Done in close range, there’s no way they can retaliate to it, after which you can just use wakeup to your advantage. And of course, his super goes right through any fireball. The hit will always be blocked but it’s a safe move, and even if it hits just once it deals enough damage to put pressure down one someone.
Speaking of wakeup, Honda has a lot of good mixup options for putting someone back down when they wakeup. Forward buttstomp is an overhead and goes pretty fast, standing RH can punish from almost halfway across the screen, short buttstomp can link into anything and is barely punishable unless you see it coming, strong hands deals good chip damage and puts pressure down on an opponent and his best moves hands-down for punishing someone on wakeup is a held grab, that stuff just rapes anyone stupid enough to not see it coming a mile away. His lack of fireballs somewhat limits his longer range wakeup, but he’s got enough closerange options to deal with it.
His best air moves are almost all into kicks. Jumping short floats and can also overhead with d+short, jumping d+forward is just an incredible move overall, jumping roundhouse is great for crossups and overhead and has fairly long air-to-air range and decent priority and jumping fierce rapes in close range and goes over fireballs (thanks NKI for showing me that). He’s not as air dominant as Blanka and Chun but he can do some great things up there if he’s used right.
The big problem I’ve seen with him is that his footsie game is way too slow and pretty predictable. His good long range footsie moves are standing roundhouse, crouching fierce (I think it’s crouching fierce, too lazy to boot my DC and check it out, the one where he trips with his hand), Hands (all versions are good enough), short Headbutt (two hits and almost no recovery!!), back+mk, judo chop in close range against jump-ins and any other punches when putting pressure down.
So yeah, I guess that’s it. Hope this sparks some discussion about the fat guy and maybe some big SF2 guy can share some more tactics for him, but I fear I’m the only dedicated Honda fan here
But yeah, discuss and stuff.