Hey guys, I just registered on the forums. Now for a little background on me. My first fighting game was MK9, I played it pretty casually. Learning a couple combos for a few different characters,(Smoke and Reptile mostly) and just played against some RL friends who were even worse than me somehow. I loved watching tournaments and always thought it would be cool it actually learn how to play at a high level.
Now I’ve just purchased SF, watched NCR all weekend, and I’m trying to decide which character I want to main and basically learn fundamentals of fighting games on. I really like Vega, he looks very interesting, I’ve played through some of the challenges on him. But my question is should I be using Vega to learn on? Do you guys think there’s a more suitable character for someone pretty much completely green to the fighting game scene to learn on? Or does it even matter at all? Also any tips you guys have for someone brand new looking to get into fight games and eventually start going to meetups and tournaments would be greatly appreciated.
I’m pretty green to, but here is my take on it. When starting out dosent do you any harm to fool around a little, feel up the cast so to speak.
Maining vega should give you a solid defense pretty quickly, and since he is the master, will show you the footsie game quite well.
He feels like a specialized charecter, not to the point of for ex: Viper, Elf or Makoto. But still has a pretty own style. His great pokes, speed and mobility is in a class of it self. Comes at a price thou.
As I see it he is beginer friendly in being low on execution skill, but he dosent give the whole SF4 expirience. He has some big holes in his repotoir as a price to pay for his range and speed. So might be a good idea to fool around a little with some of the other more broader charecters to gain a better understanding of the game.
Vega has a lot going for him, Best theme song in game, good looking and rich. And he has a huge claw, I mean the claw alone is pretty decent.
In my opinion you can learn the game from playing pretty much any character, even if some are harder than others to pick up. It’s much easier to practice and get better with characters you like.
On a low to sometimes intermediate level you can get away wit some of Vega’s gimmicks. Not a lot of people will know how to punish your backflips or walldives. However anyone decent wont let you get away with any bullshit.
I’m not sure if you’d want to start sf with a character that has no invincible reversals or good anti airs. You’re going to need to learn to block and get out of pressure the hard way, its especially difficult because vega only has 900 stun. You also cant really anti air deep jump ins. So you need to be able to react with air to airs like neutral jump HK and air grab.
Check out the guides by Jozhear, Francys Pai, and Emersion and check back on them once in a while because you’re not going to be able to digest all the information at once. Also check out VesperArcade’s guide on youtube for general knowledge of SF4.
That’s great you found someone you’re drawn to, play Vega for a bit and see how you like him. However, I highly recommend you casually play the other characters as well. Since you just started out, you might find someone you love that went under your radar.
The other responses here are pretty solid replies.
I actually started to learn SF with Vega as he is the only reason I play this game for. But know this: if a Ryu/Ken player starts to get wins and get the hang of the char in 3 months, a Vega player will feel the same in 9 months. Gen, Viper and Vega are technically the most demanding imo.
Personally, I don’t find Vega to be very demanding, but the amount of mistakes you can make per round is rather low.
It’s a matter of trying to screw up as little as possible really.
I’ll say this. Vega is a GREAT character for learning fundamentals and footsies, but he’s in a terrible game for such things. Ryu is another great fundamentals character, and it may be better for a newbie to pick him up to learn the basics since he has most every tool you could ask for in a character while still being fundamentals based. While Vega is all fundamentals, he has to face a bunch of characters who break those fundamentals in a game that rewards vortex style play.
Supposedly USF4 will change that, but seeing Ibuki’s Kunai vortex still in the game has me convinced I was right that the vortex game won’t go away, but will simply evolve.