How to lan battle
On the title screen, hold down L, R and Down on the D-Pad and press Start.
I’m now pretty sure this game has no chance as a serious, competitive game. After a week of playing daily and a lot of time in training mode and local vs (apparently there is no ‘P2 controlled’ option in training), here’s my opinion:
The “attack triangle” system:
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[]Turns wakeups into more of a guessing game than I have ever seen before in a fighter. Meaty attacks (normal or counter, it doesn’t matter), will always beat wakeup normals, jumps and grabs, without exception. This means you can either try a counterattack or block on wakeup. If your opponent uses a move that pierces counters, your only options are to block or eat damage.
[]Is extremely difficult to react to, basically impossible to test for. Most of the fastest normal attacks in the game don’t recover faster than a counterattack takes to charge to full power if both attacks were initiated at the same time. If you hit somebody charging a counter, it’s most likely already too late to block.
[]With many Pokemon moves also being counterattacks, it seems to encourage players to attack like crazy and just guess better than their opponent.
[]Normal moves that resist hitstun (like Mewtwo’s Psystrike) can be used like counters almost without weaknesses, blasting straight through grabs, most normals and uncharged counters.
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There’s a fun game under here, and I’ll keep playing it for now (maybe I’m wrong?), but I don’t think it has any real staying power in the competitive scene.
- Oh no, a game that forces you to block on wakeup, what a nightmare.
- Oh no, a game where if the opponent decides to launch a counter when you launch an attack, you lose.
- And I’ve seen plenty of games where attacking like crazy just leads to free blowups.
- So…reversals in the neutral game? Just to note, Psystrike is also IMMENSELY punishable on block and whiff.
The game has plenty of flaws to be certain, but holy crap these are some of the worst nitpicks I’ve ever seen.
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[] Yea, the guessing is kinda annoying, but it is what it is. Meaties blow up wake up normals, jumps, and grabs in like every fighter. That’s not something new to Pokken as that’s what meaties are supposed to do. In Pokken(and every other fighter), you’re supposed to block or use a reversal if you don’t have an escape option. There’s also Counterattack, which is made for that exact scenario. If they use a piercing move, it’ll normally have long start up or recovery. You can react and punish accordingly.
[] It’s not something you should be able to react to. It’s based on reads. Counters beat attacks. Some cases allow you to block the counter, but in most you’re supposed to get hit. That’s the opponent’s reward for making the right call and your punishment for making the wrong one.
[] Attacking like crazy will get you countered like crazy. Countering like crazy will get you grabbed like crazy. Grabbing like crazy will get you attacked like crazy. The game doesn’t encourage any one thing over the other. It’s all dependent on whatever opponent you’re fighting at the time, your tendencies, and how you’ve conditioned each other. Guessing better than your opponent is a staple in all fighters since not everything is reactable.
[] Moves like that usually have a lot of recovery. You can punish them hard if you bait them like you’re supposed to. Pikachu’s Volt Tackle(Up+A), for example, has armor on start up so it beats non-piercing attacks and grabs. If you block or counter it, however, Pikachu is left wide open. No different than a DP.
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I don’t really care about Pokken’s competitive value, so I can’t comment on whether or not it’ll last.
@“Phantom Angel” get on irc lets play
I was wondering that too, and so I did some testing to find out! I made a quick video about it:
Essentially my issue is that Pokken, due to the Attack Triangle, feels like a guessing game most of the time, rather than a fighting game. Imagine playing Street Fighter or Tekken, except make all normals dangerous to use in footsies and give 2 to 4 of each character’s moves hyper armor. That’s this game.
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OK, I’m overblowing it a bit. Meaties are a thing, I’m just used to having more options (shoryuken, backdash, etc).
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Want to play footsies? If you want to go for a poke, counterattacks and moves with counter make that dangerous. If you do, and at the same time your opponent starts to charge their counter, you eat damage. If you try to poke, and the opponent uses a move that has counter or resists hitstun, you eat damage. Since throws have a lot of startup (and is character dependent, who knew!? Charizard’s is 14 or 15 frames, Mewtwo’s is 12!), moves with counter tend to go straight through throws, since your throw has to connect during their move’s startup. Even if you read/guess correctly, you’ll still probably take damage if you try to beat it with, you know, the thing it’s supposed to be most vulnerable to.
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My complaint is that it feels like the game rewards reckless behavior. See point 2.
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Definitely just a nitpick. “Here’s a type of normal move, so it beats throws, but it ignores a lot of hitstun, so it also beats counters”. Chandelure has one of these as well, but it also debuffs itself when it uses it.
Made another combo vid, this time for Braixen. Think I found my secondary.
BRAIXEN’S SO FREAKING ADORABLE IN THIS GAME
Also I see they made a customization option just for me:
Spoiler
AH that majority of fighting game in nutshell. Fighter is RPS with each game allow player to devaite from the norm and dictating momentuem.
its character quirks, subs system, and game unique mechanics that gives the illusion that more stuff is going on. But In the end you make guess on some thing and if successful you capitalist by follow up on your momentum, some games reward with simply damage or more with meter, utility, mechanics unlocks ect.
Pokken is no different from the rest of fighting games.
So, I couldn’t help but notice that Mewtwo’s hitboxes on his down + Strong are kind of wonky:
Currently testing every character right now, but so far Mewtwo can simply down strong attack through a whole bunch of projectiles and attacks. Definitely doesn’t work against anything Suicune, Braixen or Chandelure has, though.
So, I was kinda reading through this thread and noticed, that this video was missing:
Also some Sceptile and Blaziken setups:
Okay, real talk, blockstring infinites, all of them, need to fucking GTFO of this game. R.Pika (apt name by the way, since both characters are total cunts in their respective games) seems to have one in Burst that leads to guard break and free Super, which is dumb as hell. There’s absolutely no reason why a single blocked attack should lead to a free 33% on average character health.
I’m hoping that come 1.2, all these bullshit blockstring infinites get taken out.
Patch has been announced for early April that fixes Shadow Mewtwo’s infinite and adjusting Reshiram assist, “various other bug fixes and adjustments” as well.
Unlike Smash, Namco-Bandai actually drops patch notes, so we’ll know what all else changes when the patch goes live.
Any chance there’s a site/blog that has some avatars done with references to any characters? It’s actually kind of overwhelming how many options you have after you finish the Ferrum League, makes a little difficult for me to figure out what I want to do.
Hey guys, here’s a combovideo I made.
I grabbed the game yesterday and so far it’s definitely better than I expected. Night now I’m just trying to learn Braixen’s BnBs, which are frickin’ impossible to find right now because goggle just shows the news articles
So thanks to Braixen’s ability to cancel into support, Braixen seems to be the only character who can activate Synergy Burst in the middle of a combo and then still combo into Synergy Burst Attack, thanks to Farfetch’d:
Granted the damage isn’t really worth it unless you started from the Y, Y, Y chain (the second example in the vid).
Also finally got around to finishing Lucario’s frame data.
I’ll get Braixen’s next.
Braxien for top tier. #kappa
If Machamp could combo into his Synergy Burst, shit would be entirely OP.