The Casual Player's Guide to Beating Marie

Classic Fighting Games Skullgirls
1

I think this is necessary for obvious reasons. I finally beat the story mode with everyone, and boy some of those boss fights are CAKE compared to others. In order of difficulty from easiest to hardest, roughly:

Peacock
Double
Valentine
Cerebella
Filia
Painwheel
Parasoul
Fortune

Which is sort of funny considering Peacock was built to destroy the Skullgirl to begin with, huh?

Here is what you need to know about the boss fight.

PART 1 - She will toss small skulls, large skulls with tails that will drag you on hit far away from her and hands come from the ground. Unless you’re Peacock, stay close and do heavy normals. If you’re Fortune, you can never use s.MP, c.HP, s.HP, j.HP or qcb+P because getting counter hit in any of those (or doing the last one) drops your head, leaving your head unable to block the skulls. Recall it if it happens. If you’re Cerebella, stay a half screen away and Titan Knuckle (f+HP) your way to part 2. If a tiny skull hits you it serves as an instant recovery so just keep doing that. If your character has an air dash, try doing one hard normal, air dash and another hard normal to make things go quicker. If you’re Peacock, HP into qcf+HP x 3, gain as much meter as you can (2 or 3 is good) then Argus Agony (qcf+PP) once to get to part 2. If that doesn’t get her to part 2, charge up a HP item drop to full while blocking and jumping back (qcb+hold HP) or shoot some guns.

PART 2 - Find one of your character’s aerial normals that does good damage and can cross up. Here is a list of possibilities:

Double/Peacock - j.HK
Valentine - j.HP
Cerebella - j.HK
Parasoul - j.HP, j.HK
Painwheel - j.HK
Fortune - j.HK on super jump, j.LP
Filia - j.HK

You are going to run to get close to her, then jump over her hitting her with your crossup move. Without stopping, you’re going to jump over her again and do the normal again. If she moves, RUN AFTER HER and keep jumping over her. She seems to attack less if you’re jumping from one side to another, and most of her attacks will miss with good timing. If the Mother shadow goes underground, or high above, stop and block, wait for it to come back to Marie, then jump over her, do normal, do it again and don’t stop until she’s blowing up again.

PART 3 - God help you. The good news is that if you did parts 1 and 2 correctly you have a good bit of health, and hopefully in the case of some people, meter.

Peacock - Spend every bit of meter you have by going to the corner and doing full screen Argus Agonies (qcf+PP) until she dies, or j.HP, item drops, George at the Air Show (qcf+HK).
Valentine - j.HP, use all your meter on aerial qcf+PP from the air in front of Marie
Double - Hornet Bomber (dp+HK) into car (qcf+PP) for minimal risk, j.HP otherwise.
Parasoul - j.HP, sniper shots (qcf+PP) cancelled from Napalm Pillar (charge d,u+HK)
Painwheel - Mostly jump at her and do j.HP, j.MP, j.HK
Cerebella - Jump at her with j.HP, j.HK, or do dp+MP or dp+HP (most notably)
Fortune - Never use s.MP, s.HP, c.HP, j.HP or qcb+P for any reason ever; jump with j.HK, or do dp+HK

And so, you have beaten Marie without having to know anything ever. Other than the notation I’ve been using!

2

I beat her on sleepwalk using one button for each character. Either HK or HP. True story.
And if we’re talking about casual players how about writing something that will help them to become competitive? Or just good in the game for that matter. Like actually know what they are doing.

Because I’d like to become one of those. After PC port that is. And I think there is bunch of other people who’d like to do that too.

3

When I picked up marvel, or rather when I was waiting to buy it and getting interested in it, I watched a couple of really basic introduction videos that helped me understand what was going on in the game. If we can make something like that to cover what assists are, how to pushblock, magic series chains, stunt doubles, dhcs etc. in a very clear (and hopefully pretty) way it could help people who approach the game without marvel (or fighting game) experience.

To be competitive I think it’s more character specific.

4

I actually tackling this idea around since… well pretty much since BEFORE release. I had a huge hope for in-game tutorials. And those are good but they are obviously lack some stuff and which is more important IMO doesn’t cover things like how should you manage your time if you want to get better and what modes in what way you should use for that. So articles and videos oriented to casual crowd made specifically for SG will be much appreciated. At least by me. They also will come handy if I’ll try and lure someone into playing this game.

5

You can beat Marie with any character by blocking, hitting HP, and goto 10.

6

I hate fighting Marie so much that when I get to her I usually just quit the game. haha. But I agree that it seems like Peacock has the best tools for dealing with Marie. That teleport is particularly useful to get around all of Marie’s minions.

This is something that I may actually be able to help out a bit with even if I may only be a beginner myself. I mean one of the goals the little vlog I do about this game is to try to get other people to try out fighting games.

7

I’ll certainly check those out when I get more spare time.

8

Thanks. They’re mainly just showing what I’ve learned through the week and trying to apply that stuff online and to show the progress from week to week. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get one out for last week. but yeah, this is off topic, so sorry about that.

9

Valentine’s qcf+HK is probably her best tool against Marie. Use it to deal damage and cross-up easily at the same time. Also note two additional things:

  1. Probably the most consistent way to beat Marie is to damage her first form heavily and then run away, avoiding skulls until you get the time over victory.
  2. Marie becomes progressively harder to beat the more characters you have on your team. You’ll be relying on jumping heavy normals most of the time, so the weaker they are the harder the fight becomes.
10

Because the whole point of casual players is they don’t care to ever become competitive.

They don’t need to know the fine nuances of fly cancelling with Painwheel, Egret cancelling heavy attacks, etc. Casual players play fighting games first and foremost because they’re GAMES, and they want to have fun. Many of them stopped playing the game because they had a GREAT time, then suddenly they were faced with fucking brick wall spamming skulls and quit the game.

Casual players don’t care to learn how a game is played. Many of them cease to have fun when faced with someone who DOES know what they’re doing in the slightest. This post is for those players, so they can continue to have fun doing story mode or arcade mode without regretting ever buying this game.

The REST OF SRK should help if they want to get better. This post is not for that.

Now, if you think there needs to be a guide for a casual player who wants to become competitive (as opposed to just knowing how to deal with Marie), then I will consider writing something like that. Unfortunately I feel like it would sound very pedantic on my part because I can’t use fighting game terms, and I would have to go through it with baby steps and it would feel very awkward lol

I mean, I would do it anyways. It would just feel weird to go say something like this:

"To throw, get close to your opponent and hit LP and LK at the same time while standing. You can even do this in the air! But be careful; if you’re not close enough you will be vulnerable to attack!

If you think your opponent is going to throw you, you can defend yourself by doing a “throw tech”. To do a throw tech, you have to hit LP and LK at the same time when you are expecting a throw. But watch out; you can’t do a throw tech while crouching.

So at any point where the opponent is near, both players must watch for something called a low/throw mixup…"

GAH, it feels like Sesame Street for the FGC. And I’m Kermit the Fortune player.

11

Bella can spam lock n load(HP) on the first two forms then throw all her meter in Dynamos on the last.

12

Easiest way to beat Marie on any level using any character:

Block until last 20-25 seconds.
Attack.

If you’ve done this correctly you’ll end up timing her out ftw.

13

Thanks!!

I just got the game yesterday (I really like it) and couldn’t figure out how to kill her when she’s floating in the air. Anyway could you make a simple guide for playing online. I tried to look at some of the combo threads but people were posting 60 button moves, how is someone suppose to remember that =[.

14

Actually yeah I forgot about this. It’s very effective.

15

Also.

You never mentioned one thing. Character with One hard hitting move can almost skip 3rd part. you get the 2nd part healthbar close to the “switch” and hit her with the move

Her 3rd form will die with one jHP.

It work with Cerebella lvl 3, also miss fortune lvl 3. And bionic car as well. And painwheel’s Death Crawl. (so much damage on this thing). George Day out is also not bad. Maybe Fillia lvl 3 (didnt test this one.).

16

In reality, the combos all follow this structure.

Chain -> Launcher -> Chain -> Special

Sometimes they’ll have something like this:

Chain -> Move -> Chain -> Move…

For your character, you have to figure out what the chain is. Most people can chain their light punch into light kick, their light kick into medium punch, their medium punch into medium kick, their medium kick into heavy punch or heavy kick. So it’s kind of like a zig zag: punches then kicks then harder punches, etc.

In this chain though sometimes some moves will move the opponent away, knock them down or do things you don’t want. The good thing is you can skip an attack in the chain and still be able to continue.

For example, the chain with Fillia is LP->LK->MP->MK->HP/HK (like explained above). Her crouching chain is exactly the same, except that crouching MP does a launch in the air so nothing after it would hit. Thankfully you can skip MP altogether and still have a chain doing LP->LK->MK->HP.

Another thing to watch out is that you can stand and crouch as necessary to avoid normals that move the opponent away the same way. Also, you can start a chain from any point as long as you do an attack that follows it correctly.

So with Filia, if you do (c is crouching, s is standing) c.LK, c.MK, s.HP it should combo if you let MK hit all hits and bring the opponent in.

If this is all overwhelming, the only other possibility I find is to create online rooms with the Casual label. There’s a good chance you’ll find someone casual if you do that, but of course it isn’t guaranteed :frowning:

17

For Peacock:
[media=youtube]ijHqCq7bzW0[/media]
Just don’t get hit like me and don’t panic by doing random supers and there, done like dinner.

18

When using Painwheel

Fly a lot during 1st form to dodge
When Marie is going from 1st -> 2nd form use Death Crawl a little after the explosion for free huge damage
Hatred Armor damage is your best friend

19

I did a much lamer approach.

Hold HP item drop
Waking bomb
Car bomb
Air bomb
Release item drop
s.HP
qcf+HP x3
Have meter? qcf+PP, repeat.
Don’t have meter? Repeat. lol

20

wouldnt a casual player just do the story/ arcade mode on the easiest setting??? its seriously a piece of piss on the lowest difficulty just spam heavy attacks and make sure you dont waste supers. thats all i did i just wanted to unlock the colours quickly etc.

does everybody obsess over doing it on the hardest difficulty or something like that? only time i would consider doing it on hard is with characters who i actually use. half of them i dont have a clue with how to use.