If anything, I’d say a typical SWR match resembles something like a MeltyBlood match involving Ren or Miyako, except the okizeme game is much much much worse. And that’s just how I feel regardless of how anyone analyzes it.
That said, if you enjoy the game then go ahead and keep enjoying it. You don’t have to justify your reasoning in order to continue playing something you like.
But I also don’t feel the need to elaborate on every minute detail about why I don’t like the game, I just voice my opinion and move on. It is what it is.
This kind of segues into my point. If you don’t have that much faith in SWR’s top players and they play IaMP over SWR anyway and SWR has had maybe two major tournaments at most, then how can you say for certain the extent that SWR’s game ends and IaMP’s begins? IaMP has been around for years by this point, with heavy tournament support and developed many great players that unlocked it as a whole. SWR…has been around maybe a couple months. And completely abandoned on this side competitively MUCH sooner than that, I might add.
SWR is a very simple game when taken at face value. The depth comes from having all these viable options at your disposal in the form of the different spellcards, bullet grazing, 360 degree flight, border escape, wrongblock and high jump canceling. When you’re fighting a good opponent, the mind-games become intense. You have to pay attention to your opponent’s openings and take care not to fall into traps. And all of this happens at literally lightning speed (which is what I mean from ‘fast’ match; not as in the round is over quickly), from every angle, from close to two screens away. Sometimes I have to consider a replacement special in my deck when one I have isn’t doing the job against a certain kind of opponent.
Then I have to factor in the weather, which can open many doors or close a number of them for me. If I don’t invoke it specifically to screw my opponent up, I just have to adapt accordingly.
I can’t get that out of any other fighting game. The closest, according to what you say, is probably IaMP. And Brawl, to a lesser extent. If I want ‘deeper’ mindgames and high level advanced techniques, I can play third strike or World Heroes Perfect O_o.
Let me be 100% clear to avoid misunderstandings; I’m not trying to change your mind, tell you you’re wrong or convince you to give SWR another chance. I respect your opinion, you have a right to it and I understand where you’re coming from.
This is just how I feel about the game and its current situation and will gladly agree to disagree on the matter with you. Like Xenozip said, it is what it is. This is my opinion and I’ll move on.
It’s a shame there aren’t SWR tournaments over here. I’d love to participate in them. Maybe eventually I could run a small online one, if I have the time.
Yuyuko, Alice and Reisen disagree. I’ve found corner traps that, if blocked, and you have enough soul orbs, WILL guard crush an opponent even if all the hits are correctly blocked.
Yuyuko’s is the simplest. It consists only of using her ground or air 5C and air dashes. If the opponent tries to graze, you can trap them due to the size of Yuyu’s aerials.
As for Reisen, doing a j.2A immediately after HJCing a ground rocket or 5C causes her to make a fast arcing attack backed by a very powerful projectile. A grounded opponent trying to graze this will most likely regret it. The best they could want to do is block, and that simply means that Reisen gets to blockstring them and show off her chip damage powers.
What’s Alice’s blockstring? I’m especially interested in that o_o.
Tenshi’s rushdown is also her blockstring. 5AAA, 5B, HJB2, Fly1, A, 5AAA, repeat. If the opponent doesn’t border escape, they’re getting Guard Crushed nomatter what they do.
It may not be easy to lock an opponent down, but turtling in the corner can be punished. And how!
Reisen drains herself before she can drain you. Yuyuko’s isn’t even remotely airtight. Alice doesn’t have a practical/reliable way to set up her airtight strings unless she guesses correctly on a ground tech against only about half the cast, the other half of the cast is basically immune to her tech traps so she has to magically get lucky against them midscreen.
Not that it matters. Even Tenshi and Sakuya who have actually valid airtight blockstrings that crush before self-drain and work midscreen/corner still can’t guarantee a guardcrush because of BoarderEscape, intentional wrongblock, and hangeki cards.
And this assumes you get to force the opponent to block on the ground up close which is going to be pretty difficult if the opponent doesn’t want to, hence my point in the first place. Even if we assume one of these is valid for whatever reason, you’re still aimlessly running around fishing for hits instead of applying footsies just to get to that point. Only to have it BE’d and have to chase them down all over again.
But what about Reisen’s Scatter shot bullet? I can crush the opponent’s guard in a corner using only 3 moves. That isn’t so hard to set up on a cornered opponent if you can get them to block a j.2A.
And if the first series of whisps are blocked, Yuyuko’s guard crush IS airtight. Due to the meaty nature of her whisps it’s not to hard to do it on ukemi.
Alice’s guard crush is two C dolls used in quick succession followed by a 3-doll beam attack (alternate skill).
You can crouch Reisen’s “mind dropping” skill if that’s what you mean. It whiffs on crouch.
And uhh, the Alice thing is so far from practical, to first get meter and randomly gain the SP-doll card out of your deck, then to get into a situation to activate the SP-doll card, and further then to activate not just 1 but 3 dolls, and even further to get a blockstring where you can use the dolls. All for just a single crush. I can think of a lot more practical things.
But you’re ignoring the main point, that none of these actually cause any damage if you just BorderEscape out.
Seriously though, analyzing every little thing about the game isn’t going to make it different from what we have already experienced. Nor will it change how we feel about it based on those experiences. Personally I would sooner play RockPaperScissors with some one and I’d probably have more fun for a longer period of time, too.
Just play the game and have fun with it if you can. Talking about it with me isn’t going to magically change how I or anyone else feels about the game.
Wow, this thread got active. Well, I’ll just say that I’ll worry about this game’s lack of depth when I learn to block (harder than it sounds and it could take a while). Also, I came into this game knowing that it doesn’t hold up well in high level play, but that hasn’t stopped me from enjoying it.
Oh no… good luck getting it back up. Netplay is one of the reasons I like this game, and IRC makes it so easy to find people.
Oh whoops, I thought the pushback problem got fixed in one the patches. (I wanted to check the change log but it’s still down.) Then again, I remember blocking my friend’s blockstring and getting pushed back far enough to get out.
I believe that you can graze/superjump on wakeup so that you’d pass right though the meaty wisp. Do you have a melee attack covering them as they wakeup?
Wait… so how many dolls are on the screen, ready to fire the beam? Also where are the two dolls placed?
Edit: Nvm, didn’t see Xenozip’s post.
They can graze through it on wakeup, yes, but since if you’re doing it correctly, Yuyuko will be above them, you should be able to use her 2A if you fear they’ll graze (and what smart opponent wouldn’t graze when they’re surrounded by whisps?)
Her air 2C also snakes downwards and covers a lot of the floor, making it good for okizime.
As for alice’s doll setup, I just quickly use 5C, 5C and then wait to see if they block it. If they do, I fire a dollbeam. (of course I need to set up the 3 dolls first, which is her alt 22B skill)
It’s not at all hard to get your skills ready at least for the second match, especially if you have 4 of those cards in your deck.
And I don’t see what you’re griping about. If you analyse everything about the game it becomes much more enjoyable.
nobody cares about Reisen’s guard crushes anyway, it’s her chip damage that’s important.
Oh come now. Nobody’s trying to convince you to like the game again. The opposing viewpoint just makes for interesting discussion ^^.
There’s so many fighting games where strings are inescapable that it’s a breath of fresh air for me. It turns blockstrings into more of a way to apply pressure and get the opponent to make a mistake. Which is actually the whole point of an offensive strategy in this game to begin with, since locking down the opponent is difficult.
Wrongblock does push back less than it used to and it’s far easier to guard crush opponents now. It is still possible to use wrongblock to escape, but Border Escape is a much more viable option than it used to be.
I’m just saying the only reason I’m posting is that I’m not convinced that what you’re saying is accurate, and there’s little reason for me to be humoring this conversation since talking about it isn’t doing much to convince anyone of anything. But I don’t mind listening anyway.
What I’ve experienced myself and witnessed from other players is that the game is so far from consistent it’s not even funny. If you’d like to prove that there is consistency in SWR – as in; consistent okizeme, consistent anti-airs, consistent block strings, consistent anything – then I would be happy to see proof.
Well, I’m glad it’s interesting enough that you’ll listen at any rate. You guys are very civil about your opinions, which is really cool. It is something to respect.
I don’t understand what you mean by ‘consistent’.
Okizeme, the wake-up game, is no different than most other fighters. It’s never ‘consistent’; it’s pressure on wake-up to force the opponent to fuck up so you do more damage. Third Strike; I do my overhead MP+MK on wake-up. It works, okay. Uh oh! You learned to parry it. Okay, now I just throw you.
SWR, you’re knocked down. I perform some projectile pressure. Uh oh! You learned to high jump fly out of it. So I cover with a melee attack O_o. Uh oh! You woke up in a direction. So I move towards you and perform pressure again. The wake-up game doesn’t necessarily end right when the opponent wakes up.
Block strings also aren’t always consistent. That’s not a bad thing. I’ll use Third Strike as an example again. If I were to try and perform a block string (Theoretically; I know it doesn’t have a guard meter, just bear with me on this), they’d never work because any hit attempt that doesn’t combo runs the risk of being parried. Just because there are ways out of blockstrings doesn’t make it bad.
‘Consistent’ Anti-Airs? I don’t understand. Do they randomly change properties? Tenshi’s air dive and Gamma Crush spell cards, Yukari’s rising buzzsaw, most chars’ 8A, and really, most melee attacks will counter somebody in flight or jumping in. And there are others too. You say they could just fly around and play hookie from you, but if they want to progress the match they have to attack you eventually. There’s no timer, remember? Any attempt to attack will create an opening for a projectile.
It’s all theorycraft, but in this situation that’s all I can provide. I can record casual matches in good time. Either way, if you want proof, you’ll have to be patient.
I’ve been taking a liking to Iku recently too. I think it’s the fact that I find her hilarious being an oarfish and all. (something about that just tickles my fancy)
She’s kinda eww until she manages to get her alt skills activated I find. A bit like Reisen in that regard. I’m still learning her but she’s a little dull sometimes and a lot of fun others.
A bit like Yukari. I can’t decide if Yukari is fun to play or very boring. It’s strange.
She’s slow, her bullets take a while to cast and don’t offer very much coverage. They’re fairly easy to graze and don’t have much density considering how large and slow they are. Even Yuyuko seems to be able to penetrate danmaku better than her, because she fires out more waves.
Iku’s regular danmaku is really quite unimpressive. Her 56 is great if you can get the opponent to block it, since it holds them there for ages, but it has very specific spacing requirements and doesn’t cover much area.
She kind of wants to make up with it by using her great melee attacks, but even her melee attacks just aren’t fast enough to cover for her slow and wimpy bullets. They also leave her quite open, unlike Yuyuko, who also has a lot of range (although not as much) on her melee attacks.
She has a very slow, floaty jump which doesn’t seem to suit her well. Yuyuko also has a floaty jump, but she seems to be able to use it fine due to her having a stronger aerial danmaku ability.
But when Iku gets hold of some of her better alt skills, she seems to become a lot better. the Shock drill is better than her normal drill, and her connected beam is better than her bouncing beam.
I need to play around with her more, but so far I’ve found her to be a bit unsafe and a bit slow.
That I can understand except for the pressure part. Pressure is one of the only reasons you’d do a blockstring at all, mainly to force the opponent into a situation of either escape or get guardcrushed. Wrongblock (and I might be wrong on this next one; but it certainly seems that way from my experience thus far) and the spirit gauge in general are less efficient now than they used to be. I find it much easier both to run out of spirit during air battles and to get guard crushed
Case in point Patchouli. I remember in 1.04 when I really started playing her I could pretty much spam her fireballs and specials from afar fairly safely. Now I tend to run out of spirit if I play her like that.
On Iku: I’ve picked her up recently, but haven’t had the chance to mess with her alt specials. The thing I like about her is that <s>she’s a fish</s> she’s strong and has awkward physics. Like her border escape and wake-up take a long time to complete compared to other chars that it can actually throw your opponent off.
Her B projectiles seem the most reliable (and I like the charged version), but they’re nothing compared to Komachi’s wind scythes or Patchy’s fireballs. Her C projectile is too slow to use as anything but pressure from afar. Except the 6C. 6C is really good.
Her DP+B/C special is amazing (The delay, then scarf whip). It has some awesome autoblock on it, so start it up as the opponent attacks and watch it get knocked off. Plus the C version has a longer delay so it creates an interesting dynamic.
I’m not all that fond on the range of her normal scarf drill and her 22+B/C. Do the alt versions have more range?
Which seems pretty pointless to me if its not consistent enough to actually guard crush (in a non situational event) since escaping isnt as hard as it should be.
And about Patchouli using more spirit for attacks was a good fix, it made a buddy of mine who mains her frustrated.