I would complain about the execution, but then again, I’m new to execution-heavy and not used to play them. How should I start off playing this, practice-wise? I’m trying out trial mode, but it’s not going so well. On another note, which characters are more aggressive and rushdown-like, or do I have to play this out like Marvel?
I would just play people… Get a feel for the game and basic tactics. You’re gonna get blown up for the first games you play and knowing combos ain’t going to matter.
Work on some basic bnb’s, work on consistently getting every sort of jump/hop to come out, try working in some basic mixups, such as blockstring into sweep frametrap, empty hop low, empty hop throw, etc.
After that, what I do in training/practice mode for learning a character, aside from working/learning bnbs first is to work on basic drive cancel combos, don’t start with HD right away. After you got that, try doing some basic loops. An easy one off the top of my head to get it down is Claw iori’s HD loop.
And for the record, almost any character can rush down decently well in this game. Even characters like Ash, Saiki, Billy Kane, etc. got tools up close. Just play a lot of characters and play who you like best.
Don’t start seriously in trial mode, you can do some trials (the first 5 for example) for a basic concept and use some fractions of those combos, even for some vets those trials are really hard, play arcade in hard mode the AI is really decent, and try to get some player matches with decent connections…
About Characters this will help you a lot:
http://wiki.shoryuken.com/The_King_of_Fighters_XIII
And check the team construction thread in this forum and the front page video tutorials.
Good luck.
I would start out in Arcade mode on Normal, and ramp up the difficulty once you think you can handle it. Get a feel for the game first. After that, you can start going into trial mode.
Even after you start doing trial mode, it’s probably best that you don’t expect to do a lot of them. Just use it to familiarize yourself with the timing of strings.
After that, I’d just use Practice Mode. I spend more time in Practice Mode (or Training, whatever they call it) than anywhere else.
As for rushdown characters, Claw Iori is pure rushdown. Most any character in KOF can do rushdown, but Iori seems to really excel in it. Clark, Hwa Jai and Shen Woo have shown themselves quite capable as well.
The way I started in this game was this…
I went in trial mode, did as many trials as I could in under 5 attempts for each, picked the three that I got the furthest with, Youtubed some videos with good players using them, and hit up training mode.
I ended up with my first team being Mai / Ash / Kim.
Spent about 2 weeks with them, and learned the fundamentals with them. Now, I’m using Billy / Kyo / Benimaru, as they’re slightly more difficult, and I think they’re all better characters.