I'm an aspiring fighting game player focusing primarily on learning to play BlazBlue. It's my intention to use this account as a place to chronicle my efforts at improving.
Well Persona 4 Arena was short-lived. Varga and I played the hell out of it for a while, but we just can’t get into it. Certain options seem a little too simple, dumb and safe, and punishing mistakes made by your opponent doesn’t seem to give a big enough reward, so at the end of the day it just feels like the game is kind of going for a “Low Risk, High Reward” type of thing which just doesn’t make sense to us and we haven’t been able to enjoy it on a technical level. It’s a real shame, because we were both hoping it’d be our new game. We’re both huge fans of the Shin Megami Tensei series and I especially love Persona 3 and 4, so I wanted P4A to be incredible, but I guess the Arksys B-team made it while their A-team was working on Blazblue Chrono Phantasma. Which, by the way, I’m hype as fuck for.
Don’t get me wrong though, P4A is fun, it’s just not what I was hoping it’d be. Not my kinda game, so my efforts are once again focussed on BB, which I have a lot more fun with. I’ll still probably play P4A on the side, though. I can’t leave Akihiko hangin’.
Anyway, attached a video of a pretty fun and somewhat crazy match me and Varga had a couple days ago. I’m still making a lot of silly mistakes and being reckless, but compared to my earlier footage, I think the improvements are noticeable. Just gotta keep at it!
Well dang, it’s about time I posted something new.
Varga and I’ve been playing a bunch lately. It’s been incredibly beneficial to simply play more. I’m approaching a point in my game where execution is becoming somewhat less of an issue, and simple lack of experience is holding me back the most. I’m not trying to brag, though. My execution is ass. It’s simply better than it used to be, to the point where in my level of play it’s not much of a concern any more. I don’t necessarily need to work on my technology, but I do most definitely need to work on understanding my character, the opponent’s character, the game mechanics and spacing/movement so that I can improve my game overall.
That said, I feel as though my footsies have taken a step up. Although a lot of my movement is still very predictable, I was able to keep Varga out consistently enough that I was able to scrape a win in this match. Still, I need to work on my predictable jumps backward (I must get air thrown about seven times in this match), and… well, I need to just get better all around.
P4A is around the corner. I’m really hoping it’s as awesome as BlazBlue. I’m planning on playing Akihiko. He just looks way too fun. Since Europe STILL has no official release date, I’m actually desperate enough at this point to import a US PS3 and US copy of P4A. Why did it have to be region locked? Well, it doesn’t matter much considering I’m moving to the US in a couple of months anyway, so the US PS3 won’t go to waste.
I can smell the win, and it’s making me hungry!
Still getting a little better! It’s taking me a while, but whatever. I’m having fun. This was a really fun match. I got off to a good start, but in the final round I missed so many chances. Dropped combos, fumbled hit confirms. Ugh. So disappointed in myself. But, I feel as though my game has improved overall. I’ve got a better sense of positioning, timing, movement, space control. I’m not saying I’m great or anything, merely better than I used to be. And I feel like it shows, if you compare this to my earlier match videos.
Anyway, I’m still putting in work. I wanna get better at this. It’s too fun not to.
I can’t explain why, but this morning I felt an overwhelming urge to make this.
‘sbeen a while, but I been playin’! Some more relatively minor improvements in this video. I’ve been trying to work on my blockstrings and hitconfirms. I feel like if I compared this to my earlier videos the improvements are definitely noticeable, so I’m feeling pretty good about it, but I know I’ve still got a long, long way to go.
Also I was way too aggressive in this video and it made my snakes easy to predict and punish. The fact that I desperately needed to take a piss was kind of making me play with a certain sense of urgency, so I feel like I can at least blame that in part, right?
Another match, maybe some more signs of improvement, small and incremental though they may be. This was a really fun game.
I’m paying more attention to my meter now, which helped me be prepared at the end of round 2 and I pulled off a decent hit confirm into hotenjin to secure the round. I made a pretty devastating drop at the end of round 3, though. It could have been the match if I hadn’t fumbled it so terribly and then failed to react in time. Although Varga could have just burst and made it all moot anyway, so it’s not saying much, but improvement is improvement. I think I did relatively well in this game compared to most of our matches in the past.
Sorry for yet another longass wait between posts. Not that anybody reads this. I’m mostly apologizing to myself for letting me down.
I’ve been keeping up the lab work in BB. I decided to drop SFxT since I just don’t enjoy it very much. I could talk forever about reasons why I think SFxT is a bad game but many people more qualified and experienced than me already have. Long story short, it’s not my game. BB is, though, and I loves me some BB.
The description on the youtube page for the above video goes into some detail about my recent BB improvement efforts, but in summary, I feel like I’ve made some solid improvements to my overall gameplay, especially when it comes to things like offensive pressure. My confidence is growing also as my familiarity with the game and with my character increases.
Currently some of my biggest problems include not paying attention to my meter and missing chances to use hotenjin, and being too predictable and relying too much on 5D snakes. I’m working on those things, and you should see some improvements in more videos soon. The one posted above is a couple weeks old by this point and I’ve gotten a little better in some ways since then.
Also: This is now BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend, since that came out since my last post. New tech, new characters! Varga is maining Relius now. We also play on the PS3 now, since we have a friend who only has a PS3 and not a 360, and we wanted to play with him, so I have an extra sparring partner and I’m hoping it’ll help me to increase my matchup knowledge.
Alright. A whole new game! A game not without issues, but whatevs. I’m having fun with it so far.
I’ve been rocking a Hwoarang/Asuka team. I initially started out wanting to play Yoshimitsu, but man… Yoshi just isn’t fun. After some frustration I stumbled on Hwoarang and Asuka and I feel like they’re a good fit for me. Hwoarang I’m happy with for sure. Asuka I haven’t put enough time into yet so I’m unsure about her options right now but she seems fun. I’m gonna put more work into her soon.
The attached video is of a casual match between myself and Varga. He’s running a Law/Rufus team. He’s as good as ever and gives me a hard time as both characters, though I’m dealing with it a little better than I was when we played shortly after launch, where he destroyed my Yoshimitsu team free every match.
I kept dropping Hwoarang’s bnb in this video. I’d gotten used to using fade away kick in the combo after chainsaw kick because it’s so easy to do, but moments before we started playing these matches I realized I could actually use standing roundhouse instead and make it consistently hit by taking a tiny step forward after chainsaw kick. I didn’t have enough time to get used to doing that though, so in these matches my hands were totally confused and kept trying to input fade away kicks and step forward standing roundhouse and it didn’t go well, hence all the drops. I should have just kept using fade away kick for the night until I’d practiced the better alternative some more, but oh well.
We still in there!
I’ve been quiet lately. My bad. I’m still working hard at improving at Blazblue. I had a character crisis for a while, became concerned that Hazama was simply too much for me to handle and too technical a character, but I kept working at it and bust through the mental fog.
Oh, since my last post CS:EX came out, too, so with the new version came a few little differences. I’ve improved my main meterless combo, my corner throw combo, I can now do some stuff after throws (thank god for that change that came with EX because I felt so impotent after throws in CS2), and I’ve also put in work on my anti-air combo and adapted my hotenjin followup to use 6C instead of 214D~C because it’s easier to land that online. It sacrifices a little damage, but I feel like it’s worth it for the extra consistency and ease when playing in lag. On top of that I’ve been working on a very basic little pressure string which seems to be quite effective. I’m sure I can do better, but for now I’ll stick with it and try to put it into effect in some actual games. It’s been a while since I’ve actually had some real matches for a variety of reasons, but I’m gonna jump in at the deep end real soon.
Also Varga picked up Relius, so I had a whole new character to learn to play against, which has been fun. I’ve got basically zero experience against characters other than Ragna and Relius right now, so when I finally work up the courage to play randoms online I’m sure it’s gonna be a shock to the system. I’ve got a loooot to learn and a long way to go, but I’m not stopping any time soon. We doin’ this!
Also, SFxT this week, so I’m sure I’ll be posting some SFxT stuff real soon too, but I won’t be dropping blazblue or anything. I am totally pumped about SFxT though, so I’ll be putting a lot of time into it.
Also also, I made a twitter account because I felt like I was missing out. I had to call it SlapdashFighter instead of Fighting, because twitter account names have a character limit. It was that or SlapdashFightin.
It’s been a long few days. I barely had time to practice this weekend so I’ve been feeling pretty down on myself about that. As a result I’m falling behind, or at least not progressing anywhere near as fast as I should be.
I’ve given myself a to-do list of specific things I really need to work on. I’ve been fumbling my timing on command throw > hotenjin a lot so I’m going to spend time working on that. There’s no excuse for me to be dropping that. I’m gonna work on my CH 214D~B combo as well. I can do it fairly consistently offline now, but I wanna keep at it until it’s more deeply ingrained in my muscle memory. I desperately need to figure out my corner throw combo, but I’m really struggling with the timing of the throw > dash 6C so it needs some serious work. And I also need to work on my anti-airing.
There’s more, but those are my priorities right now. If I can get all those things nailed down I can make some solid progress.
The attached video is another long match taken some time last week. I think it shows a marked improvement in my defense, and I was blocking a lot of mixups more consistently than before. Other than that though, I’m still dropping a lot of things, trying stuff at the wrong moments, getting baited out and generally missing a ton of opportunities. Sorry for it being yet another unmitigated shit show on my part, but I’m working on it and I’ll get better eventually and these videos should become a lot more fun to watch, I hope.
