Yiceman

Both. I wanted a character with good projectiles. She has the best projectiles in the game. She just rides them, is all. Not that I'm set on a main yet, I'm still futzing around with Axel and Ram too.

I've been enjoying May a lot in Strive, especially with her new voice actor, Latif.

Invited over a friend who also knew nothing about Strive to play some games together and had a blast. I tried most of the cast, and had the most success playing like a total asshole with May and Axel, but also enjoyed Ram a good deal. I think I had the most fun trying to figure out Jack-o, but I kind of feel like pursuing that as my first Guilty Gear character might be ill advised. I'll keep at it.

Alright, they were on sale on PSN so I pulled the trigger on buying Strive, finally (with shill pass included). Now to figure out who to play. And also how GG works in general...

Dope, about time. I never played the Ultimax version.

I don't need a Rose clone, I just know what I usually have the most fun with. I tried every single character in UMVC3 but always gravitated back to Taskmaster, because I had the most fun with him. But say I liked sniping in shooters, and you wanted me to play a FPS where everyone just had shotguns and rocket launchers, I might be a little skeptical, y'know? I'd try it out, just not for $60 bucks. The amount I'm willing to pay for a game like this depends on the amount of fun I reasonably think I would have with it.

Trying out new things is easy. I'm just not about to drop 60 bucks on it unless I think I'd have fun. Wanna buy me a copy? I'll try the shit out of the whole roster.

Yeah Ky looks a little too Anime Protagonist for me. Happy Chaos piqued my interest at first, because gun, but then I watched the previews and they were like "use gun to get close and mixup/setplay" so meh... I don't know anything about Ram except for the thirsty thigh memes. Maybe I'll check out some footage.

I was hoping a Persona 5 Arena was one of their announcements last night, myself. The Strive top 8 was pretty enjoyable, even for someone like me who doesn't know much about the game. I want to get into it, but I still don't feel like any of the cast really match my style. I like spacing/zoning characters with safe pressure, but everyone seems so aggro and setplay focused in that game. Except for Axl, but I've always preferred fireballs over big buttons/weak up close characters.

With great ease, malice and conviction.

I think the most fun thing about Luke and his "massive impact" on the Street Fighter series moving forward is going to be seeing the developers gradually conceding that they missed the mark and phasing him out of the series. There's almost no chance this guy takes off as one of SF's more iconic characters. I still don't hate him as much as useless characters like Blanka and Kage though. I hope to never see their like in SF6.

Yeah I was getting a ton of DPs when I meant to do QCF, especially since most of the combos seem to be chaining into a forward command normal cancelled into a special. It's even more sensitive than Street Fighter in that regard.

Some of these inputs are super goofy. QCB - HCF kick for a super? So far I'm liking BigHands Shun'ei and Chizuru with the clones.

I think that's just what a KOF noob like me needed, thank you based MonkeyMan.

Sorry man, that's always rough. I'm gonna try this beta, even though I've never played a KOF before. Hopefully there's some kind of basic tutorial and I don't have to learn on the fly.

Wasn't able to watch much of the RedBull Kumite live, but watching it now really makes me realize how much I've missed offline events. You don't get BrianF sheepishly admitting he won via an input error in an online event. I was even getting hype watching GG Strive and Tekken, and I don't know anything about those games.

Yeah you too. I've been so swamped lately I haven't had much drive for fighting games, but we should play again soon. I'm feeling the itch to get back on the train.

@Darc_RequiemI just accidentally made my friend ragequit with my Eleven-Akira, lol. So if you wanna play now...

I'm down with Ruby Heart Rose, can't wait to see some different colors.

After my time playing yesterday I think Rose has a decent matchup against both Akira and Oro. Neither of them have the buttons to match up with her on the ground it feels like, and she can beat out Oro's zoning with his v-skill 1. The new buff she has to Soul Punish, allowing it to detonate and knock down when it interacts with an enemy fireball, is outstanding. Some people were upset she lost reflect, but I firmly believe, especially after this buff, Soul Punish is a way stronger fireball deterrent. I fought an Oro who was actually very solid (for ultra silver) and definitely seemed to want to back up and throw fireballs and v-skill orb to make me come to him. I could just drop a Soul Punish on him when he tried to v skill and he'd get blown off his feet. The knock down let me easily set up another one or turn on Soul Satellite. Then he tried to jump in, tried to bait my anti air with double jump. Soul Bind bodied the double jump. From there it was just a matter of smacking him with standing heavy punch until victory. Speaking of Soul Bind, the new buffs to that are great as well. I snagged a Honda doing a cross-up butt-slam with the light Soul Bind. *chef's kiss*

Trying to make myself play some ranked even though it makes me anxious, and just fought an Akira who did the heavy rush punch at 99 seconds round start every single time. Every. Single. Time. I blocked and punished the first time, because I thought a random silver Akira might do that. Got hit the second time because I didn't think he'd do it again. Then I neutral jumped and full combo punished it the next 6 rounds straight. Dude had full Akira launcher combos and Daigo set-ups, but never stopped doing that. Ranked is wild, man.

https://www.twitch.tv/capcomfighters Sounds like we can expect a lot of day 1 Oro and Akira play here.

I thought it meant that too, but I think it's just odd wording. I tried it in training mode and you couldn't cancel the recovery of any specials, even on hit, into v-skills. I think when it says there "can be canceled into from a special cancel" they just meant any normal that's special cancelable can go into v-skill. It lets you do things like cr mk into card toss, and since cards have better frame advantage it's a viable tool to use in footsies. V-skill 2 seems like it's still hard to set up, though I suppose you could squeeze in a cheeky st hp into orb summon against a timid player.

Damn, Rose actually got several good buffs. The Soul Punish orb, if detonated by an enemy fireball, actually causes a knockdown and 20 more damage now, and both her v-skills can be cancelled into from normals. The cards have much better frame advantage and can hit airborn enemies too.

That's such a nice little buff, there's been so many time the basic BnB misses because of the low range of cr mp. Good shit, Capcom.