I have been greatly amused by the fact that playing Persona 4 Arena (P4A) is helping me get better at BlazBlue but not vice versa. I ended up playing Tyler and Shota at P4A last night, and while I feel I have a few more things down in the game, I just don’t think anything has improved when it comes to how I’m playing. I essentially forgot a lot of the basic setups that I learned (which I had to relearn while I was playing matches). And, while playing Tyler and Shota, The only thing I noticed that I improved on while playing against my friends was that my zoning with both Yukiko and Elizabeth had gotten a little better. I still only have a general idea of how both Yukiko and Elizabeth play, so I still wasn’t able to follow up any attacks that I managed to land. Oh well. I’ll probably poke at BlazBlue a little more before heading straight back into P4A training. I know I’ve invested so much time and effort into BlazBlue that the mechanics are just so natural to me, but I really should cut back so that I can focus on getting better at this new game. I know that the newest iteration of BlazBlue will probably come out next year, but that’s a long ways away to keep nursing at a game that is, for the most part, dead.
How sad. Especially since I was finally starting to get kinda decent at the game, too.
One thing I noticed while playing a couple of matches online in BlazBlue is that I am incredibly bad of utilizing anti-air attacks. I know that they’re there, and I know which attacks I can end up using if I need to defend against getting rushed down from the air. Nevertheless, my reflexes keep having me hit other buttons, which usually ends up with me getting my ass handed to me on a platter. I think I just need to break this habit. If I see an opponent trying to air dash at me to get in my defenses (especially since I play as zoning characters), I need to make it a reflex to hit with an anti-air (or block, good grief).
I still have yet to start looking into combos for the characters that I’ve been playing as the most (Teddie, Yukiko, Elizabeth). I’m not sure why I haven’t done this yet. Even if I don’t learn the most complicated of combos, I really just need to capitalize on the attacks that I do manage to pull off. In BlazBlue, it always felt so rewarding to have different options to capitalize off of when I’d get in one random hit. My friend Ryyudo mentioned to me, when I played a gauntlet of matches with him, that I was really good at getting in surprise hits, but I just never seemed to follow through after I’d get them. If I were able to capitalize off of the random hits I could get in with pretty much anything, I would increase my damage output and probably win more matches. Sure, this is a very obvious conclusion to draw, but I think this hindrance is definitely contributing to me losing a lot of my matches. I pretty much get so close in beating my opponent, but if I make just a little extra push, I think I could wreck more people consistently.
Tyler is definitely getting better at the game, though. He is doing a lot of the things that I haven’t been doing, such as consistently following up on whatever hit he happens to get in. He’s got his main and his very likely sub chosen, while I’m still at an impasse with three characters. Some days I feel better playing as Teddie. Other days I’m better with Yukiko. And I’m not able to put in enough effort to get better with one character. I’m feeling spread pretty thin, relying on primarily gimmicks and crossed fingers to get me through my matches.
Tyler and I have been training against Shota for the explicit fact that Shota’s pretty decent at using Mitsuru. Shota has played as charge characters in Street Fighter, not to mention he’s pretty good at fighters in general. And, well, Mitsuru is just scary. She’s fast, she hits hard, she has insane reach, and all of that is even without using her Persona. Shota was pretty much pounding both me and Tyler into a pulp without even really having a grasp of the game and most of the moves. He’s good enough at fighters to know when to attack, how to block, and how to capitalize on opponent mistakes.
It was brutal.
Nevertheless, I think it was good that Tyler and I played him as much as we did. Even though all Mitsurus won’t play the same, at least we’ll both have a better idea of how to avoid different types of attacks from her when we see them coming. That, and we can practice our own defenses without killing our percentages online.
The moral of this story is that I need more practice… oh, and that I need to start doing that research that I claim that I’m always going to do. ._.
Tags: BlazBlue, FGC, P4A, Video Games