fernandopa

October Assassination #3

14.8 hours

Had a blast playing Skullgirls, the oldest unplayed win on my backlog. The game is crisp, sharp, and vibrant. It looks, sounds, and plays great. It has a great vibe, and deep mechanics that can still be enjoyed by casual players, along with a lot of character variety. It's hard to not recommend this one. I definitely won't be playing it competitively anytime soon, but I enjoyed my casual play a lot!!

Steam review


RileyHisbert

Oh man, I need to pick this one back up. I think I tried it once and was terrible, but it’s been a few years since then!

fernandopa

Compared to hardcore fighters like Guilty Gear, this one felt much more accessible! I’m not a huge fighting game player and still managed to beat almost all Stories in Normal difficulty, but there are still two difficulty settings below that! Def worth taking another shot :)

Mitsukuni

That’s nice to hear. I played this game a little bit years ago and couldn’t beat the final boss no matter what in many story missions. I guess I’ll take another try soon. :)

Thanks for the report. o/

fernandopa

Marie is def a step-up on difficulty, but she also has some caveats. Her fight is always three phases - in the first, she has few attacks, and as long as you block the dragon skulls coming your way, there’s little threat in that. On the second phase she becomes VERY dangerous - a lot of attacks that throw you across the screen, and then immediately after stun-locking you. You gotta learn how to defend and quickly recover ground before pounding her, and learning how to anticipate her “shadow” attacks. The third phase has a mix-up of attacks from the other two phases, with the extra difficulty that her hitbox is high up, so low attacks won’t hit. And in each phase transition, if you’re not defending, she’ll “explode” and damage you heavily.

It’s not easy, but after beating her 13 times, you kind of get the hang of it hahaha but definitely much harder/finnicky than most other fights.

Fukua is an exception because in her story, you don’t fight Marie as the final boss - you fight Filia (another regular roster character), but with 300% health and with the difficulty on Nightmare, regardless of which difficulty you chose at the start. That was the battle that almost made me give up on the game, but it can also be cheesed, thank God hahaha

Mitsukuni

I was always dying on the third phase, because it was hard to hit her. It seems I’ll need to work on high attacks.
Currently I’m struggling with Mortal Kombat X as I stuck at one fight. On the other hand, I’m perfectly fine with Guilty Gear games or King of Fighters. I’m pretty much casual on fighters too.
I hate to find a way to cheese combat on many games but when you die tens of times, cheesing becomes the way. No shame at that. :)

fernandopa

I felt that, with most characters, combos involving HP and HK were the most effective on the third phase. They are usually slow and leave you vulnerable, but Marie doesn’t spam attacks on the third phase so it’s usually a good option, and they hit for a decent chunk of health. The biggest challenge for me was the amount of health I got to the third phase, as the second was always brutal and left me very little to manage for the last phase. You got it!

Gosh, I’ve played Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus a lot on the PS2, but never really got it. It’s so so so so complex haha the skill ceiling is too damn high. Strive looks fantastic but I don’t think I could get into it. I definitely miss the PSX days, playing SF Alpha 3 or MvC on couch multiplayer. Those were the days.

Mitsukuni

Noted, thanks!

I didn’t mean the older Guilty Gear games and you’re probably right. However Xrd ones weren’t so bad for me (though they kicked my poor ass online), but that’s all of the fighter game communities for you.

Yeah, Strive looks great. It’s kinda sad that when we finally get the game with a big discount, usually the community is already dead. Though you can always find die-hard fans, though those usually aren’t fair fights.