As I mentioned earlier, lately Tatsunoko vs Capcom has completed dominated my gaming. Originally, I was planning on starting with a big summary of my history and philosophy relating to fighting games, but I’ve decided to forgo this for the sake of brevity. I will only summarize by saying that I have never been a hardcore fighter. I’ve never dove deep into the intricacies of a fighting game or learned even learned combos. My fighting experience mostly consists of casually playing games here and there and being able to, at least, pull off special moves with little-to-no difficulty. In a case of right mindset, right time, I’ve become fascinated with TvC and have set out to learn the game on a deeper level. I’ve been playing it for about 3 weeks now and while I have a long, long way to go, I can already see significant improvement.

At this point, there is a lot I could talk about. I could talk about techniques I’ve learned, techniques I’ve yet to master, finer points of the game engine, etc. For the remainder of this post I will simply introduce the characters I’ve been using in general order of usage.

Ippatsuman – One half of my main team. Ippatsuman is a great all-around fighter. He has an incredible anti-air hyper (which I need to get better at employing and work into some combos), good close range fighting, and a few tricks from a distance. Balance is his real attribute.

Saki – The other half of my team. Saki is anything but balanced. She’s an absolutely incredible long-range fighter who’s left with few options when an opponent is up in her face. She is very interesting in that some players (semi-regardless of skill) have absolutely no idea how to deal with her, while others find her weakspot quite easily. She has a brutally powerful armor-piercing hyper move. Switching between her and Ippatsuman is also advantageous and enjoyable in that they are played so differently.

Soki – I only discovered him about a week ago and he’s quickly becoming my third favorite option. His main advantage is extreme distance in his pokes, which allows for some easy basic combos. He also has great power and hp, although he seriously lacks mobility and much in the way of specials.

Morrigan – An incredible dragon punch and good projectiles along with an awkward dash, make her a pretty good alternate option. Her level 1 hypers are useless against all, but the worst players, but her level 3 hyper is great.

Ryu – We all know him. He’s extremely well-balanced and comes with an extremely familiar skillset.

Batsu – Similar to Ryu, but I find nearly all his variations disadvantageous. Used against less-skilled opponents for variety.

Chun-Li – I love her from SF2, but I don’t get along with her all that well in TvC. I pretty much only use her for fun against less-skilled opponents.

Viewtiful Joe – After using this character briefly, I don’t like him at all. Limbs are way too stubby for my tastes.

Advertisement