The Longest Grind 02 - Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R

The Longest Grind 02 – Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R

Click here for a brief summary on my personal blog series.

Author’s Note

I am not an expert in fighting games, so feel free to comment if I have provided any incorrect information. I have also gathered some information from Dustloop’s wiki to explain some of Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R mechanics.

Not a Storied Past

I know of the Guilty Gear franchise in the past, but the only game I owned and played before Accent Core Plus was Guilty Gear X2 on the PlayStation 2. I enjoyed playing the game for the brief time I had it, fighting against my brother and cousins and constantly getting frustrated in arcade mode. I was sad when Arc System Works lost the Guilty franchise when they were owned(?) by Sega Sammy and moved on to produce BlazBlue. Luckily, they bought the franchise back and are able to re-release past games as well as produce more games for the future. As for me, my not-too-long Guilty Gear history picks up again with Accent Core Plus and the R patch update.

There Ain’t No Hitchhikers Guide to GGXXAC+R

Many games this past generation now include a tutorial and combo challenge mode for new players to learn some of the game’s mechanics and learn certain character combos. You won’t find that here in AC+R. There are mechanics that are essential to learn for players who want to excel in the game which I will touch upon later in this blog post. In the meantime, the best sources I can refer to start learning GGXXAC+R is a mixture of reading online sources (Dustloop particularly), solo training, and fighting and conversing with other folks who are willing to spar and provide assistance.

Five Finger Button Setup

Unlike ASW’s other fighters with uses four attack buttons, or in Street Fighter where it uses six attack buttons, Guilty Gear uses five attack buttons. Each button is assigned a unique attack function: P (punch), K (kick), S (slash), HS (hard slash), and D (dust). I had a ton of trouble finding the right button configuration that felt comfortable to play on my fight stick. I’ve settled on two configurations that I felt comfortable with on the two characters I play as the most. For my main character Jam, I settled in and got comfortable using the default Guilty Gear arcade configuration. The top row consisting of K / S / HS and the bottom row using P / x / D. For my side character Bridget, I prefer to use the “P4A” configuration with P / S / D and K / HS. It took me a long time before I settled into those two configurations with my two most played characters. I’d like to maybe learn another character, and that’ll be more soul searching in finding the right configuration with that character.

Implementing the Mechanics

I haven’t used much of the advanced gameplay elements during my bouts in GGXXAC+R, but I realize in playing matches with other folks and watching high-level play that implementing these elements are essential and employed often in matches. Arc System Works carried most of these elements to their other fighting game franchises (Persona 4 Arena, BlazBlue), but it seems to have more importance in Guilty Gear. I’ll do my best to explain these mechanics and their uses.

Roman Cancel – For 50% meter, Roman Cancels allows the player to immediately cancel an attack after it is performed. RCs have many uses in GG, from extending combos, continuing block-string pressure, or safely getting back into neutral after performing an unsafe attack. I’ve seen Roman Cancels used frequently in other ASW games (Rapid Cancel in BlazBlue and One More Cancel in Persona 4 Arena) and a big tool for high-level play to get the most out of a combo and uses in number of other situations.

Force Roman Cancel – There are specific moves that if Roman Canceled at the right time, only costs the player 25% meter instead of 50%. The best way to find out which moves can be FRC is to go into training mode with the input data on. While performing attacks, the button data row flashes blue. Performed at the right time, the fighter will emit a blue light, indicating that an FRC has been performed instead of an RC. It carries the same purposes that RC does, plus additional advantages such as use after a projectile and feign attacks that may cause an opponent to open up their guard for an opening.

Dead Angle – Dead Angle is Guilty Gear talk for guard cancel, where the fighter will employ an attack that knocks their opponent back while blocking for 50% meter. A lot of other fighting games employ guard cancel at a cost of meter, but I haven’t used this particular mechanic a ton so far in Guilty Gear. I’m still learning the set-ups and strings from my opponents to see how they are, so I’m still mostly reliant on reading correctly and blocking attacks. Maybe once I’m more familiar with the character attack set-ups and routes, I can employ Dead Angle more often.

Slashback – I haven’t seen this gameplay element employed much, but Slashback is Guilty Gear’s parry mechanic. In order for the Slashback to work, the fighter has to employ the mechanic at the same time when their opponent performs their attack, similar to how Street Fighter III’s parry mechanic is performed. Slashback is valuable tool if a player is confident in executing it during the course of the match and shifts the momentum back to the player if successful. There are limitations and drawbacks for an unsuccessful Slashback attempt, which makes it a high risk/high reward move to make.

Dust – The specific Guilty Gear mechanic that probably gave birth to the popular anime fighting game website and has its own dedicated button, Dust is an overhead attack that shoots the opponent high into the air from the ground and allows the fighter to perform numerous attacks in the air that are all cancelable. But I recently learned that there are two types of Dust attacks.

The normal Dust attack is when the opponent is hit from the ground, thrown high into the air with the player jumping high with the opponent, and the background transitions over to a blue background with sakura leaves.

The second type of Dust attack is called an Impossible Dust. To perform an impossible dust, the fighter first connects the dust attack and then quickly hits the opponent as they are going airborne at a certain number of frames. The attack at the right moment does two things, it prevents the opponent from going any higher and makes them fall back down (and preventing the dust background transition from occurring), but more importantly, it further prevents the opponent’s ability to recover which allows the fighter to continue the impossible dust combo.

There is one additional function that the Dust button has that is very important in Guilty Gear. 2D in Guilty Gear is Sweep, where it always knocks down the opponent if the attack connects. Knock downs in Guilty Gear are extremely important, as it gives the offensive player numerous options to attack the opponent. It’s huge for characters with an okizeme, where the offensive player throws out an attack that the recovering player must block, and then block the offensive player’s follow-up attack. It’s still important for those who do not have an okizeme, just to keep frustrating the defensive player and keeping them on their toes.

Two Different Species (P4A vs. GGXXAC+R)

Arc System Works eased the high learning barrier that fighting games typically have by simplifying some core fighting game mechanics in Persona 4 Arena. Almost every normal is easily cancelable, all specials are 214/236 motions with the exception of Mitsuru and one Shadow Labrys special move, and all super moves are 214214/236236 motions. P4A is also lenient with inputs, where if you are close in inputting the motion and button, the special/super will be performed. For those who are only interested in the story of P4A, folks can simply mash the A button to perform an auto-combo. Guilty Gear is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to accessibility.

Guilty Gear has each character have different command normal, special, and super commands, which is only one part that makes GG hard to gain a grasp at first. All character have some sort of command normal attack, each one serves the character in different ways. There are a variety of different command specials, ranging from the 421/623 dragon punch motion, all the way to half-circles. Super move commands can go as far as double half-circles, quarter-circle to half-circle, and even 720 motions. To add into the frustration, you have to input the motion and hit the button with utmost precision or the character will perform something else. I get frustrated whenever I am inputting special and super moves and get nothing.

Guilty Gear also forces the player to know what can cancel into another move for their character. Some normal attacks cannot cancel into another normal, other normal attacks can only cancel into a certain normal attack. The same applies to normal to special, special to normal, normal to super, special to super, etc. Roman Cancels and Force Roman Cancels can help players connect certain commands into another. It’s another long list to learn on top of executing properly and implementing the other gameplay mechanics to at least be competent in Guilty Gear.

A Different Kind of Frentic Speed and Action

I found Persona 4 Arena’s action to be very frantic and fast though my own personal gameplay experiences and watching numerous high-level matches through online streams. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core matches I found to be equally as fast, but even more frantic in terms on action on the screen. I’m a lot more active on my fight stick in a Guilty Gear match than on pad/stick in P4A. It’s not only the constant motions of specials and supers that make it much more frantic, there’s also seems to be more importance on movement here than in P4A. I see a lot of moving back and forth with tons of jumps/air dashes in matches in which player determine which is the best course of action to get in to mount an offense, or to back out just out of range defensively then to find a way back in on offense. I do a lot of jumping around going in and out in both P4A and in GG as I play rushdown characters that lack range, but I found myself doing it a ton more in GG where it seems like Jam has to go through a lot more obstacles in the way than in P4A, where I feel like I can hold my ground a bit better with Chie.

Combos Really Hurt

Learning the best combo during the course of a match is important to deal the most damage as possible at the most opportune time in a fighting game. All ASW games have long-winding combos that deal a considerable amount of damage, but the ones done in Guilty Gear REALLY hurt. You won’t see the high hit combo counts in GG compared to BB and P4A, but you’ll see the most damaging combo can easily deal more than half of a character’s health. Jam’s corner BnB combo uses all three of her powered-up cards to deal massive damage, while her ground and dust combos also deal some nice damage.

Cut Copy

I love to see the many aesthetic and gameplay elements that Arc System Works carried over to the other two fighting game franchises, BlazBlue and Persona 4 Arena. P4A borrows a lot of the advanced mechanics from GG: gold/blue burst, burst meter, dead angle/guard cancel, roman cancel/one more cancel, force break/ex specials. BlazBlue also carries dead angle/guard cancel and roman cancel/rapid from Guilty Gear, but differs in burst function from GG/P4A. It’s amazing that each game plays so differently even though they share most of the advanced gameplay elements.

It’s also neat to see what animations ASW copied over to the other games. I see a couple of similar moves shared by Jam and Chie, my main characters I fight as in their respective fighting games. Both of them have a dragon kick, though Jam’s goes horizontal, has two versions (normal and powered up), and is used in her BnB corner combo, while Chie’s goes horizontally, not great to use stand alone, and is rarely used in combos and in the course of play. (I use it seldomly.) Jam’s 2HS and Chie’s third part of her auto-combo share the somersault attack. Chie copies Bridget’s throw and running animations. Folks who have played a ton of time between all three ASW games can see where things from GG have been carried over to BB/P4A.

Giant Bomb Rage Quit Weekly Crew

I pretty much spent all of my online bouts in Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R against the Giant Bomb Rage Quit Weekly Crew. I’d say all of them got quite the upper hand over me, though I managed to get some wins here and there against them and getting in some close matches overall. I’ve been finding it tough going up against the opposition in terms of getting close to them while dealing with their shenanigans. I liken trying to get in close against the crew like playing a side-scrolling shooter, going through the bullet hell to get in close and hit the targets.

MikeFightNight is running a weekly Giant Bomb Guilty Gear tournament and has run through six weeks of tournaments as of this week. I haven’t been able to participate every week the tournaments have been held due to work and other things, but I try to participate as much as possible. So far, it’s only been a small group of folks participating holding down the weeklies with others coming in here and there. The tournament just got one new person to enter this past week. We’ll see if the tournament can be sustained as the year moves along and if we get more members to play on a regular basis. I’ve had fun participating on the weeks I am able to in the middle of constant stress of work and life.

I got eliminated pretty quickly in this week’s tournament, so I went ahead and produced a Google spreadsheet on ranking the folks who participated in the tournament.

GIANT BOMB FIGHT NIGHT: RAGE QUIT WEEKLY WORKSHEET

I Saw the X-rd Sign and It Opened Up My Eyes

Out of Arc System Works’ latest projects from their three fighting game franchises, Guilty Gear Xrd is the one I am excited for the most. Ever since its first trailer shown from ASW’s 25^th anniversary event last year, I’m in awe on the amount of work and care ASW seems to have undertook in developing GG Xrd. The 3D character models look amazing disguised as 2D along with the 3D winding camera with dust and being built upon the Unreal Engine. GG Xrd seems to have gotten great reception so far in Japanese arcades and the new characters Bedman and Ramlethal Valentine continues GG’s run in wonderful and nutty character design. Xrd seems to be the least problematic out of ASW’s games in terms of bugs and balance. BlazBlue Chrono Phantasma had issues with Kokonoe that they developed a patch to severely downgrade her numerous advantages against the rest of the cast, while Persona 4 Arena Ultimax had bugs and severe character balance issues. My only hope is that ASW will expand the cast of playable characters once the console version is being made available, along with competent netcode with player lobbies.

Mashing and Mashing, Dust to Dust

I’m far from being a good Guilty Gear player and the game is formidable to get a grasp on, but playing a frantic game with a zany cast of characters and dealing with their antics on the play against other GB duders have been fun. GG Xrd is the most anticipated new fighting game that I’m looking forward to and folks who love playing GG are really passionate and are supporting the game as much as possible ahead of Xrd’s impending release. The franchise has gone through its rough patch with a slew of unusual releases and being locked away from Arc Systems Works by Sega Sammy for some time, but it’s got through its tough times and looks to find a nice resurgence with Xrd. I’ll be right there in the wings, along with thousands of others.

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Previous The Longest Grind Entries

01 - Persona 4 Arena