In order to prevent myself from getting hypersaturated on Persona 4 Arena (P4A) this early, I end up spending the occasional day switching back to BlazBlue to see if my P4A endeavors are helping or hindering my overall fighting game progress. Since P4A is my main game right now, I’m really not all that concerned with my percentage in ranked matches when it comes to BlazBlue. I was also curious to see if the BlazBlue community was still alive at this point. So, last night, I hopped on Network Mode and played a couple of ranked matches.
I probably should have warmed up before hopping right into ranked matches. I managed to win the first match I played, but I ended up losing the match I played right after that. I played against the same person both games, but my movements, moves, and rhythm was so clunky for both games that it was almost embarrassing. It should have been a complete domination, but it was pretty pathetic on my end.
I played one more match after that (which I lost), but I didn’t feel so bad since the lag was so bad that there was almost a two second delay between me pressing the button and the move registering on screen. I’m amazed I even was able to deal any damage to the other person. It was pretty dismal.
I warmed up a bit after that by playing a couple games of Abyss mode. Let me tell you, if there’s one thing I love about BlazBlue and playing as Lambda-11, it is definitely the brutality of my corner combos. For the average player, my corner combos seem rather overwhelming and near impossible to get out of. Of course, as I was watching my execution, I noticed that there is a pretty convenient loophole out. But for the most part, I can get a significant chunk of damage in without so much as any effort. What I also like about my corner combos is that they’re heavy on mixups. Even though I’m doing all the motions reflexively, the motions aren’t the same every single time. Apparently somewhere along the way, I got to the point where I could evaluate my spacing and use the appropriate moves as to where the pressure stays constant. Oh! Not to mention that, if the appropriate string happens, the combo resets so that proration doesn’t do as much harm as it could. Usually these resets happen so fast that the opponent doesn’t have enough time to react before the combo starts again.
That made me happy.
My blocking is improved from when I was playing BlazBlue seriously last, too. I find myself being on the defensive a bit more often and punishing openings appropriately. This doesn’t happen as often as I’d like (I do tend to drop my blocking a bit early sometimes), but I’m starting to see the rhythm in attacks and where I can capitalize off of my opponent’s mistakes or inexperience.
For some reason, I get more stressed out playing online matches in BlazBlue than I do in P4A. I still have yet to figure out why this is the case.
After Abyss mode and another network match (which I lost to a really high-level player), I went in Challenge mode to see if I got better at BlazBlue combos.
Hey! Look at that! I was able to do one of Ragna’s aerial combos, one of Jin’s aerial combos, and one of Jin’s timing specific combos that I couldn’t do before.
Almost all my Lambda combos are pretty solid, too. I rarely, if ever, mess up my aerial finishers with Lambda. I’ve also been finding other moves that I never realized combo together, too. Huh. Figures that this happens when I stop playing BlazBlue, huh?
Going back to P4A tonight. Let’s see if I can start getting better at this game…
Tags: BlazBlue, FGC, Video Games