The Misadventures of a Loli and Her Bucket

Wow, has it been that long since I last updated? Time sure manages to fly.

Since my last update, I have been in a serious love/hate relationship with Persona 4 Arena (P4A). Some days I feel really good about the progress that I’m making in the game. Other days, I feel like I just want to quit playing the game entirely. For the longest time, I couldn’t find just one character that I was comfortable with (if you couldn’t tell from all the posts that I’ve made regarding the game). I’d do really well with one character one day, and then the next I would feel like I didn’t have a single clue as to what I was doing with said character. I was satisfied then frustrated then satisfied again. Even though the mechanics were getting more and more cemented in my head, I still felt as if I wasn’t getting what I was looking for from the game. By this point, I decided that I needed to either decide on a character or just accept that I wasn’t going to improve in the game. Trying to remember the mechanics for three characters all at the same time while you’re learning a game is definitely not an effective way of learning the game. Especially when you’re already confusing things as they are with just one character.

Much to my surprise, I ended up settling on Elizabeth as a character. I was going to stick with Yukiko, but a lot of her combos seemed too fast for me to hold on to. Her moves made a lot of sense to me, and I loved the flexibility that I have with her setting up traps and keeping a ranged game… but I feel that her mechanics are just too complicated for me right now when I have a tournament around the corner. I may pick her up later on in the game, but right now I need to focus on someone who I feel solid with. That character happens to be Elizabeth.

I’m a little nervous, of course. Out of all the characters in the game, Elizabeth has the least amount of health. She also has a lot of mechanics that require a significant setup… and, in turn, also require a significant amount of risk. As most of my fighting game friends know, I tend to get in people’s faces a lot in fighting games, and my blocking leaves something more to be desired. I’m taking a pretty heavy gamble here playing as Elizabeth, but she’s the only character who I genuinely say that I feel the most comfortable with as of this very moment.

Her combos actually feel like they make sense to me. Rehearsing and rehashing her combos doesn’t feel like a chore–I actually feel like I’m learning something. The timing doesn’t feel sloppy to me. Her aerial combos are actually interesting, fun, and possible for me to do. While, as I said before, I can see myself probably picking up someone else as a strong secondary to make up for what I’m lacking right now, but I think I’m going to be sticking with Elizabeth through the tournament that’s coming up.

This is still scary. Don’t get me wrong. Out of all the characters I play online, Elizabeth has the lowest win percentage. I’m feeling that this is going to change, though, since the last two matches I played as Elizabeth in, I ended up winning. I usually don’t win matches with her. And, from what I can tell, people at this initial level are actually rather intimidated by my Elizabeth. And this is all after two or three days of seriously training with her.

I think if I keep up my game with her, that I am going to be something that might actually be worth fearing in this game. Sure, it takes me a little while to get the grasp of things in the game (after all, the only fighting game that I’ve ever really taken seriously in a long time has been BlazBlue), but I think I’m learning faster than I’m giving myself credit for.

I think the thing that has benefited me the most is that I’ve finally settled down on one character. When I was flip-flopping between three characters, I never found myself actually learning combos with the characters that I was playing as. I was really good at getting pokes in on my opponents, but when I’d get something going, I would never have the ability to string something together to punish the pokes I was able to get in. I could do this with all three of my characters, but after that? I was pretty much SOL.

Sure, the combo training is helping. It’s helping quite a bit, as a matter of fact. I don’t think it would have helped nearly as much if I didn’t just stop messing around with so many characters, though. There’s so much depth to Elizabeth’s play style, and I don’t think I would have been able to grasp any of this if I didn’t start taking playing as one character more seriously. I might actually have a decent chance if I keep on grinding this game out before the tournament.

Of course, I can already see Ryyu pounding my face in, but I think I’ll actually be able to hold my own if I keep up what I’m doing thus far. 😛

Lesson #1: Playing Persona 4 Arena (P4A) while drinking makes me less stressed out during matches, but I seem to get really reckless in what I can do. Not to mention any sense of performing combos seems to go right out the window. I still won a couple matches, but man, I ended up losing a lot of matches, too.

My win/loss ratio in P4A is nothing to marvel at, especially since most of my matches have been played while under the influence of alcohol… or have been played by my friends when they’ve just been hanging out while we’ve all been drinking. Most of my best matches have been on Tyler’s PSN account. My win/loss ratio with Teddie on there is better than on my own personal account. I’ve also noticed that I can play better as Teddie on his account, but I do a lot better with Yukiko on my own personal account.

I’m really starting to like playing as Yukiko. Even though I was so bad at it with Lambda-11 in BlazBlue, I seem to do a really good job of it with Yukiko. I love setting up traps, I love tricking the opponent into falling for my traps, and I love endlessly harassing my opponents with Yukiko’s fans. It’s almost, in a way, worse than me trolling online as Teddie. Teddie’s unblockable is annoying for sure, but few things annoy people as much as me not letting the opponent get close to me because I’m endlessly pelting them with Yukiko’s fans from every direction humanly possible.

I also actively started using my anti-air attacks with my characters, which has also effectively improved my game just a little bit. It seems like a lot of scrubby players were catching a lot of people off guard just by air dashing in instead of just mashing A. Now I seem to be doing a lot better against people who just mash A and people who just air dash in then mash A. At least this is somewhat comforting.

I ended up doing a lot of research on the mechanics of the game on Friday before getting some training in. This was probably one of the most beneficial things that I’ve done since getting the game. Since I understand a lot more of the mechanics of the game, I have a better idea of how to play against other characters. It is still a lot to think about, and I do still freeze up when I’m trying to process a bunch of pieces of information as rapidly as I need to, but I’m feeling good that I can take the knowledge that I’ve obtained so far to apply to my game. I just need to take the time to feel it out before it becomes second nature.

I’ve been a little distracted since I recently picked up Sleeping Dogs, but I can’t let my training falter any time soon. Gotta keep reading, gotta start practicing the combos I researched, and I gotta keep playing other people to get a better feel of what I can get away with. I should probably start watching more match videos and streams, while I’m at it…