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. 😛
Tags: FGC, P4A, Video Games