GUILTY GEAR STRIVE: Learning I-NO | Week 1

If you have played a fighting game before, you are well aware that everyone learns things about these games very differently and at varying speeds. I am a particularly slow learner in fighting games. This is by far my most favourite genre and that’s not in spite of being slow to learn in fighting games, but because of it. During the first month of Guilty Gear Strive I was pretty much playing every day; eventually making it to the Celestial Floor. In the second month I made it back to the Celestial Floor by Day 7 or so, after which I switched to Sol. That did not work out for me. I adore Ramlethal’s visuals, but her playstyle really didn’t mesh with me in the long run. While I think Sol looks boring as hell, everyone kept saying how much fun he is to play. Broken as he may be, I did not have fun playing him. It was so bad in fact, that I stopped playing the game completely by July 16th and didn’t touch it again until August 8th. August 8th is also the day when I did my first matches with I-NO.

I-NO is mad fun

I am not exaggerating when I say that I-NO is ridiculously fun. For me anyways. Visually speaking she really wouldn’t be my first pick; but I’d rank her the third most interesting looking character on the roster. If she still had her old design, she probably wouldn’t even make top 10 though. Whatever the case, none of this really matters! What does matter is her gameplay, which is what I am having a blast with. The way I input her attacks is still a little suspect, as I keep mistiming hover dashes and 6H. I also still struggle with the fact that she doesn’t have a normal dash. Nonetheless, being able to start to apply the constant high low mixup, instead of being on the receiving end of it, is really enjoyable. I’ve actually managed to even get some BnBs going in the corner. Something that I didn’t manage to ever really do in the entirety of my playtime from the game’s launch until July 16th with either Ram or Sol. 

Losses = EXP

I said I was having fun, but the first day was not a pretty sight. Actually even the second day wasn’t, but the first day in particular I went out with 21 losses back to back and not a single victory. I did make some improvements during the all you can eat humble pie buffet. I kept confusing 236K and 214K in the beginning, 236K obviously doing nothing on the ground. This got better as the matches progressed. I also started using 236S and 236H (Stroke), which didn’t go over as smoothly as I thought it would. People can use and abuse that on me for free, but I kept getting smacked out of it before it even really moved anywhere. So there’s absolutely some labbing to do when and how to use it correctly. On hit and stagger I remembered to go into 5K xx 214K and I overall started to respond better whenever Nago started to go into his Beyblade shenanigans. I still lost twenty times to him. The very first loss of the day was against a random Zato. That’s where the 21 losses came from in total, the match against Zato was actually a rather close one, the Nago matches were anything but. I hadn’t eaten this many perfects in a very long time. That was it for the first day though. Which also brings me to my overall “approach” to learning a new character. 

Actually learning to play I-NO

What I do for the first day, week or even month depending on how slow I am when learning a new character or game; doesn’t matter! I straight up ignore all the feedback the game gives me in terms of winning or losing and keep my focus on answering just one question: “Am I currently having fun playing this character?”. As long as I can keep answering that question with a resounding yes, all I need and want to do is to keep playing. While I am playing, I am figuring out which buttons to press and what those buttons actually do. My “wins” in the beginning tend to be successfully anti airing, to successfully hit confirm, to land a full combo without dropping it, to punish an unsafe move and a lot of other things. Once I get all of these little individual aspects levelled up, that’s when I start thinking about upping my win ratio.

BnBs & Combos

You obviously always want to do the sickest stuff you’ve seen online, but realistically speaking you can’t until you understand how to open up your opponent. I’ve gone over this topic in one of my older videos (embedded above) and nothing has really changed in how I approach this subject. With I-NO I did actually go out of my way to just learn some of her basic BnBs, but you don’t have to. Learning how to play and then learning combos, or the other way around doesn’t really make much of a difference. What I would say is to at least not waste your entire spare time on learning combos in preparation to play, because that combo will be useless for quite some time to come until, yes I am going to repeat myself here, you understand how to open up your opponent. The most basic analogy I can think of is this:

“A learned combo is ammunition, bullets if you will, but without a gun to threaten your opponent with, these bullets are absolutely useless.”

Closing words

Simply by recognising some of the problems I had on day 1, the second day started to look a lot more positive and by day 3 I even started to feel relatively comfortable with I-NO. Granted, just by looking at how I am playing, there’s still more wrong than right, like a lot more wrong than right. Progress is progress though and most importantly, I decide what progress actually is for myself. Some random person telling me that I suck because of X, Y and Z isn’t really going to be news to me, because I literally just started learning this character or game. I’ve included the stream of my third day down below, feel free to skim through it. 

I guess what I am trying to convey is that if you enjoy the game you’re playing but you’re not having fun for some unknown reason, don’t be afraid to try different things. I knew that Ramlethal simply wasn’t as fun as I wanted her to be for me, so the decision to go around shopping for another character came relatively easy. Maybe taking a break and getting off the grind might help, maybe playing a different game for a while, or something else entirely.

Have fun and enjoy what you’re doing! See you next time.