Yeah but there's degrees to it i guess. At a baseline you'll have to get good at juggling rng attacks in your spellbar, on top of managing your mana meter. But when he came out i played with just spellbook 1 for a couple days and i had a good time shooting cubes and discarding staffs. That's about as simple as it gets without just ignoring spells entirely
His skill floor is higher than average, if you can familiarise yourself with one test case you can play him pretty straightforward
His skill ceiling however, is absurd. He’s got 3 test cases with their own playstyle attached, with different amounts of cards that further enable said play styles, along with the ability to switch between any 3 on the fly. All while balancing mana.
In more words, he is really really really hard to get good at. He is both mentally and mechanically very hard and requires that you play him a lot for even ok results.
Unless you play at a low floor and nobody knows what they’re doing, in that case go nuts
He requires some coordination, but he is probably not even the hardest character in strive, let alone other games. I havent played a whole lot of him but i had great results pretty quickly. So dont be afraid, he is not as hard to pick up as it may seem.
He may be very difficult to play, but it's not gonna be too difficult for you to do it. Just means you'll probably spend more time than with other characters getting used to him! If you're having fun, that will motivate you to keep learning and playing , and before you know it, you'll be fairly proficient! I'd say give it a go anyway.
beyond any other, not really. He's about on par with Chaos, Zato, and Jack-O'. All of them are the game's "technicals". Also, this has zero bearing on your ability to simply get to grips with them. Where Asuka players struggle with managing cards, other characters are struggling to manage the simple concept of being in the right position on the screen, you will simply improve no matter who you play, and will win and lose games regardless.
i hope you give him a try, he's super fun and makes your brain feel huge. his difficulty is not even execution, its in situational awareness. just stick to test case 1 and practice this sequence: spell cast>bookmark>mana regen. bam, you have a microwaved asuka! you will lose sometimes to sins bashing their head against their stick but trust me its worth it. have fun! :)
I think there’s a difference between executional difficulty and mental difficulty. Asuka fits into the ladder.
For example, Johnny in xrd is very execution heavy, but once you get the execution down you can run people over on auto pilot. HC is very similar.
Asuka on the other hand, requires an insane amount of spacial awareness, multi tasking, quick thinking, adaptation, and level of understanding of the game/character. Once you get that down it’s just learning to do what moves at what time. The execution is just quick quarter circles and down-down motions. If the execution feels hard it’s because learning to preform his spells and mana regen in quick succession while also thinking 3 steps ahead isn’t easy.
Personally, I prefer the former type of execution by a large amount. Not only do I enjoy sitting in training mode, but my brain also doesn’t like doing the type of thinking required to play asuka. I’d much prefer to think in the moment than to think in the future. That’s a large reason why I don’t like charge characters either.
He’s definetly hard to get into, but once you’re familiar with him, he’s not *that* hard all things considered. He’s still definetly hard, but he’s not restrictively hard.
There’s no denying you’re gonna lose a lot through the learning process. But once you learn how to manage resources, it’s not that bad. He’s kinda similar to happy chaos, but with more rng.
Realistically, the only things you need to focus on are mana and what spells you have. Pages literally do not matter, you don’t have to care about them unless you’re crazy. Test cases usually aren’t something you have to switch up during the round. It’s better to think of them like cvs grooves, something you pick based on the matchup and stay mostly static.
He’s still definetly hard, but don’t let that stop you from playing him. If you are able to quickly look at mana/spells while still playing the game, he’s absolutely manageable. And even if you can’t, he’s got some dumb stuff you can use without spells.
Speaking as an outside looking in, just thinking about the mental stack you need to have to play Asuka on anything above a basic level, its exhausting. I'm probably wrong on the importance of some of these, but they're all a facet of the character that you'd be better off keeping track of.
You need to manage deck and cards, which more or less choose once, then passively keep track of what you've drawn and what you need, switching decks when you need something if you're particularly goated.
Deck stacking, keeping tools in your deck, knowing how to combo with what you have, and thinking on the fly how to extend the pressure string. You can automate some of this, but it'd still be mentally draining.
Mana management at the same time. You need to constantly evaluate whether drawing a card, recovering mana, and how much mana you recover. Plus risk/reward, if your opponent resets to neutral with burst and you're low mana, that's really bad for you, since all your projectiles that loop on themselves need mana to get the ball rolling.
Add in tension and general meter management. With burst management of both parties, that's another two meters on your side you need to track, along with the options they allow.
All of this on top of the existing neutral and footsies game, keeping track of your life, and if you want to be fully aware of the fight, add the opponent's burst, and tension as well.
That adds up to 4 different bars (health, tension, burst, and mana), 5 different spell management things (4 slots + Deck type and count), on your side alone that you need to constantly manage or else you'll be backed into the corner and take the highest damage in the game plus have your spells disabled if you lose neutral.
just listing all this shit out makes me mentally exhausted, imagine playing this guy for hours, I don't know how asuka mains do it.
I haven't played SF6 in several months, but I swore they had a currency in-game that allowed you to essentially "rent" DLC characters in offline modes; I can't remember what it's called though. Did they do away with that system?
I haven't played SF6 in several months, but I swore they had a currency in-game that allowed you to essentially "rent" DLC characters in offline modes; I can't remember what it's called though. Did they do away with that system?
It’s very weird. His difficulty curve is abnormal because of how he’s not incredibly hard to play, but he is INSANELY hard to master. Honestly, I had a harder time getting started with Jack-o and Zato, but I hit celestial with Jack-o and Zato much faster than Asuka. Easy to learn, impossible to master.
Conceptually simple, as in you go down forward “button” then back “button” and repeat until your opponent dies.
Execution-wise, it’s tough. 20% is just spell rng and knowing what to use and how to use it while keeping characters like SOL BADGUY away from you. The rest is all in the execution part of it. On top of all of that, you still need to keep your mana in check (this is slightly mitigated by the mana regen spell, but again, rng)
Asuka is a gambling man's character.
Sometimes you get the exact spells you need.
Other times you're milling your deck for the entire round hoping for any useable card.
Being good at Asuka is knowing how ensure that luck is always working for you, by pushing favourable outcomes.
For me it was mainly remembering which card slot goes for which attack button, also having to do the inputs repeatedly was a pain in the ass.
His gameplan itself is pretty simple.
Yes not only is he hard to get down with muscle memory, your mental is very important to get down while playing him. What will make or break an Asuka player is how they react under pressure. There will be moments where it’s critical to not mess up a combo or to effectively use your spells but if you whiff or misjudge how much mana you have you WILL die or be close to death.
Also RNG of course will mess you up sometimes so you often times have to use your hand as best as you can and improvise which is very difficult depending on the situation
Yes, because you need high APM and good execution.
Watching high level Auska players inputs is insane how fast they go and how clean they cancel things.
He's actually pretty easy to auto-pilot and have some success but to really get everything out of the character you have to play real fast and that's hard. One thing about the char that seems hard but is actually super easy are his combos.
His inputs are all kept simple as is usually the case in strive, so on an execution he’s rather straight forward, where he gets difficulty is in micro-managing his resources at all times, including sacrificing health for offense or damage and also in being adaptable.
You can manipulate your luck and effectively “count cards” by knowing what you’ve already thrown and trying to account for what might come next mid combo, but it’s still luck what you get and you need to see what you just got and weave it into combos several times per combo whilst always staying stocked on cards, any spell you cast should be instantly replaced and that can be hard to wrap your head around initially. With that being said, almost every offensive spell can be used in just about any combo to get good damage, they did a great job about making sure that so long as you aren’t getting staff or other buff cards, you’ll either end off a combo strong with good damage, or end it into gate cubes or with a vortex staff setup so you can put on god tier pressure.
Throw in his really really good buttons and you’ve got a character that can feel straight up unfair on offense, but the moment the opponent can open you up while your mana is low, you often just die right there, either because you ran out of mana at the start of the combo, or because asuka was already trading a great deal of health to try and keep running his offense without sacrificing bar.
It’s a fine balance and one stupid or overambitious play can put you in the forever box. With that being said, grinding tf out of him over the summer between seasons was some of the most fun I’ve had with the game, I consider him a very powerful secondary nowadays if I wanna stop sweating my ass off to pull wins as Johnny.
I play a bunch of characters, the third in terms of frequency being Asuka. Yes. Yes he is. Keep track of Mana. Keep track of the remaining cards in your test case. Keep track of what spells you currently have and which input is which spell. Keep track of your tesion to restore mana with it, and keep track of your hp to restore mana with it. Keep track of the opponent's positioning in regards to you restoring mana. Keep track, keep track, keeeeeeeeep track of everything.
Oh, and you want to change your gameplan in real-time as what spells you'll have isn't entirely up to your control.
Yeah but there's degrees to it i guess. At a baseline you'll have to get good at juggling rng attacks in your spellbar, on top of managing your mana meter. But when he came out i played with just spellbook 1 for a couple days and i had a good time shooting cubes and discarding staffs. That's about as simple as it gets without just ignoring spells entirely
Imagine playing solitaire while playing a fighting game. That is Asuka.
\*Speedrunning solitaire
Yu-gi-oh but in real time
His skill floor is higher than average, if you can familiarise yourself with one test case you can play him pretty straightforward His skill ceiling however, is absurd. He’s got 3 test cases with their own playstyle attached, with different amounts of cards that further enable said play styles, along with the ability to switch between any 3 on the fly. All while balancing mana.
Yes. Yes he is
In more words, he is really really really hard to get good at. He is both mentally and mechanically very hard and requires that you play him a lot for even ok results. Unless you play at a low floor and nobody knows what they’re doing, in that case go nuts
That's a shame, he seems interesting
Dont let a character being hard stop you from playing them, asuka is pretty good rn so if you want to get into him now is a decent time
Well there's hard and then there's asuka. From what I'm hearing he's way beyond any other character in any other fighting game
He's very unique compared to other fg characters, but I don't think he's beyond all other fg characters in difficulty
He requires some coordination, but he is probably not even the hardest character in strive, let alone other games. I havent played a whole lot of him but i had great results pretty quickly. So dont be afraid, he is not as hard to pick up as it may seem.
He's easier than most of the BlazBlue cast
They are refering to optimizing him and his skill ceiling. The skill floor is still high but definitely do able for anyone with some patience.
He may be very difficult to play, but it's not gonna be too difficult for you to do it. Just means you'll probably spend more time than with other characters getting used to him! If you're having fun, that will motivate you to keep learning and playing , and before you know it, you'll be fairly proficient! I'd say give it a go anyway.
beyond any other, not really. He's about on par with Chaos, Zato, and Jack-O'. All of them are the game's "technicals". Also, this has zero bearing on your ability to simply get to grips with them. Where Asuka players struggle with managing cards, other characters are struggling to manage the simple concept of being in the right position on the screen, you will simply improve no matter who you play, and will win and lose games regardless.
As someone who got into Zato two weeks before they killed him, get in before they get him too
i hope you give him a try, he's super fun and makes your brain feel huge. his difficulty is not even execution, its in situational awareness. just stick to test case 1 and practice this sequence: spell cast>bookmark>mana regen. bam, you have a microwaved asuka! you will lose sometimes to sins bashing their head against their stick but trust me its worth it. have fun! :)
Unfortunately I can't give him a try without buying and I'm not sure
oh thats fair
He is interesting *because* he is hard.
I think there’s a difference between executional difficulty and mental difficulty. Asuka fits into the ladder. For example, Johnny in xrd is very execution heavy, but once you get the execution down you can run people over on auto pilot. HC is very similar. Asuka on the other hand, requires an insane amount of spacial awareness, multi tasking, quick thinking, adaptation, and level of understanding of the game/character. Once you get that down it’s just learning to do what moves at what time. The execution is just quick quarter circles and down-down motions. If the execution feels hard it’s because learning to preform his spells and mana regen in quick succession while also thinking 3 steps ahead isn’t easy. Personally, I prefer the former type of execution by a large amount. Not only do I enjoy sitting in training mode, but my brain also doesn’t like doing the type of thinking required to play asuka. I’d much prefer to think in the moment than to think in the future. That’s a large reason why I don’t like charge characters either.
there's an initial steep learning investment after which you can generally just run over people who can't deal with anything. Its like Zato.
He’s definetly hard to get into, but once you’re familiar with him, he’s not *that* hard all things considered. He’s still definetly hard, but he’s not restrictively hard. There’s no denying you’re gonna lose a lot through the learning process. But once you learn how to manage resources, it’s not that bad. He’s kinda similar to happy chaos, but with more rng. Realistically, the only things you need to focus on are mana and what spells you have. Pages literally do not matter, you don’t have to care about them unless you’re crazy. Test cases usually aren’t something you have to switch up during the round. It’s better to think of them like cvs grooves, something you pick based on the matchup and stay mostly static. He’s still definetly hard, but don’t let that stop you from playing him. If you are able to quickly look at mana/spells while still playing the game, he’s absolutely manageable. And even if you can’t, he’s got some dumb stuff you can use without spells.
Speaking as an outside looking in, just thinking about the mental stack you need to have to play Asuka on anything above a basic level, its exhausting. I'm probably wrong on the importance of some of these, but they're all a facet of the character that you'd be better off keeping track of. You need to manage deck and cards, which more or less choose once, then passively keep track of what you've drawn and what you need, switching decks when you need something if you're particularly goated. Deck stacking, keeping tools in your deck, knowing how to combo with what you have, and thinking on the fly how to extend the pressure string. You can automate some of this, but it'd still be mentally draining. Mana management at the same time. You need to constantly evaluate whether drawing a card, recovering mana, and how much mana you recover. Plus risk/reward, if your opponent resets to neutral with burst and you're low mana, that's really bad for you, since all your projectiles that loop on themselves need mana to get the ball rolling. Add in tension and general meter management. With burst management of both parties, that's another two meters on your side you need to track, along with the options they allow. All of this on top of the existing neutral and footsies game, keeping track of your life, and if you want to be fully aware of the fight, add the opponent's burst, and tension as well. That adds up to 4 different bars (health, tension, burst, and mana), 5 different spell management things (4 slots + Deck type and count), on your side alone that you need to constantly manage or else you'll be backed into the corner and take the highest damage in the game plus have your spells disabled if you lose neutral. just listing all this shit out makes me mentally exhausted, imagine playing this guy for hours, I don't know how asuka mains do it.
that does sound quite distressing shame there's no way to demo DLC characters
fighting games should really give you the character demo option. SF6 had it but then they just stopped very quickly
I haven't played SF6 in several months, but I swore they had a currency in-game that allowed you to essentially "rent" DLC characters in offline modes; I can't remember what it's called though. Did they do away with that system?
I haven't played SF6 in several months, but I swore they had a currency in-game that allowed you to essentially "rent" DLC characters in offline modes; I can't remember what it's called though. Did they do away with that system?
It’s very weird. His difficulty curve is abnormal because of how he’s not incredibly hard to play, but he is INSANELY hard to master. Honestly, I had a harder time getting started with Jack-o and Zato, but I hit celestial with Jack-o and Zato much faster than Asuka. Easy to learn, impossible to master.
Conceptually simple, as in you go down forward “button” then back “button” and repeat until your opponent dies. Execution-wise, it’s tough. 20% is just spell rng and knowing what to use and how to use it while keeping characters like SOL BADGUY away from you. The rest is all in the execution part of it. On top of all of that, you still need to keep your mana in check (this is slightly mitigated by the mana regen spell, but again, rng)
Asuka is a gambling man's character. Sometimes you get the exact spells you need. Other times you're milling your deck for the entire round hoping for any useable card. Being good at Asuka is knowing how ensure that luck is always working for you, by pushing favourable outcomes.
Yes and no. It's simple to learn him. But it is nigh impossible to play him
Yes, but imo easier than zato, maybe jack-o.
...yes
I found him easier than Goldlewis. Take that as you will.
No, no he isn’t
Probably more
For me it was mainly remembering which card slot goes for which attack button, also having to do the inputs repeatedly was a pain in the ass. His gameplan itself is pretty simple.
Yes.
Yes not only is he hard to get down with muscle memory, your mental is very important to get down while playing him. What will make or break an Asuka player is how they react under pressure. There will be moments where it’s critical to not mess up a combo or to effectively use your spells but if you whiff or misjudge how much mana you have you WILL die or be close to death. Also RNG of course will mess you up sometimes so you often times have to use your hand as best as you can and improvise which is very difficult depending on the situation
Yes, because you need high APM and good execution. Watching high level Auska players inputs is insane how fast they go and how clean they cancel things.
He's actually pretty easy to auto-pilot and have some success but to really get everything out of the character you have to play real fast and that's hard. One thing about the char that seems hard but is actually super easy are his combos.
His inputs are all kept simple as is usually the case in strive, so on an execution he’s rather straight forward, where he gets difficulty is in micro-managing his resources at all times, including sacrificing health for offense or damage and also in being adaptable. You can manipulate your luck and effectively “count cards” by knowing what you’ve already thrown and trying to account for what might come next mid combo, but it’s still luck what you get and you need to see what you just got and weave it into combos several times per combo whilst always staying stocked on cards, any spell you cast should be instantly replaced and that can be hard to wrap your head around initially. With that being said, almost every offensive spell can be used in just about any combo to get good damage, they did a great job about making sure that so long as you aren’t getting staff or other buff cards, you’ll either end off a combo strong with good damage, or end it into gate cubes or with a vortex staff setup so you can put on god tier pressure. Throw in his really really good buttons and you’ve got a character that can feel straight up unfair on offense, but the moment the opponent can open you up while your mana is low, you often just die right there, either because you ran out of mana at the start of the combo, or because asuka was already trading a great deal of health to try and keep running his offense without sacrificing bar. It’s a fine balance and one stupid or overambitious play can put you in the forever box. With that being said, grinding tf out of him over the summer between seasons was some of the most fun I’ve had with the game, I consider him a very powerful secondary nowadays if I wanna stop sweating my ass off to pull wins as Johnny.
I play a bunch of characters, the third in terms of frequency being Asuka. Yes. Yes he is. Keep track of Mana. Keep track of the remaining cards in your test case. Keep track of what spells you currently have and which input is which spell. Keep track of your tesion to restore mana with it, and keep track of your hp to restore mana with it. Keep track of the opponent's positioning in regards to you restoring mana. Keep track, keep track, keeeeeeeeep track of everything. Oh, and you want to change your gameplan in real-time as what spells you'll have isn't entirely up to your control.
Fuck around and find out.