Alright alright fine I’m doing a thing.
Fighting games have been my dopamine delivery mechanism of choice ever since SF2 HDR came out back in the Xbox 360 times and Renegade introduced me to it. I guess prior to that, Smash was kind of a gateway drug. But Smash isn’t a fighting game, it’s a party game that has some mildly similar elements. Anyway, I like fighting games a lot. The genre has always worked for me. I respect the high skill ceiling and long, steady learning curve. There has never been anything as satisfying to me in all of gaming than when you put time into learning something in a fighting game and then pull it off in a real game against another person. It feels incredible.
So I’ve been playing SF6 a LOT since it launched. I’ve been having a ton of fun with it, and mostly I think it’s excellent. Of course I have a few gripes. Let’s just get that part of this over with right away so I can get to the good stuff.
Oh but before I forget – the music is ASS. Pretty much universally bad. Anyway, now the more significant stuff.
First and most egregious – “modern” controls. These straight up should not be an option online, at least not versus regular controls. Keep modern with modern. Segregate this shit. I get that it’s one of Capcom’s tactics to get new people and casual mainstream types into the game, but it should NOT be possible for it to hang with the actual real controls in any competitive sense. Quick summary for anyone unfamiliar:
Street Fighter is a six button layout. Light, medium, heavy punch, and light, medium, heavy kick. Inputting different series of directional inputs along with certain button combinations results in special moves like shoryuken and hadoken.
Modern (assisted) controls is only 4 buttons, and no directional inputs. You can just hit a button for a special move to come out, no need to input any directional stuff at all. The only attempt capcom made to balance this is to reduce the damage of special moves by 20% which might sound like a lot but it really isn’t, because the opportunities and convenience provided by being able to do things like instant anti-air with special moves or react immediately to jumps or drive impact with a one button super dramatically outweighs any lower damage by the simple fact that you’re going to be able to land so many more of those things in the first place.
Ultimately that leads to the game feeling incredibly different when you’re playing against an assisted controls user, and that’s really frustrating. It’s like the game has two entirely different sets of characters. Whenever you see that goddamn scarlet letter by their name you’re like “great, gotta remember to never jump or DI against this idiot.”
Fortunately I rarely see assisted mode users, so it’s not a huge issue, but I at least think standard controls and assisted controls should be separate in ranked mode or something. But then that would mean tournaments would have to separate things as well, and you’d also get whiny assholes complaining that the game isn’t being inclusive. Basically they’ve opened up a really disgusting can of worms with the whole thing and I genuinely believe that the genre will never again be the same thing that I fell in love with because now every single fighting game HAS to have some equivalent of this because heaven forbid that something can be challenging or require time and effort and practice. According to everyone else, enjoying those kinds of things makes you a no-life tryhard and the world should just give you everything for free all the time and competition shouldn’t exist.
Moving on to my other issues with SF6 though, I really just have two more and I think we’ll see both either removed or improved as time goes on.
First is the input reader. It’s honestly one of the worst I’ve experienced in any fighting game. It has this awful tendency to misinterpret specific inputs as something else. For example, a super input (quarter circle forward x2) versus a DP input (forward, down, down+forward). This frequently means that wakeup options get misread and the wrong thing comes out, causing you to waste meter or get hit when you really shouldn’t have. You can blame sloppy inputs on the user’s part all you want, but nobody’s gonna have flawless robot hands and get it exactly perfect every single time, and this input reader problem is something that’s universally complained about by the entire community. So it’s not just that I suck, alright? Either everybody sucks or the game needs some adjustments in this regard. The issue seems to come from the degree of leniency in how the system is interrupting the directional inputs – it might forgive or ignore some directions. Like you accidentally got a down+back when you were going from forward to down for your DP or something like that and the system will ignore it. That’s fine and expected, but something about this input reader means it’s sometimes ignoring too much, or sometimes accepting too much. It definitely doesn’t feel right and I’ve found myself staring down at my stick in confusion after a completely unexpected move comes out far more than I ever have in any other fighting game.
There’s also a related issue with inputs – there’s a new system mechanic came6 drive rush. Drive rush is a pretty simple addition that’s basically a big fast dash that costs a little meter to perform, long story short it enables you to continue pressure or extend combos. But when it’s performed, the screen freezes for a moment. That’s fine and the brief freeze isn’t an issue by itself, but what IS an issue is that your opponent’s inputs get eaten during that freeze.
So let’s say I get knocked down and I believe my opponent is going to do something unsafe on my wakeup, like they’re going to go for a throw or pressure off some kind. I decide my best option is to do a wakeup DP. I input forward, down, down+forward and…. Nothing comes out. I wake up just standing there because the opponent did a drive rush and the game is like “what directional inputs? I didn’t hear nothin’.” It’s absolutely infuriating.
So yeah, there are distinct and frustrating problems with the input reader. But I’m hopeful that they can and will be fixed. Enough people complain about them so I’m certain that capcom is aware of the issues. But Capcom is entirely retarded, so who the fuck knows if they’ll actually do anything.
The only other major issue I have with the game is that the current implementation of system mechanics has resulted in a very formulaic meta. Drive rush and extremely high damage level 3 supers mean that there’s way too much potential to just rob a whole match off of a single stray hit. It’s chaotic as hell. I’m sure that it makes it very exciting to watch, which is probably the point. But this is also something I think will get changed over time. I fully expect drive rush to get some changes as time goes on, and I personally hope that level 3 supers maybe get their damage toned down a little so that it’s not so common to literally lose 60% of your health because you didn’t block low and your opponent did a sudden drive rush into cr.mk.
Oh and I guess one other thing that needs to change – if somebody rage quits in ranked, it should fucking take their points and award you the win. Right now if you’re bodying someone they can just alt+f4 and the game disconnects both of you and your points don’t change. Need to correctly punish the bitches and reward honest players. Why is this still a thing in 2023? Multiplayer is not a new idea and at least 50% of human beings will be bitches.
But now the stuff that I like about the game.
It’s got a relatively solid roster of characters right off the bat. Decent variety. The balance is actually pretty fucking good too – there are a few characters that are better and worse, but the worst can still hang with the best when played well. Tweaks are still required of course, here’s a few basic thoughts on the sore thumb characters:
JP is an annoying cunt who can get away with murder at any point on the screen and doesn’t even need to learn combos, he can just do his special moves all day because he’s got like six kinds of fireball. Dude has an overhead fireball, a low fireball, a command grab fireball, can FEINT his fireballs to bait you, and he has C. Viper’s ground spike things at various distances, and portals he can put in the sky to drop more spikes on you from above AND he can choose to teleport into those portals and come in close for an instant throw when you’re blocking expecting the spike. It’s bullet hell on steroids and honestly I feel like his style is not a fit for street fighter so he’s a massive pain in the ass to fight against.
Ken is broken as fuck simply because he has every tool available, plus effortless corner carry, and insanely high damage on even his most basic stuff. His neutral game is incredibly strong and he has tools that let him just bully everyone for free.
Zangief is pretty bad and doesn’t really have many tools that allow him to get up close and play his game. Modern Zangief though is unbelievably terrifying because one button instant command grabs for huge damage are crazy good. Who would have thought? Not Capcom.
Honda is an odd one because he’s REALLY GOOD at low levels of play but REALLY BAD at high levels of play. At low levels, people simply lack the knowledge and skills needed to deal with his cheap play style. At high level when players understand the game plan and have the timing necessary to simply parry, Honda has NOTHING.
I think Marisa and Manon are similar to Honda in that regard, though perhaps not as extreme as Honda. They both have gimmicks that make them extremely dangerous at low levels of play but much less effective versus opponents who know what they’re doing. Marisa is by far the better character of the two though, and since she can basically do 70% damage off of a single hit with unbelievably easy combos she’s definitely the one that needs to be toned down while Manon could probably use a little help.
That all being said, those balance issues are pretty damn small in the grand scheme of things. Ken and JP aren’t SO good that they’re unbeatable, and Zangief isn’t SO bad that he can’t win. It much more often comes down to the player than the character.
I think it’s actually a big compliment to the game that this is the first fighting game I’ve played where I genuinely want to play every character. Every single character appeals to me and looks like they have really fun moves, combos and gameplans. My main is Cammy and I’ve dabbled a little with Honda. They’re wildly different play styles and levels of complexity. In all honesty I actually got bored of Honda after only a couple hundred matches, but Cammy I’ve gone back to and I think I’ve played a couple thousand as her in total and I’ve got no signs of feeling bored with her at all. It’s just that Honda is very braindead and repetitive and easy. Right now I can’t decide who to play next – Luke, JP, Ken, Marisa, Dhalsim, Zangief and Ryu are all pretty appealing right now. Hell even Lily. Literally the entire cast make me want to learn them for various reasons but I don’t have the time or patience or mental capacity.
UPDATE TO ORIGINAL POST:
I said some more stuff in the comments. Summary: Game is risking becoming stale due to a couple of things:
1. prevalence of drive rush (I think it needs a few changes, mainly that I think it should scale the damage just the same way perfect parry does. Make the cost of using it less rewarding to make people save their meter for other things, so it isn’t used as frequently. This does increase the odds of people spending their last bar to do a surprise end-of-round DR to kill the last little bit of their opponent’s health though. Counteract that by making DR more risky to do, like maybe damage scaling the other direction for someone who interrupts drive rush?
2. a couple of unbalanced characters. I already touched on this a little, and I don’t think the game is THAT unbalanced, but Ken and JP are the two major outliers and they now feel like they make up about 75% of the online playerbase and dominate tournaments as well. In the top 64 at the recent CPT Singapore tournament, almost half of those 64 players were using Ken or JP.
Additionally, level 3 super animations are too fucking long and level 3 supers do far too much damage. Both those aspects need to be toned down.
So yeah, that’s my general thoughts on the game right now. While I’d love to see some changes, I’m ultimately really happy with SF6. I’ve put almost 400 hours in already and I’m still really into it. So that’s where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. What’s up with you.
Comments
After some additional consideration and more playing, and watching the recent Singapore CPT tournament since writing this, I’ve got a little more to add.
Right now the game is becoming stale – main reason being drive rush. It’s far too prevalent and powerful of a tool and it’s making the neutral game boring and repetitive. I’m not sure how to “fix” it – maybe make it travel less distance for everybody, maybe make it cost more meter it can’t be used as much, maybe scale the damage of anything used after drive rush quite harshly or something.
That sounds like I’m straight up hating the game – I’m honestly not, I wanna stress that I’m still very much having fun with it. It’s just that if drive rush stays as it is, that fun will fade.
Additionally, as far as spectating the game goes, it’s also risking becoming stale if they don’t do something about Ken and JP very soon. It feels like at least half the matches at tournaments feature one or both of those characters and that’s already getting old.
Perfect parry might honestly be an issue as well at the high levels of play, where people are capable of reacting and parrying a ton of things. But I think it’ll be a longer time before that becomes something that needs to change for the sake of the game’s health.
OH, and level 3 supers do too much damage. That coupled with drive rush means that at any point it’s so easy for a whole match to just turn on a dime. It’s common for people to be able to do 60-70% damage in one combo, which means that one mistake can cost you a game that you’re otherwise dominating.
Level 3 super animations are also way too fucking long. I shouldn’t be able to take a piss and make a cup of tea while my damn super is going off.
I want to like fighting games. Played a fair few, won some local tournaments, watched plenty of others, but the genre has become way too formulaic in the past 10ish+ years. And I feel like almost all of them eventually approach a Marvel Vs. Capcom singularity of presentation and gameplay. High spectacle, high speed, long combos, more and more characters in-match, and generally way spammier.
Fighting games strongly remind me of what chess grandmaster and world champion Bobby Fischer said about his own game. He grew to hate chess for what it became. It sucks because the creativity is dead. It’s a mere exercise in pattern recognition now. I think the same of fighting games. It’s all about things like rote memorization of BnBs and 50/50 mixups. Too many specifically designed tools for keeping your opponent from even playing the game nowdays. Way too many combo extenders. And one mistake can lead to ToDs in far too many games. It’s certainly not fun to suffer it yourself but it’s also not fun to do to others. It feels so boring and hollow.
Modern chess is so much about opening theory and memorization, that it only becomes interesting once the players run out of book moves. Except fighting games don’t even get that quality because they don’t run out of pieces that force the change. Throughout a fighting game match, generally, you’re going for the same optimal strategy/combo each time if you really care about winning and, who are we kidding, everybody cares about winning since that’s all there is in this genre.
Unless a match slows down enough for players to actually learn about the other’s quirks and preferences to then form counters and use mind games, they’re pretty samey. And that happens pretty rarely as it is. Since the games move so fast now (almost like a twitch shooter with short time-to-kills), even a pro’s skill is slightly more luck than reactable intention. So many get the lucky poke and with prevalent high/long bnb comboes or tods, a single lucky strike can basically end the match. The challenge/obstacle/threat, is less about fighting an opponent and more about just not dropping your combo.
Fighting games, of course some more than others, have devolved to be solely about metas and optimization/memorization just like chess. The math took over and everything became predictable and less fun. The same characters and combos over and over again. And people are easily influenced by “pros” so casual players copy them and then you see that infection everywhere. This is not absolute nor 100% of course but still way waaaay too rampant.
And frame data just makes me sick. Something revolting about it or how games are designed/played around it. Like, it violates the spirit of fighting to me.
And all these gripes not even including the problems from developer screw-ups, like game or character breaking buffs/nerfs. I swear modern devs don’t understand their own genre sometimes let alone their own game.
There is also that saying about chess: “The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.” I think this fits fighting games to a T. But I understand that dopamine hit. Even now I feel a pull to find and play a fighting game.
I like the idea of fighting games, but I don’t think they have been implemented well in a very long time.
Of course there are some super hype and legendary moments out there and I’m not trying to take away from any of that but then again, I think those are the exceptions or so legendary because of how much they flout the normal play-state of the game.
My favorite fighting game is Smash Bros because I think it’s the only one that escapes the severe formula-ness of the others. It’s much more open for creative play and better at mind games. But, full transparency, I haven’t played a Smash game since Brawl. Yes, I do agree that it’s mainly a party game but I feel other fighting franchises have lowered the bar so much that Smash is the only one that largely retains the right spirit.
I thought the SF6 demo was decent, I made some lanky-legged stubby-armed grandma character which was cool, and I certainly liked the direction they went overall. Deejay seems like pure fun and joy now and doesn’t look like the creepy rapist he was before. Got my eye on Tekken 8 though.
I know what you’re saying about the control differences. Reminds me of Marvel Vs Capcom 3 putting in something similar back then. And more recently, things like DragonBall FighterZ’s autocombo crap and I think that Granblue Fantasy: Versus also had the exact same thing you described here in SF6. It’s been years since that came out. Not surprised that Capcom would be late to the party and yet also copy so much.
I hate this long drawn out drive for more casualness for the past decade and a half or whatever. People unwilling to put in any effort to learn or practice and still want to play, never realizing the majority of the fun comes from that effort’s fruition.
DUUDE, what is it with input readers lately! I feel this is the most basic tech that’s been around forever and it’s somehow worse and worse as time goes on. And not even specific to fighting games honestly. Again, devs don’t know what they’re doing anymore.
OMG, they are still handling quits in ranked like that? In 2023? You’re exactly right man. My god these fucking devs. They HAVE to know but they don’t want to alienate casual players. I hate pandering to that audience above all and now they can cloak these bad ideas under the guise of accessibility or something. And folks wonder where personal values have gone and why people are so weak and sensitive. I firmly believe that quality/good entertainment makes quality/good people and bad/dumb entertainment makes bad/dumb people.
Despite all I’ve said, and I’m sorry for how long this comment is, that was some good work on that Ken with your Cammy. Always a treat to read something on this site.
I had a thought. Perhaps a refinement of something I said. I think even most fighting game franchises are blending together and play the same. starter/launcher, combo, combo extender 1 (could be assists, bounces, otg, walls, or in SF6’s case: Drive Rush), combo, combo extender 2, hyper move.
I had a sort of epiphany back in Marvel vs Capcom 3. Comboing was kinda the same for each character and given how long they were, I didn’t feel it was fun to do nor fun for the other player to suffer through. I feel if a point occurs in a match where the opponent could put down their controller because they can’t do anything, that’s not fun and something is wrong with the design. Idk, just thoughts.
Sorry I’m responding so late, the notifications for comments are really inconsistent for some reason. Didn’t even see that first comment until today.
Anyways, I’m still enjoying SF6. I’m actually somewhat looking forward to Granblue Versus Rising – I dislike the assisted inputs but it seems like the general idea of the game is that it’s actually a lot more like real vintage SSF2T. Back to basics, rock paper scissors. They’ve made a lot of improvements during the beta tests, wish is a relief to see. At most I’ll only dabble in GBVR though.
You mentioned things feeling homogenized with auto combos – I get what you mean but in the case of things like DBFZ, it actually became much more complex when people started to figure it out. The first few weeks were people just doing LMH launcher jump LMH special super, but then those people got bodied when they came up against people who could optimize their shit and do significantly more.
I do still think drive rush is too powerful in SF6 but I’ve been making efforts to learn counter plays and it’s becoming more tolerable.
Currently trying to learn Zangief, too. Doing 360 and 720 inputs on a leverless controller is a big learning curve, but hella fun.
Oh hey there! No problem, you are not obligated to respond to anything let alone in any specific time frame. I didn’t expect anything at all to be honest! But it is always a treat though. And I don’t think I get notifications if someone replies to a comment on wordpress or whatever so that’s why I didn’t know either.
Honestly didn’t even know there would be a second Granblue until you said it here. I think a back to basics is what fighting games need. MFGGA. make fighting games great again?
I feel that DBFZ just changed from that simple MvC\Guilty Gear-esque BnB to a larger one once people figured out what it was because of the new additions of ki blasts and the superdash in that game. Once it was discovered, it was and still is the norm.
You can have counter plays for DR? My experience was really just watching desk/biffotasty combos so I thought the use of DR was generally just spam it in combos you are already trapped in to extend them. Unless I’m mistaking what those green moves are. Saw 5 of them in a Luke combo once.
Yeah respect for Zangief players; I could never do those grapplers with full circle inputs.
My attention is on Tekken 8 and I don’t like what I see since I tried the closed network beta test, so I’m probably going to pass on it which is a shame. Seemed to confirm my worst suspicions. Still the visual incongruity, aka BS, in combos (high kicks hitting low/otg characters). Put-your-controller-down gameplay. (Wall to wall combos where the other player just has to wait as they lose 70% of their health). Input reader problems like moves not coming out and the command display clearly shows I pressed the buttons right. Plain ol’ errors, aka alsoBS (did a leg sweep with Law that has the Homing property designed to catch sidestepping. it went right through the whole model of a otg siderolling Paul).
Yeah so there are multiple issues with drive rush – yes it can be used as a combo extension tool. i.e. you connect with a crouching medium kick, then you hit drive rush and you can continue into a combo without anything dropping.
This makes it easy to convert stray single hits into something much bigger (i.e. going into full level 3 super finishers off of a stray hit. Suddenly one poke is 60% damage, meaning in round 3 you have to be fucking bulletproof so you don’t suddenly lose over half your health from one mistake)
There’s no counter play to DR being used in combos, the answer there is just “don’t get hit.” The issue of DR enabling converting anything into big damage is something that I think may need some work, specifically damage scaling whenever DR is used in a combo. That way at the very least you can’t turn luck into an enormous chunk of damage.
Second issue is the fact that DR can be used outside of combos as a big, fast dash. It enables people to skip neutral – rather than playing smart and trying to gain space and earn that first hit, you just get into your opponent’s face. This is particularly annoying, but I’ve made great strides in reacting to it and playing in ways that anticipate it in order to mitigate and punish it when it’s done. That’s where I’ve been learning the counter plays.
And yeah I’d love Tekken 8 to be good. Everything I’m hearing though is that heat is a terrible idea, and the netcode looks utterly horrendous from everything I saw during the betas. My prediction is that 8 will be Harada’s last Tekken just like SFV was Ono’s last Street Fighter. Yes, you revitalized the game, you brought it back into the limelight, but now you’ve overstayed your welcome and your decisions have started to become detrimental to the series. Time for someone else to take the helm and turn it in a better direction like how SFV improved after Ono left and a better team took it over.
Hey man, glad to see you’re still playing fighting games after all these years. Enjoyed playing SF and BB with you back in the day. I’ve scrolled through here every couple of years to see if you or Renegade have made any updates, thought I’d engage in the discussion this time on a whim. I agree with most of the article, you’ve got some pretty reasonable takes on 6.
Music is whack, that shit got muted ages ago. Modern is whatever, one button DPs are kinda jank but changing my mental stack for one button supers catches me off guard for the good ones like Luke and Chun. Tried playing modern when teaching a friend to play, and some normals being locked behind the auto-combo button is weird. Feels good that every character can be piloted to victory, but I think Luke and DeeJay are shaping up to be just as dangerous as JP and Ken.
Agree on some staleness and sameyness post-honeymoon, drive rush is annoyingly neutral skippy especially on the jumpscare DRs like Juri and DeeJay. I’ve been training to press buttons when I see green shit but I don’t got those Adderall reflexes as much any more. cr.MK>DR>stuff is not really exciting after the 3000th time, but it is what it is. I feel neutral about throw loops, they’re probably a necessary evil. Tap parry is too strong, and perfect parries to steal turns when you’re minus don’t feel right. The monetization for costumes and shit is fucked up. Overall, though, the game is a net win. Better than the shit sandwich we were handed when 5 came out.
You want to play some time? I’ve been working on slowly getting the whole roster to Diamond and eventually Master later on, I play 80% of the characters but I’ve put in the most hours in on Dhalsim(because I got my ass beat for weeks), Rashid, and JP so I got you if you need MUs. I think the last time we played was back when Hazama came out in BB or some shit. I was fighting some inner demons back in the day, so I get it if you ain’t down. Just wanted to shoot my shot and reach out. Hope you keep enjoying the game, life looking p. good with this and T8 + UNI2 on the horizon.
Oh hey man, long time. Good to hear from you. Yeah I remember plenty of salty smash games back in the day, and some fun HDR games when that was a thing. I remember you hitting me with that crazy 9 hit DeeJay crossup combo one time.
Yeah, Ken, JP, DeeJay and Luke are the clear top 4 right now. They’re all equally the best in my opinion. I’d say Blanka’s pretty high up there too, but part of that is that he’s just weird and has so many fucking tools, so part of why he’s good is that he’s just constantly surprising. Hey let’s give this character full screen safe attacks like Honda, but also a command grab that has range, and a special that crosses up, and a dive ball that makes it LOOK like he’s retreating so you instinctively walk forward and get hit…. Anything else? Oh sure a fucking install super that freezes the game for so long that he can react however he wants afterward with impunity. Can you tell I fucking suck against Blanka? I gotta learn to play that bitch.
Yeah, cr.mk drive rush is real stale at this point, but the game overall is great. I’m looking forward to the inevitable post capcom cup patch and I’m hoping for at least a little shake up. Agreed on perfect parry, but right now it doesn’t seem common enough to be a massive problem. That said, it seems like as people get better at the game and it starts to become normal, we’ll start seeing it multiple times from both players every game (I’m talking online and not pros. We’ve already been seeing players like Kakeru perfect parrying dozens of times in a set for months now.) It’s definitely jarring for turns to just get stolen with what can often feel like a lucky guess, but there are also plenty of entirely sensible uses for it, so I get it and I understand why it’s there. But long term, I expect some balancing will occur with it. Not sure exactly how yet, but… Yeah.
As for modern, I still think it’s just a bullshit implementation. Accessibility is fine, but 1 button instant DPs and supers change the fundamental style of the game. The reduced normals are an odd balancing point as well because it seems to be a big deal for a few characters but a total non issue for others.
Anyways. I’ve only really played Cammy and Honda (and barely any Honda at all). I’d love to learn the whole cast but I’m a painfully slow learner so I always go back to Cammy. I just made it to diamond 2 as her, but that was only after a ton of effort. It’d be nice to hit master but I don’t know if I have it in me. I’m still playing way too dumb for that. Props to you for playing so many characters though, that’s something I really wish I could do. I should just fucking put my laziness and pride aside and pick someone and just play a few hundred games as them to just force myself to learn. I think I’ll go with Ryu next, back to basics.
Feel free to hit me up on CFN, just search Shepton and send a friend request. We’ll find the time for sure.
As for Tekken 8 – I’ll admit I’m interested, but I’ve never played a 3D fighter, so it feels like a massive wall to climb right off the bat. Strive kinda soured me on where anime fighters are at right now and I’ve never played UNI so I have no interest in UNI2. That said I’m somewhat interested in Granblue, so I really should at least give that a try now that it’s out.
Added you, I’m the guy with the Chinese name. My $0.02 on 3D, the game feels magical to play with how hype it is at first with the energy and the music, especially when it’s completely new content. I learned Tekken towards the end of Tekken 6 about a decade ago with a local guy in FL who just so happened to be the best (arguably) Mishima player in the west and thrown into the scene face first. When I was stationed in Hawaii the main game Oahu FGC played offline is Tekken, so I had to either get good or play other shit with intercontinental lag to literally everybody when rollback wasn’t standard yet. I’m glad I did though, playing Tekken with someone at exactly your skill level while jamming to the music gets me in a flow state like nothing else it’s absolutely euphoric.
Blanka is one of my most played characters, happy to help you grind the matchup. Biggest part that helps me fight him is to delay press or delay tech when he wants to ball to OS light blanka ball>throw or heavy ball. I think Cammy’s cr.MP has a semi-reliable disjoint to stuff it. Sniffing out if they are gonna wake up EX Air ball to get out of strike/throw mix, some people truly just did not pay $60 to block EVER, so YMMV. Anti-airing at closer/crossup angles makes him uncomfortable, I whiff vertical ball more than Rashid AA’s get stuffed.
UNI1 was a big hit with my local scene, the game hands down has the best system mechanics in any fighting game and it’s not even close, and a really solid roster to support it. I popped off hard when uni2 was announced randomly during evo pools, cannot wait. Strive was also a bummer for me (Venom when?) so I don’t blame you for feeling soured.
I played the granblue mobile game back in the late 2010s for a couple years (yeah, I know I know, I quit playing mobile games a while ago), so I love the cast of characters, GB has a great roster 100%. But man it’s kind of the opposite of UNI in that I think the system mechanics are jank and just not for me at all. I dunno if they changed it but I also don’t like that there was a block button making left/right mix non-existent. If you find a character who truly vibes with you though it can carry the game as a whole, I loved Lancelot & Percival.