‘Granblue Fantasy Versus’ Actually Teaches You How to Play a Fighting Game
March 6, 2020Fighting games are one of the harder game types to get into. And though most fighting game communities can be rather welcoming to new players, the individual games are often horrible at explaining basic mechanics that are taken for granted in the fighting game space. Granblue Fantasy Versus aims to change that.
Arc System Works have hit on a formula mixing auto-combos and a dedicated skill button, alongside a robust set of tutorial missions to make what I consider one of the most welcoming on-ramps a 2D anime fighter has ever had. The Waypoint Radio crew discusses Granblue's tutorials, the Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo, and the last week in politics on this week's episode. You can listen to the full episode and read an excerpt below.
Cado: This is how my Super Tuesday went: [I went] through the entirety of [the Granblue Fantasy Versus] training mode, which is really good and explains a bunch of things that a lot of training modes leave out about–
Austin: Why you would do the thing, right?
Cado: Right, like the core mechanics of learning how to respond to a certain type of [attack], which also means that you can then also execute [the attack] as well? Like a mix-up, being able to jump over someone and hit them in a way where the hit comes from behind instead of the front but it's ambiguous, and you've got to be able to learn how to read that. They explain to you how to do that. And then you can also take that knowledge to [the attack] as well in your own games.
Austin: Yeah, and the fact that they're like, "hey, learn how to defend and anticipate [if] this is going to be a lower attack or jump in attack? And [here's] how to respond to that specifically" is so good.
Austin: The training modes even go into specific character things like "here are five combos to learn as this character and briefly here's why you would use this." The reason you would start with this like powered up version of a fireball so you could rush in behind it and they'll have to they'll have to block it or try to jump over it, in which case you should get ready to duhduhduh, all that is really really good.
Cado: Yeah, just the simple idea of "here's a character jumping in the air and then getting behind you while something else is coming from the front" being an option opened up a [possibility for me]. With Lowain, there's one or two ranged attacks that are slow enough that I've gotten to using that as mix up potential. There's this missile barrage that kind of hits like [makes a sound of many missiles hitting one after the other], but while they're blocking that I can jump over them and hit them from the back. I wouldn't even thought to try that if the thing about mix-ups was wasn't in the training mode.
This transcript was edited for clarity and length.
Discussed: Politics 00:00, Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo 25:09, Yes, Your Grace 50:51, Spoilers for Yes, Your Grace 59:59 - 1:02:40, Ash of Gods Redemption 1:14:20, Murder by Numbers 1:21:17, Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment 1:30:56, Journey to the Savage Planet 1:31:47, The Last of Us HBO 1:34:33, Granblue Fantasy Versus 1:38:15, Granblue Fantasy 1:46:58
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