Street Fighter: Hardest Fighting Game or Not?

As I have said before, though Street Fighters characters Ryu and Bison may have similar moves to Tekken character Kazuya and Mortal Kombat character Raiden respectively, I would consider Street Fighter the most hardest fighting game and have to be skillful enough to play, though it is my favorite fighting game. Tekken and Mortal Kombat is just easy for any novice.

Sorry that I didn't know that Youtube videos are not allowed as I have seen videos on some other threads by others that were not locked few years ago.

But can I get any more views of others on what is the hardest fighting game(s) to win and also your favorite fighting game(s)?

Will the hardest fighting game(s) to play be:

- Street Fighter

-Mortal Kombat

-Tekken

...etc

Will your favorite fighting game(s) be:

- Street Fighter

-Mortal Kombat

-Tekken

...etc

Guilty Gear

Word.

I would say its not, but I will say this.

Street Fighter is the hardest game to be THE BEST at. So many people love and play Street Fighter that to be the best Street Fighter player in the world is nigh impossible so I'll give you that Street Fighter is the hardest to be the best at.

Guilty gear bro!

Waku Waku 7 guys.

Virtua Fighter. Of course. Maybe 5?

Jackie Chan in Fists of Fire

prolly guilty gear

Street Fighter isn't as crazy as any given Arc System Works fighting game... so no. Not really?

Like someone else already said: Street Fighter is the hardest purely by virtue of the fact that it's the most popular by a wide margin, so there's a lot more competition. There are certainly other fighting games whose mechanics and execution are more complicated and difficult, but none of them have a community even remotely rivaling the size of SF's.

It's also one of the oldest - if not the oldest - as is evidenced by my trying to play SSF4AE2012 like it's Alpha 3, and actually having a limited degree of success with it. Very limited... My point being: people have been honing SF chops for two decades now.

VF5:FS is way easier to jump into than Street Fighter 4.

It has half the buttons and it's got a much better training mode.
Personally I think the hardest one out right now that I've put any time into is KoF13. The fact that you have 4 jumps, no shortcuts for motions like in SF, it's just really execution heavy.

I don't play anime fighters like BB, melty blood or GG though, so can't really speak on those.

Virtua Fighter is pretty complex.

It's got some stuff, sure. But you can absolutely learn 3 block strings and have fun with it. Then you can go on to learn all the special crap like which moves crumple on counter but not normal hits, wall combos, difference between a low and an EX low, etc, etc, etc. Anyone with any experience from other fighting games can spend a day in the lab and learn fuzzy guard and be ready to go online, pretty much.

You're not gonna be LA Akira or Fuudo or whatever, but you can be fairly effective long before you have to learn anything as hard as fadc in sf or whatever.

I dont think this guy is talking about online play or vs of any kind. That said, I would imagine that the typical SNK boss's pre-fight pose would kill everyone in the street fighter universe instantly.

My favorite fighting game is Last blade 2.

@71ranchero: If you're just talking beating the story mode, like...weapon lord? KoF '02 maybe? compared to those Dural is a cakewalk.

Personally I find it hard to get into any fighting game where the controls do not really translate well from a stick to a standard console controller. So any game where I wind up needing to use the shoulder buttons to strike. I want to actually play a game a little and decide if it is worth it to invest in a stick, unfortunately I have such a rotten time on the controller that I never get to that point.

Personally my favourite fighting game was the last Mortal Kombat game. Unlike most fighting games I could actually get random friends/people on my floor in university to play it with me for more than 1-2 matches. Injustice was also pretty good but the concept of holding back to block was harder for most people.

This thread confuses the hell outta me.

I think that in terms of things like mind games and strategy SF4 is the hardest game because there's so much competition.

But for anime fighters like KOF 13, BlazBlueand Melty Blood... there's so much grunt work that goes into memorising combos and block strings that maybe they would be the hardest for many people to play. And after learning all that crap you aren't necessarily good at the game, you just are good remembering things.

@overnow: You might look into getting a fight pad with a good d-pad and a better layout for 6 button fighters, like the madcatz fightpad or something.

Much cheaper than a stick and the 2 rows of 3 buttons layout is much more suited to fighters in general. And of course, if you're on 360 anything is better than the 360 d-pad.

@amafi: Honestly I'm at a point now where I just don't want to play any fighting game that I do not find comfortable to play on the PS4 controller. Luckily I have a Mortal Kombat game coming up. Also it fits the sports genre better than the fighting genre but I play the fuck out of UFC games.

I think the simplicity of Street Fighter compared to many other fighters when combined with the huge population of players makes it one of the hardest to be the best at. The mental aspect is pretty hardcore as well, again helped by the massive community.

I would say the UMVC3 is up there too just because of how it seems like everyone has figured it out, the ideal teams are kind of set in stone at this point and unless you are Justin Wong you will get destroyed by god damn Vergil.

Actually the hardest is that fucking awful boss battle in Dead or Alive with Omega or whatever ... that fucking camera angle where I kept jumping by accident. Oh man I'm getting pissed off just thinking about it. What an absolutely awful design choice.

What the hell is up with this guy's posts? Is he viraling youtube videos or something?

Street Fighter is built entirely on fighting game fundamentals with almost no extra trappings... the only difficult part about it is learning the large roster.

Guilty Gear is hell in comparison.

Well no... I think Hard is a slippery word in this game. I would mostly define it as how tough it is to get the combos down, and the worse the fighting game is, the harder this is to do well. For instance MK deadly alliance was very clunky and had unresponsive controls in many instances so I would call that one of the hardest, I could not even finish one combo campaign, whilst SF4 i've finished like 10 character combo campaigns.

I think Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is the hardest to learn from experience. It's so crazy at the highest level.

The hardest fighting game is probably some doujin fighter made my lunatics. As far as mainstream games are concerned, ArcSys games are fucking banana. They're probably the hardest 2D games to play. Vitrua Fighter takes it for 3D. Street Fighter is not a difficult game to play, it just has so many legacy characters that make the barrier to entry super steep because people can puck up new versions and already know how to play a large amount of the roster.

Not true. Being a big fighting game fan I've been playing both series since the 90s and Street Fighter is more pick up and play than VF will ever be. That is also good and works in its favour. It can retain complexity and have a lot of accessibility. No wonder it's still so popular. Number of buttons is pretty irrelevant here. Street Fighter is a lot more simplistic in terms of mechanics compared do VF as most 2d games are. Is a lot more character driven, matchup focused game too. VF it's a bit more player driven, with a lot of people playing the same character pretty differently. It's very, very technical and the chances you're going to cause experienced player any trouble is very slim compared to any Street Fighter game. It's also not only the inputs, it's also more tactical and I dare say more depth too.

It's not even the most complex 2d fighting game with arc sys games especially been very complex if a tad convoluted at times. GG and BB are both more complex than SF.

However complexity in itself is not important. I feel that a good fighter, for my tastes, needs accessibility in terms of commands, interesting mechanics, depth without resorting to unnecessary and confusing mechanics, good balance, good community, diversity in the roster, characters fun to play among few other things. Obviously not all will offer that but can still great and fun to play.

One of my favourites is 3rd Strike for instance but the balance aspect could be a bit better.

Hardest game list I don't much for but here goes my favourites. No order besides the first in each category:

2D:

• Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
• Blazblue
• Persona 4 Arena
• Mortal Kombat 9

3D:

• Virtua Fighter 5 FS
• Soul Calibur 2
• Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate

From what I've played, KOF is the hardest. It has such a high barrier of entry, the execution required to pull off just some simple bnb combos is insane. SF is by far my favourite fighting game series though.

I'm not sure we could definitely pick a hardest fighting game. Only half the difficulty (if even) comes from the game - the most challenging part is the human your facing. All we have left is which game has more upfront complexity, but complexity =/ difficulty. We could talk about which one has the toughest AI, but talking about fighting game AI has always felt like a small waste of time.

I'll say that in my experience Virtua Fighter was far more difficult to grasp than the other 3D franchises.

@crysack: I keep thinking it's a different username each time, but I guess it's the same "Could MK Kratos cross-over to Soul Calibur with Marvel Alliance Street Fighter Characters Combination PLEASE ANSWER TO MY THREAD!" guy? I keep getting this fanatic fighting game fan/youtube advertiser/spambot vibe or whatever the heck...very confusing in any case!

It may be the hardest in terms of mind games and psychology, but execution wise it certainly isn't. As many have said Arc Sys games can be pretty hard to learn (Blaz Blue and Guilty Gear spring to mind) in parts due to every character having unique mechanics that make learning characters + matchups much more difficult.

I'd' say the hardest was/is Virtua Fighter, mostly because I'm more of a 2d guy. Idk why there's just something about 3d that adds a whole other level of difficult, but 2d has always come more natural to me.

Although I've never been amazing at a fighting game, 2d always suited me best. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter were always my favorites and later Blaze Blue came into play. Each of these games contain something I love about games, MK is pure fun(especially with friends) and has an interesting story/mythology(I'm into all that dark stuff), SF(especially 3) just has tight gameplay. It's very responsive and mostly about who messes up first, mind games I suppose. BB has incredible combos and the visuals look awesome.

Fav of the series:

Mortal Kombat 9/MK3

Street Fighter 3

BlazeBlue Continuum Shift Extend

In terms of execution, you basically need to be a wizard to be a good I-No player in Guilty Gear.

I find Virtua Fighter 5 and Marvel vs Capcom 3 both way harder to learn. Street Fighter is relatively simple.

Maybe it's just me, I just always found that VF was way easier to get decent at. You can basically learn fuzzy guard and a couple of block strings and do reasonably well, which is like what, a 5 hour investment or so?

Compared to that I've spent about 15 hours in the lab with Hakan by now and I'm still probably the worst Hakan to ever pick up a stick.

@amafi: maybe just used to VF or the character is just not for you. I don't like him by the way :P

The way I see the depth in VF always meant I needed to learn much more in order to be really competitive. I guess in 5 hours you know a few things but there're so many strings (it's a 3D fighter after all) that can be overwhelming. Usually better if you focus on a few things at first. In SF you sort of have full knowledge of all the character's moves and work from there so you don't feel so lost. I guess the small movelist helps that in SF. At first you can focus on normals, movement and so on before worrying about other mechanics. But that's assuming the person doesn't know much about fighting games. I think that if someone's new to VF things like fuzzy guard are not important. You'll get to it eventually since for most fighting you won't be competitive for at least a couple dozen hours.

In my experience SF games you can, if dedicated enough, play okay with most characters (maybe not so much now with the current amount of characters). I find it pretty much impossible to do the same in a VF game.

That said I find SFIV a bit convoluted in terms of mechanics compared when compared to the simplicity of SFIII and SFII and that disappointed me. I don't think I'll be even buying ultra.

Maybe SF starts easy but then the learning curve gets steep whereas VF you advance more steadily. Don't know really.

As someone who has always played fighters with a controller, I often wondered if investing in a stick would be beneficial.

To answer the question, SF was always very easy to pick up and play, but very difficult to master.

I really don't know why I have such a hard time with SF4, I find skull girls much easier to pick up as well, timing of links and such has never clicked in SF for me.

Maybe I just keep picking all the characters with tons of 1 frame links and standing 720s or something.

Maybe its hard in the sense that the combo system isn't the most easily accesible to a new player, none of my less fighting game savvy friends can get away with button mashing in street fighter is what I'm saying

Aahaahahhaaha, I like this comment a lot. I'm a wizard in training!

@nefarious_al: @esrever: @irrelevantjohn: Obviously none of you have played Aquapazza.

Guilty Gear.

Marvel vs. Capcom.

Get the fuck off my lawn, kid. And stop throwing your new-fangled "frisbees" near my house

Guilty Gear is almost unrivaled when talk about HARD.

Except for the easier ones, it takes MONTHS or YEARS for any player to play a character properly (to about 70% potential maybe?). Both in movements, defensive techniques and attacking techniques, the complexity and depth are arguably highest for fighting game. Strategy-wise the game are notable harder than the whole genre, which strategic part is seriously a joke in comparison. Execution is the thing that it won't top some others, but still harder than average.

And in competitive, you're not even remotely worthy if you're not Japanese. EVER. Many tournaments else where in the world, even the lower level players from Japan totally dominated people. This is not even funny, when you can think about it like this: player who won GG tournaments at the like of EVO or some fighting Majors is sometimes too weak at said game in their own country to be considered a good player. Some like Daigo doesn't play the game (GG AC at that point) competitively in Japan at all. I don't know any players of other fighting game go and top GG scene, but many good GG players become monster in other games. This is because the ceiling of GG playing level are also higher than any other mainstream fighting games so far, you either stick to it hopefully see the light on top one day, or just switch to any other game, go for easy tittles.

The most hardest of necros! KoF is the hardest, no question, I have a platinum in Xrd. I mean sure, Virtua Fighter is probably harder but doesn't really exist anymore while KoF could possibly have one more rendition.