The fine folks over at the Dustloop forums were granted some hands-on time with the game at the Atlus offices and have provided us with a few tidbits on the finer mechanics of the fighting engine. Some of these details are probably only going to be meaningful to you if you know what terms like Okizeme mean but if you have any questions I can do my best to try and break it down for you. Here's what was learned:

Wakeup Options

• You cannot wake up backdash, there is a small window where you simply won't backdash at all. This is similar to BB's cant-backdash-immediately on landing introduced in CS1 onwards. You can still use roll, B+D, wakeup super, etc just fine.
• There is no manual quick getup. The only ground option is to neutral tech or wait for your character to automatically quick getup.
• The quick getup animation is cancelable into ANYTHING, including blocking. So you can't punish this at all, you either hit them while theyre knocked down, or you let them get back up.

Counter Hit Properties

• CH with normals, throws, and specials adds 10% more damage to the first attack, but it's not consistently so. It seems that some multi hitting attacks (such as yukiko's 5C or mitsuru's ground throw) do get 10% bonus damage on all hits, while others (such as Kanji's command throw) do not. only the first hit of kanji's command throw (where he tosses you to the wall and does 250ish damage) gets the 10% bonus.
• CH with supers add 20% more damage. Similar inconsistencies found as above.
• CH with throw adds more untech time
• Fatals follow the same rules for damage bonus. Forgot to test things regarding wallstick/bounce and fatals

Jumping, Air Options

• You can not block for the first 5 or so frames once you are airborne. This makes 5As good for anti-chicken block. Double jumps do not suffer this penalty.
• You regain all your air options (air dashes, double jumps) after you air normal block, air instant block, air ukemi, or break air throws
• You can hold the button to air ukemi asap. This means you can stop piano-ing buttons during opponents combos
• Like GG, you can not Superjump > double jump. You can only air dash after a super jump. (unless you regain your air options as described above

Short Hop

• Short hop appears to have Foot attribute invul on Frame 1.
• You can not jump or air dash during short hop, even if you RC an attack.
• You can not block during short hop at all.
• Short hop has landing recovery.
• forgot to test if throw invul in Frame 1

Command Interpreter

• like BB, you can input things during super freeze and they execute immediately afterwards
• No negative edging of specials
• We could not tell if there was a hold-button-to-repeat-input thing like BB or if you could input dashes early like BB. It's pretty hard to test given that we aren't familiar with character's combos or frame data.
• You need to input 22 to do 22 motions. Mikey (the soCal carl player) described it to me that carls use some special 32 input to summon nirvana during combos, but that doesn't seem to be an option ehre. In either case, I don't understand it well enough to explain it any better haha. Ask a carl player what he's talking about!

Other stuff

• mashing 4A will not give you the auto combo. Your character will simply do 5A and not cancel into anything. Mashing 6A will do the auto combo. Exception: Mitsuru can mash 4A for the auto combo (likely so she can charge a drill).
• the super armor on A+B attacks will not guard against super attacks
• Minimum Damage on supers appears to be 30% for most, but iirc we found a few that were 20%
• Damage scaling will push damage of things down to 0, just like BB
• some persona attacks will auto correct to attack in the direction of the opponent, even if you jump and air turn to face away from the opponent such as Teddie's j.C.
• Teddie can hold down the item throw button to throw 2 items at once.
• Teddie's persona wind up animation for item throwing has a hitbox haha. hits multiple times
• No super cancel on whiff
• No TRM
• the last normal of an auto combo (5AAA for most chars) gives you 12 or 13 meter and refil a part of your burst gauge (1/8th?)
• forgot to test how long SP gauge cooldown lasts.

Yeah, read this before. Interesting stuff and no TRM is definitely a boon in my book.

Aww no negative edging. :(

I like the hold a button to air ukemi cause combo's in BB could get long. I don't know if this is new or not but I didn't know about it before.
 
@FluxWaveZ said:

Yeah, read this before. Interesting stuff and no TRM is definitely a boon in my book.

@SuperWristBands said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

Yeah, read this before. Interesting stuff and no TRM is definitely a boon in my book.

What is a TRM?

Throw Reject Miss. I've only heard about this a few days ago, so I apologize if I get this wrong (been trying to educate myself on all of these things), but a TRM basically punishes players for trying to break a throw too early. When an opponent goes to throw you and there's TRM in the game, that means that there's a certain period during the throw's startup frames that you can break it and if you try to break the throw before those frames, it simply won't break it and you'll get thrown even if you knew he was about to throw you before those specific frames.

@FluxWaveZ said:

@SuperWristBands said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

Yeah, read this before. Interesting stuff and no TRM is definitely a boon in my book.

What is a TRM?

Throw Reject Miss. I've only heard about this a few days ago, so I apologize if I get this wrong (been trying to educate myself on all of these things), but a TRM basically punishes players for trying to break a throw too early. When an opponent goes to throw you and there's TRM in the game, that means that there's a certain period during the throw's startup frames that you can break it and if you try to break the throw before those frames, it simply won't break it and you'll get thrown even if you knew he was about to throw you before those specific frames.

Basically yes. TRM kicks in when you input a tech command during the start-up frames of your opponent's throw, you end up getting thrown out of your throw's start-up frames. The idea behind this is to prevent mashing but I'm glad it's gone too.

I'm still a bit unclear on the purpose of short hopping when you can just IAD. Short hopping is enabled during the paralysis status effect, so it's the only way to jump at that time, but other than that I don't really see when to use it. Maybe short hopping makes for faster overheads than doing an IAD.

Yup, you might as well be speaking another language.

@FluxWaveZ: From what I understand, short hopping just kind of sucks unless your opponent is mashing. Still, I'm sure someone will find a use for it once the game is out in the wild.

@JeanLuc said:

Yup, you might as well be speaking another language.

@JeanLuc said:

Yup, you might as well be speaking another language.

this+

Is short hopping the same as it is in KOF? If so, I sometimes prefer doing that if not just to throw out a quick air attack and get the other person to block.

I'm guessing IAD=Instant Air Dash?

@Rmack: IAD is instant air dash, yeah. The short hop in P4A is so limited that the only time it would be superior to an IAD is if the opponent is blindly mashing low attacks.

@StarvingGamer said:

@FluxWaveZ: From what I understand, short hopping just kind of sucks unless your opponent is mashing. Still, I'm sure someone will find a use for it once the game is out in the wild.

True, but it sounds like the best way to defeat auto combo or the opening steps to most rushdown combos. Just doesn't look like it does anything against tri or square jump characters like yosuke or Labyris.

@Mesoian: I don't actually know this, but I'm assuming auto combos aren't comprised of low attacks? The short hop only has foot invincibility, can't block, and can't initiate an attack until the apex of the jump. Wouldn't an auto combo just stuff this for free?

What is negative edging?

@ImmortalSaiyan According to Giant Bombs wiki it's this:

A technique used in most 2-D fighters such as Street fighter which helps the player chain combos or just get a move out. The concept is that; not only can a move, such as a hadouken, be done upon entering the down diagonal forward motion then pressing punch, but it can also be done when the motion is entered and releasing the punch button (after being held down).

@_Soki_ said:

@ImmortalSaiyan According to Giant Bombs wiki it's this:

A technique used in most 2-D fighters such as Street fighter which helps the player chain combos or just get a move out. The concept is that; not only can a move, such as a hadouken, be done upon entering the down diagonal forward motion then pressing punch, but it can also be done when the motion is entered and releasing the punch button (after being held down).

Yep. Negative Edge is when in certain situations, releasing a button has the same effect as pressing that button.

@StarvingGamer said:

@Mesoian: I don't actually know this, but I'm assuming auto combos aren't comprised of low attacks? The short hop only has foot invincibility, can't block, and can't initiate an attack until the apex of the jump. Wouldn't an auto combo just stuff this for free?

Yeah, auto combos are just 5AAAA (with the exception, as indicated above, of Mitsuru who can do it with 4AAA). Plus, you can't block at all during hops and they have landing recovery, so if your opponent's just mashing the auto combo you'll get hurt real bad for hopping without a reason.

The hop has throw invincibility as well as foot invincibility, though, so I guess, like you said, it'd be useful for opponents who are a bit too comfortable mashing low attacks or throws.

Terms I don't quite get:

• plinking
• Magic series
• Links & chains (what's the difference?)
• Block strings
• Frame traps (I understand this a bit, but I don't think I could explain it)

Thanks for making this thread. While I didn't understand everything in the P4A breakdown I did learn quite a bit from the various other posts.

@StarvingGamer: Thanks a lot, that's very enlightening. Now I feel as though I've acquired enough fighting game lingo to not be confused concerning anything people may refer to that isn't extremely specific like "Happy Birthdays".