As a preface -- I'm no pro fighting game person, I basically never play online and usually just do single player stuff. I'm not great at these games by any stretch.

But goddamn do I hate the higher-level AI in this game. It's made me angrier than any game ever has. Any time I do a higher-level difficulty multiverse tower, for example, I inevitably run into an enemy with the AI set to just do nonstop juggles, essentially, and I'll play a single fight over and over and over again, for sometimes over an hour, until I just quit the game entirely to avoid throwing my controller into a wall.

It's the AI setting where they'll know the exact timing of your moves and block at the very last second, juggle you from one end of the arena to the other, know exactly when you're getting out of the wake-up animation cycle and start another combo on you right then. It's so insanely frustrating.

I just wish there was more of a middle ground, it feels like there's maybe three settings for the AI in the game -- insanely easy, slightly too easy, and just soul-crushing hard.

I just had to get that out there after spending 40 minutes fighting Poison Ivy as the last person in a tower and then the game crashing.

I know this isn't a good answer, but if you are having real trouble with a boss or the last part of a Multieverse event, and it's the single player Multiverse, you can sub in one of your kitted out AI players to complete it for you. When you get beaten for the umpteenth time, you can go back to the character select and when you're over your characters, press square (if you're on PS4) where you can select your loadout. Go to AI loadout (which you set up in teh Customize Character screen) and pick that. Then you will have an AI outfitted with your gear fighting the computer AI, and it's usually really even if your gear is properly upgraded.

It's cheap but if you're desperate, have the computer fight for you to get you over the hump.

I had issue with poison ivy when i was playing as supergirl the other week, finally figured out the only way i could beat her was to zone her and spam the 2 combo's i knew (at the time). I think with this game and any NRS game is to expect to get juggled like crazy when you fight harder AI and people who know what they are doing. Also look through your moves list for moves with the less frame start up, a lot of times you can spam it against the ai lol.

For all the stuff Netherrealm has gotten right over the years (especially for single-player fighting game fans), their AI still needs a lot of work. It's not as ridiculous as it used to be, but they just can't find that middle ground between stupid easy and stupid hard. MKX wasn't too bad, but having watched some of the Injustice 2 story on Youtube, it looks like it's all over the place on difficulty.

Especially bosses, I remember in the early days of MK, the bosses were just SO cheap. Even in Injustice 2 Story Mode, Brainiac is insane on medium difficulty.

https://www.reddit.com/r/INJUSTICE/comments/6cnu3y/compiled_list_of_ai_builds/

Use your own AI to counter theirs, tada. For some reason people are saying NRS AI isn't good when it's vastly superior to every other game? I guess you can keep believing that if you want. The AI doesn't cheat in Injustice 2, only did a little bit in MKX. It did cheat in MK9 and the first Injustice though.

I mean, the lone reason why AI builds are so effective in the first place is precisely because they do cheat. AI builds perform frame links and repositions that are functionally impossible by a human, and the enemy AI 100% reads player inputs to outpoke/counter actions. Beating the AI on Hard/Very Hard becomes a game entirely comprised of baiting wake-ups and punishing recovery frames, because employing any semblance of an aggressive offensive strategy spells near-certain failure.

@garrettross You aren't alone, duder. The AI--especially Multiverse Boss AI--can be brutal. If you hit a wall, definitely check out the link @fredchuckdave posted above and build an AI Loadout. You still gain the experience and loot you would have earned otherwise.

Don't forget Brainiac's attacks on his ship that he can activate any time and take away half your life bar in one shot -_-

Thanks guys, I really hate resorting to just having the game play itself but god, I legitimately wanted to commit an act of violence after the other night.

Totally relatable. I tend to look at the AI Loadouts as ultimate trump cards rather than crutches. The enemy AI simply isn't playing the same game I am. It isn't bound by the same rules.

Injustice is willing to give its players the tools to fight back on their terms, which I think is kind of amazing. Plus, if you don't look at the reddit thread linked, it ends up being sort of fun trying to spec out a personalized AI minion. Almost like a strategy game inside a fighting game.

I wish there was a difficulty setting in between Medium and Hard, because Medium feels almost perfect, but could stand to get just slightly tougher. The jump to Hard ends up being too severe, too cheap, too silly. Against the AI, I mostly spar on Medium, doing so with the mentality that I'd rather enjoy something slightly too easy than suffer fighting something that is unfairly hard.

@fredchuckdave: I'm pretty certain it's been proven that the AI *does* cheat. I mean, aside from the fact that PvP fighting games rely on mind-tricks and psych outs, and that the AI needs to compensate for not actually having a mind, people provided evidence that the NRS-AI will respond to your button inputs the instant you touch them, before the animation actually plays (which is why the AI sometimes hits you with a perfect 8-hit 600-damage anti-air combo when you jump once). This is more frequent on higher difficulty settings, of course.

My personal pet peeve is that Netherrealm can't seem to program a challenging "Boss AI", so they just artificially increase its damage and protection to the point where two of it's bog-standard moves reduces your HP by half (and THEN says "Great, you beat the boss! Now do it all over again, with him being exactly as annoying as he was before." Faaaaaaack youuuuuuu, game.)

THAT said, over all I'm really enjoying Injustice 2, and I'll point out that using Meter-Burned Air-Escapes or MB Escape Rolls are a pretty safe way to c-c-c-combo break a long juggle.

@fredchuckdave:I think the problem is the AI is either easy, or really fucking hard. I can stomp any AI on medium, but when I tried going up to hard I couldn't win.

This isn't surprising. I can think of one part of one fighting game ever where the AI wasn't terrible. Making reasonable AI for a fighting game is a pretty difficult thing to do, but I wish that more devs would take a legitimate stab at the problem.

@fredchuckdave: Is IJ2 AI is so smart why does my Firestorm keep losing due to constantly doing wakeup f3 eh?

A 12 tiered tower with Braniac on top made me loose my mind, it's a wonder the controller still works.

The AI forsaw my every move, everything I tried something he either grabbed me out of the air with game braking physics, or he orbital laser spammed me to bits, I couldn't even stand up. Let alone get close to him, he only needed one opening and he juggled one health bar from me.

Aquaman, Shazam, Batman,Firestorm and Braniac are the worst on high difficulty. There's a thing called a challenge and there's a thing called Fuck you, you aren't allowed to have fun playing this game.

I can handle hard AI but I can't stand it if the AI basically ignores any laws of physics and mechanics, Brianiac and Wonderwoman are able to use their long range grapple attack from ANY range within half a second, they don't even have to finish the animation and you can see the game breaking because the character gets teleported to the supposed extend of the lasso/tentacle. They can also grapple you out of every animation and know exactly where you'll be, the damn thing reads your inputs and overrides your animations and inputs in a second, leaving your character just standing there.

@ravelle: I can't recall with Brainiac, but I can state with 100% certainty that WW's Lasso special move is *not* a grapple. It can be blocked like any other attack. ;)

I agree that characters brokenly warping into a "grappled" state is a huge bummer; again, it suggests a lack of know-how or a lack of caring on the part of Netherrealm that I find surprising, given how much TLC they've given to the game overall.

Again, in general I really enjoy it, but Injustice 2 is not without flaws.

Thing is though, she even whips that lasso grab when I'm an inch away from her trying to get in combo's I barely see the animation and can't react fast enough.

Yeah, I hear ya. It's always a bummer when AI manipulates it's ability to make nano-second fast reaction time and read a player's command inputs rather than realistically reacting to a player's moves.

On the plus side, like said above, you can have yoyr own robo-warrior fight cheezy Multiverse battles for you; and you can be fairly confident that a human player won't be able to act in that way, so if you can beat a hard AI from time to time, you're probably a challenging match for a lot of on-line opponents. :)

Brainiac is only insane because he has boss-only moves (the massive, metal worm-claws) that hit almost instantly and have next-to-no start-up animation. Which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't do almost 1/2 of a entire bar in two hits AND act as a combo set-up.

I get that he's a boss character, but being able to defeat a normal character in ~4 moves is a bit ridiculous, even for them.

I'm not a fighting game guy either and I liked this game up to this point. But now when I try to finish a Metaverse planet, all the AI does is stun lock me. It's only a matter of time before I get caught up in a combo nightmare and whoops, the match is over. Finished all of the story chapters, I liked those, but now... I don't know if I wanna play any more of this game.

@whatshisface: Same. I love this game so much, in a lot of ways it's just perfect, and then I inevitably get to a fight where I die a dozen times without getting to the enemy's second healthbar and then select an AI fighter and they destroy the enemy without getting touched once

There's also the AI sandbagging until the second half of their healthbar is done and then...suddenly: every move blocked/dodged and countered with 1/3 combos...constantly...

AND the multiverse saying you're at the same level as an opponent, but then inflating the opponent's stats...just TELL me Catwoman is level 40, and I'm level 19...I know the level for players caps out at 20, but would the players REALLY revolt so much if AI levels went higher at higher difficulties?...

Based on how they freak out: probably...