Hey y'all, it's been a hot minute, but I'm working several jobs this summer and there was a bit of a stretch where I wasn't really video gaming, but this past week I got back into the Guilty Gear Groove™ and decided to tell y'all about it. I also felt shitty every day I didn't play or make a post because I'm one of those people who tend to fall off of things they think they would dedicate myself toward, so the fact that I have been playing recently and on top of that am writing this right now. Well it feels alright.

In any case, it all re-started when I started playing Skullgirls with a friend who got it during the steam sale as his first fighting game. I was reminded of how I'm not the biggest fan of that game (tho Peacock is pretty fun ngl) and so I decided to buy him, myself and another friend GGXXACPR (Guilty Gear XX ACCENT CORE PLUS R for the uninitiated) which was like 3 bucks during the sale. I played that with him for a while, lamented over the fact that Bridget isn't in Xrd (Bridget is a boy who crossdresses as a nun with a magical yoyo that summons a teddy bear demon if you didn't know), and remembered that despite my badness I fucking love these games.

So I started playing again. My friend who never played it before (who also for some reason manages to pick up fighting games relatively fast) visited me and we just played it for hours. I pretty consistently beat him, which was to be expected, but I noticed that I was actually doing relatively simple Leo combos and doing my best to set up said combos in neutral. I was feeling good about the wins. I'd love to say I'm hooked but I don't want to speak too soon.

In any case, I loaded it back up the next day and hopped into a lobby. Started to play against another Leo main. Generally I'm not a fan of mirrors, but fuck it, he's probably better than me and I could watch what he's doing and learn a thing or two. First round? I get perfect'd. Wonderful. That confidence I had built up was starting to dwindle out of me like the helium from Ben's welcome to the office balloon. But hell, ain't gonna just quit now. We played match after match. Didn't get perfect'd again, but he beating me over and over. What's nice is that I did notice some things he was doing as far as his Leo mixups as well as some tech that I kept a mental note of (Eisen Sturm, Roman Cancel into that aerial quarters circle HS move). Finally... I won a round. It took a second to register in my head. That particular match was now 1-1. I might actually win a fucking match. We duke it out, both insanely low, some footsies are being played then I throw out a sweep and hit him and win! It felt great. He immediately left for another setup in the lobby (bit of a prick move but whatevs) and I did a victory lap while kicking that soccer ball around.

I'm going to keep playing this game. I can't stop now. My next step is to implement a combo other than some simple string of normals into rekka. Some helpful fellow who watched my stream at some point gave me the tip of RCing heavy fireball as an approach option. My one issue is still not quite being able to do charge moves reliably in the heat of battle, but I'll get there. I know I will. I'm also tempted to diversify my character options (namely into Milia because she seems dope) but at the same time I want to stick to getting some relative mastery with Leo before branching out. In any case, I'm real excited to continue with this game!

Stay Fresh,

~nic~

PS - I'm excited as hell for Evo!