Capcom Brawlers!

[Obiwanshinobi]

I tried Violent Storm and Night Slashers. Both are interesting games with interesting ideas that are both ruined by the same dumb mechanic: combo breakers for bosses. It's especially stupid for Violent Storm, since bosses can counter you even after a single hit, so all those interesting combos are useless against them and you have to stick to safe one or two hit attacks. Even more annoying is the choice to give them answers to everything and give them such fast walk speeds. A shame because with a few fixes they both could be rather good.

Night Slashers X is an OpenBOR remake supposed to improve on the original Night Slashers.

[Hagane]

Wha, no comments?????

Nice! Excellent write-up! You worded it better than I ever could, brilliant stuff. Playing with little thought and randomly hitting buttons is how 90% of people play these games unfortunately. It's interesting what you said about playing on auto-pilot, I find myself doing this alot and I have to make a conscious effort to snap out of it and think, especially when I'm playing ST in verses.

Glad you liked it. Yeah it's easier to spot those behaviour patterns on fighting games. I used to play a lot of ST too and found myself doing dumb stuff out of muscle memory and had to try quite hard to avoid doing it.

Would someone like to take a stab at ranking the CPS I+II brawlers from easy to hard depending on how hard to 1cc? (Feel free to correct the list I wrote down on the top of my head)

From the ones I played I'd say (from hardest to easiest)

Final Fight (mostly due to design oversights that make it extremely punishing)

Warriors of Fate

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs

Armored Warriors (few energy recovery items can make it tough at first but if you are experienced it's not that hard. I'd say that, design wise, it's the fairest Capcom beat'em up)

Alien vs Predator (would be much harder if it didn't have so many life recovery items)

Captain Commando

Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara (some tough spots but you can bypass anything with smart item / magic usage)

Knights of the Round

Battle Circuit

The Punisher (lots of weapons and resources)

In general I'd say that older games are harder because you have less mobility options, defensive mechanics, weapons and damage opportunities. On paper something like Armored Warriors can be quite hard to manage at first, but once you start to take advantage of flight / dash speed / weapons and other many particular options that game has, everything becomes much easier.

On something like Final Fight you can't move around fast, if you are cornered or knocked down you are dead, and your attack options are quite limited, so with less stuff to do you have to be much more careful and memorize much more than in something like SOM.

[apatheticTurd]

I tried Violent Storm and Night Slashers. Both are interesting games with interesting ideas that are both ruined by the same dumb mechanic: combo breakers for bosses. It's especially stupid for Violent Storm, since bosses can counter you even after a single hit

The bosses in Violent Storm are designed with the expectation you'll grapple them. The throw is the most damaging attack against them (and not the suplex/piledriver as one would expect) and most of them have a "trick" to grabbing them.

The stage 1 and 2 bosses are perfectly beatable with normal combos.

The stage 3 boss is only vulnerable when posing or landing from a drop.

The stage 4 boss gets a free breaker attack every time he's knocked down, although he'll waste it if you get directly above or below him. After he executes it, he's perfectly grabable or combo-able.

My recollections of the stage 5 and 6 bosses are a bit more fuzzy, though I know if you play as Boris and get a pipe, the stage 5 boss can be easily shredded (since it has great range, priority and Boris can attack knocked-down enemies with the pipe).

The final boss is decidely more cheap than the rest, though there are ton of 1cc videos of the game on Youtube so there's probably something to him I haven't figured out yet.

[MURPHAGATOR]

Almost all the bosses have rather simple loops, too.

Stages 1-3 as well as 5, you can use the OTG pickup throw and just loop throwing the boss forever. It's a pretty tight window (3 frames) on the stage 5 boss but doable.

The stage 4 boss you can just stand off-plane from him and jump and he will miss his anti-air attack and you can grab him after easily.

The stage 6 boss is a little less intuitive, but basically if you do the dash at the right time as he's standing up, he'll try to block it but fail and you can grab him and throw him to the other side of the stage and repeat.

The stage 7 miniboss you can throw off screen and then just jump kick for about 90% of his health.

Geld is kind of a monster, though. There's some things you can do, especially in the first half of his health bar, but ultimately it comes down to some luck for him.

[Hagane]

I know about the throw loops, the only thing preventing the game from being absolutely broken, but the problem is that all bosses outrange you and they can quick recover after they lose some life so you have to resort to dumb exploits to grab them.

I have an exploit for the last boss too when he does the energy pillar counter, which is doing a couple of hits then cancel into a desperation, which will avoid the counter without hitting him, and you will be able to hit him again when you recover.

It's a real shame because the game has a nice combo system but you have to resort to pseudo infinites to beat the bosses.

As an aside, I finally no missed AvsP with Linn after not playing it for around a year and a half. I'll try to go for a no damage run now, my main problems being stage four and the final bit of stage seven.

[1up]

I've decided that I want to go for a 1cc in Dungeons & Dragons Shadow over Mystara in 2015.

Is there an easier path through the game and what characters do people prefer? I see a lot of people on YouTube play 'Fighter' in their 1cc. I also see there's a lot of item management, and the are SO many secrets and items in the game that I look forward to discovering.

[Pretas]

If you can figure out the tricks to playing Magic User as a decent makeshift brawler (i.e. double tapping jump gets you a teleport backdash with invincibility frames), many of the bosses become much easier with his spells. Elf is the most versatile and reliable character for a solo 1CC, though.

Also, it's pretty much mandatory to beat the Red Dragon to have enough EXP to make finishing the game feasible.

[1up]

I read an interview with the developers on shmuplations, and they said that the Dwarf was the most powerful. One of them liked the Dwarf in Tower of Doom and decided to make him most powerful in Shadows over Mystara, but realised afterwards that he was the least liked

They also mentioned taking the river is easier? Any other path suggestions for easy route?

[Pretas]

Dwarf suffers a bit from his lack of magic, but he's indeed the best melee fighter and most resilient character. Even without magic, knowing how to use oil bottles well can lead to tons of damage from combos.

I've always been of the opinion that if you're not playing Shadow Over Mystara in co-op, you're not really playing the game, though. It's much more weighted towards party dynamics than Tower of Doom, and the difficulty can be really uneven in solo play, while ToD is better balanced with a smoother curve in this regard. That doesn't mean it's easy; on average it's usually harder than SOM due to the more weighty and harder-hitting combat.

[Leandro]

If it helps 1-up, there's an old thread in gamefaqs, from the user sumuduju, that has a good, if quick, analysis about the characters in SoM. I'l quote it here:

SoM

#1 green mage over black mage. i love cloudkill. blackmage's conjure elemental only helps against the lich, who can be disposed of easily with corner melee traps and a couple of ice storms. furthermore, meteor storm is bugged when used with staff of wizardry, because it goes over 255 damage and so restarts from 1.... lame imo. the mage's melee abilities are pretty underrated - his dash attack rules (double-hit , can be cancelled), his dagger does ridiculous damage against bosses (like a full lifebar against Synn). with infinite-charged lightning wands he can take down Rafael, telarin, elementals, darkwarrior2 without letting them move. EASIEST time against nagpa. 3 cloudkills/conjures and he's dead. easiest time against darkwarrior2 , 3 lightning bolts (using glitches , hit skeletons first) and he's dead. eh, seriously, it's not debatable, the mage is simply the easiest and best character in the game. in japan and korea they do non-magic runs because the mage is so good... staff of wizardry, why'd capcom even put this ridiculously overpowered crap in the game........

okay, now from here i won't mind if you disagree with me.

#2 fighter . great moveset, super endurance (takes like 3x less damage than elf/mage). simply no weaknesses whatsoever, except for the fact that his Forward+atk sucks, which isn't that much of a big deal (i like to do atk, f+atk, qcf+atk, repeat juggles w/ the elf and cleric but it can'[t be done with the fighter). anyway, dash+atk, qcf+atk, du+atk, repeat is all he needs against regular enemies. dual-wielding imo is underrated nad is very fun. 2handed sword is NIIICE as long as you stick with the combo i listed a few lines above. kills harpy like she's his *****. great megacrash move.

#3 cleric . crapload of heals + buying 7-9 rings from gnome village...and pretty good endurance.. okay, wtf capcom. you'd think his offense would suck, but nooo he has the best qcf+atk in the game and some really good jump attacks . plus he has create light/ hold person to set up combos. only weakness is elementals, but you can just cheese them with a morningstar (repeated du+atk) or a warhammer.

#4 elf. she has all the important spells (ice storm and lightning). and invisiblity to help her ass out against nagpa and darkwarrior2. haste is oh so nice with autofire, but sucks without it. her megacfrash is good against certain bosses to cheese them when they're lying down, but they're easy bosses anyway (displacer, ogre) i don't use autofire so haste sucks for me. absolute crap for hp and defense, but if you do everything right, there's nothing she can't do.doesn't leave a lot of room for errors though

#5 thief . her qcf+atk rules, can be done over and over to juggle. but that doesn't make her the best melee character no way. (for instance, cleric/elf can do atk,f+atk,qcf+atk for the same result, and fighter can abuse his qcf+atk to du+atk just as well for an even better effect). picking locks is nice, but.... she gets the worst loot in the game imo. fighter and mage get the best (so many heal/lightning rings)

#6 dwarf.. he's the one character i can't one-coin the game with.. i just can't get used to his attacks. he's amazing against regular characters (but who isn't) but he requires completely different tactics against bosses. i do acknowledge that a skilled dwarf can be a scary sight though.

I also 1 coined the game with every character except the Dwarf, which I never bothered to use. His list is spot on, but there's one thing I should mention:
My first 1cc was done using the Cleric. I think he is an excellent begginer character, he has good melee and his healing spells are abundant, you can make a lot of mistakes and survive. I'd put him above Fighter, probably

[1up]

Ok, I guess I will have to try each one out and give them a fair shake before I decide who to really place my bets on. Seems like Lightning if VERY good vs bosses and oil bombs are also very good.

Any preference on which route to take? From watching videos I have picked up that the river is good as you get loads of gold, and save the gnome village for a good shop. I guess different areas have different bosses, so which boss is easier?

[1up]

I'm setting out on this adventure next week, so if anyone has suggestions for an easier route through the game playing single player, please chime in. Right now I can't decide between Elf and Cleric. I've watched videos and both have pros and cons.

I'm starting from scratch and I can imagine there's special stuff I should know right off the bat like how to defend, dash, crouch, combos, when to use spells etc.

Tips would be appreciated

[Ruldra]

Right now I can't decide between Elf and Cleric.

From my experience with ToD, Elf has a very short lifebar and will die pretty easily. Cleric can take a lot more damage and heal himself, so you have a lot more room for error. Stick with him at first, and once you're more familiar with the game you can change characters if you want.

[Pretas]

The Japanese PS3 ports of ToD and Mystara (different from the US/EU ones) let you pick multiples of the same character in co-op.

Would be funny/cool to see a skilled playthrough with four Magic Users going nuts, or four Clerics constantly healing each other.

[1up]

I'm frustrated as FUCK right now! Had my first session of D&D:SoM tonigt and the furthest I made it was at either the Dark Warrior boss or the Man Scorpion Boss. Both handed my ass to me...

First I couldn't get past the first boss at all. After countless tries I figured out a way that I could beat the damned war machine consistently. But the 2 next bosses I almost couldn't get a hit in? They just outright destroyed me.

I feel like the item management is too big a part of this game. You really have to prep BEFORE going into the boss fight so you have maximum damage and a good item handy. And it's hard to figure out what to do to handle the boss as he just fucks you up straight away so you don't even get a chance to try things out.

Suggest me a less item management heavy Capcom brawler please. I'm thinking The King of Dragons. How's the difficulty on that compared to other Capcom brawlers?

Does anyone dare make a Capcom brawler difficulty tier list?

[Ruldra]

I hear you. I played a bit of SoM these days as well and the Tel'Arin boss was as far as I got. Most of my runs end at Dark Warrior. Bosses have a huge difficulty spike in this game and I have no idea how to deal with them. Heck I can't even beat Warmachine with the Thief.

King of Dragons is probably the easiest Capcom brawler I can think of. Wizard starts off weak but he absolutely demolishes everyone later on. After that you could try Cadillac & Dinosaurs.

Hagane says The Punisher is easy too but I'm not too familiar with that one.

[Squire Grooktook]

King of Dragon's is an amazing game, just never play wizard or elf.

Love parrying. Wish the game was a bit shorter though.

[Ruldra]

(Nevermind. Will try to get a higher quality recording later.)

[1up]

[quote="Ruldra"King of Dragons is probably the easiest Capcom brawler I can think of. Wizard starts off weak but he absolutely demolishes everyone later on. After that you could try Cadillac & Dinosaurs.

Hagane says The Punisher is easy too but I'm not too familiar with that one.[/quote]

Totally forgot that I already asked for this and that Hagane posted his list

Final Fight (mostly due to design oversights that make it extremely punishing)
Warriors of Fate
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
Armored Warriors
Alien vs Predator
Captain Commando
Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara
Knights of the Round
Battle Circuit
The Punisher


I agree that King of Dragons is on the easier side but it's very long. I also find The Punisher to be very hard. I always get wrecked in the bus on stage 2?

[Squire Grooktook]

Don't mean to keep going on about it, but TOKD maximum difficulty dip switch also makes enemies much more aggressive, and they're pretty random already, so it's a pretty twitchy experience. Again, don't play Elf or Wizard.

[Ex_Mosquito]

I've always wanted to 1cc SoM after whatching a guy 1cc it in Hey! Gamecentre - Akihabara, he just demolished it like it was nothing. It looks like a really fun game when you know what you're doing.

I recommend Final Fight. It's a prettying basic game and it will teach you the fundamentals to play the later Capcom brawlers. I don't think it's as hard as people say it is personally. My mate completed it after a couple of months practice when he was 14years old in arcade back in the day. He was exceptionally good at games, though.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Bumping to ask for help on Alien vs. Predator - what's the best way to deal with the alien queen boss in stage 4 with Predator Warrior? I'm stumped; I can't find any good strategy for beating her aside from the cheesy "safe spot on top of the boxes" strategy, which doesn't seem to be absolutely consistent.

[Hagane]

Mash shoryuken. Get to her side and just do d, u + A over and over, if you do it correctly you won't get hit at all. They key is not crossing her up with the shoryu so you stay on the same side after each shoryu. It's quite funny.

SoM:

You don't really need to use items that much to beat the game. They certainly can make it easier, but you can no-item just fine. Dark Warrior is a bit of a dick though, it's preferable to pick the lower route if you are a beginner.

War Machine is easy once you notice that it needs goblins to push it. Get to its back and hit the goblins and it won't be able to move, keep killing the replacements and you will do lots of damage (you can even prevent it from getting out of the screen at all if you get to its back right at the start of the fight).

Another relevant bit is that it has a huge hurtbox. Stay still around the middle of the screen, then move up when it charges at you. Hit it at the top, you will find how lenient the range is. SInce the boss gets pushed back every time you hit it, you can get a lot of hits in if you time them well.

I got back to the game and I'm trying to 1CC with the Thief. She's much better than she appears at first, but you can't mess up at all or you die in seconds.

[Squire Grooktook]

I got around to 1cc'ing Alien Vs Predator recently, and I swear this is one of my top 5 or at least top 10 games ever made. Probably one of the most visceral, fluid, and tactical combat engine's I've ever touched, layed out in a fast paced gauntlet of random but nuanced chaos where every credit is different and each battle begs you to look for windows to stylishly execute all your super fun moves.

Like seriously holy shit guys this game, this fucking game. It's sooooo good.


Also been playing around with Knights of The Round a bit too. It's a bit hard going back to the whack whack whack combo's and relatively one dimensional movesets of an older title after playing Capcom's Magnum Opus, but the blocking system is still really fun, and when you get into the groove of it, that dance of clashing blades during boss fights is the hypest shit. I still wish I could play that with the kind of brilliant move-set design in AVP though, the DND games seem close to that but the blocking mechanic doesn't seem as central or fluid.

I used to kinda dislike KOTR before because I felt like attacks were too fast to block reactively, but I think I kind of "get it" now after playing AVP. Most attacks are extremely fast, but just barely reactable. The idea is to space yourself at maximum range so that you can have an easier time of reacting to things.

That being said, manual blocking (that is, holding Attack + Back to maintain a steady guard, as opposed to parrying an attack by moving back at the last moment) an anticipated attack is a lot stronger then I thought, since it basically gives you free damage in many situations. I'm still getting the hang of the games dueling, but I suspect that'll be a large key to mastery