Always happy to hear my vids reflect people's real experiences with fighting games! Means I'm doing something right.

I have two friends who both main Marth in Melee, one is convinced I'm the best of us while myself and the other think we're all on even footing, and it's because of how they play. I'm a filthy Fox main, he wants to hug his opponents, and while the guy who convinced himself I'm somehow better wants to do the same thing, the other guy is happy to sit back and punish my smoothbrain dash-ins because I don't actually know what I'm doing.

Can't fault the classics

This is a very Netherrealm comment, are you an MK player by chance? I will be taking mk12 seriously and making content to do with it when it releases, but since teleporters aren't really common enough in other games to really be a whole archetype, it would maybe be a "move overview" video. Where I talk about the strengths and weaknesses of a specific kind of move and all its many variations. I discuss Testaments teleport from guilty gear strive in depth in my "How to PRESSURE in fighting games" tutorial from last year. It's a bit more specific than a whole teleporters guide, but you might find it interesting nonetheless 👍

@@DarumaFGC MK9 was my first fighting game lol. But after I commentated this, I thought it over and came to the same conclusion you did about teleports. I would be interested in a similar video format to this, discussing special move archetypes and their various uses. Like, the similarities and differences between Virgil's teleports, weskers, smokes... etc I'm subbed to the channel though and look forward to anything coming out though.

Yeah, I wanted to make the archetypes in this series really precise where I could, since in wider discussions they're really nebulous and not well defined. And strong definitions help new players learn how to play these games and if they want to dedicate to learning these characters, too. Two more of these this week, so look forward to 'em!

Are you certain it isn't?

@@DarumaFGC I remember this series being more about Yu-gi-oh

Today we are discussing zoodiacs

Actually, disjoints arent really an inherent part of midrangers, and are pretty rare. A lot more characters can be hit on the sword than you'd realise. Especially during start up.

That's the idea! Even my own ideas about who's what and where to draw the lines grow every day with more discussion and thought into the whole thing.

Another one over the weekend before a short slumber between it another video, stay tuned!

I only learned this after putting this out :(

I mostly agree, but I think for the term shoto to be useful, to teach people how to play as, and play against shotos, there needs to be a lot of transfer and overlap between the playstyles. And so a very loose definition like "has a dp, a tatsu, and a fireball" can get you in really bothersome ground when lumping characters like akuma and kage in with ryu and ken, when both play so wildly differently from Ryu and ken, it's much more worthwhile to be a lot stricter. And tie it down to something closer to has only - or in some games "primarily" - a DP, tatsu and fireball. For that reason I personally wouldn't lump in Jin, Ky, Katarina, and a few others as shotos, even though they build off the base kit of a shoto, the purpose behind them having those tools is very different, and they play what most people would define as a "less honest" game than someone like Ryu, Ragna, or Gran. Since they all have some inherent mixups in their kit and you'll find them "fishing" for specific reactions from their opponent. When a true-blue simple shoto, ideally only has 1 applicable tool per situation. You dp a jump, fireball them at range, or tatsu a fireball. I made this series to start these discussions though and am plenty amicable to any criticisms of my theory's on certain archetypes. I primarily want to help new people learn, but also to let other fighting game players who are more experienced than me give more of an eye to characters that aren't as commonly talked about as part of a group and instead treated as singular entities. Hope that makes sense.

Sidenote - footsies characters/pokers, or as I'd probably refer to them, "punishers" play a distinctly different game to midrangers, and I have a video planned on them. So characters like Chun-li, Kolin and Karin will get a spotlight relatively soon.

@@DarumaFGC I don't know about needing to have only the three standard shoto moves, but I can agree with primarily. The important thing for me is "Are they an all around character with a DP, fireball, and tatsu." The main point of shotos is their versatility all around, which is why Sol (while versatile to a degree) isn't considered as a shoto because he can't do much from afar, but can do a lot up close. Meanwhile Ken is a versatile character w/the shoto tools, but has a more aggressive lean-in despite having the ability to keep out a little. I don't know about Jin or Katarina, but I would say that Ky fits that definition, warranting calling him a shoto. He is a versatile character all around, with a lean-in on midrange.

@@deco7217 it does start getting into muddy water when you see ken is now using a built in run attack to enforce a 50/50 and has lost tatsu projectile invulnerability. It is still at the point where I think he plays "enough" like Ryu I'm comfortable calling him a shoto still, but it's just teetering on that enough. That's why though I wouldn't really call Ky one, watching ky play versus watching ryu play; they're worlds apart, and I like archetypes to tell you what you're playing against just from the name alone or else I think it's just pointless semantics. I do think "only" was extreme of me, and primarily is better, but I do think it should at least be 'close' to only. If Ky lost foudre arc & air fireball, just retaining projectile, stun dipper, dp, & his supers. He'd probably play in a way that would still be different from Ryu, but different to the extent ken is different. With some allowances made for anime games like air dp and RC mixes. But it's because he spends a lot of his time in the air and he has this brutal mix game from like half screen that converts into more mixes with meter, it just feels fundamentally different to me, you know that when Ryu tatsus through a fireball you don't also need to guess if his tatsu will end in an overhead or low and then hold his mix, and if he doesn't get a hit in from that sequence he cant do up+back air fireball and retreat. Tatsus unsafe if it isn't a clean punish so it only has 1 use and that's it.

@@DarumaFGC I'm curious, in your words, what do you define as the difference between a Midranger and a Punisher? On that note, do these vary from what you described in your Boxer video? I've heard a lot of people discuss the concept of a Footsies character (Hydro mentioned this in a video of his a while back), and some of the fundamentals sound similar to what you described in your Boxer video, which made me curious.

I try not to get into specifics with which archetypes they struggle with and more about playstyles or move types they fail at dealing with, because most archetypes force most other archetypes to play somewhat differently when they're in play.

Absolutely! Happy you enjoy!

Glad its something you enjoy!

Really appreciate it! Thank you!

Much appreciated! Being accurate about how characters play and why they play them is the whole point of this series, so I'm glad it struck true with you!

Video on "bullies" tomorrow, a pretty specific archetype that I've essentially self identified. And then over the weekend I will release item-throwers, a far more agreed upon archetype that still doesn't see much FGC content created to discuss them

@@DarumaFGC subscribed! i'm also really curious if you ever talk about Arakune, i'm really puzzled about wich archetype they belong or if is a new one entirely hahahaa

Arakune is a pretty strict runaway character. There might be a video on them at some point. Arakune runs away the whole game slowly building curse meter, then when the curse bar is full they go all out on offense. Because of this long wait for a resource some people like to call arakune and oro "one-shot" characters. Since they essentially get one limited chance at 100-0'ing you. And don't really aim to win besides that. But I don't really like one-shot as an archetype description, the characters are too different from eachother

@@DarumaFGC great analysis! thanks :D

I would like to cover this stuff in future, it'll be a ways off though. Describing how Shang tsung works alone would take a ton of work.

@@DarumaFGC Oh for sure. It's always interesting to see how they balance what essentially are utility toolbox characters that can handle such a wide range of situations pretty well. Especially when relating to the native Jack of All Trades of their respective games.

@@SPIRE_FAN I believe it's in MK Trilogy that to make Shang tsung competitively fair, you had to pick which character you could morph into before the game, rather than it just being either your opponents character, or the whole roster. Really interesting limitation to work around.

Glad you think so! Two more coming this week! I've been working on the first trio for months. But from here on they should be much easier to make.

Fingers crossed!

Thank you very much! I've been hard at work around a year or so but yeah it's really insane within the course of a week going from 400 to almost 1,800 subs! I'm very happy with the growth and just happy you guys enjoy the content!

I'd probably take inspiration from Ike, accent core Ky and Saber primarily as far as sword users specifically. I think they all play a very interesting game with their swords being the main focus, where a lot of other characters don't use their sword quite as prominently or interestingly.

2 more archetype archives coming this week!

It's a very popular archetype for how little it gets a lens shone on it. Plus it's not bad for people just starting to take the games seriously due to the relative safety their optimal range provides

Cheers! 🍻

A certain someone in my twitch chat told me to do it while I was learning her

Knowing you don't have to worry and you just swing around is a luxury few archetypes get

I believe its Mad Forest from the Japanese Castlevania 3 soundtrack, great soundtrack btw.

I'm more interested in really silly decks like iC1000, I taught chatGPT to make Yu-Gi-Oh decks with a friend and had it make a very janky starving venom fusion dragon lyrilusc OTK deck buuuut the AI doesn't understand the game enough yet and the deck doesn't work. I do still occasionally stream Yu-Gi-Oh though. Both Master Duel and Duel Links. Do I really sound like rank10ygo? 😅

@Daruma it's just the title lol. Good stuff tho

2 more this week! One coming tomorrow night. Look forward to it!

You're in luck-ish. The next two videos both coming this week are on bullies, and item throwers. Think characters like Z Broly, Sagat, and Urien for bullies. It's a sub-archetype I wanted to cover for a while. Trap characters might be on the way!

@@DarumaFGC that’s what I like to see. I started with smash bro’s and branched out so I love the vids.

Tekken 7 drew me in but after experiencing Blazblue, im 2D through-and-through

@@DarumaFGC Hope you cover Testament from X to AC+ extensively because Testament was the true Ancestor of the Trap style character.

@@zhaoyun255 testament, byakuya and a couple others are planned for this video when it happens downstream

Kagura actually is interesting for this discussion because all his downsides come from how restrictive his moveset is, he's a very knowledge heavy character to both play and play against but because his 3 stances all have 3 exit moves with very very specific attributes, he takes a lot of risks constantly. It's why you don't see him tons in tournament. Any character where you have to make the correct call rather than just react to what's on-screen gives them a naturally lower success rate when against players at that level.

Nice awesomenauts pfp

They're the archetype that winds up caring about startup and recovery the most, since for a pure zoner, they're so far away neither can be punished (usually), and for a short ranged character, they get the best of both worlds to make up for their lack of range. There's a very wide range of just how "midrange" characters are though. And on both the shorter range "swordless" end of midrange keepaway (chun li, Nash, answer), or the longer range end where they're just shy of being fullscreen (Faust, testament, Johnny) both sides have some kind of extraneous function besides pure midrange, that makes those characters more useful to classify as another archetype. While all of those characters have way better range than a rush down character, but can't realistically play fullscreen either, they all have extreme gimmicks that make them more useful to define as other things. Which is why you'd probably never actually call the latter 3 Midrangers even though technically, they play at midrange. For a quick example, it's much more useful to place chun-li in a box with Karin & Kolin, because all three are never the aggressive party, they play an extreme defensive game where all they do is use hit-confirmable buttons out in the air to catch punishes and do around 30% to your character, making their damage actually a lot higher in effect than someone like Falke or Vega. They're weighted so heavily towards punishes though that their reversals, anti projectile, etc is all neutered. I have a video planned on punish characters but it's behind a couple other projects right now.

@@DarumaFGC Thanks for the explanation! I just started reading takopi so I wouldn't get spoiled watching your review, you have good taste btw. And a new sub also, keep up the good work

I appreciate the comment on my taste, I made it myself. Some manga reviews and such are on the horizon but a little tucked away. 2 more archetype archives this week! Look forward to em

Defence is the very first thing I tell beginners to focus on. If you can't defend, you can't attack. Good job getting into them seriously!

I'd hate to break it to you but KY is quite Unga himself lol

@@alexanderdenison2950 I mean he has the potential to unga bunga, everyone in Guilty Gear can unga bunga to an extent, But Ky does have some great options for a reactionary playstyle

@Derrin Errow I'd argue that his tools honestly encourage a more active playstyle, he's a lot better at actively controlling space than he is at whiff punishing, (outside of stun dipper anyways which is obviously an excellemt situational whiff punish) most tournament level Ky players are quite literally always pressing something in neutral to attack a specific space on the screen. I'd say gio and millia, and honestly even sol encourage a more reactionary neutral game in the current version of the game.

And a grab that travels a football stadium

Pure coincidence, needed an archetype video series name and its a given when you start thinking "archetype overview" or "archetype guide" etc, its really the simplest thing i could think

Absolutely, and youll hear it often said too. I cant find an actual quote from the developer calling him such, but id almost guarantee cowboy is designed to be one, i think most telling of this is his 6 bullet limit, otherwise, hed likely try to play much further away from opponents on the screen. But instead its a great tool to bait approach or make retreating hard/impossible, since ricochet can cover some really nasty smart angles.

This is mostly what i was talking about in my brawler video, i didnt really go into detail on this part since discussion on "gorilla" took up half the vid but the characters are also often known as mid dispensers. And it definitely applies to a lot of tekken characters. There are other adjacent archetypes id like to cover though, like i dont have a name in mind for whatever youd say Law is, since i dont think hes a brawler but he definitely just trys to bait the opponent into mashing out and explodes them for mashing, i think thats super interesting and id like to cover that specific thing someday, even if it just winds up being about a few of his moves in particular.

It's hard for me to say, I would maybe say she's a punish character, which is more commonly (though I'd argue incorrectly) called a footsies character, cause much like Dragunov, Chun li, Karin, Kolin, etc. Her movement is very important and she's very happy to play defensive and not run much offense at all, if any. I wouldn't say that she plays keep away at all, and is more specifically fishing for counters. But that's my personal opinion just off the top of my head.

@@DarumaFGC thanks for your insights, I always find the play style of these characters, like Jyubei and Yashamaru from SamSho, appealing. Yet I always have a hard time fathoming which archetype should they fit into.

Low/Mid players arent as good at keepaway or pressure, so characters who are entirely focused on winning scrambles and getting stray hits are amazing at that skill bracket.

Xrd is a game I'll probably do a very controversial video on down the line. Characters like Sin, Faust, Johnny & Raven all have steady availability of 50-75% screen attacks, to the point it becomes a bit reductive to even call anyone a midranger given that ky, who clearly is one in strive and accent core, has way less range than all these characters in XRD series. For that reason I'm not reaaally sure I'd count sin. I'd maybe more put that down to a case of "xrds attack ranges are somewhat wacky" than "all 5 count as Midrangers but play totally differently"

Kinda, but kinda not. The reason I chose saber in particular is because she basically only plays fundies, and her only advantage in that field is decent range. Pciel has so much more going on than her, and in part that's because she uses meltys movement a lot better than saber does, but her kit is just a lot more complicated, and winds up not drawing in the same crowd of players or playing quite the same. But I do think pciel fits in this discussion if I was going to do an "archetypes in melty" video, which maaaay be on its way, we'll see.

Kind of a lame answer, but realistically hes something like a big normals character, which isnt something that comes up very often in most games, but has been a pretty big problem in arcsys games specifically, like if you look at how well they've performed in XRD, Johnny Raven and Faust all have great results and its almost purely because they all comfortably play from halfscreen, Ky still plays like a midranger in both of those older GG games and he has some fantastic, unique and interesting moves to account for the high power level of the games, but Johnny just has longer range than him for free, and hes not really some kind of zoner either, its not like his goal is keepaway even if hes always had a fair amount of that in his kit. and will do it at parts throughout any match. So hes kind of like a midranger but better. His coin tosses are really non commital anti airs that also pin the opponent down into block pressure and mixups from over halfscreen. etc. His strive incarnation is something that plenty more of exist now though, Characters like Luong & Yamazaki in kof or Zeku in SFV rely on that kind of like, stance hold where they either pull out a long range mid or an anti air, they enter a stance where its an ambiguous 50/50 how to win on approaching them and they get to explode damage on an opponent who guesses the approach wrong, and generally whiffing it isnt that bad because of the sheer range of the move. Testament does something similar in strive too.

@@DarumaFGC would you say that big normals are a subset of midranger and the Bully can also be the same?

Sort of, maybe more like a sister archetype. When i think of big normals i generally think characters like Jack-7, Abigail from SF, or Johnny. Normally theyre kind of like midrangers but with bad or nonexistent get off me's, trading that for corner pressure that is much safer and more potent than a midranger. Theres certainly plenty to learn from both styles that you can borrow.

While he is clearly a melting pot of a few archetypes, since his spell restock super gives him a One-shot element and his relentlessness seems counter intuitive for a zoner, I do think I'd still put him in the pureblood projectile-based zoner camp. that might seem counter intuitive but I think thats just because his range doesnt lose any strength when its up in your face either. But clearly he would delight if you just sat fullscreen all game and let him stock and spam spells as much as he wanted. Its still at the end of the day reversal that is his weakest part and its preventing approach hes strongest at, even if his corner pressure is very good which is generally unexpected for zoners (though not unheard of at all)

Nago will be in a video coming out on Monday (estimated)

Yeah, but I really dislike the use of shoto for anime games because there's not really a good 1-1 analogue for Ryus playstyle ever, except maybe in granblue. In my eyes, a shoto should PRIMARILY play as such: Projectile to force gap closing and punish zoners Tatsu to punish projectile and close gap DP to punish jumping over projectile It's what we would consider "Honest" because each move has only one purpose and the purpose is not to confuse, there's no mix involved. This is why id like to just call these guys in anime games something else, very very visibly, sol and ky do not play anything like Ryu. Ky has a half screen overhead low mix, air fireballs, and some very nasty mix when using Roman cancel correctly or hS projectile. Meanwhile sol has no projectile invuln, and his projectile doesn't even interact with zoners, not only is he an insanely aggressive character but he just doesn't have the same move properties as Ryu whatsoever. So I try avoid using the term shoto unless they really do play to a considerable degree like Ryu. Which for the most part, these dudes don't.

Double cheers! 🍻🍻

Nah, theyll get their own vid, which i begrudgingly will title "footsies character" but i dont agree with that name, which ill go over in the vid

The answer to this is extremely complicated but to give a short answer I would say no. Archetypes are for the purpose of giving out a clear idea of what a character does just in a single word and shoto and Rushdown are two very far apart ideas. You can play a shoto doing Rushdown as a tactic, or you can be a Rushdown character with shoto tools, but I'd really try stick to 1 when describing a character. Ones always gonna be more important than the other. Now that ken in SF6 has his built in run as well as his high-low rekka mix and (presumably) no tatsu projectile immunity, it's probably better to just call him Rushdown. Just for example.

i dont like the name, but she often gets called a "footsies" character. In my opinion its a little more accurate to just call them "punishers" or something. Footsies is too vague and misleading, all people mean when they say it is characters who basically run no offense and look for consistent whiff punishes that do insane damage, Kolin, Karin, Chun-li etc. Video coming on them in a few weeks time.

@@DarumaFGC fair enough, looking forward to it

On it!

In the GY after being Ghost Ogre'd

No, cause a midranger doesn't have to be honest and they often have built in mixups in their kit, and they also most of the time don't have any kind of tatsu. Which is really important for a shoto. Plus the way shotos normals are designed to fish for hitconfirms is really different from Midrangers who are a lot happier with the blockstun and pushback to enforce further mix or keepaway. They're similar, but different enough it's not useful to say they're the same.

@@DarumaFGC let's make it clear, by shoto I simply refer to any all rounder(I know shoto also means ryu clone) 1 The honesty of a shoto is dependent on the type of game (sol is a shoto and he doesn't have to be honest) 2 to me, a tatsu is just a dash attack, so it doesn't matter which specific dash attack it is sense every fighting game should be unique even across different games

So your question actually was, so a midranger is a zoning oriented all rounder? In that sense yes, sorta. Saying zoning oriented makes it sound like these guys can play fullscreen, which they really can't. But they have better range than most characters as far as physical attacks are concerned. So they're a mid range all-rounder, so yes. I'll make a video in a few weeks about shotos and going over that with a fine comb. But to just give a short statement on it before going into it in longer detail, I don't think using shoto in so vague a sense is a good idea, since say, Guile is also an all rounder but very clearly not a shoto. And similarly I think sols lack of fullscreen and anti projectile options make me think he's not one either. Since put simply, someone who really likes playing ryu, probably won't like playing sol at all, they're completely different. I'll go over it with a fine comb in the video but it's gonna be a month away or so, there's a few more planned first

Those games dont have tons of overlap with 2D games, but they do have their own archetypes. For example the Evasive character is really really common in those games, characters like Fahk will have moves that warp their hitbox to be really difficult to hit, and characters like nina get to end their pressure in rotating around the opponent extremely quickly, making them hard to punish. Plus, tekken and soul calibur have very different ideas on what range a midranger plays, and zoning is totally different in both too

@DarumaFGC I was having a conversation with Mt friend who doesn't like fighting games "mainly because they don't like not having someone to carry them." And he was trying to tell me the Demon Slayer game is closer to being a traditional fighting game than like Naruto Ninja Storm. What are your thoughts on this? I told him if the game doesn't have footsie (neutral), mix/oki, and etc. It would be hard for many to view it as a traditional/"true" fighting game. He wants arena fighters to be popular so he can play a popular fighter. Man's puts 0 hours in training or learning and wants an easier time already. A strange phenomenon. Fighting games are the most watched but least played.

I made a video on the ninja storm games, but in my opinion everything theyve done since has been a lower effort reskin of them, mha, one piece, demon slayer, etc. Its the same game but made cheaper and faster, so its a bit silly to try and claim one's more respectable than ninja storm. At best, theyre essentially identical. As for competitive viability, the games are all made to be flashy, not balanced in any semblance of the word, and the skill ceiling is unbelievably low, since there isnt even a rock paper scissors to guessing if someone attacks, grabs, or dodges, theyre all designed to be fully reactable options. I think theyre by-and-large great games casually, especially to experience their stories, but unless someone buckles up and wants to specifically make one to be a competitive game, there will never be one with a respectable scene, theyre simply not designed as such. I forget which competitive player said this, but tekken essentially contains two completely different games. If you know anything about professional tekken, you should know about Korean Backdashing, which completely changes the movement of the game and completely defines the way its played competitively, but there are literally millions of people who buy and play tekken every year, who dont know about korean backdashing but love the game and try and learn their own version of the meta without it, either on their own, or with friends. I think thats a much more interesting example of a true 3D fighter designed to be enjoyed casually, Tekken is still fun, flashy, and has a high skill ceiling even if youre playing the simpler version of the game using only simple dashes and sidesteps.

@DarumaFGC exactly, you put into words I struggled to. I think the rock paper scissor aspect is crucial to the identity of fighting games. I'm ngl I've been enjoying your insights; thank you.

Unfortunately, bimbo and himbo are seperate archetypes, so I couldn't just group them for one video like that.

I think when you get to that good walk speed range, you wind up at a crossroads where you're better defined as a runaway character, or a "punish" type character, which tends to be what people are getting at when they say a footsies character. I'd argue they fundamentally play very differently to the characters I showed here, except vega, who generally belongs more in runaway, but hes been adjusted a lot in sfv to like, actually play the game, his neutrals a lot better than its ever been, even so I didn't use his neutral as an example too much, because it applies a fair amount less to him than to falke, even if its somewhat applicable to both. If you look at characters like vega, orie, or nash - they're a lot more likely to just get stray hits and leave it at that, or concede their knockdowns for space rather than pressure. They play a very hit-and-run game plan where they're happy to leave a match down to them winning like 6 interactions for 15% damage. Not dissimilar to say, arakune before he gets his win condition. Meanwhile, characters like kolin, chun-li, karin more suffice the "footsies" category, which I dont really like as a label, "punisher" or something works better, because that's really all people mean when they call them footsies characters, they spam an empty special cancellable normal thats reasonably safe to whiff and use the punishes they fish for for around 30% per interaction. Not saying that damage is the defining rule of which archetype they define as either, but the interactions they seek to win and how they achieve them is a good rule of thumb to figure out the archetype they belong to. This is why id place characters like ky, jin, katalina in midrange, rather than shoto. To say they're shotos just because they have a fireball, dp and a movement option is reductive, and doesnt really reflect the experience of fighting them, making it not too useful a label. Shotos are better defined by how they have to play using those options, and a character like ryu, ragna or djeeta is much more restricted to using the right option, for the right scenario. Projectile at range, dp enemies out of the air, movement option to close in. While Jin, Ky and katalina wind up flying all over the place and using a lot of things we wouldnt typically consider "honest" outright. air specials, parry baiting, built-in mixups. Etc. For similar reasons, you probably wouldnt call Sol a shoto, but you are much more likely to call Hyde one, the labels are flexible, but only really to a certain extent before it becomes pointless bundling certain characters together. I'm not saying honesty is the defining factor either, Sagat is fairly honest, but his playstyle is totally different from a regular shoto even though he has all the core tools of one. I would like to note that I don't really view the movement speed grouping as primary for archetypes in any game, even ones like Blazblue and Melty, where every characters overall movement is different between eachother to a much higher degree than in an average fighting game. It just defines a very little amount about how they play unless its using some kind of special to move around the place, in a game like street fighter, its primary defining thing is your characters ability to shimmy, but that alone doesnt really tell you anything about Juri's differences from Laura even though they both have very good walk speeds and will shimmy on knockdown 9/10 times. And the same goes for blazblue/melty, while on paper reading about hakumens restricted movement would make you instinctively assume they're a bigbody but it doesnt really reflect playing against him, where he has a lot of moves that dash him forward extremely fast and make him surprisingly good at closing gaps. For that reason I think you're kind of looking at saber a little bit back to front, sabers clash frames are important, but she also has a very good fast half screen overhead low mix, its not really remotely the same as fighting a genuinely armored opponent like kouma, while she might have slow universal movement, and limited options overall, just because shes slow for the game that melty is, an extremely fast one, doesnt actually bundle her in with the playstyle of slow characters. And to quickly adress rolento, i did try and specify I wasn't pressing an inherent honesty on these characters. But rolento does rely quite heavily on good spacing to get his game started properly, his roll is in a bit of a weird place for sfiv and the game that is, so his playstyle does become a knowledge check in effect. But while "knowledge check" is a useful thing to write characters off as, its also not really great as an archetype, since it groups characters like rolento, hilda, kokonoe etc together. So I think it still serves good for discussion to note rolento still does count, even if his neutral winds up looking very odd compared to just about everyone. (though to be fair, this is a game with abel and el fuerte) You seem receptive to discussion! So I thought I'd adress all my thoughts here. Thanks for the comment bro. Your thoughts are always welcome here. Quick edit: I think honesty is only an inherent concept to Shoto's. Right tool, right time. Everyone else, zoners grapplers midranger etc can be as dishonest as theyd like.

​@@DarumaFGC I think you touched on two points where we disagree. For one, I'd argue movement is one of, if not *the* most important thing that differentiates characters, and while I don't think I know enough about SFV to comment on Laura or Juri (hence why I didn't mention Falke) I think Hakumen is a decent example. Sure, he can use specials to close gaps others can with normal movement, but they're much bigger commitments and none of them truly replace a decent run. They're stable options for some matchups, but against a character or player more dedicated to zoning they're much riskier outside of hard reads. They're also pretty costly if you're consistently using them due to how magatama work. At some point you'll have to bear with Hakumen's base movement to let them recharge. And I think this segues nicely into my second point of contention, personally I think how characters are best played on paper is a little more relevant then you make it out to be. The thing is, most players don't play most characters, so the experience of playing against a character isn't ubiquitous. I think this is why Grapplers are, as you put it, the biggest villains of the FGC despite the fact that true grapplers are almost always low to bottom tier nowadays. But most players play rushdown, and grapplers counter rushdown. So to most players that's an accurate assessment of how fighting grapplers feels. The average experience doesn't accurately reflect a characters true capabilities, and it can't. It's just an aggregate of personal opinions, not hard data. I'll concede that I'm guilty of this kind of bias myself (although I wasn't being [entirely] serious when I said Rolento is a cheater). But I think this kind of mentality is a sort of slippery slope that leads to classifying more than half the characters in any given anime game as rushdown just because that's how most players approach the game. With these two points in mind I'll go out on a limb and say I would call Sol a shoto, or at least an anime shoto. He might not have a proper fireball and he might have a command grab, but these aren't fundamental, meta-defining tools in most anime games like they are in SF. He may be more aggressive than a character like Ryu, but it's GG, aggression is the name of the game. I feel like Sol and Ky are (or at least were) meant to be two sides of the shoto coin somewhat like Ryu and Ken. And I'd say the same for Ragna and Jin, Gran and Katalina, and Hyde and Linne. They all share staple tools for their respective games and they're always joined by offshoot characters with similar staples but key differences or gimmicks (e.g HOS, Akuma, Tsubaki, Djeeta, Wagner). Sure some of these characters are better suited in certain situations, but I've always seen these as variations within the category, and on some level it comes down to slight differences between players. Jin or Ky aren't that much better at playing midrange than their rivals. Of course they have some notable advantages in neutral, but it's not like you can't play Ragna or Sol evasively. In most of the matchups the blondies don't want to get too close or too far from the opponent it's arguably optimal for their spikey haired sparring partners to do the same. In some cases they want to stay at arms length even more. Ragna has low health, so he can't really afford to take as many risks as Jin can against certain characters. Sol's modifiers aren't even that bad and you still saw Sols squirming to get away from good Pot players in pretty much every version before Strive. Does this make every character with a balanced kit a midrange character against Grapplers? But again, That's just the way I see it. Trying to reflect the experience of a matchup and focusing on the macro of a characters kit is probably more useful for most players. I'd be lying if said I don't think that way myself from time to time, everyone does because you might not even know this much starting out. I didn't pick Vega in Vanilla SF4 because he had good walkspeed. I picked him because I thought he looked cool in the manual and because charge inputs seemed easier to 10 year old me. And you'll always have characters that don't fit neatly into any box no matter how much you focus on the micro side, but that's part of why I enjoy discussions like this.

I don't reaaally think I said anything that makes the matchup against certain characters/archetypes matter as far as my definition of any archetype goes. If anything that's a large part of why I don't factor in movement too much, having 3 airdashes against an opponent with excellent anti air of course makes you use your airdashes much less, it becomes much less relevant in that matchup. But my characterisation of a midranger trading startup/recovery for range still holds true, as does the revolving guesses between getting in, and keeping away. Since even against say a grappler, you still want to be in their face sometimes. Both as part of conditioning and part of your own gameplan/win condition, same does go for zoners/grapplers too, a skilled grappler shouldn't be at grab range all game, and vice versa. So I think move properties and movelist are my prime definition for characters by far. I think sols a good case study for why I don't really agree with the term "anime shoto" or calling him a shoto in a more general broad sense either. I just don't think it accurately represents how he plays at all. Grand viper, night raid vortex, bandit bringer/revolver are all huge parts of his gameplan, and the explicit, sole goal of all of them (except NRV, which also low profiles, but is also the least safe of these moves) is to create close range (but not throw range) pressure or mix-ups. I think it's fair to categorise characters like him, akatsuki and susano'o as something like "brawlers". They're clearly not just Rushdown characters, who are explicitly characters that win by gluing themselves within throw range (jam, makoto blazblue, makoto SF), which is a range that all 3 of these characters actually rarely occupy unless they specifically want to enforce a strike/throw - due to all their specials and normals being advancing moves with lots of block pushback, and instead they have nearly limitless implied pressure if just neutral blocked, (f.S, f.S isn't airtight but it will frametrap slow mashes and will loop into more blocking, so sol doesn't have to do anything else to stay in that pressure range, which makes f.S scarier, which makes you respect it more, and allows him to do other moves at that range to pressure) these character need to specifically be barrier blocked to end their pressure without them specifically choosing to end that basic pressure by doing a special move or attempting to throw you. It's a very unique and identifiable situation that only certain characters have built into their toolkit. And I think it's clear and distinct enough of a playstyle to be worthy of its own distinct definition and distinct terms. Also, on hakumen, his get-in/movement specials are all 1 bar, while a good hakumen will need to know how to play without meter, it's only for intervals of at maximum 5 seconds that he is ever meterless, and he even starts with a bar too. Which is why I just don't really think it accurately reflects him to say his movement is actually limited - except for in the air, which due to his specific playstyle, winds up again being surprisingly non impactful. Not only is his air-to-air really good, but his ground to air is fantastic. You could say similar things of nagoryuki, they both have resource focused dashes to "manage" - but in effect that's only a limitation for a few very specific kinds of interactions that they have inbuilt answers for anyway. Which is why even though they both have "big body" traits where movement is concerned, I don't think that really forms much of a picture of how these characters actually play. Because they absolutely dominate grounded interactions even from long distances and have great grounded movement, and even good enough anti air that they often negate air-to-ground as a response. You can't say the same of tager, Potemkin, gief, etc. But it's more true of characters like Birdie, and Abigail. So for simplicity's sake, even if you cut every game to just 3 speed classes, fast, medium, slow. I think relying on them to figure out how someone plays really isn't worth much, aoko and ushi are incredibly fast, millia and chipp are incredibly fast, etc. Millias a great example since mixup characters who work nearly the same as her by just placing something on knockdown to enforce blockstun can be on the slower end or the faster end and it winds up not impacting much.

Earned

I avoided including footage of testament because this is muddy, but yes. Testaments projectile isn't a good fullscreen tool, it either dissipates at half screen or moves incredibly slowly at 100%, it's not intended for "zoning" in the traditional sense. It's a keepaway tool and a setplay tool simultaneously.

@@DarumaFGC OK, I see. Thanks for the explanation.

I dunno, I still see Testament as a zoner, but one that prefers their opponent to be a bit beyond midscreen rather than fullscreen. My rule of thumb is that zoners are generally more reliant on projectiles or absurdly long normals, and midrangers are more reliant on pokes that are juuuuust long enough to outrange the majority of the cast.

@@thatshadowguy1005 Testaments projectiles are a bit oddball though in that they're only actually good either very close range, or very far range. At an actual midrange they're fairly easy for most of the cast to avoid or interrupt. But close range it can be quite a nuisance to react to since it's faster than 6hS and not something most people anticipate. It's too slow to actually hit anyone within reason at fullscreen, but it both forces an approach at fullscreen, and leaves a succubus behind that testament can teleport to for mix. And it's the fact that the main utility of testaments projectile is the succubus and not the hitbox itself that's why I wouldn't consider them a zoner. It's actually much more a midrange space control tool or a get-in tool than it is useful for killing someone. And by space control tool I specifically mean a major use of it is to use it to teleport to where a faster character just was when they try to approach you, meaning they've accidentally put you back at midrange and you get to surprise them with some kind of mixup from your optimal distance. There's a ridiculous number of mixup uses for teleport and teleport feint so I can't really get into them all, but testament does a very constant mix between frustrating people into approaching them, and closing the gap themselves. So I think pretty firmly, they're a midranger.

Kinda yes, kinda no. In a lot of 2D games the sword can actually be hit, platform fighters are a lot more gung-ho with disjoints and the way movement works is really important. While these might share a lot of attributes and the same name, don't take my word as gospel for 3D fighters or platform Fighters. While there's still a 60-80% overlap between this archetype in these games and those games, it's up to you to decide exactly what information still applies and doesn't.

Video coming with him in it soon

This series is specifically about non-basic archetypes, and the goal isn't for me to discuss the more commonly discussed kinds like shoto, Rushdown, zoner, grappler. I do want beginners to be able to parse these videos but given the topic is niche archetypes, there wasn't really a reason to jam in a full definition for any of the above 4

All rounder suffices if you are a literal beginner and the word shoto means nothing to you, or a more invested player who wants to get involved with the discussion on midrangers

@@DarumaFGC I suppose my only argument would be that things, such as shoto, abare, option select and fuzzies, are always used incorrectly in an effort to simplify things for new users, while commendable, my opinion is that in simplifying this way you are giving people quite literally the wrong idea about the characters and what the term means. If you want to start simple do just that, and save particular naming conventions for higher levels of coaching to avoid the dilution of meaning, instead of using a concept in an improper way for the sake of simplicity (which happens way too often in fighting games). I appreciate what you’re attempting, however. I think starting with base concepts is good so long as it invites people to seek further knowledge without misrepresentation. That will become hard to unlearn down the line.

@@carlosMartinez-tj3yf I've already made 5 explicit tutorials aimed at new and intermediate players in separate playlists I flag in the description box and ending card for every video, including a full and explicit definition of shoto, and in depth coverage of their playstyle. And yet even when a player is up to an intermediate level, I don't think concepts like abare, option selects, fuzzies, etc are things new players will even begin to properly Parse and integrate into their gameplan until they gain a lot more expertise beyond being just intermediate in fighting games, and only by that point will they have enough knowledge of the systems surrounding those concepts to fill in the gaps of exactly how broad the goalposts are for what those concepts actually cover. And until then throwing those concepts out serves no purpose besides muddying the waters and scaring off newcomers to think these games are more complex than they are. Too many people in the FGC are completely removed from what it's like to actually be new and not only find specials difficult to input, but to not know moves have special properties like projectile invulnerability, armor, etc, and not have any idea about knockdown pressure and the idea your character has an optimal range. But even with that beginner level of knowledge, what does all-rounder imply for a fighting game? Or jack-of-all-trades? Both get thrown around a lot for shotos and I think it's silly to imply either are wrong for them. They have good counter-zoning, good zoning, good anti air, and simple pressure/mixups. And that's with the bare bones sf2 tatsu, projectile, dp movelist. While it's good to be explicit and say something like, not all rounders are shotos, but all shotos are all rounders, at that point it really is semantic, it's not a useful distinction to draw since you wind up at silly arguments like, guile is an all rounder, but he's not a shoto, when nobody would make the mistake of calling him a shoto anyway, since he not only lacks a tatsu but very clearly and distinctly plays a very defensive game that's inherent to the need to hold charge, nothing like Ryu or ken would.

@@DarumaFGCall shotos are all rounders? No, they are explicitly not. This debate is exactly why you should stay away from the term in these contexts. It calls a good many things to question, not to mention your own knowledge as the provider of info. Make sure you can be immaculate with your choice of words or else you drown in the piss.

Love when a video does that.

The only video I've done that isn't an established archetype people already talk about all the time is the Bully, midranger brawler item thrower boxer etc are things people already say en masse

@@DarumaFGC yeah, and they're not archetypes. they're variations on an existing archetype. I mean, a bully is a rush down character, no matter how much you insist it's something new you discovered. characters do or don't have the capacity to fight at the midrange. It doesn't make them a "midranger", they just have buttons that work at a certain range. And even is a brawler? Someone who fights up close without a command throw? Item thrower? What's next, oil-putter-onner? Floaty jump kicker? I mean, seriously, you think you're adding depth to a conversation, but you're only repackaging something already established, but with the caveat of minor details that are supposed to all of a sudden change them into a whole new archetype.

You should watch my what is an archetype video and see if you disagree with any of the lines I draw on what an archetype is or where you draw the line on whether someone belongs to a specific archetype or not. I think you'd agree more than you expect on the difference between a playstyle and an archetype.

@@DarumaFGC I've watched your videos. first and foremost, thank you for the free content and entertainment. no sarcasm, just appreciation. i think your videos are high-quality and at the very least show care, effort and love. with that being said, i really do disagree with your whole idea, which could have been more accurate if you didn't decide to label them as archetypes, but instead identified them as "fighting styles". i think that you're arguing semantics to try and differentiate or create something that's either already a thing, or simply a toolset or trait of an existing thing. an "archetype" is relegated to a character. a "playstyle" is defined by decisions and actions a player makes when controlling their character. zoners, grapplers and shotos are "archetypes", while rush-down, turtler, mix-up are examples of "playstyles". you can play any archetype in any playstyle, with varying degrees of success, but it doesn't mean that you've created a brand new archetype. teleporter is not an archetype, it's a tool, and not a single character's gameplan revolves around simply teleporting around the screen to win. if they did, they would be considered mix-up or 50/50 characters, but they wouldn't get an archetype of their own. you might as well rebrand Ryu as a "low forwarder" or "two-in-oner" if you want to emphasize his excessive use of low forward into fireball...but you won't. so why think that archetypes can be based on a singular tool?

@@RetroKid I'm really confused how you got that impression, I stress repeatedly in all my videos that archetypes can't be defined by single tools or choices you make while playing a character. And said in plenty comments that like dive-kicker and teleporter aren't archetypes. You need to have an overall focused goal the characters moves as a whole facilitate.

Hey I just ruined Sol, Nago and Faust too. I'm coming after everybody