I Miss Melty Blood

Talking with Honya on Twitter about Melty Blood made me realize how long it's been since I've played the game.  There's a few reasons for this.  Other than stating those, I'm just going to cover some of my favorite stuff to do with certain characters.  Note that I'm in no way actually decent at the game, so likely very little will apply to tourneyfags and will probably make me look like a total n00b (or as the fighting game community likes to say, scrub).

Technically I could fire the game up at any time.  I have it, the PS2, a screen, speakers, a controller, and a save with everything unlocked on my memory card.  There's no real physical barrier.

But what's infinitely more fun than playing fighting games by yourself, against the AI?  Playing fighting games against real people.  That's what I haven't had the opportunity to do.

The reason for this is due to something simple yet mind-bogglingly unexpected.  Every Friday I'd get together with friends and we'd play games.  Board games, card games, and since I was bringing my PS2, console games.  This took place with a subset of CAINE, in one of their dorms.  However, this semester, our host and all five of his suitemates somehow forgot to bring a TV.  No TV, no PS2.  Simple as that.

Now, of course, there is a solution, though it takes a lot of effort.  I've done it once, and it was more hassle than it was worth.  Basically, take my screen, PC speakers, and assortment of audio cables necessary to route the audio from the PS2 to my PC speakers.  Due to space limitations it had to be set up a fair distance away from the rest of the gaming action and was sorely underused.  Also, I'd just gotten Guitar Hero 5 at that point and was obsessed, so that's what I was playing, and hadn't brought enough regular controllers for anything else.

With the reasons out of the way, we move on to discussing fun stuff to do in Melty Blood.  I'll start with Kohaku.  I don't really have a "main", but she's the one I have more playtime with than any other character.

I love abusing her molotov cocktails.  They build magic circuit like crazy, she's invulnerable while dropping them, and if they're blocked they offer enough blockstun to be completely safe enough for me to land and try something else.  Since this is stealthily Actress Again we're talking about, whacking bombs around the screen with Half-Moon style Kohaku is also quite fun.  Basically, I play Kohaku as a troll character.

Mech-Hisui has a ton of fun stuff including a wide array of projectiles to spam.  My favorite thing though has to be her 4B flamethrower.  People think they're going to be jumping in, and surprise!  You're on fire!

Back in Act Cadenza I really annoyed the shit out of a friend with Nero Chaos' summons, specifically the deer.  Once you get that shit started it's hard to get knocked out of it.  I haven't really played him much in Actress Again, but they can't have changed him all that much.

Even though I play Kohaku as a troll character, the game has two troll characters built in.  Yes, I'm talking about Neko-arc and Neko-arc Chaos.  They're much smaller than the rest of the cast and have a wide array of moves to cause much annoyance, including screen-wide beams and a teleport move for easy mixups.  Word to the wise, stay away from their air dash, it's slow as balls.  Neko-arc has an aerial move that I use in place of her air dash, I believe it's j.214B.  I don't really feel like firing up the game or looking up a move list just to check, though.

The tag team of Hisui and Kohaku is always fun to play, just because of the combos you can make while using the sisters in tandem.  Couple that with being able to switch which one you're controlling to completely change your available move list and having access to both of their arc drives regardless of who you're controlling and you get a complete experience.  I spend most of my time controlling Kohaku, so I can abuse the Hisui assist where she runs forwards and knocks the opponent into the wall.  Following up on that (or just using it repeatedly for trollolols) is pretty fun.  Sometimes though I'll switch back to controlling Hisui and go in for some beatdown.

There's three versions of Akiha in Actress Again, and they all play slightly differently.  Oddly enough, the settings menu claims that Akiha Vermillion is my best character.  I think that's just based off of Arcade mode, though.  Regardless of which one you choose, she's got options for beatdowns.

I kind of feel like there's someone I'm leaving out that I used to play a fair amount.  Since I can't think of the name I'll just end the post here.  If I remember I may edit it in, but that's unlikely.

Since it's on my mind, can't wait for the last four episodes of Carnival Phantasm.