Introduction

Inputs

                   .- up (u)
                   |
  up+back (ub) - 7 8 9 - up+forward (uf)

      back (b) - 4   6 - forward (f)

down+back (db) - 1 2 3 - down+foward (df)
                   |
                   `- down (d)

Light Punch
Light Kick
Heavy Punch
Heavy Kick

Game Mechanics

Throwing

Standard throws are performed using + .

You can break a throw by pressing + while standing or crouching. If you are crouching and a throw does not occur, you will get a crouching LP. Be aware that every crouching LP in the game can be parried both high and low.

You have a 9 frame window to tech a throw, with the first 6 frames giving you a neutral tech, and the last 3 frames resulting in a back flip. If you back flip, the aggressor has significant frame advantage.

There is a 6 frame throw protection on wake up -if you do not quickrise-. If you quickrise, you can be thrown at the same instant you lose your invincibility.

There is a 5 or 6 frame throw protection out of block and hitstun. (currently not 100% certain if it's 5 or 6)

Universal Overhead (UOH)

UOH's are performed using + .

For all characters except Hina and Shimo, UOH's are considered airborne on the 6th frame, meaning that they are not immediately throw invincible.

UOHs are +0 on hit and +0 on block when the opponent is standing (unless you time it as a meaty attack, of course).

If the opponent is crouching, a UOH grants good frame advantage on hit and can always be followed up with a combo. Many characters can combo light attacks easily, or heavy attacks with practice.

For Hina and Shimo, their UOHs leave the ground on the 4th frame. Shimo's UOH is +5 on hit and block while Hina's is +6 on hit/block. Because of this, their UOHs are better for pressure than other characters' UOHs, but the combo afterwards will always be a tough link.

Guard Meter and Instant Guard Crush

The tiny blue bar beneath your Life bar is your Guard Meter. As you block attacks this will decrease. It will flash red as it gets close to being empty.

If your guard meter is fully depleted, you cannot defend yourself for approximately 1.5 seconds. An opponent with good timing can score a full combo. The meter will return to full after your guard has been broken.

A full guard meter has 1020 guard points. This is universal across all characters.

Guard crushes are performed using + , which will instantly deplete your opponent's guard meter.

If this attack is blocked, the opponent cannot defend themselves for about half a second. (They recover much faster than from a normal guard break.)

If the GC hits an opponent, it hits about as hard as a normal HP.

Jumps, Superjumps, and "Tripguard"

You can jump straight up, forwards, or backwards by pressing any upwards direction (, , or ).

You can superjump up, forwards, or backwards by pressing any downwards direction (down, down-left, or down-right) followed by any upwards direction (up, up-left, or up-right).

You cannot block or parry during pre-jump frames.

Pre-jump frames are throw invincible.

Jumps have 4 pre-jump frames where you can be hit grounded, except for Chadha and Aja, who have 6 pre-jump frames.

Superjumping adds an additional 2 pre-jump frames.

If you attack during a normal jump, you are vulnerable for 3 frames upon landing to all attacks and throws. This increases to 4 frames for a superjump.

If you do not attack during a normal jump, you can guard immediately upon landing.

If you do not attack during a superjump, you are still vulnerable for 2 frames upon landing to all attacks and throws.

Backdashing

You can Backdash by pressing back twice quickly on your keyboard/joystick/control pad.

Backdashes are throw invincible for their first 5 frames, but are NOT airborne and have no other invincibility. If you find yourself getting thrown while backdashing, you backdashed too early to avoid the throw properly.

Parrying

There are two parry buttons, high parry and low parry.

When you tap a parry button, a successful parry will register if an attack collides with you within a certain number of frames, and if that attack can be parried in that zone.

The amount of time that a parry attempt is active depends upon what direction you are pressing on your keyboard/joystick/control pad.

Frame windows on parries:
- Neutral or Back: 10 frames
- Down or Down-Back: 7 frames for high parry, 10 frames for low parry
- Forward: 13 frames for high parry, 7 frames for low parry
- Down-Forward: 7 frames for high parry, 13 frames for low parry
- While airborne: 10 frames regardless of direction input

When you tap a parry button, that button is in "recovery" for 22 frames. In other words, If you press a parry button, then press it again at some point in the next 22 frames after the first press, then the second press of the button cannot produce a parry. This prevents parry mashing.

If you successfully parry an attack, the recovery windows on BOTH parries are reset, allowing another immediate parry in either zone.

The two parry buttons have separate recoveries. If one parry is in recovery, you can still use the other parry as normal. This can be used to your advantage when parrying attacks that be parried both high and low. That is, if you press high parry, wait a short while, then press low parry, you have a single, very large parry window to parry that attack. This technique is often referred to as "BL Shifting" and is useful while airborne (because -all attacks- can be parried with -either- parry button while airborne) and also against ground attacks that are parryable both high and low (such as all crouching LPs).

If you press both parry buttons at the exact same time, only a high parry is registered.

If you press one parry button, then press the other parry button within the parry window of the first parry, then the second parry window begins and the first parry window ends. (In other words, if you press low parry then you accidentally press high parry immediately afterwards, the low parry is negated.)

When you attempt a parry, sometimes tiny blue or red bars appear next to the parry icons. These bars indicate whether your parry attempt was early or late and by how many frames. For example, if you press a parry button, then 8 frames later a fireball collides with you, 8 blue bars will appear. If you get hit by something then you try to parry 3 frames late, 3 red bars will appear. These bars appear during matches to give you timing feedback on your parries.

Knockdowns and Wakeup Timings

Soft Knockdowns

When you are knocked down by certain attacks, you can press a punch button when you hit the ground to wakeup faster. We call this a Quickrise. Alternatively, you can press a kick button to make yourself stay grounded for longer than normal. We call this Delayed Wakeup.

Any knockdown where you can use either a punch or kick button to affect your wakeup timing is often referred to as a "soft knockdown".

Hard Knockdowns

Some attacks do NOT allow you to use a Quickrise or a Delayed Wakeup. We call these situations "hard knockdowns".

Note: You can Quickrise after getting hit by a sweep ( + for most characters, + for Hina and Shimo), but you cannot use a Delayed Wakeup.

Wakeup Timings

When a character hits the ground, they fully wakeup after a certain number of frames. These timings are NOT universal, and vary based on whether or not the character did a Quickrise, Delayed Wakeup, or nothing.

Counterhit States

High Jump Counter:

Caused by getting hit in any way during a superjump in any direction
DOUBLE damage from normals/specials
1.5x damage from everything else

Crouching Counter:

Caused by getting hit while crouching, and also during some special moves
1.25x damage when crouching

Super Armor Counter:

Caused by getting hit during an armored state (such as with Chadha's EX dp+P)
1.5x damage when taking hits in an armored state (the life does not recover)

BL Counter (Parry Counter):

BL stands for "Button Lock", which was in-game terminology for parry in previous versions.
Caused on the ground when you get hit low while attempting a high parry, and vice versa.
Caused in the air by getting hit by any attack that is not a LP or a LK after attempting any air parry.
1.5x damage
For a BL Counter on a grounded opponent, you get an additional +3 frames of advantage on that hit. If you continue the combo, the next hit has an additional +2 frames of advantage, and the next hit an additional +1 frame of advantage.
For a BL Counter on an airborne opponent, the opponent pops high into the air and a damaging juggle combo is possible. The exact amount of juggle points rewarded for an air BL Counter varies from character to character.

High Jump Counters and BL Counters do not stack, as BL Counter takes priority. Crouching Counters CAN stack with BL Counters, resulting in 1.875x damage.

Life Mechanics

All characters have the same amount of life, 51600.

You can reduce the damage you take when you get hit by pressing buttons (similar to Melty Blood).

If you are getting hit by punch attacks you need to press a punch button, and vice versa.

Button strength doesn’t matter, and negative edge inputs are accepted for damage reduction..

Damage dealt is automatically scaled when the opponent has less health (Guts system, like in SF4 and Soul Calibur 5).
- Less than 50% life: -5% damage
- Less than 25% life: -10% damage
- Less than 10% life: -25% damage

Stun

If you get hit many times without retaliating, you will get stunned (dizzy).

When stunned, you can mash buttons and directions to recover faster.

Only the first hit in a combo adds to the stun gauge.

Your stun gauge will not go down until you get a hit on the opponent.

Counter hits do not affect stun damage.

Universal guard crush and throws do not do stun damage.

Stun happens when your stun gauge reaches 320 (seems to be universal) with most lights doing 10-20 stun damage and heavies doing 40-50 stun damage.

When you stun the opponent, they launch high into the air and you hear a chirping bird-like sound effect. When this happens, you can juggle the opponent off of that launch, then followup up with a full combo after the juggle is over. Damage scaling does not reset at any point.

Super Selection

After you select your character, you can choose from one of that character's two Super moves. No matter which super you select, you still have access to both supers. Selecting a super powers up that super by giving it an additional 20% damage. There are a few exceptions, however:

Azure's Shunjunrankujin (Super1) is normally 3 hits. When selected, this super gets an additional 2 hits.

Chadha's Gigadeath Pressure (Super1) is a grab super that does 18000 damage. It is input with two full circle motions (360s). When selected, you can do three or four full circle motions instead of two to increase the damage by 2000 each. In addition, you can also do five full circles if you have 2 full super bars (maximum meter) for 36000 damage.

Jet's L.G.J. (Super2) is a timer super that lasts about 6 seconds. When selected, the super timer lasts an additional 1.2 seconds or so.

Aja's Kongo Shingonso (Super2) is a timer super that lasts about 6 seconds. When selected, the super timer lasts about twice as long.

Kotaro's Star's Gift (Super2) causes a status effect on the opponent if it hits. It lasts about 2 seconds. When selected, the status effect lasts about 8 seconds. In addition, the status effect will also now work on block, in this case for about 2 seconds.

Omit Idle

Executing anything other than a normal move on the first possible frame when going back to a neutral position (reversal), the game will display “Omit Idle” and a number. The number indicates whether or not you acted on the earliest possible frame.

Omit Idle 0 = frame-perfect. Omit Idle 1 = 1 frame late. Omit Idle 2 = 2 frames late.

If your action was 3 or more frames late, Omit Idle does not appear.

Miscellaneous

Directional Buffer

The special move buffer is 8 frames for all special moves except "charge" special moves. (After inputting the directions for a special move, you can leave the stick at neutral for 7 frames, press the button on the 8th frame, and the special move will still come out.)

The special move buffer for charge special moves is 9 frames.

Hurtboxes

The following characters gain a wider hurtbox while crouching: Azure, Hanzo, Juzumaru, Hina, Shimo, Jet, Chadha. (The other characters do not.)

"Red" combos

Some moves can combo after an opponent backflips in the air from an air reset (such as Kou's and Jet's super1). When this happens, if the combo counter turns red, this means that the opponent could have parried that move.

--Juicebox

HUD

#	Name	Description
1	HP Gauge	Gauge showing how much Health one has. First one to lower their opponent's HP to 0 wins the round.
2	SP Gauge	Gauge showing how much SP one has. The gauge is increased with various actions, such as performing special moves. EX Special Moves will consume 1/2 of an SP bar while a Super Special Move will consume a full bar.
3	Reinforcement Light	A light showing which super has been reinforced. Red light means super 1 has been reinforced, blue light means super 2 has been reinforced.
4	Guard Gauge	Gauge showing how much guard meter is left.
5	Timer	Shows how many seconds are left in the round. Standard time is 99 seconds. When the timer reaches 0, the one with the most HP will win the round.
6	Button Lock Light	Indicates when a BL (parry) button is pressed. Top one lights up when a High Button Lock is used, bottom lights up when a Low Button Lock is used.
7	Misc Information	Shows information that depends on game mode. (Points in Arcade/Training mode, winstreak in VS/Network VS)
8	Player Name	Indicates the player.