Difficult But Awesome / Fighting Game

By definition, fighting games are, per se, difficult games to master and even to pick up, especially in the crazier air-dash based subgenres. Some Dexterity Required is the norm rather than the exception, after all. But some characters take the difficulty up a notch. Thankfully, in the right hands, these characters have the ability to make even SNK Bosses shiver.

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• Akatsuki Blitzkampf and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle have Blitztank, an automated lightning-powered tank with a skull hood ornament. As such, it plays by different rules than regular characters. It's the largest character in the games, bigger even than Waldstein in Under Night In-Birth, and thus is slow and unable to jump very well. On the other hand, it hits like, well, a tank, and can knock out opponents with ease in the right hands.
• ARMS:
  • Dragon type arms don't work quite the same way as all the others. Rather than extending fully, they move forward a short way before shooting an energy beam. At first, it's quite difficult to get used to, as the delay between initiating the attack and the beam actually firing can leave the player open and aiming the beam can be difficult. But if one gets used to it, it's one of the most effective long-range weapons in the game, and can reliably attack opponents from angles that no other weapons can manage.
  • Helix is a Mechanically Unusual Fighter who uses a form of stance system that differs from every other character, meaning he's incapable of performing certain movements that everyone else can use. His beginning sets of arms are also very unintuitive (one is a Dragon arm, another a Blorb that bounces, making it difficult to target aerial opponents, and the Guardian is first and foremost a defensive weapon with a very long delay that can accidentally end up blocking your own attacks if you don't know how to use it). However, he's also capable of performing actions that no other enemies can use, and the unusualness of his weapons make him very hard to counter once you can get over the initial difficulty of learning them in the first place.
  • Max Brass has a great set of abilities and useful starting ARMS, but unlike all other fighters, his punches have zero guidance behind them, meaning if curved the wrong way, your punch will miss the enemy by a mile. Using Max Brass effectively requires you to have complete control over where you're sending your punches so you don't constantly whiff, but having such control gives you a juggernaut with a Fire-Explosive combo of elements and the ability to laugh at weaker hits.
• BlazBlue:
  • Hakumen became this in Continuum Shift, although he showed shades of it in Calamity Trigger. His sloth, difficulty in chaining his light attacks for proper hit confirms (they often need to be linked), lack of invincibility frames and need to burn super meter to use most of his moves serve to make him difficult to use; however, an expert will know how to use his BFS' reach to play keep-away while using his Counter Attacks to punish attempts at retaliation.
  • Iron Tager. A starting Tager is a slow piece of junk many rushdown-centric characters can take apart easily and his most powerful moves have Some Dexterity Required inputs. A master Tager player like Mike Z, on the other hand, turns him into a monster that few can dismiss out of hand by recognizing the openings in others' combos, bringing out his powerful grabs as necessary and making smart use of his magnetism.
  • To a lesser degree, Litchi. Combos that exercise crazy muscle memory are the main problem, with her movesets (with or without her staff) being easier to recognize, but can be hard to understand, nonetheless.
  • Carl Clover started out as a low-tier character due to his incredibly steep learning curve, poor mobility, lack of safe-range on his normals and low defense (both in HP and lack of a safe on-the-fly reversal). However, after players discovered that he had the game's only infinite combo, he was shown to be incredibly powerful in the hands of a skilled player. Not only that, as a Puppet Fighter, he has an unorthodox neutral game, making him a deadly space control character with the highest damage output in the game in the form of VERY long combos.
  • Carl's father Relius Clover can be in the same league too, though with more bulkiness and more advantages (such as calling out his puppet whenever he wants to and dismissing it like so) and an alternate learning curve with different moves, but he's just as difficult to manage as his son as he too, since he also has his dependency on the said puppet and also has a lack of bulky poking range on his normal attacks. His combos may or may not go on as long as his son's due to him being more about resets and frame traps.
  • Hazama can be this too. He's VERY combo oriented, his basic attacks don't have much range to them, they don't have a lot of damage on their own, and since his dash is little more than a scoot forward his only gap closer is Ouroboros which the enemy can see coming quite often (he also lacks solid reversals). However, he has a lot of combo opportunity which hurts a lot for this one thing: For some reason characters downed by his attacks stay on the ground a bit longer, enabling him to just attack and bring the enemy airborne for another combo. Again. Plus, he also has a very powerful mix-up game that can net him said combo opportunities.
  • Arakune has little to no offensive pressure and not much in the defense department either. His air dashes are awkward and a fair amount of his moves are situational at best with one even having a random result each time you use it. However, he has a gauge that fills up when certain attacks involving his Drive connect that, when full, has his normal attacks summon bugs act as projectiles from out of nowhere per attack. Unfortunately, each bug has their own issues (the weaker two have little to no hitstun, the stronger two are slower) and require proper timing from the Arakune player to put the opponent in a combo. To make matters worse, the gauge empties gradually as you fight, lasting 14 seconds in Continuum Shift and decreases the gauge as you summon bugs while also emptying naturally in Chronophantasma. However, with enough skill, Arakune can decimate opponents in a single bar of curse, potentially dealing ten thousand damage (in a game where that's enough to KO a fair amount of the cast) in a single combo (it was quite absurd in the first game).
  • Central Fiction gives us Nine the Phantom. She walks painfully slow, has a teleport dash like Azrael's but much slower, uses the same dash for her midair dash, and shares Kokonoe and Carl's spot as the most frail character in the game in terms of HP. She also has no drive unlike the rest of the cast. What she does have however, is far-reaching powerful normals that store up to three stocks in any combination of ice, wind, and fire spells leading up to what her specialty actually is: mixing these normals to create and combo into a myriad of special attacks all at the press of a single button. She boasts the largest moveset in the game by far and can create up to 20 different attacks to control the battle in her favor. Poorly played, Nine is a joke, at best, and easily crushed by a large majority of the cast. Proper Nine players however memorize each and every one of these spell combinations and can make it close to, if not outright impossible to even advance upon her. This woman was one of the Six Heroes for a reason.
  • Naoto's combos rely heavily on microdashing and have a reputation for being incredibly hard. However, if he can pull them off he can carry characters from one side of the screen to the other and dish out a huge amount of damage.
• Roll Canceling in Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium is definitely one of the hardest. Canceling moves within a few frames which gives you an invincibility buffer. Unfortunately, pulling one of these is easier said than done, which is why most players will never do it, and only top level players will. Throw in things like Custom Combos and spacing, and it becomes one of the most technical fighters ever.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy:
  • Exdeath is absurdly slow, but lethal if you get his blocks down. Even the developers have admitted that he's practically indestructible if you're able to master his incredibly steep learning curve.
  • Jecht is the game's Bare-Fisted Monk. When most players start off with Jecht, they most likely don't know when or how to enter the well timed button presses. Once the player masters basic timing with Jecht, well... if a Bravery attack connects, consider enemy bravery busted (under normal circumstances anyway). What the game doesn't tell the player, is that Jecht's combos can also link into his HP attacks if certain combos are put in. Finally, his Jecht Block can serve as well as Exdeath's Omni Guard (so long as the attack in question doesn't hit directly above or below him, although he will stagger if he's hit with an HP attack). After he's properly mastered, the only problem a Jecht player tends to face is his absence of long range attacks.
  • Ultimecia, on the other hand, is the long-range specialist. She has many move that can be charged up to deal more damage, but don't come out quickly even if they aren't charged. Playing Ultimecia requires the player to properly gauge whether or not to charge her attacks in order to keep the opponent at bay.
  • New players can also find it difficult to play as Firion or Cecil's Dark Knight form, as they are heavily ground based in a game that favors instead aerial combat. Cecil also requires mastering his two different forms which are only usable either in the air or on the ground and knowing when and how to switch.
  • Squall can be rather difficult to grasp early on because unlike most other characters, most of Squall's most damaging attacks are effectively at zero range. To put it into perspective, most characters have attacks that allow them to attack while moving. Squall stops immediately and his attack range is about 1 game meter in length. This makes him very frustrating because most beginning players do not know the importance of guarding yet. However, once they do, Squall becomes one of the most dangerous characters in the game. He can literally take a character at 9999 and drop them down to 0 with only a few combos, even faster if you invested in the brave draining skills. The other learning curve is that a lot of his HP attacks are hard to connect with, but once you are able to master their timing, you can essentially rip through your opponent's arsenal.
  • Kefka has very... odd spells that, with the exception of Havoc Wing, rarely strike directly. However, given time to level up his spellset, Kefka essentially becomes a combo god who can drain bravery just as fast as Squall can (and from a safe distance to boot!). In addition, the constant flow of his spells to Kefka Experts would easily qualify him for more of a "trap-style" player than The Emperor would.
  • Onion Knight starts with weak attacks that can be hard to connect with, though he later becomes a chaining machine. It gets to the point that the only time a skilled player will use Onion Knight's basic HP attacks is to destroy a weaksauce opponent: if you get hit with a bravery attack from Onion Knight at high levels, you're either in Break status, or taking an HP attack. Sometimes both.
  • Golbez is probably second to Jecht in terms of this trope. Golbez's Brave Attacks have really odd quirks, being two-part Full-Contact Magic attacks. Depending on whether or not his foe is hit by his hand or by his magical burst of energy, the second component of his assault will change. In order to get the hang of these mix-ups, a Golbez player needs to be able to properly gauge distance for each and every attack. In addition, he's able to chain most of these Braves together (or alternatively, chain them into his HP attacks), and when coupled with EX Cancel, he can keep these strings going for quite some time, giving Golbez a combo ability on par with that of Jecht and Zidane. In the proper hands, there will be very few safe havens when Golbez is on the warpath.
  • Most of Team Chaos actually functions like this, being unwieldy at first because of how different they are from the characters you start off with and then when you figure out how to set them up, they become deadly awesome. As mentioned, the notable steep learning curves are Exdeath, Jecht, The Emperor, Ultimecia, Kefka, and Golbez. Their bonus character, Judge Gabranth probably has it the worst, seeing as he's a Super Mode Specialist whose entire playstyle relies heavily on reaching his Super Mode before his opponent can.
• Captain Ginyu of Dragon Ball Fighter Z can call on other members of the Ginyu force to attack. Thing is, all four are mapped to the same two inputs. What determines which member you get is a sequence — the inputs will give you Guldo, then Recoome, then Burter, then Jeice, then it will start from Guldo again. This means that you'll need to be aware of how to take advantage of all members of the Ginyu Force, which is a total of eight moves, of which only two are available at any given time. ^note Technically nine moves, as Recoome has a secret third move. Ginyu has very little potential outside of what the Ginyu Force provides, so he's unplayable unless you have some idea of what they do.
  • This also applies to his Body Change super move, which is hard to connect with. However, if you hit your opponent, you take their character for yourself, while your opponent gets saddled with the worst character in the game: a Ginyu without the Ginyu Force nor Body Change. The second variation of Body Change has you hitting yourself before attempting the switch — making you lose health if you miss, and making the opponent lose health if you connect.
• Guilty Gear:
  • Testament is a Trap Master who will spend their time laying traps willy-nilly. Novices will place traps randomly then get overrun by fighters using rushdown tactics like Sol. Good Testament players will lay traps in strategic locations but are unable to really deal enough damage. Great Testament players know what to do when you're caught in a trap and also know when to pull out their surprise attacks and screen-filling blasts to catch you unaware and blast you into yet another trap while filling their supers again so they can blast you into another trap.
  • I-No is one of the most execution-heavy characters of XX. She has a very strange hovering dash that lifts her off of the ground, her normals can feel strange at first glance and are tricky to use, with her best special attack requiring a Super-like motion to pull off. This is coupled with the timings on her Force Roman Cancels, which are just above average in difficulty compared to the rest of the cast and are an absolute necessity to maximize her potential (in pressure and damage output). In the right hands, she is a force to be reckoned with, and her relentless pressure can decimate frightened opponents in the blink of an eye. Should we also mention that like some other characters in other fighting games, her dash allowed her a free overhead due to putting her into an airborne state for mix-ups? I-No's execution barrier is so far above the cast (with Zato-1/Eddie rivaling her in this regard) that one of her biggest improvements in Xrd was making the motions for said best special simpler, from half-circle backward-to-forward to a mere quarter-circle forward.
  • Bridget has long inputs and a requirement to plan ahead as to where your yo-yo and Roger are, but once mastered, any foe who's locked down can be at her mercy.
  • The truly-weird Zappa is probably the hardest character to use. He is possessed and can switch movesets at random. That said, he has one of the best forms of match control in the series involving pressure, frame traps, mix-ups and even some disjointed moves, as well even having one mode act like a Puppet Fighter. But due to the random nature of his ghost summons, he's just as unpredictable to the person playing him, and his really powerful ghost takes a long time to set up... but once Raoh appears, the fight is more or less won. Plus he's good for just plain freaking opponents out with his constant babbling and impossible contortions. There actually is a method of consistently selecting a summon for Zappa based on the 2nd digit of the game's timer; this makes him considerably more dangerous.
  • Before Carl Clover, there was Zato-1/Eddie, one of the premiere Puppet Fighters in fighting games. Their combined relentless pressure, unblockable setups and devastating combo game came at the price of having a learning curve the same height as I-No's. Like Carl, players who want to use Zato need to be very good at Negative Edging (releasing a button to register an input) in order to even be able to do the simplest things with Tiny Eddie. Unlike Carl, if Tiny Eddie so much as takes a jab, his entire gauge is depleted and he is rendered out of commission for a good (roughly) ten seconds, robbing Zato of nearly half of his options. Nevertheless, the strengths to using Zato outweigh the weaknesses, and it shows in the character's tier placement throughout the years; if he is not sitting at the number one spot, he is sharing it with other characters (as is the case of Accent Core), and at worst, he is still very much a high tier threat.
  • Newcomer Bedman from Xrd has a lot of quirks going for him, being a Mighty Glacier and a Lightning Bruiser at the same time. His walking speed and stamina are some of the best in the game and he is the only character in the entire game, and even the entire series, to have an eight-way airdash. His Déja Vú system allows certain special attacks to be replicated after said special attacks have been used the first time, which creates a guessing game for the opponent, and can potentially make battles one-sided. Despite these strengths, starting and maintaining this pressure is somewhat tricky, since there will be a lot of things to keep track of. That said, a competent Bedman can go toe-to-toe with some of Xrd's high-tiers.
• Hyrule Warriors
  • Lana's Summoning Gate weapon does very little damage with its regular attack string, though it's enough to deplete Weak-Point Gauges, if the Stamina Fruit badges have been unlocked. Summoning monsters from her gate with her combo finishers leaves her open, although she's invulnerable to damage once the summon attack gets going properly. The key to using the Summoning Gate effectively involves keeping a distance from elite mooks and fast mobs and using her C1 attack to summon monsters, then using a specific combo finisher to summon that same monster, which results in a much stronger attack that lets her kill enemies and clear keeps much more effectively.
  • Agitha's normal attack string leaves her airborne for some time, and is very slow, making her somewhat clunky to control. And even her combo attacks have long wind-ups to actually cause damage, except for her C2 attack. However, her C2 is an excellent finisher, and her C1 attack is a surprisingly good mob-clearer. She is deadly in the hands of a competent Agitha player, making levels that require to play as her seem much simpler.
  • Zant has a very erratic fighting style, making many players initially write him off as difficult to combo with. There's also the fact that he has the annoying gimmick in his Twili Magic bar that, if it gets filled all the way by mashing the Strong Attack button to extend his finishers so that it glows red and he tries either using a combo finisher or extending the one he's currently performing with the meter full, he'll screw up the attack, gets dizzy and is left open to enemy attacks and the meter empties out: to prevent this, you can use his C1 when the meter is full to make Zant remove his helmet, which lets him perform an extended Spin Attack or Beam Spam the enemy, both of which deplete the meter until it's empty. Learning to keep an eye on the meter and cutting his combo finishers short right when it fills up and not letting one get overwhelmed by the number of enemies one has to defeat, Zant can dominate the battlefield with a little bit of timing.
• Enrico Pucci in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle starts off slow and weak, but has the ability to upgrade his stand from Whitesnake to C-Moon, and eventually into the Purposely Overpowered Made In Heaven (and his stand evolutions are retained in-between rounds). MIH slows the enemy's overall speed to the point of making it impossible to land a proper combo while Pucci can move as normal; you can see where it's going from there. However, this takes a really long time, and involves a lot of special tasks that leave him wide open to attack. Plus, certain characters can nullify Made in Heaven: Requiem!Giorno Giovanna is immune to its effects while Kosaku Kawajiri can reset MIH back to Whitesnake with his GHA. Fortunately, his moveset is also full of attacks to knock his opponent down and away, or just keep them occupied while he performs the required tasks.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future:
  • The game is known for being beginner-unfriendly, with most of the cast having some form of Stance System that effectively doubles the size of their moveset and can be accessed at will. Because of this, most newcomers gravitate towards "passive Stand" characters like Hol Horse, Shadow DIO, Young Joseph, and Black Polnareff, who lack that system and can be figured out fairly quickly. At high-level play, though, "active Stand" characters are unanimously regarded as the strongest in the game, gaining a massive assortment of options, better mobility, stronger defenses, and a host of other benefits that can force terrifyingly lopsided matchups onto the game's lower brackets.
  • Devo the Cursed is the most infamous of the game's characters to learn, because he combines the aforementioned Stance System with being a Puppet Fighter: activating his Stand switches the player's controls to a doll lying around the arena and leaves Devo himself unable to change position. Mastering Devo requires not just learning all his moves and combos, but also being able to track the doll's position and keep it in the opportune location without leaving Devo himself as a sitting duck. However, once you have mastered Devo, he becomes a terror, able to hit the opponent from multiple directions and pull off Confusion Fu by constantly switching whether he's the threat, the doll is, or both, and if the player can trap the opponent between Devo and the doll, they can pull off 100-hit combos fairly easily.
• Killer Instinct (2013):
  • Using Kan-Ra feels less like you're playing a fighting game and more like you're taking a test in how many things you can keep track of at once, and that's added onto his lackluster damage and godawful close-range options. Though once one manages to master all of his tricks, setups, and combos, he's undeniably effective, and can dish out surprisingly high damage while keeping his opponents in a range that he's comfortable with. It goes without saying that playing against a very good Kan-Ra can be a nightmare.
  • ARIA is essentially a 3-person tag-team all mashed into a single character with her drones, with a bunch of options to cover almost any possible situation. But the downside is that unlike all of the other characters who have one, large life bar, her health is divided up between her 3 drones, and if the health on one of the drones is completely depleted, she loses that drone for the rest of the match. Using ARIA effectively not only requires good use of the drones in tandem with each other, but also being able to use them to the best of their abilities to stay in a dominant position for the entire match, or else she runs the risk of effectively losing a third of her entire moveset, making it drastically harder to make a comeback against almost every other character in the cast.
  • Mira is an extreme Glass Cannon; most of her attacks and abilities require turning some of her health into "recoverable life", which doesn't count towards her health total, and has to be recovered using a zero-damage, highly-telegraphed command grab. Used poorly, she can easily drain her life extremely fast and quickly get KO'd. Used effectively, Mira has beastly damage potential without having to spend any shadow meter; with meter, she's candidate for the hardest-hitting character in the game. And this is on top of having a spammable airdash, projectiles that can track her opponent, and a teleport that makes her completely invincible that she can do whenever she wants; all of which require tapping into her health bar, meaning she has to use these tools sparingly and carefully.
  • Gargos is huge, slow (though capable of flight), and has the first Instinct Mode in the series to have a drawback (he loses the ability to block and some air mobility in exchange for becoming Immune to Flinching and the ability to cancel out of his Instinct Mode to break combos, knock down opponents, etc.). He also has the ability to summon two minions that die in two/three hits but provide insane combo opening and breaker potential. Add in the ability to start combos from pretty much anywhere (which is easily breakable) and a unique command grab with four possible throws, and you have a character that's a nightmare to learn, but also has quite possibly THE most versatile movepool in the entire series.
  • General RAAM used to be this before nerfs knocked him down several pegs. He is as big as, and even slower than, Gargos. He also has a very limited movepool that's easy to Combo Break, requiring accurate Counter Breakers to keep his combos going in high-level play. However, several of his combo enders, as well as his Instinct Mode, inflicted heavy potential damage over time, meaning that a good RAAM was once able to land short combos that dealt 50% damage or more so long as he could keep the momentum going his way. Eventually, however, the damage over time effect was heavily adjusted after his release (dealing weak health damage instead of strong potential damage), making him even harder to use while reducing the payoff by substantial margins.
  • Eyedol functions a lot like Street Fighter IV's Gen (detailed below) in that he has two entirely separate movesets. Unlike Gen, however, Eyedol has little control on WHICH moveset will be available at any given moment, as which form he starts in is completely random, and will occasionally swap movesets after preforming special attacks (the odds of which increase the longer he's gone without switching, and can only be manually increased by hitting himself). But once this obstacle is cleared, keeping on top of both movesets give Eyedol players access to some of the best rushdown and zoning options in the game.
• The King of Fighters:
  • If you expect series protagonist Kyo to play like a Shotoclone, you're in for a rude awakening. He famously lacks a long-range attack or projectile in the vast majority of installments (it was merely annoying at first but now it's a series tradition), so the only way you're gonna win with him is by mastering his "Aragami" (Wild Bite) and "Dokugami" (Poison Bite) chain combo sequences. Which means memorizing which moves combo into what other moves and in what order. Which also means performing half circular motions, into quarter circles, into reverse quarter circles, then applying the appropriate finisher to end the chain sequence. Or, he can end it it with one of his DM/HDMs instead, for added damage, pressure, rushdown and complexity. While he does have a usual anti-air type special and some other solid coverage moves, Kyo's more counter-intuitive compared to other starting characters.
  • Also debuting in The King of Fighters are Chang and Choi, a pair of criminals. Chang is a stereotypical big guy who uses his size and oversized ball and chain as weapons. Choi is a support character who looks like Freddy Kruger with dwarfism. Big characters are typically the worst to play as, but these two are absolutely lethal, regardless of whether the CPU is controlling them. They are always the hardest opponents to fight in Arcade Mode, and they're not even bosses.
  • Shingo Yabuki of The King of Fighters '97 is less effective in terms of skill, but he has loads of damage potential in him. This is due to the fact that his hits randomly crit. Basically, it's a bit hard to land hits, but when he does connect, he'll shatter your defenses more than once. Yeowch.
  • The USA Team of Lucky, Brian and Heavy D! is meant as a joke team, but the characters can be nasty in the right hands. The winner of a major Japanese KOF tournament had Heavy D! in his team. "Meant" being the key word there. The only real joke out of the three is Lucky. Heavy D! is extremely fast and powerful, and Brian has surprisingly extensive combo ability.
  • The always-elegant Chizuru has differing versions of her main attacks, which can serve very well for proper/improper reactions via sending out afterimages of herself (sadly, due to the nature of her moves she can easily have her copies get hit and take damage regardless).
  • May Lee has a good amount of followup moves in her normal form, while also having another form called Hero Mode with different moves where she is unable to block.
  • From his inception in his home series Fatal Fury, Geese was a well-rounded Mighty Glacier; he could zone with projectiles and also counter his opponents' attacks with throws, but he's a bit sluggish and is not as rushdown-heavy.
  • Angel, as her Unchain Circle moves are complex and confusing to both parties: basically, she has a number of attacks that act as starters for her UC, which she can then follow up with an extender or 2, followed by an ender. Most of the UC moves have some kind of special property and you don't need to actually hit the enemy to continue the chain, giving her a vast number of options that can be used to both counter or avoid the enemy's attacks in a number of ways as well as confuse them into leaving themselves open, but it can be difficult to keep track of how the UC moves chain into each other and unlike Kyo described above, landing an UC starter doesn't mean that any given followup will successfully combo the enemy, potentially leaving Angel open if she picks the wrong option.
• Three of the top-tier characters in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Sentinel, Storm and Magneto. (The fourth is Doctor Doom.) All 3 require intimate knowledge of glitches to get the most out of them. Otherwise you might as well be hurling cream pies at the enemy, because their standard attacks are pretty poor.
  • Magneto wasn't even considered middle-tier until people discovered that he has an infinite combo with multiple setups, provided the player has the dexterity to pull it off.
  • Sentinel is Magneto taken to a higher level. Every character has an infinite combo, so that's not unique to Sentinel. However, it makes up for that with the sheer number of setups, glitches, and options used at high-level play. It takes time to master them all.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3:
  • Many people thought M.O.D.O.K had evolved beyond the joys of being a good character. They were wrong. His mix-up and trap laying potential puts even Sentinel and Wesker to shame. And using his analyse cube system gives him the most damaging Level 1 hyper attack in the whole game. To those who say he's a "Mental Organism Designed Only for Trolling", you will call him god-tier after facing a decent player.
  • Doctor Doom has some of the best assists in the game, multiple beam specials for keepaway, and great combo and zoning options by canceling his foot dive into his air dash, but his limited maneuverability and relatively slow normal moves means that time needs to be spent learning all of his options to be effective.
  • As of Ultimate, Phoenix Wright joins Doom. Basically, he starts off in Investigation Mode as rather weak and with low mobility. When he gets three pieces of good evidence, he becomes a pretty okay zoner in Trial Mode. When he uses those pieces of evidence to get into Turnabout Mode, however, he takes about a million levels in badass, becoming more powerful, gaining an extremely powerful Kamehame Hadoken rendition of his signature finger point as a heavy attack, gains his Level 3 hyper (which is instant with limitless range), and potentially becomes one of the best characters in the game.
  • Dante alone has about as many special moves as entire teams without him, and most of them deal fairly low damage or leave him vulnerable. But once a player learns how to combine them and use some of his unconventional tricks, he can break through almost any defense and string some of the longest and most spectacular combos in the entire game.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Kabal is a speed demon who comfortably sits on the S+ ranking on tier lists... as its sole occupant. Though as dominant as he may be, he is one of the more challenging characters to use in the game because of his Nomad Dash Cancels (NDCs) and the harsh timings on his more devastating combos. Excellent Kabal players make use of his NDC both to condition the enemy into blocking and guessing his strings and as extensions to his combos, and balance between offense and zoning them out with Air Gas Blasts that fire instantaneously.
  • Shinnok in Mortal Kombat 4 has the ability to steal the movelist of every other character in the game except Goro, who isn't playable. He is literally as good as every other playable character combined. The problem? First, you need to enter the command to actually take on another character's movelist. Then, you need to have that character's movelist memorized. And since there's no point to picking Shinnok if you're only copying one character (since then you may as well just pick that character), you'll need to memorize multiple movelists, making for a metric fuckton of memorization. On top of that, there is a time limit on how long Shinnok can copy another character; it is almost unheard of for one battle to be over within this time limit. While nothing is stopping Shinnok from copying the same character multiple times, the sudden timeout often translates to a broken combo since a character special failed to work by virtue of Shinnok not having the special at the moment. The short of it is that Shinnok is portrayed as the best fighter in the game, and he certainly is... provided you're one of the very, very few players with the patience to actually use him.
• Persona 4: Arena:
  • Kanji is slow and has limited mobility. That being said, playing him patiently makes him completely and utterly unstoppable, as his entire game revolves around taking advantage of the opponent's mistakes. On top of that, as this dude demonstrates, he can hit confirm into his command grabs pretty easily with the right combos. Not to mention he, like many offensive fighting game characters, can get A LOT of damage rolling if he gets his opponent in the corner.
  • Aigis has lot of her moves are unusable unless she goes into Orgia Mode. The problems with using Orgia Mode? The mode has a time limit (that temporarily disables Orgia Mode if it runs out) and completely changes how Aigis moves; instead of normally walking and running, she uses her thrusters to boost herself. Attacking during an Orgia dash causes aerial attacks to occur instead of standing attacks that normally happen if a character is moving. Once you get past that hindrance, she's a powerful character who can deal tons of damage with very long strings of combos.
  • Naoto is a zoning/keep-away character in a combo-centric fighter. She doesn't have the best damage output, she doesn't have the most health, and she's generally considered lower on the tier lists. That said though, she has lots of options for zoning, keepaway, and combos all in the same character, she has a nice selection of traps she can use to pin down her opponent, she has a pair of supers that instantly kill the opponent no matter what their health is in the right situations. Though her zoning and close-combat go hand in hand for some strong balanced gameplans, either style isn't as strong and specialized as other characters, so she has to work well on both fields (and she can indeed). And, to top it all of, she can take advantage of SMP Loops to do EXTREMELY high damage combos that have low damage per hit but LAST A LONG TIME.
  • Shadow Labrys has some of the lowest health in the game and her gameplan is devastated without the use of her massive "Persona" Asterius. Asterius is also the most awkward Persona to use in the entire game, as it's constantly out and is not tied to Shadow Labrys herself when it attacks, being the only active puppet out there in a game full of passive Puppet Fighters (they appear briefly for only one type of action and then fade away until called out again). Once mastered, though, she is one of the resident gods of mix-ups, using staggered attacks from both Shadow Labrys herself and Asterius to keep the opponent blocking until she can find an opening in their defenses. She and Asterius can also set up situations where it's impossible to block the attack of one without getting hit by the other. She even has some massively damaging combos thanks to her powerful Awakening supers. The kicker? She is the only character in the game who can combo into her Instant Kill.
  • Elizabeth is an extreme case. She has the lowest health in the game, has few usable defensive options, and is rather slow to boot. She is also crippled without her Persona, Thanatos, and practically has to be in Awakening in order to be at her most powerful. That said, once mastered she is a force to be reckoned with, as she has a variety of deadly projectiles, command throws, status effects, a pair of instant death traps that she can force her opponent into, the ability to heal herself (a trait only two other characters have), and one of the most powerful non-instant death moves in the entire game.
• In Rumble Pack, using Binary style takes more skill than the other styles and revolves around using the "Radix" button to cancel any move. Mastering it allows massive combos and cinematic Overdrive attacks.
• Parasoul from Skullgirls is considered by most of the competitive community to be a high-to-top tier fighter, with excellent space-control involving her many long-ranged attacks, damaging combos, and her excellent mix-up game. The problem? Her ground movement is awkward, she doesn't have any mobility options in the air (she's also the only character in the cast with this property), and she fights with charge attacks making patience a necessary requirement to unlock her potential.
• Soulcalibur:
  • Ivy's combos and abilities with her whip sword are incredibly difficult to learn, but once mastered provide players with incredible range and versatility. Oh, and don't expect all those hours you spend learning her moveset to mean anything by the next game, as her movesets are changed completely from game to game.
  • Voldo, with his bizarre stances that can leave an inexperienced player desperately trying to figure out how to actually fight from a prone position on the floor. Made even worse by the fact that Namco routinely changes his move set inputs, meaning that if you spent years learning how to play him in one game, that doesn't mean you can play him in all of them. Made especially egregious by the fact this input changing is pointless.
  • Setsuka is a character beginners shouldn't touch unless they are possessed in terms of execution. With the most amount of Just Frame moves, she is frustrating for newbies, but frustrating to fight against when used right.
  • Alpha Patroklos of V is on the same boat as Setsuka, as his gameplay also revolves around near-pixel perfect Just Frame inputs. A fully-mastered α-Pat is as powerful as a fully-mastered Setsuka. There are similarities between both characters, from their style of play to their fighting discipline to even their stances. It turns out that she actually trained him while Pat was younger and was something of a second mother to him, so go figure.
  • Mitsurugi is deceptively like this. While rather easy to pick up, a true master user of Mitsurugi can utilize his middle-of-the-road speed, power, and various stances to utterly eviscerate the competition.
  • Taki is generally considered to be the fastest character. If you've got quick enough reflexes, you can simply dominate by blocking anything and retaliating.
  • Xianghua is considered top-tier once she's fully mastered, which requires being able to consistently and reliably chain her moves, many of which require "slide command" inputs^note refered to as such, because you have to lightly press one button, then quickly slide your thumb to the next corresponding button, thereby cancelling the first button's attack animation before it begins. Plus, she has a bevy of feints, counter stances, and evasive moves to memorize, if she's to be played effectively.
  • Sophitia is often used by the toughest players on Soulcalibur IV's online mode. Her attacks aren't very powerful on their own, but she can attack quickly and has good defense. Even for an experienced player, it can be quite a shock to find yourself losing to her.
  • Astaroth is in a similar boat to Ivy; at first blush, his attacks seem way too slow and clunky for Astaroth Newbies to compete with characters like Nightmare, who has a very easy to pick up aggro game that can hit nearly as hard. When one takes the time to optimize Astaroth's range and some of his more complicated throws and heavy attacks, however, he becomes an absolute horror to fight against and can cover a deceptively long distance to deliver a lot of hard-to-block pain.
  • V introduced Viola. Her moves do very little damage and her claw attacks have terrible range, but she can keep an opponent almost constantly off-balance with her crystal ball. Viola later is considered a little less difficult thanks to her damage being improved somewhat (although she's still a very technical character) and her companion Z.W.E.I. While considered absolute garbage on a number of competitive forums, Z.W.E.I can pull off some very impressively damaging combos if one has the patience to get very good with his E.I.N summon, which can eat the enemy lifebar or ring them out surprisingly fast. THEN comes her infamous grab loops...
• Street Fighter II:
  • Dhalsim has always been a prominent example of this trope. In the SFII era, especially in Turbo, he is among the best characters in the game. His amazing reach can condition a human opponent to play to his rhythm and punishes attacks that most characters would otherwise be unable to. However, what consistently makes him one of the most-challenging characters to use are: his lackluster health, low mobility, poor damage output which is often compunded by a de-emphasis on combos, and the depth of his zoning game, which goes FAR past just using his normals and Yoga Fires. Overcoming these obstacles means that your opponent will barely even touch you while you whittle away at their health.
  • Zangief was like this back in the day. Doing a circular motion (or 360) on a d-pad or joystick was difficult in this era of games because the inputs were not as lenient. More often than not, players attempting to do a Spinning Piledriver or a Final Atomic Buster with Gief can't do it without making him jump at least once. This makes it difficult for him (and fellow grappler T. Hawk, for that matter) to land such moves, and sometimes unreliable. With patience and precision, one can turn these shortcomings into potential mindgames that can throw opponents off at the worst of times.
  • In the Street Fighter IV era, Gief turned into a behemoth many players hate fighting against.
  • Guile is certainly this (if not a bit on the bland side of things). He only has two moves (Sonic Boom and Flash Kick), but in the hands of expert player, those two moves as well his normals makes him a potent force enough to be one of the top tiers of the game.
• Street Fighter III: Third Strike:
  • Why all the love for Q? He's a metal-masked goon in a trenchcoat. He's a plodder with slow, awkward attacks. He is mostly-reactive due to his size and the range of some of his pokes. He telegraphs all of his attacks, and his normals range from average to poor. All of which leaves him very vulnerable and makes for some very bad competitive play. The secret: He dusts off his coat after a parry! Just joking. Actually...
    1. Taunting was an integral part of his game in III, which is why he was fun to play. When performed up to three times, it buffs his total health from 1200 to 2050. Which, for comparison, is about 50% higher than Hugo's default HP, and Hugo is the Capcom poster boy for slow-moving collosus. There are two spaces for Q on the tier list: normal Q is usually near the bottom. Q with three taunts? About two spaces away from Chun-Li, highly-regarded as the strongest character in Third Strike.
    2. Get his armor up by taunting and have a good handle on his moves, and he becomes a force to be reckoned with. He has the best kara-throw (tied with God-tier Chun-Li), a command-throw which can be made invincible, a glitch which makes him impervious to throws for a split-second, and very-damaging supers.
  • III in general. (Oro is another odd character who manages to be deadly despite his obvious handicaps: his age and the fact that he keeps one of his arms literally tied behind his back.) Contrasting with every other came in the series, even the most basic tenets of this game take computer-esque precision and/or muscle memory to execute, and you're expected to be able to do so perfectly on command in every situation. Near every character requires heavy memorization of moves, and which ones chain into combos to be effective (again, especially in contrast to other games in the series), and the game is, in general, fairly difficult for a fighter, leading to the metagame and higher levels of play being frankly insane for the levels of skill they require. Cue fans of the games generally complaining that subsequent games in the genre are too easy in comparison.
  • Mastering the parrying mechanic makes a monumental difference. If you press forward instead of blocking just before an attack connects, you'll parry it and won't take any damage. It requires an understanding of animation frames, careful timing, and is the cornerstone of high-level play. If you're really good, you can No-Sell and counter almost any attack in the game. This is further complicated with red parrying, which involves blocking and then parrying subsequent parts of multi-hit attacks. Doing it means even tighter timing and suffering chip damage, but makes your opponent second-guess pretty much every tactic they can throw at you.
  • Hugo is your typical slow grappler that towers in his part of the stage. Now if you play fighters often you know that being big equals having more ass to be kicked into. Of his 3 supers, the two grabs are naturally the most damaging but quite hard to pull off...until you realize his Megaton Press is ridiculously easy to combo into with one of his other grabs. Using Gigas Breaker on the other hand requires quite some skill to pull off efficiently. Incorporating the parry system makes it EASIER while making it HARDER. But if you successfully pull it of, your enemy can kiss his lifebar goodbye while you can gleefully call out EINS, ZWEI, DREI, ENDE!
  • Necro suffers from the same problems Dhalsim has: He has long reach but relatively low damage and he increases his vulnerability with his long limbs. But if you learn to use his cornering mindgames and his low damaging but really annoying combos you get amazing results.
  • Remy is quite a defensive character with his only really damaging moves being backwards and downwards charging ones and everything else can be seen from a mile away. But with enough effort, you can spam his up and down projectiles so fast Remy earns himself the nickname "The Machinegun".
  • If timed well, Oro's aerial juggling combos can completely shut down a match.
  • With good charge partitioning and buffering, Urien's tackles and Aegis Reflectors can completely overwhelm a cornered opponent.
  • Twelve's X.C.O.P.Y. Super Art demands that you have knowledge of the other characters' movesets, but given that you can still make use of their taunt-granted buffs while mimicked, he can become a force to be reckoned with. His air dashing, move canceling, and clever spacing can be lethal if your opponent is unaccustomed to fighting him.
  • Elena is typically overlooked due to her limited range, slow startup on some of her moves, seemingly low priority, and clunky hitbox. It's very difficult for her to get in safely, and even basic parrying can be tricky due to her shifting animation stance. But hiding underneath all of those flaws is easily one of the best offensive rushdown characters in the entire game. This is due to a healthy dose of Confusion Fu (she has some absurd mixups, and most opponents are unaccustomed to fighting her), and the fact that several of her attacks - both regular and EX — can be easily comboed into each other. If she connects with one of her aerial combos on an opponent and follows it up properly, she can rack up tons of damage and induce stun status in a matter of seconds. She also has an exceptional kara throw. Lastly, if her Brave Dance Super Art fully connects, it is slightly stronger than Chun-Li's SA2. Let that sink in.
• Street Fighter IV:
  • Gen, as well as in Street Fighter Alpha, has access to two different substandard fighting styles, but he can switch between them anytime he wants. Great Gen players are rare, but you'll notice how they basically fly around everywhere, crush your defense and pull insanely high damaging combos out of their ass whenever they want. Not to mention Gen has solid mix-ups from one of his other fighting styles, and his primary one gives him solid ground control and safe pokes into standard combos for days, now do the math and see what happens when Gen is able to freely switch back and forth between the said styles on whim in the middle of any combo....
  • Newcomer Crimson Viper has her entire gameplay revolve around relentless offense consisting of feints to keep the opponent on their toes and hard-hitting combos. The problem? She is an incredibly technical character, one of the hardest (if not THE hardest) in the game, with her feints being an absolute necessity and requiring adept hands to use, and her more advanced tricks (usually involving her super jump) requiring an even more adept pair of hands to pull off. A Viper player needs to have precision to keep the offense up without accidentally doing a move that would otherwise leave herself open or give the opponent a chance because once either of these happens, her poor defensive options and bad stamina will cost her the match.
  • Seth has the worst health and stun in the game, his defensive options while under pressure are limited to Shoryuken, and his large kit means that while players have tons of options, he also requires a ton of practice to know what moves are viable options at any given time. On the other hand, he has all the tools that he needs to control the pace of the match, his damage is absolutely horrific, and his pressure is absolutely nightmarish when he's on the offense. Poongko's 2-0 victory (4 rounds straight, ending in a Perfect) against Daigo's AE Yun during Evo 2011 showed just how ridiculous a good Seth could be, and while he has been nerfed in Ultra, he's still an unholy terror when played by someone who has taken the time to master him.
  • Ryu's Metsu Shoryuken does more damage than his Metsu Hadoken (and also looks way cooler), but there are much fewer opportunities to use it, it's harder to land, and misses are more easily punished. But if you know the hitbox size of the move, and you can read your opponent really well, you can pull off things like this.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • 64:
    • Luigi is the earliest example of this in the franchise, having almost identical moves to Mario, that could do more damage and much more knockback (pulling off a Fire Jump Punch rewards you with the successful scream noise of the Home-Run Bat), but had smaller windows of effectiveness and left him prone for longer; if you didn't nail an opponent at exactly the right place and time, you might as well have put a big fat target on your back.
  • Melee:
    • The whole game is basically entirely this on a tournament level. Learning to move properly takes many hours, because the optimal means of movement involve large numbers of short hops (which have to be executed on command for quick aerial attacks, among other things) as well as, most of all, wavedashing, a technique wherein you jump into the air then immediately airdodge into the ground at an angle. Due to the fact that you can control the direction of your air dash, and because when you air dash into the ground it causes you to hit the ground and begin sliding with momentum, you can slide around the stage freely, making attacks as if you were standing still while moving at full run speed (and in many cases, faster than the character's actual run speed, which is particularly notable with Luigi and Mewtwo). The net result is that it takes hours to even learn how to move around and attack properly, and anyone who knows what they're doing can wipe the floor with you using techniques you cannot even use, and oftentimes moving around the stage more quickly than you can, to add insult to injury.
    • Fox and Falco from Melee are probably some of the best examples of this trope ever made. Just watch. Yes, at 0:47 they are doing their Down-Bs, jumping out of it, then Down-Bing again so quickly (and repeating) that the full reflector animation doesn't come out and you just see the flash when the hitbox first comes out.
    • Fox and Falco's main meat, however, is their powerful speedster abilities to leave the ground and land back down in one quick single jump, allowing for a ton of ground-to-air-to-ground combos. Fox's Up Smash and Up Aerial and Falco Forward Smash and Down Aerial are amongst their few yet very reliable kill tools. On the other hand, due to doing so many actions very quickly (but still being eclipsed by Captain Falcon in terms of running speed), you need quick fingers and we mean it. They also have very fast falling speeds and the lowest horizontal aerial movement on top of that; a blessing and a curse since they're also lightweights and it leaves them vulnerable to most horizontal K.O. moments and many effective combo setups.
    • The downside to this is that the hand speed and dexterity required for Fox and Falco (more the former) can cause injury if one goes too hard, or is sloppy. This in particular happened to competitive player Hax, one of the most technical Fox players in the world. His wrist was destroyed and he had to get surgery to have a bone removed so that he could play again.
    • The Ice Climbers, with insane amounts of practice, can chaingrab virtually any character to death. You can count the number of people who can do it consistently in tournament on one hand.
    • Jigglypuff takes a lot of time to master, but if you do, you will become a force to be feared. Your opponents will not take you seriously, giving you an advantage. Many people will also be shocked to find that Jigglypuff is further up on the tier lists than fan favorite characters like Mario and Samus. Most of the time, this is mainly its lethal Rest attack being the icing on the cake; it's its dominating aerial game with high priority and combo-able aerial attacks that requires the execution to put into.
    • Yoshi in really everything he appears in. Controlling the Egg Throw's direction and speed is not easy, but if you can do it, it is dangerous. In certain situations, you can even keep a fairly skilled player from doing anything until you're ready to knock him off stage. Not to mention, a good number of his moves are decently strong, and he even can do a tricky double jump cancel as well.
    • Yoshi is the only character who can't jump out of his shield, which is extremely important in competitive play. This is particularly bad for Yoshi, since his remaining defensive options such as his grab and roll are easy to circumvent and punish. However, Yoshi has some ways around this which require incredible technique and/or timing. If Yoshi shields a hit on the first few frames before the egg shield forms, he will instead parry the hit, allowing him to act immediately, including jump. Then there's a technique where, with a precise motion, you can drop through a platform when you're shielding. While everyone can do this, it's way more important for Yoshi players to master this as again, he is limited when shielding otherwise. And then there's the armor he gets on his double jump. Use it well, and Yoshi can counter many attempts to attack him from the air. Use it poorly and Yoshi can be killed extremely early due to his lack of triple jump from an Up special. In short, a skilled Yoshi player is a nightmare to attempt to attack without being countered. But each counter takes insane timing and technique from the Yoshi player.
    • Marth requires precise positioning to perform sweestpots with his sword, as it deals the most damage at the very tip. Learning his spacing and mastering this will make any Marth player a force to be reckoned with that can combo their opponents and rack up nice damage for days, as well as choosing whether to easily finish them off or not. That, and he has the longest grab range in the game (longer than Yoshi's tongue), a very solid counter that can discourage most forms of non-grab offense against him if used well, and a very cheap-but-laggy spike/meteor smash in his down aerial that's part of a very infamous combo off of his forward aerial, especially in Melee. However, he has some easily camped recovery options, so sometimes it can be easy to handle him when he's off the stage when he's not making use of his sword's tip.
    • Princess Peach. Her unique float and aerial moves were meant to help beginners recover and survive; she was intended to be a Skill Gate Character. Instead, Smash Bros players developed a highly technical aerial style that has seen her consistently high or top tier, with her particularly dominating in the more aerial-heavy Ultimate.
  • Brawl:
    • Olimar. You need to manage your army of Pikmin to be effective, (it has a brick-wall learning curve) but all of his Pikmin-based attacks look exactly the same to your opponent, and they all have quite good range.
    • Ike has some of the strongest attacks in the game, along with an incredibly useful jab, but the vast majority of his moves are incredibly slow and laggy, even causing him to commit suicide over the edge of the stage due to how long it takes to recover from most of his aerial attacks. As a result, top Ike players are highly reliant on reads and spacing to land hits when his opponents are outside his jab range.
    • Zero Suit Samus, who has very effective tools in high-level play, including a versatile recovery, fast mobility, and possessing some of the strongest items in the game (her Power Suit Pieces, which spawn at the beginning of the match), allowing her to gain some quick damage. It is very hard to effectively master these skills, however, but they are invaluable to placing high at tournaments using her.
    • Sonic is fairly easy to pick up at a basic level, but suffers in competitive play from being so light and needing the enemy's percents to be fairly high for a KO. However, when a truly skilled Sonic player picks him up, he turns into a whirling buzz-saw of doom that is untouchable. He is hands down the fastest character in the game and he can literally change direction and be going full speed instantly, not to mention that careful use of his neutral b attack can allow him to stay in the air indefinitely, gluing him to the underside of stages or enabling him to chase down flying opponents. A good Sonic player capitalizes on this speed and maneuverability, strafing the opponents too quickly for them to react and taking advantage of his ability to shield or dodge at any point in his attacks to save themselves from an opponent that somehow manages to catch, corner or out-think them.
    • Solid Snake, who is by far the most unique and unusual member of the Brawl cast. On one hand, he packs some of the game's most powerful tilts and smashes (special mention goes to his Up Tilt) that have deceptively large hitboxes. He also boasts the biggest arsenal of projectiles, which gives him a camping game that is unparalleled. On the other hand, his aerial game is the absolute worst; his jump height is poor even with a double jump, his air attacks (though disjointed as his tilts) are mostly slow and/or leave him open when he lands, and his fast falling speed makes him both an easy prey for juggle-happy characters and a victim of gimping. Mastering Snake means making intelligent use of his projectiles to camp and turn the tide of the battle while at the same time preventing the opponent from taking advantage of his glaring weaknesses.
    • Pokémon Trainer is essentially three characters in one, all of whom have very different styles and approaches: Fragile Speedster Squirtle, Jack of All Stats Ivysaur, and Mighty Glacier Charizard. Individually, each of them is a below-average combatant, hindered further by the stamina mechanic, which causes their attacks and movement to become sluggish until swapped out for another for long enough. Together, they are a force to be reckoned with, the Pokémon Trainer by far the most adaptable character in the game, switching up playstyles to counter the opponents no matter what they do. It says something to the Pokémon Trainer's absurd difficulty in usage in that there has only ever been one noteworthy tournament player who uses Pokémon Trainer, and this kid is the only Brawl character whose data is too scant to have any accurate tier placement. Even the hardcore players who made mods for Brawl, like Project M, split Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard into separate characters.
  • Wii U/3DS:
    • As mentioned in the page quote, Greninja is this, with attacks revolving around Confusion Fu. Being a Glass Cannon, Greninja has to make sure not to get hit too hard.
    • Robin is a Mechanically Unusual Fighter, bringing with them the Fire Emblem series' Breakable Weapons. If used too much, their magic tomes and/or Levin Sword will temporarily break, leaving them without the special attacks the tomes use and replacing their powerful Levin Sword with a much weaker Bronze one. Keeping track of how much damage each item has taken in the chaotic action of Smash takes some getting used to, but learning it gives Robin plenty of options for any situation a battle might bring.
    • Shulk's moves themselves are bit more straightfoward, but mastery requires learning his Stance System (the Monado Arts), as without it, he's simply mediocre at everything. Activating one stance strengthens him in one attribute while making him weaker in others (though in some situations, the "weakness" can be used as an advantage), so learning when to switch and what situation is geared for what are his main difficulty curves (and then there comes the Monado Art Cancel for even more complex moments). However, it can be solid to just use him without any Arts at all, as Shulk does have decent strength in his range and power for most of his attacks as well as a few solid bread n' butter combos, but it's up to you whether you want an extra boost of power for a price or not.
    • The Villagers are unusual characters as many of their moves have odd ranges to them: For example, their forward smash is a projectile with almost no horizontal range, but it can hit opponents that are below a ledge. Their aerials do random amounts of damage, and their down special takes a large amount of time to set up. That being said, once that barrier has been jumped, the Villager's moves can be devastating provided that they actually connect.
    • And then there's the Wii Fit Trainers, fitness instructors who uses yoga poses as their method of attack. While considered to be low tier due to their awkward hitboxes and low reach in most of their attacks, especially with their smash attacks being very hard to land, Wii Fit Trainers are surprisingly competent in racking up damage if used right. A chargeable projectile (Sun Salutation) that deals a good amount of damage, another projectile (Header) that has a powerful spike effect if used correctly, a powerful Neutral Aerial that can be used to start combos and rack up damage quickly with little landing lag, and most of her standard and smash attacks having high knockback growth that will almost always KO the opponent if the player manages to land the attack. If that's not enough, Wii Fit Trainer can increase all of their moves' damage and knockback growth by 30% with Deep Breathing for a few seconds, increasing their KO potential even higher. With Deep Breathing in effect, their Up Smash is considered to be one of the strongest in the game, which is also very difficult to use.
    • Ryu can be used like any other fighter, but this isn't the way to play him most effectively. To do that, you'll need to not simply use the standard special controls of simply pressing the B button while holding a certain direction on the joystick, but execute the appropriate combos for the moves just like Street Fighter itself. While the inputs are fairly simple, it's a lot more work than usual. It's well worth it though, as this will increase the power of your moves significantly. Attempting to play Ryu without at least an understanding of his command inputs is liable to end badly, as accidentally activating the moves at a bad time is likely and can put you in a bad spot or even cause you to self-destruct.
  • Ultimate:
    • Hero holds the honor of having the most special moves out of any Smash fighter, thanks to Command Select. A bulk of the Command Select spells have a number of powerful effects, including freezing the opponent, putting them to sleep, briefly turning metal, teleporting back on the stage, and even potentially KO'ing the enemy in one hit. This outright led to the Hero being one of the few Smash characters to be banned in some tournaments. Except using this requires navigating a menu in real-time, and the options are randomly picked each time it's used, so muscle memory won't help. The Hero is also left defenseless while the menu is open. The Mana Meter would factor in to this as well, except that it's not that hard to keep mana replenished in battle.
    • Duck Hunt received very little attention, being widely considered a D-tier character (that is, not bad enough to make fun of but not good enough to be worth paying attention to) until professional player Raito began maining him. Duck Hunt's neutral special is Trick Shot, which spits out a manipulateable barrel of oil that explodes on contact, be it the opponent or Duck Hunt himself. To get the maximum effect out of Trick Shot, the player has to memorize exactly how any attack against it manipulates the barrel, and against a player who excels at that, playing against Duck Hunt is more like playing a handicap match against Duck Hunt and that damn barrel.
    • The vast majority of Steve's moveset revolves around Resources Management Gameplay, making him incredibly complex at a first glance. Even some of his basic attack moves rely on the use of Breakable Weapons and, by association, a destructible Item Crafting table to upgrade or reconstruct said weapons once discarded (both actions require the player to gather materials around the stage beforehand, with the nature of the stage itself dictating which substances you are most likely able to collect). This potentially gives the character some glaring weaknesses, but also innumerable tools that utilize collected resources for match control, like blocks that can alter the battlefield's landscape, stronger weapons, explosive traps, a versatile vehicle and so on.
    • Ken and Terry follow Ryu's example, with using command inputs necessary to reach their full potential, while an inexperienced player may find this a detriment due to accidentally activating them.
    • Sephiroth is large, floaty, not all that heavy, has a lot of unsafe kill moves (if they don't leave him wide open on block or whiff, they're heavily telegraphed), has a great abundance of sourspots that force him to keep his distance, has a powerful but highly risky and fleeting comeback mechanic, and in spite of his jumping power, his recovery really isn't that great. He also has astounding range and killing power, numerous tools to punish defensive players, plenty of defensive tools of his own that make approaching him extremely risky, and his comeback mechanic fixes the vast majority of his issues and can and will turn a match around if used to its fullest. A bad Sephiroth will constantly hit sourspots with his sword attacks (when they even manage to hit someone), will constantly waste time trying to pull off Gigaflares, and will get whacked around like a beach ball whenever they don't manage to suicide with Blade Dash/Octaslash, while a good Sephiroth will have you exactly where they want you at all times and will brutally punish any attempts to get in their face or keep them out of sweetspot range, and will erase whatever lead you have the minute they gain a wing.
    • Kazuya Mishima is a borderline ultra-heavyweight with poor overall mobility (his command dash notwithstanding) and great susceptibility to combos due to his fast falling speed, a powerful but highly situational projectile with a very narrow hitbox (ergo he can't win projectile wars), and extremely poor range otherwise, while his astoundingly large movelist and high execution requirements coupled with a high skill floor means that he is extremely difficult to pick up and do well with and requires a ton of practice just to get the hang of his movelist, let alone use him at anything resembling an optimal level. He is also, true to his Tekken self, one of the best punishers in the game; any mistake can turn into a lost stock, and his wealth of defensive and approach options means that he has an answer for everything and can rip even tiny holes in offense or defense wide open, while his already brutal damage output and combo game is further boosted by his Rage Drive comeback mechanic, and his numerous mixups make being on the defensive against him a terrifying prospect - you never really know what he's going to do, and if you guess wrong, you're almost definitely out a stock. All in all, Kazuya is quite possibly the most technical character in the game and is unforgiving towards anyone who does not have a good grasp of his mechanics, but makes up for it with his sheer lethality and the many ways with which he can bait or force slip-ups and wipe out a stock.
• Tekken:
  • Lei Wulong's Five Stances means more moves than your average character to memorize, which require intelligence to learn. The key to using Lei is to understand how his moves transition back and forth into these stances and how interwoven these transitions are, and it doesn't help that his command list has not listed these transitions ever since his debut. As of Tag 2, he has a whopping total of nine stances, the most out of any cast member, and it also means his moveset is among one of the largest and most comprehensive. This also means however that it is very difficult to learn the matchup for him, which can make it difficult to learn to play against him as two players can have very different playstyles when using him due to his stances.
  • Yoshimitsu is hard to master, but fun. Not only can you use your sword as a makeshift helicopter to fly behind your opponent and backstab him, he has the only health-restoring move in the game.
  • The entire Mishima clan. Dark Resurrection was praised as being as close to a perfect game as possible, and the three Mishimas (Heihachi, Devil Jin, and Kazuya) very comfortably occupied the three top spots. However, because of the necessity of pulling off their signature move consistently to create "a wall of EWGF (Electric Wind God Fist)" while mixing it up with mid-range moves to prevent random ducking, as well as getting mid-range vs. low-range options out of their "wavedash" special movement, they were considered fairly balanced, even though an expert Heihachi would pretty much always win against anyone not named Devil Jin (this was true in that if the EWGF missed, a lot of recovery frames would kick in for a very easy punish). However, the Mishima clan have their own personal perks as well:
    • Kazuya is the "defensive" Mishima, demanding near-perfect block and whiff punishment and mastery of fundamentals in movement options from players. A lot of his moves aren't safe on block or miss and have very unfriendly frame data, which means the best he can do is react accordingly to the opponent's attacks. Once he lands a hit, however, there are a ton of advantages he gets when he causes someone to flinch and many ways he can mix it up for extra damage in the hands of a skilled player who knows solid combo routes. He also has the best EWGF out of the Mishima's, as well as another (better) version of it that takes even more skill to use. Skilled Kazuya players can and will take their damage as far as possible when they land a hit on you from any mistake you make.
    • While Kazuya is geared towards reaction, Heihachi is geared more towards offense, possessing some of the best pressure, very safe pokes and awesome juggles with great damage and corner carry potential. Many, if not all, of said safe moves hit mid (and some hit high), which leaves crouching against him out of the question. However, Heihachi has a massive weakness in having poor low attacks that are very easily punishable on block or miss, so he doesn't have a way to force open a defense outside of frame traps and throws. He is also rather tall, making his EWGF the hardest to use on smaller characters during juggles.
    • Devil Jin is the Jack of All Stats of the Mishima family, being geared more towards fifty-fifties than either his father or grandfather. His awkward crouch dash game also means that his EWGF is the least optimal of the three.
  • Jin Kazama himself was this in the fourth game. Due to storyline purposes (mostly dealing with betrayal by Heihachi), Jin's moveset was almost completely revamped, with few of his signature moves and bread-and-butter combos from his 3 debut (only two games beforehand) left intact. However, his new tools more than made up for this. If properly timed, his Laser Scraper combo could set up some nasty, nigh-inescapable traps for opponents to deal with. The fact that his recovery time was faster in most situations than most of the cast also helped to keep the pressure on. At high levels of Tournament Play, Jin was the sole occupant of the top tier, to the point that most matches were simply Jin vs. Jin.
    • He still retains shades of this in subsequent games, where he's more focused on his new fighting style with moves like Laser Cannon and Scraper removed completely. This leaves him the Jack of All Stats-type character that was envisioned that has difficulty in having the same wavedash as the other Mishimas (which isn't as good however) with notably more difficulty in comboing and juggling someone to death as long as other characters (due to the knockback on his moves and having unsafe launchers), and it's also saying something in that he's one of the few who lack the standard 10-hit combo all other characters have), but he makes up for it with very powerful and harassing pokes for strong counter hits, well-rounded tools for respective evasion/crushing highs or lows, solid mix-up, and a very useful Stance System packed with the said mix-up and a very unique parry with limitless potential (this coming from the best non-Tekken 4 version via TTT2). However, despite his counter-intuitive nature, Jin got a buff in 7 in that his "Electric Wind Hook Fist" can now launch, giving him more offensive potential.
  • Also from the fourth game, we have the British boxer Steve Fox. He's a rushdown monster that's all about harassing the opponents with his plethora of frame-friendly moves and rarely letting them catch their breath. Expert Steve players understand his numerous stances, the attacks in each of these stances and the proper times to bob and weave to and from these stances to break opposing players' defenses. That said, Steve's major offensive presence comes at the price of having one of the worst punishment games among the entire cast—he has to resort to using less effective options to punish what would otherwise be launch punishable moves to other characters—and being reliant on counter hits to optimize his damage output. All things considered, Steve has consistently placed high in tier lists since his debut, until he was weakened considerably from Tag 2 onwards.
  • Ling Xiaoyu has semblances of complexity, with moves that leave her vulnerable if used incorrectly, several of which are from her Rain Dance (back towards) and Phoenix stances.
  • On the same boat as Xiao is Hwoarang. Mash-friendly, yes. But his core strengths lie in his surprisingly powerful kicks that need to be carefully planned out before being used, and need to be defended against if used properly. The major contributing factor to his steep learning curve however is his best and most difficult launcher to perform: the Just Frame Talon Sky Rocket.
  • Not fully whole, but Nina, King, and Armor King (but especially the latter two) have several chain-throws, where they would link from one throw to another until the finishing one, eating up a LOT of damages (King could even get into taking out HALF the life bar). Most of them require rather limited time frame to input button combinations which can include three buttons or four buttons combination and you need to memorize what combo follows to what throw. While not used a lot in tournament plays as such throws are easily guessed, it's really satisfying to pull those, even better if you could whiff your opponent into thinking you're doing something else (like, attacking mid or low) only for you to turn out going for the grapple.
  • Doctor Boskonovitch in Tekken 3 was more of a Lethal Joke Character. In that game, his moves rarely connect and he can't stand up, but master him and you'll find out your enemies will have a surprisingly hard time hitting you, while you wittle their health down. For his return in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, he's given a completely different moveset that makes him fit the trope straight. He's hard to master, but can be deadly.
  • Regardless of character, 10 hit combos. There's certainly Some Dexterity Required in pulling them off, and if you flub a single strike's input or timing, you're leaving yourself wide open, but when done right, it's a relentless beatdown that will suck away half the other guy's health if he doesn't manage to block.
• Toribash uses a similar system to QWOP, and is as hard to use. But when you do master it, the results are awe-inspiring.
• Touhou Project fighting games:
  • Alice in Touhou Suimusou ~ Immaterial and Missing Power doesn't use ranged attacks the same way the others do; rather, she deploys her doll familiars out, where they'll attack the enemy after a short time. The stagger delay takes some getting used to, but skilled Alice players can use their dolls to trap the enemy in the corner, where they're at her mercy with her skills and spells. Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody/Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe changed things so that Alice now relies on traps and has weird ranges. She's very hard to use well, but capable of utterly destroying opponents if the player knows what they're doing.
  • Suwako in Hisoutensoku. Everything about her, most notably her movement (she hops around the stage like a frog and her "crouching" elevates her upward on a lily-pad instead). Many of her attacks can only be used at specific times, and require impeccable positioning and timing to pull off correctly. She's also the possessor of the most powerful combo in the game (which takes off half a life bar), and is only beaten in terms of damage by Utsuho.
  • Reimu is mostly a Skill Gate Character and a pretty good one in her own right. All of her bullet moves are easy to use, her skillcards are straightforward and her spellcards are rather powerful. However, her most powerful spellcard, Fantasy Heaven, is difficult to execute due to having to pull off some combos in order to use it. Not only do you have to be experienced with Reimu in order to use it properly, but you also need some knowledge about the game's hitboxes and block physics. If you do know how to hit the enemy without wasting 5 spellcard slots, then you (debatably) have a strong contender for THE most powerful attack in the series.
• Under Night In-Birth: Vatista. Dear, dear Vatista. Vatista is considered by many in the FGC to be the single hardest character to play in any fighting game ever made. All of her moves are charge moves, and many have reverse inputs of the typical commands which makes combos very complex, especially as some of them involve chaining them into each other - in other words, you have to charge up two at the same time with very specific timing to pull it off, and you may even have to hold down a button while hitting other buttons to combo and charging other moves. Vatista has some of the longest and most damaging combos in the entire game and her long range makes it dangerous to approach her recklessly, and hence she is top tier in every incarnation, but she never receives complaints of High-Tier Scrappy because it is commonly accepted that it is not humanly possible for even a professional-level player to use her without them making a ton of mistakes in mechanical execution alone. It is also commonly accepted that it is not even possible to play Vatista with a standard console gamepad, necessitating splashing out on an arcade fight stick.
  • Behind Vatista is Yuzuriha. Yuzu has some incredible tools, such as a standing low, massive reach and utility with her specials, and a counter normal. The problems are that almost everything she has is heavily minus on block and can be punished much more easily than a different character, some of them require reads to work, and her counter normal is also her only real defensive option. All par for the course for a fighting game character, if a little harder than normal. What kicks her into this is that if you hold the button after using it, her specials all allow her to go into a stance that gives her additional options: a teleport forward and back dash (generally insignificant, as she has specials that do that), some not-awful pokes, and a free superjump. Only one other character has such a thing, and it costs GRD to use, whereas Yuzu gets to do it for free. Despite that, the stance offers nothing else, meaning immediately after using the superjump you need to press D to end it so you can convert off of it. Yuzu is also an incredibly fast-paced character, meaning that if you want to use her, you need to learn how to use the jump and how to do it fast.
• Virtua Fighter:
  • Akira's case is very strange, as the main protagonist normally is the one newbies pick up. His moveset was completely unlike any of the other characters, he required much more pinpoint timing and in the hands of a skilled operator he was an unbeatable wall of force. The Attract Mode for Virtua Fighter 2 showcased Akira pulling off a ridiculously difficult sequence of moves that would completely obliterate any opponent, 100-0%, without any hope of retaliation OR resorting to a ring-out. This was the single most devastating combo in the game, and they showed it move-for move in the Attract Mode. And yet you NEVER EVER EVER SAW ANYONE USING IT due wholly to the sheer difficulty and computer-like timing required to pull it off. Subsequent installments made Akira easier to play, but what mainly makes him so challenging to use is that he is likely the most un-button mashing friendly character in the series, and thus not suited for a beginner pick up and play type style. Most of his moves are linear, power attacks with one or two hits, unlike most of the other characters who have a variety of combo strings. The few multi-hit combos Akira does have require a higher level of execution to perform. Taking take full advantage of his devastating damage output requires timing, skill, and knowledge of how to link/buffer his moves together. As well, a lot of his game is centered around capitalizing on the opposite player's openings and mistakes.
    • Of special note is his signature attack, Teishitsu Dantai (or simply "The Knee"). To do this move, you have to press Kick+Guard, then release Guard within 1 frame (1/60th of a second) or you get a different move entirely (amusingly, as of 5 the regular K+G move is objectively better).
  • The series itself when compared to other fighting games. The complex gameplay mechanics and fast pace of the game make it QUITE hard to get into, and the incredible diversity in style amongst the characters pretty much obliges you to pick one and stick with him/her. It's nowhere near as newbie-friendly as other games in the genre to be sure. However, the series is widely hailed as possibly the most balanced fighting game in the genre, with each character being able to play competitively without crippling disadvantages against other characters, so it has remained a perennial favorite for online play.
• Virtual-ON Oratorio Tangram:
  • The 10/80 Special does not have any thrust-vectoring dash (meaning it will only to one direction in a dash, unlike other VRs that can change direction mid-dash), has weak weapons easily deflectible by V-Armor, and cannot dash in the air. On the upside, it is quite fast, and able to slice between a Raiden's twin beam cannons with its special move.
  • The Bal (not that one). It has more moves than all the other VRs combined, and using Bal is an exercise of patience and skill. Master Bal, and it becomes More Dakka and Energy Weapons in one convenient package.
  • Ajim's Mine Orbs has more or less a random factor to it that can heal opponents, all of its weapons recharge slowly, and you have to level the weapons up to gain maximum effectiveness. It's armor is paper-thin (it is, in-universe, basically a stack of rogue pixels), and on your hands Ajim's energy leaks at a constant rate (meaning, your life decreases as the passage of time). But if you are disciplined with the weapons and is good at aiming, then Ajim hits unbelievably hard, is hardly affected by V-Armor, and is capable of finishing off any of the upper-tier VRs in no time at all.
• Character Customization such as the level of detail in the WWE Games can be this. 2K16 allows face photos to be imported and used, which have historically been difficult in other games. Here a 512 x 512 front on shot, head and shoulders, no hair over the face is a good benchmark. Then it's just a case of adjusting the markers and sliders to where you want. It will give you razor sharp, perfectly accurate and detailed head models to use.

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