Imagining the alternate universe where after Rivals 2 comes out Coney holds the "Coney Clash" and puts Sajam on a team with a bunch of VTubers to compete for Taco Bell gift cards
The tutorials in Rivals 1 are very well done and explain things well. Rivals 2 is currently missing the tutorials but they're planned soon and, based on past experience, they'll be good.
Honestly going back and playing the tutorial in Rivals 1 is not a half-bad way to get started in Rivals 2. You'll be missing some key mechanics like ledges and shields, but it's still great for learning fundamentals and character specific tricks (except for the 2 new characters in Rivals 2).
When I saw on the menu that it had a box on the option, meaning it was a link, I just wondered what was even going on, because I remember there was a very in-depth tutorial in the first game talking about things like survival DI and SDI.
I’ve been playing Smash since I was literally 4 and I never realized how much I’ve learned by sheer osmosis. Never thought about how weird these games are to learn if you are coming from traditional fighters
Exactly. Smashers always tell new players "Just play the game" because that's what they did for the first 1000 hours. But not everybody has 1000 hours to fuck around, and there are definitely faster ways to learn the game if you're an adult with enough patience to practice and watch tutorials.
As someone who has been into traditional fighters for the past few years when I first tried out smash like a year ago I was completely lost lol. I don't think platform fighters are for me but I'll prolly check out rivals 2 once they get the tutorials in since I hear the first game's were pretty good.
@@VannTango I mean, I think this is partially true, but I feel like Smash is so easy conceptually that most people who regularly play it think that it should be easy for anyone coming in to understand it. Not to say it isn’t easy, but at a basic level, almost everyone has the same number of tools, it’s just figuring out what each tool does on each individual character. To me, that sounds considerably easier than having the same core buttons but adjusting to characters having a different number of tools, especially because I played Smash for years and then got into SF in middle school, but I could see why someone who’s only played trad fighters think that plat-fighters’ control scheme is the mind boggling because of both how much is missing and also how much weird stuff is added instead.
@@cyanariesdw04 I think that's a wrong way to look at it. For one. Just because everyone has an up special it doesn't mean everyone has the same number of tools. Hell some characters straight up fly But Ness's up special is not at all the same tool as Zelda's up special which is not the same as Kirby's
Haven't watched more than five seconds of this, but this video is a dream come true. Long-time Melee player, decently long-time Sajam watcher, so excited to see my favorite Chipotle rep try this game out. I've had a blast with it so far, hoping the same for you!
@@whizthesugoiThe game doesn't do a good job and introducing people to its mechanics and it lacks content for casuals, which the vast (like genuinely 95% minimum) of the platform fighter fans are. I think once you're good at the game it's far and away the best platform fighter on the market but grtting good at it is rough with the lackluster tools at the moment
@@stephensterling1874 most people who play traditional fighters hate on platform fighters until they attempt to learn them and realize the sheer density of mechanics is intimidating. It's usually smash players that move on to traditional fighters and not the other way around. There's just far more things to consider at any given moment in most situations because there's a much higher freedom of movement. I started in Melee and I never feel the level of decision making is ever matched by a more traditional fighter, and I've played many of those as well.
@@OG-san21 I mentioned this earlier, but most platform fighters have the same amount of depth/complexity as Tekken, but they tend to have simpler inputs. It's these simple inputs that allow a casual player to just press buttons and have fun whereas a casual player doesn't tend to have all that much fun in Tekken, GG, BB, or any game that's mechanically demanding. Also identifying your useful tools in Smash and most platform fighters is incredibly easy, you have a limited movelist and it's extremely obvious in most cases what buttons are good and bad at. In Tekken, it's not immediately obvious what say Dragunov's db3+4 is good at or for to casual players, it's a single low hit that does 'meh' damage. To the rest of us though well... We know.
Traditional fighters have way more things you need to learn and memorize in order to do well, but plat fighters are way more about training your instincts and intuition on way more levels than in fighting games,
My take as someone who plays both, trad fighting games are harder mechanically (on average) and require more general character understanding, but platform fighter's abstract gameplan-making and understanding of distances is far more ambiguous which makes it more difficult on a mental level imo
You can really tell how much better of a mentality Sajam has when he says: "I don't know what to do." where other players would say: "There is nothing I can do."
i mean no hate but its so refreshing to see Sajam be bad at a fighting game to elaborate, I'm a big platform fighter guy so its pretty easy for me to jump between them and get the gist, but I'm absolutely miserable with trying new traditional fgs. Seeing Sajan be the exact opposite is so refreshing and validating to my experience I hope we can see more rivals in the future! (and maybe with someone in call to coach lmao)
@@Ramsonpwndz i have, and that's true Most of my feeling this way comes from (1) this being a new video in [current year], (2) this being about platform fighters, a genre that a lot of the casual audience has experience with, and (3) that I actually am good at platform fighters! So I got to see Sajam struggle on my turf the same way that I struggle on his in a different way than his jump from NRS games and SF into unist! It's very validating and a great change of perspective
I didn't appreciate how much there was to learn about this game and the importance of tutorials when I started out in Rivals 1. It's a steeper curve for new players than I remembered, hope the devs have the time to at least curate some community videos to support the (already quite good) dragdown wiki
As a longtime melee player who has always been at a complete loss trying to wrap my head around how Sajam picks up traditional fighters. It was honestly really fun to watch him be at a complete loss for what is good or game mechanics so he has "ah ha!" moments that made me feel like a proud parent lmao
I love that one of the very first things Sajam realizes is the need for bumper jump which has always been my biggest barrier into melee with the inability to rebind inputs. Why PM and Rivals immediately drew me in more was just the fact i could jump and still maintain air control without twisting my hand to claw grip.
That's why I never got into melee as well, but that was resolved for me by getting a box. I use it for plat fighters and traditional fighters both. If you can find/make one with both modes and you're interested in both I would recommend trying it, definitely a different experience and a learning curve but I love melee now because of it.
@WhiteKnuckleRide512 rivals 2 would’ve been perfect if it was as fast and flashy as rivals 1 but with real defensive options. I like rivals 1 but could never really get into it cause there was no actual blocking
38:52 Yeah this is super common in the genre. Basically you have an initial dash animation that transitions into the run animation. You’re stuck in initial dash for a set length unless you jump, use a special, or dash in the opposite direction, and you’re stuck using dash attack in this state. It’s especially pronounced on Clairen who has a very long initial dash state. A way to get around this is wavedashing, because wavedashing despite the name has nothing to do with your grounded dash state and so you can use any ground normal out of it as though you were standing still. Basically, the core of grounded movement in Melee and most indie platform fighters is that grounded dash is faster and less committal when using empty movement for neutral whereas wavedash is more committal of a movement option but allows access to more of your kit.
Lack of a tutorial is my #1 issue with this game for sure. I played tons of Rivals 1 and even I was confused by how all their new mechanics worked. Still an amazing game and I give the dev team some slack for being an indie studio trying to do the impossible but hoping the tutorial gets added ASAP to help new players get a foothold
38:42 "I constantly want to do dash jab, but I keep doing dash attack" It's a spacing thing. During the start of your dash (first 15-20ish frames, depending on the character), if you press the attack button, you do a dash attack. You can't cancel your dash into a jab (or any other tilt attack) until your character is fully running. That's a big part of why dash dance spacing is so important. You want to keep yourself at a distance where you can dash in and jab (or tilt attack), which is just outside of the initial dash distance. Alternatively, you could wavedash, but that's a little laggy (~10 frames of lag after the airdodge).
This is where baby dashing in theory becomes super useful, where after dashing for one or two frames and resetting to neutral after (so it's a two frame window) you slide forward but have access to jab and tilts. I personally have a lot of trouble doing them successfully out of a stand, not sure how much of it is a controller thing or skill issue xd but I somehow get them 99% consistently out of a little dash dance flick (similar input to doing an empty pivot or pivot jab in melee). Something I've also gotten decent at is using a tilt turn (borrowing this term from melee may not be the most correct) out of a dash in order to access jabs and tilts as well. Dashing in one direction into tilting slightly in the other is weirdly lenient, and then the overall turnaround animation is hella long. Lets me do something like tipper jab with clairen to combo into dash forward, turnaround uptilt and get the early hitbox of uptilt, pretty sick. Unfortunately though this doesn't let you dash towards someone and jab in that direction easily as you'd have to turn back around. Interestingly, doing something like dash left, tilt turn right, and then forward tilt left is actually not that bad to input. Just have to get it pretty fast or else yeah, you may as well be wavedashing. The spacing fundamentals you mentioned prolly more important than all this tech I'm sure lol. Also worth noting that you have a lot of precision on where you land by drifting in the air, compared to a whole initial dash. 🤓
@@WastedFlan Baby dashing is useful in theory, yes, but in practice if you want to move a small bit and retain access to jabs and tilts you'd just walk. It's a slight bit slower than a baby dash but vastly easier. Realistically, needing that little bit of extra speed is so situational that you'd mostly likely never react in time to do a baby dash on purpose.
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512 Not during your initial dash. In Rivals of Aether 1 you could, but in Melee/PM/ROA2 it doesn't work like that. Your initial dash is always a commitment to the full length of the dash, with your only options during that state being - Turn around - Shield - Jump - Dash attack - Dash grab Try it in training mode with Clairen (for the long dash distance). Tap left or right, then try tapping down. You won't stop moving or crouch, you'll keep going a short distance. If you hold down, you'll notice that you travel the full distance, come to a full and complete stop, _then_ crouch. It takes a while.
I say this with zero sass or vitriol in my heart. It's honestly reassuring to watch Sajam also struggle to acclimate to the platform fighter lifestyle. I'm having a lot of fun with Rivals 2, but it has been a hell of a rough adjustment on me as an ancient Streetfighter grandma.
the roa1 tutorial came out like 5 years after the initial game launched, given the tutorial was ready for the big update/rerelease (when i started) but still
R1 in was ea though for a while iirc. As a sequel the fact r2 for the most part has a similar amout of content to ea r1 is crazy. I love r2 dont get me wrong but i dont agree with the content approach they took since this is a sequel, but at least if you buy now you get all gameplay stuff for free, unlike r1 where before definitive there were characters as dlc.
Rivals is so sick. The original game has Steam Workshop with over 1000 characters and like 100 of them are release-level quality characters. Check Zetta's workshop collections for the best ones. The new game is gonna be great too, and the DLC being free is a pretty great precedent.
For years you have taught me how to play the 2d fighting games, and now finally I get to see you play in my domain, platform fighters baby. Lets see how this goes!
You weren’t joking about “new player guides” being for melee players. I watched a video titled Rivals 2 for noobs and it used a ton of smash and melee specific terms in quick succession with barely any explanation.
Seeing someone else coming from traditional fighting games and echoing my sentiments is validating. Just being able to move your character the way you want in a platform fighter is really difficult.
Cool as hell to see Sajam giving Rivals 2 a shot. I totally agree though that there should've been a tutorial at launch. I wouldn't have minded the game getting delayed a bit so they could have time to make one before the game's launch. Even just a general tutorial for now would've been nice, and then maybe later on have more character specific tutorials or something. I love Rivals 1 and 2, but it's probably one of the most complex plat fighters to jump into. Like to best recover in this game you need to know that every character can wall jump, some characters have movement specials that can get them to the wall to allow them to wall jump, up special don't count in this so don't up special into a wall thinking you can wall jump after, you can airdodge in any direction so use that to recover if you need to, and you can't up special into wall jump but you can wall jump into up special. That's a lot of information. That's not even going to character specific information. Some characters are pretty basic like Zetterburn and Clairen, but others like Ranno and Orcane have a lot of nuances in their arsenal. Still though, you were picking up on things pretty fast, which was cool to see.
I'm sure they wanted to include tutorials at launch, but my guess is they didn't have enough funds to keep delaying the game, and needed to launch the game now :( That's probably why they focused on having an arcade mode and ranked at launch, to compensate for the lack of tutorials. Maybe they should have released the game as early access instead of a full launch.
Thanks so much, Sajam. I'm coming into this from more traditional fighters as well, and watching you struggle in exactly the same ways I have been really helps give me confidence to get out and try despite it all.
Metaphor: ReFantazio launches at 50% volume by default... It got review bombed because people thought the audio was broken. They even put out a fake fix where they said "Don't worry guys! We fixed the audio bug!" and just put it to 100% by default.
This is strait up not true. My volume was set to 100% pre-patch and it was incredibly quiet, to the point where I had a crank the volume of my speakers to 3x what they normally are. Post-patch the volume normalized back to the rest of my applications so I no longer need to crank the volume
it would be so cool to see you continue learning this game, maybe after better tutorials get added. Seeing you learn a game that's so different from anything you've played before would be a real treat.
It really is unfortunate that there is no tutorial. Rivals 1 had one of the best ones in any platform fighter ever. I really hope they add something similar to Rivals 2 soon.
As someone who’s first experience with fighting games was Smash and who then went on to play more traditional fighting games, it didn’t really occur to me how unintuitive a platform fighter can be to someone with no experience with them. I do hope they add a tutorial to the game soon, because the tutorial in Rivals 1 was amazing and not being taught about crucial defensive mechanics like DI can make being in disadvantage really rough
its cool to see the teacher man play something brand new. also highlights the poor onboarding that people experienced in the genre cant see for themselves. good and important video to put out for the rivals scene
There will be a really in depth tutorial added eventually, it just wasn't a priority for the initial launch. If the RoA 1 built in tutorials are anything to go off of this will eventually be easier to learn fully in game than just about any other fighter
Welcome to Rivals, Sajam! This community is awesome, and we have so many people who are willing to help you learn, if you need it! I know things are a little confusing, right now, but Dan and the group are planning on adding full character tutorials, soon
Rivals is one of the most hype fighting games out there imo it’s really cool to see you try it out, if you end up sticking with it at all it would be truly legendary to see more Rivals content!Also welcome to bumper jumper gang I fully agree it is optimal my friends thought I was so weird for that but it feels so smooth with that scheme. For rivals 2 I fully switched to right bumper short hop and right trigger full hop so I just don’t have to think about timing my button presses and it’s worked great for me
Mr jam malding about controls is so real 😭 Finding a good control scheme in any platform fight is so unintuitive and difficult, esp when you need or want a weird setup like me (ultimate jump on left trigger my beloved)
Stage picks can generally be broken down into what it's platforms and stage size are. Platforms Offense: generally they increase combo potential by letting you hit the ground faster. You can also tech chase opponents on them (tech chasing is basically oki in this game). Characters that can do ladder (vertical) combos benefit greatly from platforms generally. Platform placement also affects this. Platforms that extend past the ledge of the stage can lead to extremely early offstage kills, and high up platforms can help characters kill off the top (if they can combo into a kill move off the top platform). Defense: Platforms also help characters escape juggles (keeping the opponent in the air to prevent them from refreshing air resources), by increasing the amount of places a character can land or tech. Platforms tend to also increase the vertical blastzone (height where you die) if the stage, so you die slower to moves that kill of the top (while on the stage). Platforms tend to also help zoning, if you sit under a platform it becomes harder to approach from above since landing aerials will land on the platform instead of the stage. Stage size: Offense: Smaller stage sizes force you to interact with your opponent more, so characters that can scrap, control large amounts stage, or kill early off the sides benefit from smaller stage size. Defense: larger stage sizes have larger blast zones, both horizontally and vertically. this leads to later kills. also, larger stage size means more space for characters that like to run away or play keep out (kinda different from stage control, think dhalsim vs guile). to combine this with character picks, consider your character's qualities: Weight: lighter worries more about stage size, whereas heavier can deal with smaller stages. kill power: Characters that can kill early like small stages, but characters that kill late do not like large stages. fall speed: Floaty characters can struggle to land on a flat stage, fast fallers don't struggle as much with landing. stage control: smaller stage size means that characters with better stage control can hold advantageous positions for longer. When going through bans and stage picks, try to balance your character's traits with your opponents. There is of course more options to consider such as specific mu interactions and walls, but the earlier mentioned traits tend to be the most important.
I gotta say it is so reassuring to see Sajam struggle with all the exact same things I have always struggled with in platform fighters. In particular the movement stick being so sensitive it feels impossible to *not* dash all the time, causing all sorts of problems with trying to space attacks and use tilts and turnaround for jabs and stuff and getting dash attack when I wanted a jab for the 40 billionth time. Rivals having a bindable short hop button is a huge step forward but I wish I had some way to consistently NOT go speeding in either direction whenever I try to aim left or right lol.
"You can swap on a win? This game sucks." Ngl I've always hated that aspect of melee's counterpicking rules. You should be stuck on a win. It only exists because of FD (and mute city/rainbow cruise in ancient times), but Rivals doesn't have FD so...
Tbf i think the only plat fighter with this issue is ult since its stage before character. Part of the fun is seeing who your opponet picks then picking a stage they do bad on. Adds more thought process ig. in tfgc though no keep it how it is where you cant swap. Im fine with how we do it in plat fighters though due to how we do stages
i mean you can swap on a win but the winner picks first, so the loser still gets the counterpick both character and stage. it goes loser chooses stage -> winner chooses character -> loser chooses character.
Melee player here. One of the first things chat should have told you about defense is how to tech on the ground. If you are hit into the ground, press shield and a direction just before hitting the ground to tech in that direction immediately, rather than being stuck on the ground. You can also tech in place by just tapping shield without holding a direction. You asked how to block immediately after knockdown. That is how. Hope that helps
I would've loved to see Sajam try the original Rivals of Aether since I think it's easier and more intuitive to get into for someone who's new to platform fighters. It also has tutorials that do a fine job of teaching the basics, and even some more advanced stuff, which would answer quite a few of the questions he had in this video and give some other useful information. Alas, I know it very likely won't happen, since there isn't any particularly good reason for him to try it out now
42:24 yeah grabs in platform fighters are fundamentally different from traditional fighting games. They’re basically just a normal hitbox with the special property they go through shields and counter moves. Being airborne doesn’t affect grabs in platform fighters. Edit: and you can combo into grabs, which isn’t present in most traditional fighters
That was super fun to watch. As a fighting game player who started with smash I always love seeing the cross pollination and how the approach and skill sets of the respective genres apply elsewhere.
You know how I learned to play fighters, Undernight and Skullgirls have great tutorials that explain everything, down to even things people take for granted. I didn't know how arbitrarily weird running was in platform fighters until I googled what a foxtrot was.
Yeah some of those suggestions from chat were wild lol. People teaching how to do the bubble recovery with Ranno before even the basic mechanics were understood.
this was super endearing, looking forward to seeing more from you :) would love to see you get all the chars eventually to gold (once there's a tutorial) I don't know whether going through RoA1's tutorials is a good jumping on point
This makes me feel so much better about my rivals experience. Dash attacks and dying at like 50 are my biggest issues, good to see sajam suffering as i am
Theres a lot to learn to plat fighters. One of them being dashes are considered like sorta commitments. Initial dash animation you cant cancel it into a move so you just have to get the timing of the dash flick to do a move after. DI is probably one of the harder things to learn knowing when you should di in/not to survive or escape situational combos. How I like to handle is by thinking after viewing their habits, "what would my opponent want in this situation?", then act the best you can. Another good habit is to ALWAYS look at your opponent's character. You gotta see what they may go for faster and thus get into the mind of how they move. Even slightly better positioning is enough to win nuetral. There is much more to learn... but keep at it 🔥🔥🔥
So, in Rivals 1 there were full tutorials for not only each mechanic, but also each individual character mechanic, similar to Strive. They'll probably bring it back
Seeing this pop up in my recommended warms my heart. I love Rivals of Aether so much and I feel super happy seeing more and more people give it a shot. Thank you Sajam
It's such a shame that Rivals 2 has the equivalent of the GameCube game manual for a tutorial, because the tutorial was one of the best things about the original Rivals of Aether.
That first question was so on point LMAO, first thing I do whenever I boot up a game for the first time is putting the volume at 50% EDIT: Watching Sajam learn Ranno made me realize how alien a lot of the core concepts of a platform fighter must feel for someone with 00 experience on the genre. Having started with melee before transitioned to regular FGs, I had always taken for granted all the specifics of these types of games, like wavedash, air dodge, directional smash attacks, recovery moves, etc
I started with smash and then moved to traditional fighters so this was cool. Watching him figure out how to DI was great. And the side B when trying to up B is a real classic
I am sooooo excited to see Sajam play a Platfighter you have no idea. Rivals 1 was my first fighting game, before I transitioned to Strive and lived off of Sajam videos so seeing him play Rivals 2 is awesome! The lack of tutorials is unfortunate. And video resources are, to be honest, not usually the best. Especially for someone who is used to 2D fighting games. There are a lot of fundamental overlaps between the Genres, but Rivals 2 has so many things that are very very different from how you normally think about interactions in 2D and Anime fighters.
I'm glad to see you trying the game even if you don't stick with it. It's rare to see someone versed in traditional fighters attempt a platform fighter. It's almost always the other way around. So many well known people in the FGC started playing some version of Smash Bros as their first tournament game, but it's practically unheard of in the other direction.
@isaachudson9108 normally I wouldn't but the devs have stated that they plan on having all the rivals 1 characters return, with the exception of the two guest characters who most likely won't. Still, it might be a very long time, especially since they're aiming for four characters a year, and they'll have to share that with new characters like La Reina of course. Still, it's not guaranteed if the game can't live that long. Here's hoping though, would love to see how she looks in motion in 3D
LETS GO SAJAM!! Long time viewer here with 8 years experience in Rivals 1, I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this video in my timeline!! Watching Sajam try to deal with Lox reminds me that we're all in this together lol See you on the ladder, dude!
Really hope you stick to it and try to learn some more. It's great seeing many of your fundamentals transfer over even if you aren't feeling them. Your reads and your combo game were very impressive for someone just starting. Once you get that core feeling of the controls down and learn what options you have I think it'll click! Excited to see more.
Iunno if you're looking for feedback but Rivals 1's tutorials are pretty transferable, you can also watch players that play the character you like, and ask Coney for some grimey stuff lol
The official TH-cam page for Rivals of Aether 2 has character SPECIFIC guides but yeah def the movement and all that other general knowledge will just take time. Glad to see the boy attempting to play a platfighter tho!
Hello Sajam, just a basic tip for wakeup options. Like in tekken, there are many wake up options that you can use when getting knocked down. The best ones are to "tech" the ground To tech the ground in place, press Shield before hitting the ground To tech roll the ground, press Shield + a direction before hitting the ground Those both have a lot of invincibility frames on startup and will prevent your opponent free damage on your knockdowns. If you fail to tech the ground you have a few options : - Getup attack by pressing the attack button - Getup special by pressing the special button, has different effects by character - Press up on your control stick to wake up in place - Press left or right to roll These are also all invincible on startup
Never seen this game before. I like how every time I see what they added to a character they obviously stole from smash I just go “oh no why can they do THAT??”
Actually my favourite part, similar to project M: 'what if every character had just a little bit more sauce?' I like ranno's monk/ninja design and animations, and similarity to sheik. But then they pull out the bubbles/tongue momentum stuff and it's even better.
Super pumped to see Sajam giving this game a try. It gave some perspective just how alien plat fighters can be if you didn’t grow up with them. Also lmao at 1:35:18 When Sajam’s first experience with this game is an instance of Marthritis
Been watching you for years now and been a platform fighter players since I was 8 year old with brawl. So this was a blast to watch. keep the rivals content up! Oh and if you want tutorials rivals 1 has them. Or otherwise I wouldnt mind teaching you the basics
It's interesting seeing Sajam be out of his depth in a new game and how much criticism he has for what there is to see as a new player in this game compared to other fighting games. I don't think his criticism is unwarranted, but as someone who played smash and has very little literacy with actually "playing" traditional 2d fighters, something like Rivals is likely to be much more intuitive to me as a player than something like GG or SF6. The things Sajam says here sound a lot like the types of criticism I would have in other fighters for similar reasons. GGST has tutorials and things, but when you get into the part about fuzzies and safe jumps and things where you're interacting with the game in a way that dissects frame data as a new player, it feels really hyper specific and arcane to digest as a newer player. They're concepts that you need dozens of hours to even detect or read use cases for them. It's cool that they exist, but it's extremely tough to actually get good at the game enough to even care about. Like, yes, I know what plus frames are, FD, instant block, but the level of play where you are consciously shooting for those things don't even register to new players. There's cool ways to implement that into platform fighters and stuff too, I'm sure, but i think it's largely a side effect of the player base optimizing games until you're reaching human limits and then the conversation shifts into the state of the game at that point. The reason I bring this up is that there is absolutely a big difference in perception of whether or not a game is fun or digestible between casual gamers and competitive gamers. The things people look for vary so drastically between those two audiences. The smash scene is big enough that I think a lot of these things are going to bounce off of smash players, but Sajam is right about them. Similarly, I think it's really difficult for players like myself that don't have a lot of experience with traditional fighters to be absolutely lost when stepping into a new game
Rivals 1 has a very solid tutorial, maybe one of the best in fighters, so just hold off on the pitchforks. It's worth saying that it's not there but they can't not have a tutorial. I don't see a world where it won't be there by full release.
I really enjoy watching you try out different games and feeling them out. Platform fighters are my favorite sub genre of fighting games, and I always like seeing people try them out. It really is unfortunate how hostile these games are to new/learning players, especially since most of them like this one have no good tutorials or training modes in game to help. A lot of the nuances of platform fighters aren't well explained or intuitive either. I hope to see you play more, as long as you're vibing with it.
Ive been off platform fighters a while (raged too hard on some of my only titles, also rivals 1 had to queue up on discords back in the day), but this video is making me want to revisit it lmao
hi mr jam I love your content. One big genre difference in plat fighters is that instead of grab being chip conditioning to not block, in plat fighters pressuring with hitboxes is conditioning to force them to block so you can grab them and run setplay. Also, grabs can be true comboed into, so you don’t have to worry about waiting out hitstun. You were doing the spin aerial a lot, and grabbing after something like that is one of the “cashing out” rps options.
18:41 Holding 'down' in platform fighters is a way to let go of ledges, and it can also prevent you from grabbing them when in proximity. While you were holding 'forward', you may also have been holding 'down', which would explain why your character did not grab the ledge.
> first game ever
> hate on kragg
> "i'm gonna talk to dan about this"
u're already a rivals player
Thought he was talking about swapping on a win
sajam wasn't even an hour into his first platfighter and chat was trying to teach him about b reversing ranno needles
LMAO
To be fair, it’s not that crazy
B reverse is literally one of the easiest plat fighter mechanics to learn
@fendour_ yeah but not when you don't know how to shoot a dart
@@fendour_ It really isn’t. For someone with zero platfighter knowledge you’d be surprised how foreign it feels.
Imagining the alternate universe where after Rivals 2 comes out Coney holds the "Coney Clash" and puts Sajam on a team with a bunch of VTubers to compete for Taco Bell gift cards
you know that's unironically a sick af idea
Get big FGC names to learn a platform fighter with coaches and throw them in a team tournament
@@OG-san21 yes please I would watch the heck out of that
That could be this universe. I think it should be
The tutorials in Rivals 1 are very well done and explain things well. Rivals 2 is currently missing the tutorials but they're planned soon and, based on past experience, they'll be good.
Honestly going back and playing the tutorial in Rivals 1 is not a half-bad way to get started in Rivals 2. You'll be missing some key mechanics like ledges and shields, but it's still great for learning fundamentals and character specific tricks (except for the 2 new characters in Rivals 2).
@@VannTangoplus you get to play a better game
When I saw on the menu that it had a box on the option, meaning it was a link, I just wondered what was even going on, because I remember there was a very in-depth tutorial in the first game talking about things like survival DI and SDI.
Why would you not release your heavily marketed game with tutorials?
@@614showtime Because they’re too busy making obnoxious-ass skins for every character and cringe win screen animations to actually make the game good
I’ve been playing Smash since I was literally 4 and I never realized how much I’ve learned by sheer osmosis. Never thought about how weird these games are to learn if you are coming from traditional fighters
Exactly. Smashers always tell new players "Just play the game" because that's what they did for the first 1000 hours. But not everybody has 1000 hours to fuck around, and there are definitely faster ways to learn the game if you're an adult with enough patience to practice and watch tutorials.
As someone who has been into traditional fighters for the past few years when I first tried out smash like a year ago I was completely lost lol. I don't think platform fighters are for me but I'll prolly check out rivals 2 once they get the tutorials in since I hear the first game's were pretty good.
@@VannTango I mean, I think this is partially true, but I feel like Smash is so easy conceptually that most people who regularly play it think that it should be easy for anyone coming in to understand it. Not to say it isn’t easy, but at a basic level, almost everyone has the same number of tools, it’s just figuring out what each tool does on each individual character. To me, that sounds considerably easier than having the same core buttons but adjusting to characters having a different number of tools, especially because I played Smash for years and then got into SF in middle school, but I could see why someone who’s only played trad fighters think that plat-fighters’ control scheme is the mind boggling because of both how much is missing and also how much weird stuff is added instead.
@@cyanariesdw04 I think that's a wrong way to look at it. For one. Just because everyone has an up special it doesn't mean everyone has the same number of tools.
Hell some characters straight up fly
But Ness's up special is not at all the same tool as Zelda's up special which is not the same as Kirby's
i'll never forget how normal it was for me then i was playing with my brother in law for the first time and he asks "where are the health bars"
This was a lot of fun to watch and very insightful lol, definitely highlights what a shame the lack of tutorials at launch is.
Haven't watched more than five seconds of this, but this video is a dream come true. Long-time Melee player, decently long-time Sajam watcher, so excited to see my favorite Chipotle rep try this game out. I've had a blast with it so far, hoping the same for you!
Also, absolutely unhinged thumbnail. Feels appropriate though.
would you care to enlighten me on why i've heard so many people saying it's bad?
Melee players like me get real hype when FGC tries Melee/PM like games or even just crossovers
@@whizthesugoiThe game doesn't do a good job and introducing people to its mechanics and it lacks content for casuals, which the vast (like genuinely 95% minimum) of the platform fighter fans are. I think once you're good at the game it's far and away the best platform fighter on the market but grtting good at it is rough with the lackluster tools at the moment
@@bumibomber and is the net code unstable or was Majas unlucky?
This is a great example of fighting game culture shock
Cannot wait for the “Platform Fighters are Inherently More Difficult to Learn” conversation on Twitter next week
Who says that? Isn't it the opposite?
@@stephensterling1874 most people who play traditional fighters hate on platform fighters until they attempt to learn them and realize the sheer density of mechanics is intimidating. It's usually smash players that move on to traditional fighters and not the other way around.
There's just far more things to consider at any given moment in most situations because there's a much higher freedom of movement. I started in Melee and I never feel the level of decision making is ever matched by a more traditional fighter, and I've played many of those as well.
@@OG-san21 I mentioned this earlier, but most platform fighters have the same amount of depth/complexity as Tekken, but they tend to have simpler inputs. It's these simple inputs that allow a casual player to just press buttons and have fun whereas a casual player doesn't tend to have all that much fun in Tekken, GG, BB, or any game that's mechanically demanding.
Also identifying your useful tools in Smash and most platform fighters is incredibly easy, you have a limited movelist and it's extremely obvious in most cases what buttons are good and bad at.
In Tekken, it's not immediately obvious what say Dragunov's db3+4 is good at or for to casual players, it's a single low hit that does 'meh' damage. To the rest of us though well... We know.
Traditional fighters have way more things you need to learn and memorize in order to do well, but plat fighters are way more about training your instincts and intuition on way more levels than in fighting games,
My take as someone who plays both, trad fighting games are harder mechanically (on average) and require more general character understanding, but platform fighter's abstract gameplan-making and understanding of distances is far more ambiguous which makes it more difficult on a mental level imo
You can really tell how much better of a mentality Sajam has when he says: "I don't know what to do." where other players would say: "There is nothing I can do."
REAL, im so guilty of the latter lmao
i mean no hate but its so refreshing to see Sajam be bad at a fighting game
to elaborate, I'm a big platform fighter guy so its pretty easy for me to jump between them and get the gist, but I'm absolutely miserable with trying new traditional fgs. Seeing Sajan be the exact opposite is so refreshing and validating to my experience
I hope we can see more rivals in the future! (and maybe with someone in call to coach lmao)
I’m jealous at how easy it is for him to pick up new games. Watching him flounder is so relatable.
Watch his learning unist playlist to see him be kinda bad a game in the beginning
@@Ramsonpwndz i have, and that's true
Most of my feeling this way comes from (1) this being a new video in [current year], (2) this being about platform fighters, a genre that a lot of the casual audience has experience with, and (3) that I actually am good at platform fighters! So I got to see Sajam struggle on my turf the same way that I struggle on his in a different way than his jump from NRS games and SF into unist! It's very validating and a great change of perspective
I didn't appreciate how much there was to learn about this game and the importance of tutorials when I started out in Rivals 1. It's a steeper curve for new players than I remembered, hope the devs have the time to at least curate some community videos to support the (already quite good) dragdown wiki
According to the devs' roadmap video, tutorials are #2 priority behind bug fixes
@@0therwisesleep522 should have been in the release version tbh
i hope they reconsider their roadmap because no tutorial really hurts new players
@@sunbreh9075 Idk what reconsidering the roadmap would even mean at this point since adding tutorials is essentially the next thing they’re gonna add?
they did do a whole series of character tutorials on their youtube
@@snizzle6174What's good about learning a character if you don't know the game?
As a longtime melee player who has always been at a complete loss trying to wrap my head around how Sajam picks up traditional fighters. It was honestly really fun to watch him be at a complete loss for what is good or game mechanics so he has "ah ha!" moments that made me feel like a proud parent lmao
I love that one of the very first things Sajam realizes is the need for bumper jump which has always been my biggest barrier into melee with the inability to rebind inputs. Why PM and Rivals immediately drew me in more was just the fact i could jump and still maintain air control without twisting my hand to claw grip.
the best melee player in the world has a bumper set to jump
its weird how i need a bumper jump button in ultimate but in pm and rivals not so much. Also i need two shield buttons for my shield wavedash
That's why I never got into melee as well, but that was resolved for me by getting a box. I use it for plat fighters and traditional fighters both. If you can find/make one with both modes and you're interested in both I would recommend trying it, definitely a different experience and a learning curve but I love melee now because of it.
@@HumanGuyy Zain is #1 this year, but yes there are plenty of melee players who use Z-Jump (bumper)
Bumper jump feels incredibly unnatural to me, what exactly are the advantages?
Not a lot of big fgc creators trying out Rivals so this is more than appreciated. I hope this vid can bring in a new audience in a way :)
Same, I just hope that audience moves on to Rivals 1 because it’s a way better game
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512crazy
@@knotknight514 literally the best fighting game ever made. Rivals 2 could have been that too but they lost the sauce so hard
@WhiteKnuckleRide512 rivals 2 would’ve been perfect if it was as fast and flashy as rivals 1 but with real defensive options. I like rivals 1 but could never really get into it cause there was no actual blocking
38:52 Yeah this is super common in the genre. Basically you have an initial dash animation that transitions into the run animation. You’re stuck in initial dash for a set length unless you jump, use a special, or dash in the opposite direction, and you’re stuck using dash attack in this state. It’s especially pronounced on Clairen who has a very long initial dash state. A way to get around this is wavedashing, because wavedashing despite the name has nothing to do with your grounded dash state and so you can use any ground normal out of it as though you were standing still. Basically, the core of grounded movement in Melee and most indie platform fighters is that grounded dash is faster and less committal when using empty movement for neutral whereas wavedash is more committal of a movement option but allows access to more of your kit.
Lack of a tutorial is my #1 issue with this game for sure. I played tons of Rivals 1 and even I was confused by how all their new mechanics worked. Still an amazing game and I give the dev team some slack for being an indie studio trying to do the impossible but hoping the tutorial gets added ASAP to help new players get a foothold
tutorials are their #1 priority after big fixes so they'll definitely be added soon
38:42 "I constantly want to do dash jab, but I keep doing dash attack"
It's a spacing thing. During the start of your dash (first 15-20ish frames, depending on the character), if you press the attack button, you do a dash attack. You can't cancel your dash into a jab (or any other tilt attack) until your character is fully running.
That's a big part of why dash dance spacing is so important. You want to keep yourself at a distance where you can dash in and jab (or tilt attack), which is just outside of the initial dash distance.
Alternatively, you could wavedash, but that's a little laggy (~10 frames of lag after the airdodge).
This is where baby dashing in theory becomes super useful, where after dashing for one or two frames and resetting to neutral after (so it's a two frame window) you slide forward but have access to jab and tilts.
I personally have a lot of trouble doing them successfully out of a stand, not sure how much of it is a controller thing or skill issue xd but I somehow get them 99% consistently out of a little dash dance flick (similar input to doing an empty pivot or pivot jab in melee).
Something I've also gotten decent at is using a tilt turn (borrowing this term from melee may not be the most correct) out of a dash in order to access jabs and tilts as well. Dashing in one direction into tilting slightly in the other is weirdly lenient, and then the overall turnaround animation is hella long. Lets me do something like tipper jab with clairen to combo into dash forward, turnaround uptilt and get the early hitbox of uptilt, pretty sick. Unfortunately though this doesn't let you dash towards someone and jab in that direction easily as you'd have to turn back around. Interestingly, doing something like dash left, tilt turn right, and then forward tilt left is actually not that bad to input. Just have to get it pretty fast or else yeah, you may as well be wavedashing.
The spacing fundamentals you mentioned prolly more important than all this tech I'm sure lol. Also worth noting that you have a lot of precision on where you land by drifting in the air, compared to a whole initial dash.
🤓
@@WastedFlan Baby dashing is useful in theory, yes, but in practice if you want to move a small bit and retain access to jabs and tilts you'd just walk. It's a slight bit slower than a baby dash but vastly easier. Realistically, needing that little bit of extra speed is so situational that you'd mostly likely never react in time to do a baby dash on purpose.
Or you can just tap down
@@WhiteKnuckleRide512 Not during your initial dash. In Rivals of Aether 1 you could, but in Melee/PM/ROA2 it doesn't work like that. Your initial dash is always a commitment to the full length of the dash, with your only options during that state being
- Turn around
- Shield
- Jump
- Dash attack
- Dash grab
Try it in training mode with Clairen (for the long dash distance). Tap left or right, then try tapping down. You won't stop moving or crouch, you'll keep going a short distance. If you hold down, you'll notice that you travel the full distance, come to a full and complete stop, _then_ crouch. It takes a while.
@ that’s pretty gay
I never thought I'd see the day
Sajam is like me
No lab, we just play the fighting game until knowledge is randomly downloaded into our brain
"I guess I can do pressure now"
I say this with zero sass or vitriol in my heart. It's honestly reassuring to watch Sajam also struggle to acclimate to the platform fighter lifestyle. I'm having a lot of fun with Rivals 2, but it has been a hell of a rough adjustment on me as an ancient Streetfighter grandma.
This game really lacks a tutorial which is crazy considering RoA1 probably had the best tutorial for platform fighters ever
Early Access game without the Early Access tag
the roa1 tutorial came out like 5 years after the initial game launched, given the tutorial was ready for the big update/rerelease (when i started) but still
@@agav2345tbf rivals 1 didn't have stuff on launch either
R1 in was ea though for a while iirc. As a sequel the fact r2 for the most part has a similar amout of content to ea r1 is crazy. I love r2 dont get me wrong but i dont agree with the content approach they took since this is a sequel, but at least if you buy now you get all gameplay stuff for free, unlike r1 where before definitive there were characters as dlc.
They're working on it. Just sucks it's not on release
Sajam slam would be very funny if it was this game and a bunch of traditional fighting game players
Doubt it'll happen but more then down for it.
incredibly invested in this learning journey. the wavedash jabs and tilts at around 1:00 really felt like it was all coming together
As a smash player since childhood who's trying to get into traditional FGC games, thanks for playing this!!! Love seeing genre crossover content
Rivals is so sick. The original game has Steam Workshop with over 1000 characters and like 100 of them are release-level quality characters. Check Zetta's workshop collections for the best ones. The new game is gonna be great too, and the DLC being free is a pretty great precedent.
For years you have taught me how to play the 2d fighting games, and now finally I get to see you play in my domain, platform fighters baby. Lets see how this goes!
You weren’t joking about “new player guides” being for melee players. I watched a video titled Rivals 2 for noobs and it used a ton of smash and melee specific terms in quick succession with barely any explanation.
Frame 1 kragg hate is insane but so valid
Seeing someone else coming from traditional fighting games and echoing my sentiments is validating. Just being able to move your character the way you want in a platform fighter is really difficult.
Cool as hell to see Sajam giving Rivals 2 a shot. I totally agree though that there should've been a tutorial at launch. I wouldn't have minded the game getting delayed a bit so they could have time to make one before the game's launch. Even just a general tutorial for now would've been nice, and then maybe later on have more character specific tutorials or something. I love Rivals 1 and 2, but it's probably one of the most complex plat fighters to jump into. Like to best recover in this game you need to know that every character can wall jump, some characters have movement specials that can get them to the wall to allow them to wall jump, up special don't count in this so don't up special into a wall thinking you can wall jump after, you can airdodge in any direction so use that to recover if you need to, and you can't up special into wall jump but you can wall jump into up special. That's a lot of information. That's not even going to character specific information. Some characters are pretty basic like Zetterburn and Clairen, but others like Ranno and Orcane have a lot of nuances in their arsenal. Still though, you were picking up on things pretty fast, which was cool to see.
Rivals 1 tutorial was goated too, I hope they get one in for ROA2 ASAP
I'm sure they wanted to include tutorials at launch, but my guess is they didn't have enough funds to keep delaying the game, and needed to launch the game now :(
That's probably why they focused on having an arcade mode and ranked at launch, to compensate for the lack of tutorials. Maybe they should have released the game as early access instead of a full launch.
Thanks so much, Sajam. I'm coming into this from more traditional fighters as well, and watching you struggle in exactly the same ways I have been really helps give me confidence to get out and try despite it all.
Metaphor: ReFantazio launches at 50% volume by default...
It got review bombed because people thought the audio was broken. They even put out a fake fix where they said "Don't worry guys! We fixed the audio bug!" and just put it to 100% by default.
A GAME FINALLY DOES THE BEST THING FOR MY EARS/AUDIO SET UP AND GAMERS TM RUIN IT :
If the sound is too quiet how the fuck is your first thought not to check the settings
Lmao this has to be a joke. I can't believe people don't know how to check in game settings anymore.
This is strait up not true. My volume was set to 100% pre-patch and it was incredibly quiet, to the point where I had a crank the volume of my speakers to 3x what they normally are. Post-patch the volume normalized back to the rest of my applications so I no longer need to crank the volume
This isn't true - the update did increase the volume. I went from having the master volume at 100 to cranking it down to 30 after the patch
The fact that this game is finding presence in even the traditional fighting game community is awesome
"Whats the wavedash" into immediately SDing by wavedashing off the ledge. You're a true plat fighter player now.
it would be so cool to see you continue learning this game, maybe after better tutorials get added. Seeing you learn a game that's so different from anything you've played before would be a real treat.
It really is unfortunate that there is no tutorial. Rivals 1 had one of the best ones in any platform fighter ever. I really hope they add something similar to Rivals 2 soon.
As someone who’s first experience with fighting games was Smash and who then went on to play more traditional fighting games, it didn’t really occur to me how unintuitive a platform fighter can be to someone with no experience with them. I do hope they add a tutorial to the game soon, because the tutorial in Rivals 1 was amazing and not being taught about crucial defensive mechanics like DI can make being in disadvantage really rough
its cool to see the teacher man play something brand new. also highlights the poor onboarding that people experienced in the genre cant see for themselves. good and important video to put out for the rivals scene
SAJAM ON RIVALS???? let me go get my coffee ready, im so here for this!
There will be a really in depth tutorial added eventually, it just wasn't a priority for the initial launch. If the RoA 1 built in tutorials are anything to go off of this will eventually be easier to learn fully in game than just about any other fighter
I like sajam holding his chuuni eye when he hits a full charged smash against a dude getting up a ledge
Sajam's playing Rivals let's go!!!
Welcome to Rivals, Sajam! This community is awesome, and we have so many people who are willing to help you learn, if you need it! I know things are a little confusing, right now, but Dan and the group are planning on adding full character tutorials, soon
Rivals is one of the most hype fighting games out there imo it’s really cool to see you try it out, if you end up sticking with it at all it would be truly legendary to see more Rivals content!Also welcome to bumper jumper gang I fully agree it is optimal my friends thought I was so weird for that but it feels so smooth with that scheme. For rivals 2 I fully switched to right bumper short hop and right trigger full hop so I just don’t have to think about timing my button presses and it’s worked great for me
Also this game does desperately need a tutorial, Rivals 1 had a pretty good one so I’m sure it’s in the works
Mr jam malding about controls is so real 😭
Finding a good control scheme in any platform fight is so unintuitive and difficult, esp when you need or want a weird setup like me (ultimate jump on left trigger my beloved)
oh man this is cool, as someone whose favorite platfighter is RoA1, it's awesome to see a lot of new people trying this game out
Just have to say that I was very much impressed by Sajam's performance! First time taking a platform fighter seriously and he did great :)
Such an interesting perspective on platform fighters. Sajam is the goat
I'm a smash player who got into traditional fighting games through people like you. It's sick to see you try a platform fighter now :]
Stage picks can generally be broken down into what it's platforms and stage size are.
Platforms
Offense: generally they increase combo potential by letting you hit the ground faster. You can also tech chase opponents on them (tech chasing is basically oki in this game). Characters that can do ladder (vertical) combos benefit greatly from platforms generally. Platform placement also affects this. Platforms that extend past the ledge of the stage can lead to extremely early offstage kills, and high up platforms can help characters kill off the top (if they can combo into a kill move off the top platform).
Defense: Platforms also help characters escape juggles (keeping the opponent in the air to prevent them from refreshing air resources), by increasing the amount of places a character can land or tech. Platforms tend to also increase the vertical blastzone (height where you die) if the stage, so you die slower to moves that kill of the top (while on the stage). Platforms tend to also help zoning, if you sit under a platform it becomes harder to approach from above since landing aerials will land on the platform instead of the stage.
Stage size:
Offense: Smaller stage sizes force you to interact with your opponent more, so characters that can scrap, control large amounts stage, or kill early off the sides benefit from smaller stage size.
Defense: larger stage sizes have larger blast zones, both horizontally and vertically. this leads to later kills. also, larger stage size means more space for characters that like to run away or play keep out (kinda different from stage control, think dhalsim vs guile).
to combine this with character picks, consider your character's qualities:
Weight: lighter worries more about stage size, whereas heavier can deal with smaller stages.
kill power: Characters that can kill early like small stages, but characters that kill late do not like large stages.
fall speed: Floaty characters can struggle to land on a flat stage, fast fallers don't struggle as much with landing.
stage control: smaller stage size means that characters with better stage control can hold advantageous positions for longer.
When going through bans and stage picks, try to balance your character's traits with your opponents. There is of course more options to consider such as specific mu interactions and walls, but the earlier mentioned traits tend to be the most important.
I gotta say it is so reassuring to see Sajam struggle with all the exact same things I have always struggled with in platform fighters. In particular the movement stick being so sensitive it feels impossible to *not* dash all the time, causing all sorts of problems with trying to space attacks and use tilts and turnaround for jabs and stuff and getting dash attack when I wanted a jab for the 40 billionth time. Rivals having a bindable short hop button is a huge step forward but I wish I had some way to consistently NOT go speeding in either direction whenever I try to aim left or right lol.
"You can swap on a win? This game sucks." Ngl I've always hated that aspect of melee's counterpicking rules. You should be stuck on a win. It only exists because of FD (and mute city/rainbow cruise in ancient times), but Rivals doesn't have FD so...
Tbf i think the only plat fighter with this issue is ult since its stage before character. Part of the fun is seeing who your opponet picks then picking a stage they do bad on. Adds more thought process ig. in tfgc though no keep it how it is where you cant swap. Im fine with how we do it in plat fighters though due to how we do stages
i mean you can swap on a win but the winner picks first, so the loser still gets the counterpick both character and stage. it goes loser chooses stage -> winner chooses character -> loser chooses character.
@@IceeTeaKenzie wasn’t that what Rivals 1 did?
This game has Rock Wall, so...
Melee player here. One of the first things chat should have told you about defense is how to tech on the ground. If you are hit into the ground, press shield and a direction just before hitting the ground to tech in that direction immediately, rather than being stuck on the ground. You can also tech in place by just tapping shield without holding a direction. You asked how to block immediately after knockdown. That is how. Hope that helps
I would've loved to see Sajam try the original Rivals of Aether since I think it's easier and more intuitive to get into for someone who's new to platform fighters. It also has tutorials that do a fine job of teaching the basics, and even some more advanced stuff, which would answer quite a few of the questions he had in this video and give some other useful information. Alas, I know it very likely won't happen, since there isn't any particularly good reason for him to try it out now
42:24 yeah grabs in platform fighters are fundamentally different from traditional fighting games. They’re basically just a normal hitbox with the special property they go through shields and counter moves. Being airborne doesn’t affect grabs in platform fighters.
Edit: and you can combo into grabs, which isn’t present in most traditional fighters
That was super fun to watch. As a fighting game player who started with smash I always love seeing the cross pollination and how the approach and skill sets of the respective genres apply elsewhere.
You know how I learned to play fighters, Undernight and Skullgirls have great tutorials that explain everything, down to even things people take for granted. I didn't know how arbitrarily weird running was in platform fighters until I googled what a foxtrot was.
Yeah some of those suggestions from chat were wild lol. People teaching how to do the bubble recovery with Ranno before even the basic mechanics were understood.
this was super endearing, looking forward to seeing more from you :)
would love to see you get all the chars eventually to gold (once there's a tutorial) I don't know whether going through RoA1's tutorials is a good jumping on point
It's good that Clairen's sword makes lightsaber noises
awesome to see sajam branching out! yes, it is for furries.
This makes me feel so much better about my rivals experience. Dash attacks and dying at like 50 are my biggest issues, good to see sajam suffering as i am
Theres a lot to learn to plat fighters. One of them being dashes are considered like sorta commitments. Initial dash animation you cant cancel it into a move so you just have to get the timing of the dash flick to do a move after. DI is probably one of the harder things to learn knowing when you should di in/not to survive or escape situational combos. How I like to handle is by thinking after viewing their habits, "what would my opponent want in this situation?", then act the best you can. Another good habit is to ALWAYS look at your opponent's character. You gotta see what they may go for faster and thus get into the mind of how they move. Even slightly better positioning is enough to win nuetral. There is much more to learn... but keep at it 🔥🔥🔥
So, in Rivals 1 there were full tutorials for not only each mechanic, but also each individual character mechanic, similar to Strive.
They'll probably bring it back
Seeing this pop up in my recommended warms my heart. I love Rivals of Aether so much and I feel super happy seeing more and more people give it a shot. Thank you Sajam
It's such a shame that Rivals 2 has the equivalent of the GameCube game manual for a tutorial, because the tutorial was one of the best things about the original Rivals of Aether.
That first question was so on point LMAO, first thing I do whenever I boot up a game for the first time is putting the volume at 50%
EDIT: Watching Sajam learn Ranno made me realize how alien a lot of the core concepts of a platform fighter must feel for someone with 00 experience on the genre. Having started with melee before transitioned to regular FGs, I had always taken for granted all the specifics of these types of games, like wavedash, air dodge, directional smash attacks, recovery moves, etc
I started with smash and then moved to traditional fighters so this was cool. Watching him figure out how to DI was great. And the side B when trying to up B is a real classic
I am sooooo excited to see Sajam play a Platfighter you have no idea. Rivals 1 was my first fighting game, before I transitioned to Strive and lived off of Sajam videos so seeing him play Rivals 2 is awesome! The lack of tutorials is unfortunate. And video resources are, to be honest, not usually the best. Especially for someone who is used to 2D fighting games. There are a lot of fundamental overlaps between the Genres, but Rivals 2 has so many things that are very very different from how you normally think about interactions in 2D and Anime fighters.
The comparison to 2XKO was spot on. Fun watch, hope to see more!
Super cool watching you get good at spacing the clairen tippers, that was a lot of fun to watch
Sajam playing a plat fighter (especially Rivals 2) would actually be the best day of my life if he liked it and continues to play
This game is so fun lol glad you are enjoying it
I'm glad to see you trying the game even if you don't stick with it. It's rare to see someone versed in traditional fighters attempt a platform fighter. It's almost always the other way around. So many well known people in the FGC started playing some version of Smash Bros as their first tournament game, but it's practically unheard of in the other direction.
Cant wait until Elianna from the first Rivals of Aether gets into this one, one of the most unique character archetypes I've seen in a plat fighter
Unfortunately the new mechanics are going to completely break what makes her fun, same as they did for all the other characters
I loved Eli but there's no reason to assume every character from 1 will be in 2.
@isaachudson9108 normally I wouldn't but the devs have stated that they plan on having all the rivals 1 characters return, with the exception of the two guest characters who most likely won't. Still, it might be a very long time, especially since they're aiming for four characters a year, and they'll have to share that with new characters like La Reina of course. Still, it's not guaranteed if the game can't live that long. Here's hoping though, would love to see how she looks in motion in 3D
LETS GO SAJAM!!
Long time viewer here with 8 years experience in Rivals 1, I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this video in my timeline!! Watching Sajam try to deal with Lox reminds me that we're all in this together lol
See you on the ladder, dude!
waiting for sajam to drop the "Plat fighters are real fighters" tweet after playing
Why would he do that?
@@evilded2 call it a soul read
still waiting I see
@@guitaroach give it a week
as a platform fighter player Sajam was playing WAY than I did for my first time a traditional fighter
Really hope you stick to it and try to learn some more. It's great seeing many of your fundamentals transfer over even if you aren't feeling them. Your reads and your combo game were very impressive for someone just starting. Once you get that core feeling of the controls down and learn what options you have I think it'll click! Excited to see more.
Iunno if you're looking for feedback but Rivals 1's tutorials are pretty transferable, you can also watch players that play the character you like, and ask Coney for some grimey stuff lol
Please more of this 🙏
The official TH-cam page for Rivals of Aether 2 has character SPECIFIC guides but yeah def the movement and all that other general knowledge will just take time. Glad to see the boy attempting to play a platfighter tho!
This is my spiritual sequel to Eyezayar experiencing Star Wars for the first time in LEGO games
Hello Sajam, just a basic tip for wakeup options.
Like in tekken, there are many wake up options that you can use when getting knocked down.
The best ones are to "tech" the ground
To tech the ground in place, press Shield before hitting the ground
To tech roll the ground, press Shield + a direction before hitting the ground
Those both have a lot of invincibility frames on startup and will prevent your opponent free damage on your knockdowns.
If you fail to tech the ground you have a few options :
- Getup attack by pressing the attack button
- Getup special by pressing the special button, has different effects by character
- Press up on your control stick to wake up in place
- Press left or right to roll
These are also all invincible on startup
Never seen this game before. I like how every time I see what they added to a character they obviously stole from smash I just go “oh no why can they do THAT??”
Actually my favourite part, similar to project M: 'what if every character had just a little bit more sauce?'
I like ranno's monk/ninja design and animations, and similarity to sheik. But then they pull out the bubbles/tongue momentum stuff and it's even better.
Super pumped to see Sajam giving this game a try. It gave some perspective just how alien plat fighters can be if you didn’t grow up with them.
Also lmao at 1:35:18 When Sajam’s first experience with this game is an instance of Marthritis
Been watching you for years now and been a platform fighter players since I was 8 year old with brawl. So this was a blast to watch. keep the rivals content up!
Oh and if you want tutorials rivals 1 has them. Or otherwise I wouldnt mind teaching you the basics
It's interesting seeing Sajam be out of his depth in a new game and how much criticism he has for what there is to see as a new player in this game compared to other fighting games. I don't think his criticism is unwarranted, but as someone who played smash and has very little literacy with actually "playing" traditional 2d fighters, something like Rivals is likely to be much more intuitive to me as a player than something like GG or SF6. The things Sajam says here sound a lot like the types of criticism I would have in other fighters for similar reasons.
GGST has tutorials and things, but when you get into the part about fuzzies and safe jumps and things where you're interacting with the game in a way that dissects frame data as a new player, it feels really hyper specific and arcane to digest as a newer player. They're concepts that you need dozens of hours to even detect or read use cases for them. It's cool that they exist, but it's extremely tough to actually get good at the game enough to even care about. Like, yes, I know what plus frames are, FD, instant block, but the level of play where you are consciously shooting for those things don't even register to new players.
There's cool ways to implement that into platform fighters and stuff too, I'm sure, but i think it's largely a side effect of the player base optimizing games until you're reaching human limits and then the conversation shifts into the state of the game at that point.
The reason I bring this up is that there is absolutely a big difference in perception of whether or not a game is fun or digestible between casual gamers and competitive gamers. The things people look for vary so drastically between those two audiences.
The smash scene is big enough that I think a lot of these things are going to bounce off of smash players, but Sajam is right about them. Similarly, I think it's really difficult for players like myself that don't have a lot of experience with traditional fighters to be absolutely lost when stepping into a new game
Rivals 1 has a very solid tutorial, maybe one of the best in fighters, so just hold off on the pitchforks. It's worth saying that it's not there but they can't not have a tutorial. I don't see a world where it won't be there by full release.
Would love a video of you returning to this game when the tutorials come out.
need to see a coney/sajam rivals stream
God tier thumbnail, I love it as it is both based and accurate.
I really enjoy watching you try out different games and feeling them out. Platform fighters are my favorite sub genre of fighting games, and I always like seeing people try them out. It really is unfortunate how hostile these games are to new/learning players, especially since most of them like this one have no good tutorials or training modes in game to help. A lot of the nuances of platform fighters aren't well explained or intuitive either. I hope to see you play more, as long as you're vibing with it.
now i understand why multiversus is the way it is
Ive been off platform fighters a while (raged too hard on some of my only titles, also rivals 1 had to queue up on discords back in the day), but this video is making me want to revisit it lmao
hi mr jam I love your content. One big genre difference in plat fighters is that instead of grab being chip conditioning to not block, in plat fighters pressuring with hitboxes is conditioning to force them to block so you can grab them and run setplay.
Also, grabs can be true comboed into, so you don’t have to worry about waiting out hitstun. You were doing the spin aerial a lot, and grabbing after something like that is one of the “cashing out” rps options.
If you hold forward strong as Ranno you send out a projectile. Gotta wavedash jab.
This video is how I found out Sajam got engaged. Congrats, dude, and wishing you two the best together!
I wonder if Sajam is down-backing and that is why he's getting so many crouch cancels lol.
18:41 Holding 'down' in platform fighters is a way to let go of ledges, and it can also prevent you from grabbing them when in proximity. While you were holding 'forward', you may also have been holding 'down', which would explain why your character did not grab the ledge.