Transcription
As you guys know, I've been playing a lot of Aki lately. I've been enjoying the character a lot, but okay, so I'm a big fan of watching FGC translated videos. I like to see what the Japanese players are saying about characters and the game and stuff. I think it's a good way to sort of like see how our opinions are the same and how they differ across different regions.
And uh, there's been two videos recently that caught my eye, and they're both videos of Daigo, the Beast, the God, the Legend himself, absolutely crapping on Aki. Like, I think Daigo genuinely thinks this character is like the worst character in the game, bottom one. So we're going to start off by just watching a little bit of this.
So yeah, he said, "Did you really test this character?" Daigo can't help but question Capcom. This is the second video. "She's a fun character." I agree with that. "I don't think there's any good matchup for Aki." Daigo, Lord Daigo, does not believe there is a single matchup that Aki is a good pick for. Wait, I should probably move my camera, shouldn't I? Cuz right now I'm superimposed over Daigo's face. Hang on a minute.
"No, I think she's at the bottom. Every character is fighting with a gun while Aki is shooting a toy gun." I mean, it goes on like this. I won't, I won't bore you with the whole video, but like, the whole thing is Daigo does not think this character is good. And it's not just Daigo, I should point out. A bunch of the Japanese players that I've seen on FGC translated and on Twitter as well seem to think that Aki is very bad. I think, uh, even Nemo, who has been playing a lot of Aki, thinks she's like bottom two, I think, I think in the game and has a bunch of 28 matchups on his matchup chart, which is wild as far as I'm concerned.
So I suppose what I've got for you guys today, I've made a little list of five reasons that Aki is better than you think. I want to talk a bit about this character and talk about what I think are maybe not obvious strengths about Aki that become more obvious the more you play her.
All right, so the first thing about Aki that I think is very strong is something that I pointed out almost immediately before she even came out, and it's this combo of two things. You ready? Wait for it. Got you there. You go right there. Slow fireball plus fast Drive Rush. That combination of of things, having a slow-moving fireball and a fast-moving Drive Rush, I don't think it's possible to be bad within the context of Street Fighter 6's mechanics. If you can do this.
For those who don't know, the reason this is so strong is that this approach in neutral covers so many options. It's a safe approach because if the opponent tries to check the Drive Rush, they'll get hit by the fireball. If they try and neutral jump the fire, the fireball, things will go very badly for them. I think Aki can even do some cool combos out of this stuff, like that. You can knock them into the fireball. The only real way to deal with fireball plus Drive Rush consistently is to EX DP through the fireball. But not every character has an EX DP, and even then, it's risky because if I just cut the Drive Rush short and do that, you will die for the EX DP attempt. So just, just this thing alone, fireball plus Drive Rush, I don't think it's possible to be bad with this combination.
Another good option is EX viable. But if my opponent doesn't EX fireball to blow through this, even if I get hit, they've spent two bars of Drive and I've spent one. So I still come out ahead in the Drive exchange here. They can, they can perfect parry the fireball. It depends on the distance. If I do it from like here and they perfect parry the fireball, then they can punish the Drive Rush. But if I do it from further out, even a perfect parry here will not give a guaranteed punish.
All right, the second thing I want to talk about Aki's strengths is her Oki. I think when Aki was first teased and revealed, a lot of people felt that she was likely to be kind of like a Zoner archetype when they saw this and this. And some people are still trying to play her as a Zoner, but I don't really think she is a Zoner. I think she's actually quite aggressive if played correctly. And one of the reasons for that is that her Oki after her main combo enders is absolutely amazing. It's some of the best in the game, genuinely. She's not like Ken, where every hit takes you to the corner, but she doesn't really need the corner to get good Oki on knockdowns.
So, for example, like the combo ender that you're going to use 99% of the time with Aki is this heavy whip. You can do it off lights, you can do it off mediums, you can do it off like a full heavy combo. Most, most combos you're going to end with heavy whip, generally when you land a hit. And this thing gives absolutely amazing Oki. You can do several things here. You can do medium dash into a into a meaty, and this covers both recoveries, so you don't have to worry about your opponent's recovery. Uh, you can do two dashes as well and then go for maybe a shimmy afterwards, which is really good.
But the really, I, I think the one that makes it really good is the mid-screen safe jump. So anytime I land heavy whip and just hold up forward afterwards, Aki actually gets a safe jump off this mid-screen. I get a huge punish. So safe jumps in this game, I think are very strong. Mid-screen safe jumps off basic combo enders are very rare. The only other character in the game that really does this, the only other character that ends mid-screen combos with safe jumps is Marissa, and she has to do it a jump light kick.
Now, I should say Aki's is a bit more complicated than that. So Aki's safe jump is actually very difficult to perform because it depends on which recovery your opponent does. If they recover in place, you have to press down and heavy punch to do this, the cross-up, and that's a safe jump. If I do this. However, if they back roll, I have to do jump fierce or jump heavy kick instead. So you have a, you do have to react to which recovery your opponent is doing while you're in mid-air and then decide if you want to press down and heavy punch and safe jump on one side, or just jump heavy punch and safe jump on the other. So it is quite, quite tricky. This is kind of like a high-level technique being able to react and adjust the safe jump here. But even still, it's like a very low-risk way to get Oki. And if your opponent blocks the safe jump, you're plus 10 million on block. You can do a bunch of things. You can do this, you can do like a low, you can do a walk-up throw, a tick throw. I think, I think the mid-screen safe jump is very strong. So that's, that's her mid-screen Oki.
Uh, her corner Oki is where things go even crazier. So like, like let's say, let's say you land like a basic corner sequence, something like this. So I already said that her mid-screen Oki was really good. Her corner Oki is potentially the best in the game because if she ends any corner combo with coward crouch dive, this move here, this knockdown is plus 84 for Aki. She has enough time to set up the poison puddle and then still be plus 38. So you can do puddle meaty fireball forward heavy kick. You can do all this stuff. You can do a safe jump here with crouch fierce. That's another safe jump that's guaranteed. Uh, you can do a bunch of meaty overhead setups. You can do like this, which works on crouches, but he's not crouching. There's a bunch of ways that you can adjust this combo. So you could do something like this instead, and that's also a meaty overhead, like, like that. She's got about five different ways that she can do a meaty overhead and get a combo off it, which is very unusual in this game. Most characters have to do like one very obvious setup or two if they're lucky. She has a ton of different ways of doing meaty overhead in the corner. So yeah, her Oki game is incredible as far as I'm concerned.
I should also mention on this knockdown, the one that I showed a minute ago where you do the poison puddle plus the five fireball. Uh, this fireball is plus how much on block? Like plus 10, I think, plus 12, which means that if I go into forward heavy kick afterwards, this is a frame trap and this is also plus on block. So like, she can do sequential plus frames in a way that very few characters in this game can do. There are very few characters in this game that can do plus frames into plus frames into plus frames and have them all frame trap into each other. The other nice thing about being able to meaty with a fireball, as some of you will already know, it also makes you completely immune to most wake-up level ones. So if you're playing against a character who main reversal is to use a super, they can't do it against Aki. It just straight up will not work.
Give me number three. Something that I haven't seen people talk about when it comes to Aki's strengths that I think is very good is her burnout pressure. So if I put Luke into burnout, most characters in this game, if you're lucky, have like one burnout loop, one normal or sequence of normals or specials, which is kind of a a looping plus frame sequence that you can do maybe two or three times. Aki has tons of burnout sequences. She probably has more than any characters I've seen so far.
So just to give you guys an idea of this. So, uh, let me have a look at my list. Okay, so cow crouch roll becomes plus one in burnout. So you can do something like this, and that's that's a loop in burnout into stun. And every single part of that sequence, C jab, stand jab, target combo into cow crouch roll, every single part of that is a frame trap. There is no opening to do anything except for wake-up super. You will get counter hit if you try and interrupt this at any point. Uh, she can also do a simpler one, which is just crouch jabbing to stand medium punch. So you can loop this one about five times before you get pushed out too far. You can mix them together. You could do something like this. You got a lot of ways of mixing and matching her burnout loop. Oops. Uh, she also has the stand jab target combo. This is minus three normally on block, so this becomes plus one in burnout. So you can just do this as well. You get about three of those. All of that is a frame trap. Um, she also has her, I think this is cruel fate. I think I call it flippy daggers cuz I'm an idiot. What was I saying? Oh yeah, so like, uh, the, the, uh, cruel disaster, cruel fate, whatever this thing is called, also becomes plus in burnout. So you can do stuff like this. Now, there are gaps here. This is not a gapless string, but this one's good because this can cause some level ones to whiff. So if you're, if you're doing a lot of burnout pressure and your opponent is getting antsy and wants to wake-up level one, you can actually make some level ones whiff by doing this. Oh, there you go. So yeah, Luke, Luke has to DP this. Luke straight up cannot level one to try and interrupt this string. So that's another good one. So like I said, it's very rare for a character to have more than like one or two looping burnout plus frame sequences, and like Aki has like five or six. It's kind of crazy.
So you may be wondering, well, okay, that lets you do a bit of pressure in burnout. Is that such a big deal? Well, it would, it wouldn't normally be that big of a deal, the burnout loop, if not for the fact that the next thing is that Aki has potentially the best stun combos in the game. Maybe I would say maybe Dalim gets more out of a stun in the corner. He's got those four full charge level two combos, but she's up there. She's up there as a candidate. If you can get a stun out, because of the way that her, uh, poison damage works and the fact that you have enough time to set up a, you can set up a poison puddle here and then start your combo. Got you in my master. So that's what, nearly 4,000 damage for one, one super bar off a blocked DI. And that was a blocked DI, by the way. If that had been a DI on hit, that would have done about 50% for one bar. She has very, very good, um, DI stun combos. So it's the combination of that and her stun, uh, pressure strings that I think makes her an absolute demon when your opponent is in burnout.
Okay, number four, uh, on my Aki strengths list, uh, is I think she has really, really good anti-fireball tools. Now, this one's kind of weird because when Aki first came out, I was really struggling against fireball characters. I was like, how the hell you supposed to beat Guile? Her fireballs got a lot of startup, 52 frames, I think. Yeah, uh, yeah, her fireball was kind of slow. She's got a few things she can use, like you might get a chain out if you're lucky, but I'm realizing over time that she's actually got very good anti-fireball tools, but they're just difficult to use because she's got so many of them and they all have very niche uses.
So let me switch over to Guile, just so you guys can see. So like, generally speaking, you either have zero anti-fireball tools or one, if you're like Cami and you've got spin knuckle. There we go. That's what I was trying to do. And that's a combo starter as well, cuz this is punish counter. So you're plus eight here, so you can do this, which is a big combo starter, which will take you all the way to the corner for not much resources. Uh, she can also meet the fireball with her own EX fireball. Uh, she can also do this, which has good anti-fire in the middle, and this is safe on block, by the way. So you can do the EX version, which, uh, gives you poison on hit. And if they block this, let's say that I missed my punish here, doesn't even matter that much cuz this is plus two on block. So I can go for a throw mix or something. Uh, you can also do this, which just lets you maneuver under the fireball a little bit. The nice thing about doing this, if you do coward crouch and then get up, uh, because the fireball isn't actually blocked, you'll notice the fireball actually stays on the screen once it passes on over me. That means that Guile can't throw his next Sonic Boom for about maybe a second and a half after this one goes off screen, cuz the game won't let Guile have two fireballs on screen at once. So by doing this, I basically get a guaranteed second or two where I know that he can't, uh, do anything about it.
Yeah, in the case of Guile, coward crouch here is risky because his viable is so fast and has so little recovery that he can Drive Rush here and punish. I should point out, like I said, none of these options are guaranteed. So against Guile, this is risky. But against other characters, let me switch to something more like a traditional Shoto. If I'm against Ryu, if I do it early, there's minus 17, there's minus 15, so it's very unlikely that you can get punished for doing this, and it locks your opponent out from being able to throw a fireball. But if your opponent does try to punish you and they start approaching behind the fireball, that's where the next layer comes in. It's not as simple as that. If they start trying to follow behind the fireball to stop you from quick rising after the coward crouch, you can then go into coward crouch roll, which is safe on block and gives a full combo on hit. So that's good. You can also do this if you're feeling especially risky. When you're transitioning from coward crouch into dive, you do actually have projectile invincibility on the way up. So this is actually a punish. And look at the corner carry on this, by the way. So I get Oki and huge corner carry, and you're poisoned. So you got this as well.
So I guess the point I'm getting at is that although each of these individual options are not like, like brain-dead anti-fireball options, the combination of this plus this plus this plus this and this and this and this and this and that, every single one of those moves can be used to beat fireballs. You just have to know how to use them all correctly. So this is why initially I thought her anti-fireball stuff was bad, because it's, it's a lot to figure out, and they all have slight niches. Oh man, I've even forgotten about slide. That's how many she's got. Yeah, you can do this. Her light slide causes her to stay in place. Her other slides get around the fireballs. You can do this if you read the fireball. You can do that. She's got so many ways of getting around fireballs. And a lot of the, a lot of the best characters in this game have fireballs. Like, off the top of my head, Ken does, Luke does, DJ does, Guile does. These are all strong characters with a good fireball game. Fireballs are strong in Street Fighter 6. So having lots of ways around them is a big positive.
And the very last thing I want to say, number five on my list of Aki is better than you think, uh, this one's not really specifically pointing to at all. This is more about the mind game that Aki has. Her basic mind game. So I talked a bit a while ago about how Aki is a little bit like Gill. So you inflict a status effect with Aki, and same thing with Gill, and then you can detonate it later for extended combos. That's the basic gist of it. You poison them, and then if you manage to land a hit, you can activate the poison and do all kinds of silly stuff like that.
Now, the reason that Gill wasn't that threatening in my opinion was one simple fact. You could just take the throw in Street Fighter 5. If Gill put you on fire and started walking up to you on your wake-up, if you just held down back and accepted that you were going to take one throw, that's kind of it. That's, that's kind of the end of Gill's turn. You take the throw, he's back to neutral, cuz throws didn't have Oki in Street Fighter 5. They got rid of throw Oki after season 1. So if you could commit to taking one throw, you were basically fine, and Gill wasn't that threatening.
Now, the difference here is that throw loops are everywhere. Aki has a throw loop. So if I manage to land a hit, let's say I land a hit like this, and you're poisoned, you're now in a very nasty mind game. The more, I feel like this is a mind game that only is going to get better as time passes as well, cuz the thing is, I can keep throwing you like this while you're poisoned. I can keep throw looping you with the knowledge that because you're poisoned, any hit now is going to be very, very bad for you. You're incentivized to take the throw because if you try and take this throw, then you're going to lose 40% of your health minimum for almost no resources spent. Like theoretically, if I do like a max damage combo, like for example, here, let me, let me show you an example of how severe this can get. Okay, so there's a basic corner combo, and I set up the puddle. Now, if you try and take a throw here and get shimmied, got, got you. You might lose 70% of your health here. There, then here, and my magn. I mean, that's like Marissa damage right there.
So the more, the more time passes and the more people become aware of how dangerous it is to attempt to break a throw while you're poisoned, the the easier it gets to play Aki, because I can just keep doing walk-up throw over and over again, safe in the knowledge that if my opponent gets antsy and tries to tech it, they probably just lost the entire round. It is kind of similar to Tangu mind games, honestly. It does remind me a bit of Tangu. Maybe that's my inner Oro player coming out. So yeah, the poison mind game is very strong, and it will only get stronger over time.
Uh, so anyway, that, that stuff, I believe is a bunch of reasons why, uh, Aki is actually much stronger than people currently think. I'm hoping I'll be proved right over time. Uh, but let me know what you guys think. Do you guys think Aki is bottom one, unusable garbage, or secret top tier? Let me know down in the comments, and I will catch you guys in the next video. See you later.