The VF Theory of Finite Skill

Okay.... I've been a big fan of VF since VF2. Akira used to be my main character, along with Shun and Pai, but when VF4 hit (and I had just bought a PS2, sans joystick ~ budget problems) the commands were just too hard... then I started fooling around with the new characters. These are my personal favorite match-ups (very applicable for intermediate players == not super good competitive VF gods).

Vanessa felt way too slow in VF4, her moves, while nice, in OS just didn't work very well for me... she was highly intuitive, but difficult to apply effectively. In Evo, she felt almost like a completely different character, she was fun, relatively fast, and had much more effective flowcharts imo.
Her style is a great mix of a pressure and all-out-offense character, a good match for Brad or Jacky players (not so much for Lau).

Lei Fei was just cool, his flowcharts are basically like using Eddy Gordo (yes it is!!!) where he's kinda slow, but has great evasion / etc. properties for some of his moves, and can link together moves faster than pretty much anyone in the game. In Evo, his new moves (bokutai), while slow, increased the variety of moves from hai shiki ~ the best long distance stance ever ~ and gave me more stuff to play mind games with (note: lei could even be considered the Nightmare of VF in terms of his power and great mind games). (Obviously a great addition to any any Wolf or Jeffry player's repetoire. He's also great for newbies in addition to their main character.

Goh was an obvious choice for my poor pad-smashed fingers, his moves were simple, straightfoward, and easy to apply (and really easy to do). Admittedly he's boring... but that should be fixed in VF5, give him like ten or twenty new moves, and more combo variety, some better circular attacks, and Goh would be one of the best "tappers" in the game. My main complaint is that he's too much like Akira in terms of movement, move application etc. but lacks Akira's power and versatility. Nonetheless, he makes a great partner / subpartner for Akira players - while similar, his flowcharts are in some cases slightly different, so if you can play mind games using the properties of his moves versus Akira's. He also makes a nice mixer for VS for all-offense (Lau, Jacky, etc.) or pressure (Pai, Lion, Brad) players, just to throw your oppt off. Also, I've found he makes a great bizarre pairing with Shun.

Brad has to be one of the coolest characters ever. Although his 'shooo shoo' gets kinda annoying. Easy moves, applicable, nice priority from almost any stance makes him a top pressure character, making him a good match for Pai, Lion, and maybe Sarah players. Also one of my fav characters for pairing with defensive (Jeffry or Wolf) or 'tapper' characters.

Sarah is always a good choice if you know her moves pretty well. While weak, and not having too many power moves, she makes a great pressure character, and has to ability to go all-out on offense for a little while (not recommended for long periods of time (~ 10 seconds) as it usually requires flamingo stance, and her moves from that stance don't have good advantage typically). Her nice variety of moves makes her a great counterpart to Pai, Brad, or Vanessa, as well as a good mixer for Lei Fei or Lau. However, I've had issues with using her and Jacky in Evo, in VF4 it was fine, but now I have trouble using them effectively without a couple of warm up matches in when I switch them.

Finally, the best mixer of all, Shun. While high maintenance (much like Akira or Goh) his moves are now easily abusable (even more so then in VF4 or VF3) and while getting drunk is still difficult to pull off effectively, he becomes a monster when drunk. His throw game is as weak as ever (which sucks) but his moves now pressure much more then ever before, with staggers and low hits coming seemingly out of nowhere. Hard to anticipate and hard to use, Shun is perhaps the best mind game character ever. A great mixer for all character types. I especially like playing him and Jeffry and Brad, for a weird all-around team during VS rounds.

Ranked by estimated usage and effectiveness, my three-char groups arranged from primary to secondary.

1. Akira, Goh, Pai.
2. Goh, Brad, Shun.
3. Wolf, Jacky, Goh.
4. Brad, Jacky or Sarah, Lei Fei.
5. Pai, Shun, Goh or Jeffry or Akira or Vanessa.

 

I agree (my first non-finnish onslaught, btw) a lot what you said about characters here. Shun particularly, doesn´t seem to get the limelight he deserves, and is definitely my "character for mastery" at the moment. Havin played the old geezer up from VF2 days he seems to hold his own better than ever.

 

Having devoted most of my time playing VF to Aoi, whenever i don't use her i have to make a conscious effort NOT to input a reversal command if i know a high/mid/low is coming, but often i don't realize that until i've already 'attempted' the reversal, have been MCed, and am floating in the air.

Another pitfall is that if i switch it up with Sarah, Pai, Jacky, or Lau, when i go back to Aoi i get lazy with her offense (like what ice-9 said about Jacky/Lau spoiling his Kage), which presents a HUGE problem because Aoi's offense affords no laziness whatsoever.

That said i think Akira compliments Aoi the best, and i have very little trouble switching between the two of them so.. yeah. I'll throw Shun in as my #3, but maybe switch to Goh if/when i get better with him.

Wolf and Jeffry are just too slow, and i haven't spent enough time playing as Kage, Lion, Lei Fei, or Brad to comment on them. Oh and i gave up playing Vanessa when Evo came out BUT i used to switch it up with her a lot in VF4.

 

Well, having played onl y Akira in VF2, switching to Kage was strange (mod moves to none), but stranger still was adapting to Lau in VF4 and Sarah in Evo.

I find that I can't win with Akira no longer, but can own with Sarah (mainly to her being relatively easier to use than Kage or Akira against decent opposition). A bit part of it in my mind is the competition you play, I actually do better with Kage against some people and I actually train with him a LOT more than Sarah.

I still wish I could own with Akira more than Kage or Sarah tho/ /versus/images/graemlins/mad.gif

 

In VF3 I played my brother a lot, and he basically just used Wolf. I used Kage, Akira and Jeffry pretty well, in my opinion. I decided it was because more than one character creates conflicts.
I found myself losing 2/3 of the time, so I ended up trying to choose 1 character to stick to. It ultimately ended up with me finding which character I liked the most. I determined Akira is the best, because he can "reverse anything." I even learned to do his SPoD, DLC and Axeblade on command with a Dreamcast and PS2 controller. Buuut, I became bored with using his most effective combos over and over again.
So anyway, now I am trying to use Shun seriously. He has the most psychological effects and that is, in my idea, the most important thing. I also think I need more knowledge of the science of VF added to my gameplay, so that's why I visit VF.com /versus/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

I also still play Akira, Kage, Jeffry and Jacky. Not as seriously as Shun though. Jacky pretty much screws up everyone else for me...the others are radically different so I can handle them fine.