What's the Hardest Fighting Game to Play?
The hottest topics of the fighting game community.
It's the ultimate fighting game discussion! Let's see what the scene veterans have to say on various topics.
The fighting game community has grown large, diverse, and well, older. This has introduced a lot of changes. Some prefer sticking to older games, some join the hype of newer ones.
How old can you be and still competing? Which fighting game is the toughest? Who is the best player? These are all questions that the roundtable tackled.
Six-time Evo winner Arslan Ash, three-time Evo winner MenaRD, nine-time Evo winner Justin Wong, one-time Evo winner Nitro, and Road to Evo Qualifier Rae
This roundtable features some of the most prominent fighters from the FGC (fighting game community) discussing various topics.
How old can I be and still compete in fighting games?
Arslan Ash briefly thinks about whether there should be an age limit for competitive players, but there really isn't one at all. There are still some very strong players even in their 40s who are winning.
Thus, there is no age limit on competing in fighting games, and we've seen all kinds enter tournaments. Usually, the more limiting factors are personal or familial responsibilities. Younger players generally have more time to practice and grind out Ranked Play in various games like Street Fighter 6 or Granblue: Fantasy Versus 2.
What's the hardest fighting game?
This is highly subjective, but there are some parameters. MenaRD thinks it's SF6, because even though he's basically one of the best players, his outcome isn't guaranteed for victory. Many players can shake up his chances.
I would say SF6 is one of those, easy-to-pick, but hard-to-master titles. Multiple panelists agree with that. Characters don't have too many moves, but there are many versions to them, and you really need to know the frame data on basically everything.
Many people argue that 3D games like Tekken 8 or Soul Calibur VI are naturally more complex fighting games, because they add the third dimension for movement and dodging. These two titles also have extremely big movelists, with characters getting 80-110 moves, so that's a lot of attack strings to memorize and even more frame data.
Some "anime" or "air-dasher" titles have very high skill-ceilings and moves that require fairly complex execution, just to even perform them. Tag games add multiple characters.
In conclusion, it's really tough to say which fighting game is the hardest. Nowadays, the focus is on having more accessible playability while maintaining depth and variety.
For more fighting game discussion, check out the video above, where the guys talk about whom they would rather not face in Grand Finals at Evo.
Wordsmith at SteelSeries. Enthusiastic about Dota 2 and fighting games. A cat dad.
