At first, I was terrified to pick up Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising because I knew it was the sort of game you were supposed to play against other people and the learning curve for this sort of fighting game has always seemed dauntingly steep to me. I couldn’t get it working on my computer before our class tournament, but I attended to watch, and seeing everyone over Discord completely flounder in trying to understand how things worked did little to improve my confidence.
However, after watching the paired video, I felt I had a much better understanding of how to improve at this sort of game. The sheer amount of information one must memorize and muscle memory one must build in order to become an effective fighting game player is daunting in an entirely different way, but I can now better appreciate what it means to master countless possible action-reaction sequences and the appeal of dedicating time to that mastery.
Despite that newfound appreciation, though, I found the controls of GBFV:R to be pretty obtuse when I was finally able to play it. I could press different combinations of buttons and see what they did, but the keybinds were unintuitive and it wasn’t clear why I should ever be using one move over another. Since I started with in-person PvP, I didn’t go through any tutorial, but I got the impression from watching other beginners play practice matches that the tutorial did not offer much help in this regard. What really helped me understand how to play was Anthony explaining the rock-paper-scissors relationship of attacking, blocking, and grabbing, and how to do each one. Once I understood that fundamental relationship, I improved instantly— I still wasn’t good, and still had trouble differentiating between the different types of attacks and remembering which move was bound to which key (which I’m sure is merely a muscle memory problem), but I was able to choose my moves with much more intention and even do some real damage. It no longer felt like the outcome of my actions was random; when I had the upper hand, I understood what I had done to get there, and when I lost, I understood what I had done wrong. That alone made the prospect of improving suddenly feel within reach— like if I was willing to put in the time to practice, I’d know where to start and how to evaluate and fix my own performance. Who knows— I may yet become a fighting game person after all!
