If you’ve played more than a few rounds of Street Fighter 6 then you likely know how it feels to jump at your foe as they’re recovering from a move, confident you’re going to nail them with a full jump in combo, only to see the screen freeze up and your opponent turn blue as they’ve just used Perfect Parry as an anti-air.
Instantly flipping from expecting a full combo to being parried is a total bummer, and through one’s frustration it’s easy to view such sequences as potential poor game design. MC Mura really dislikes the way Perfect Parry anti-airs currently work in Street Fighter 6, but is it accurate to go as far as to say this is poor game design?
Mura himself doesn’t make the leap to calling this poor design, but instead frames it as something he more personally wishes was differently implemented or executed. That’s fair, as having your jump in PP’d can suck the motivation to keep going right out of you.
You also might argue that going for an option like Perfect Parry, which can still lose if you mistime or your airborne opposition decides to empty jump, is scrubby when you could also go for a surefire anti-air that has invincibility to air attacks.
It’s widely known that you can get some 20% of your foe’s health while also draining some of their Drive Gauge if you throw a Perfect Parry attempt, but be that as it may, one might argue the risk vs. reward of PP as an AA is skewed too heavily in the parrying player’s favor.
Mura files the fighting game community into two types of players: those who see winning mix-up or 50/50 contests as an important skill and thus such situations contribute to the fun of the experience, and those who feel like rock/paper/scissors scenarios more as frustratingly more random variables.
At its core, is this debate really just a matter of preference around mix-ups vs. surefire hits, or should we really break down the nitty gritty details and crunch all relevant numbers to determine whether or not Perfect Parry anti-airs are kosher parts of the Street Fighter 6 experience?
Give Mura’s video a watch and then let us know how you think and feel about the topic in the comments below.
Want more from Mura? Be sure to check out his recent look at the peculiar reason why Guile keeps getting better in every modern Street Fighter.