Alice Senki 2/Mechanics

General

Health

Each character has different amounts of set life total, and they also take different amounts of damage at differents points of their life.

• Miki Activated 39000
• TADA 30000
• Little Princess 24000
• Demon Rance 20000

• Patton 15000
• Alietta 14000
• Miki 12350
• Maria 12000
• Rance 11000
• Seed 10700
• Makutsudo 10500
• Nazgis 10000 (suffers more damage than other characters)
• Hatsune 9800
• Raysen 9800
• Raza Aria 9700
• Fanel 9700
• Menad 9600
• Escalayer 9400
• Tiger Joe 9400
• Shizuka 9200
• Satsu 9100
• Hanny King 9000

Recovering Health

• Recover health: All characters can recover their health just by pressing the D button in neutral position. However, there's a big chance you'll get punish out of this animation because it takes too long. Only characters that can go unpunished from this by doing some specific setups are Aria, Alietta (inconsistently) and Seed (as far as i know).

• Recover health cancel: You can allways faint your recover animation by pressing 5D again right after the beginning of the Recover health animation. The timing is tight, be aware. The uses for this technique are very similar to the uses you have on faint attacks in games like Garou: Mark of the Wolves or Real Bout Fatal Fury 2. The easiest way to do this, is by holding the D button for a short time.

Low Health status

• If your character has 40% or less health, her damage power will be increased, and it will increase exponentially for every bit of less health you have. Some Lvl3/Legendary Sword moves gain damage or features when your health bar is very low. Not all characters have this property, needs confirmation. Characters that have it are Rance, Patton, Menad, Fanel.

Guts

• Typical to many air dashers and anime games, this game has a damage scaling system where the less life the enemy has, the less damage they take. Characters are more capable of resisting damage for every 10% health loss. When a character is attacked while lying on the ground, she will take half the damage.

Weight

Characters have differents ways of being blown into the air by your moves depending of their weight.

   Very light: Fanel
   Light: Satsu, Hatsune, Raysen, Escalayer, Shizuka, Aria, Arietta, Miki, Menta, Hanny King, Nalgas, Tada, Little Princess.
   Medium weight: Rance, Seed, Makutsudo, Joe, Demon Rance.
   Heavy: Patton, Maria.

Meter

You gain meter when you hit or get hit by any attacks. Being hit doubles the meter gained compared to succefully connecting an attack. If attacks are being blocked, the attacking side gains more, but both will get just a little bit of meter. Wiffing normal moves nets you a pixel of meter, while wiffing special moves gives you some more. All attacks connected in a combo after a super or roman cancel, won't add any meter to the attacker. Being thrown also gains a good amount of bar. Doing a Just Defend gives you some meter as well. You can store up to 9 bars. There are a lot of things you can do with your meter gauge:

• Super Moves: Do a specific special move with C button. For the cost of one bar, you can do a stroger version of that special move and the screen will freeze for a moment.
• EX Moves: Do a specific special move with C button at the cost of one bar. There are no screen effects with Ex moves. Super Moves are more damage/combo oriented with good priority, whilst Ex Moves are focused usually as a mixup or pressure tool.
• Lvl2: Very similar to Super Moves, but they cost 2 bars and have a green flash.
• Legendary Sword/Lvl3: Do a specific motion for the characters and press C. Costs 3 bars. All characters have one of these, and they do great damage if you connect them outside of combos. Some Lvl3 moves can have special features when the character has low health.
• Push blocking: This is a special type of defense that needs some meter to be used. Will be covered later.
• Roll cancel: This is another type of special defense that needs half a bar to be used. Will be covered later.
• Special Activation: Do a specific motion for the character and press D. Cost varies from character to another, from no bar to 5 meters. Your character will gain special abilities in this mode.
• Roman Cancels/Breaking: Doing a break will cost you a bar. There's also a different kind of break (light break) that costs only 0.5 bars.

Attacking

Throws

4/6+C. You can allways throw your opponent if they aren't on a block-stun or hit-stun animation. There's no startup on this move and you can't throw while dashing. Some characters can do a Break/Roman-cancel after a throw.

Counter hits

If you manage to hit an opponent that is in the middle of an attack animation (at the beginning or end of it) your attack will have longer hitstun and deal more damage (+25%). It can also change the hitstun state.

Chip damage

All special, Ex and super moves can do a bit of damage even if blocked. In this game you can die from chip damage. Be aware, some moves can do a lot of chip damage and there are some situations that you'd gladly take that regular damage instead of the absurd chip damage some toons can do (remember this name: Seed).

Unblockables

Normal attacks, dash attacks and some special attacks performed on the ground can't be guarded while in the air. Exceptions are normal moves that shoot projectiles or dash attacks that put you in mid air. A few special moves can't be blocked normaly in any case scenario (Ex:Aria's 236C), and you are forced to special guard them to evade damage.

Guard crush

When your guard bar is depleted because you blocked too many strong moves, you'll get guard crushed. You'll be stunned for a very long time and your opponent will have enough time to decide what's the best combo he knows to finish you off.

Clash

Whan two weapons collide, nobody takes damage and they cancel each other's attacks. The screen will be frozen for a moment and you can cancel your clashed move into a special move or a higher rank move.

Knockdowns

If you can't recover the control of your character in the air or when hitting the ground after being attacked, that means that attack causes a knockdown. There are four types of them.:

• Quick Fall: This causes a knockdown that is unrecoverable, but the toon will stand up very quickly. A lot of characters have at least one Quick Fall move in their 2C attacks.
• Hard Knockdown: They fall back doing a small bounce on the ground, and it will take a bit more time to stand up again.
• Sliding Knockdown: Character will hit the ground hard and her butt will slide for a short period of time. They won't be able to stand up for the longest time.

Combo mechanics

Chains and combos

Every attack canceled into another is considered a chain, and you can cancel them in succession. This is only possible if the attack landed on your enemy, blocked or not. Usually all moves can be cancelled by a superior one, the order is like this: A normals, B normals, C normals, Command moves, Special moves, EX moves, Lv1 super moves, Lv2 super moves, Lv3 super moves. There's a lot of exceptions though.

Unrecoverable Moves

A lot of attacks can cause a hitstun state with long untechable time when you're blown into the air, many of them can only be teched until you hit the ground or cause a knockdown not being able to tech them at all. In an optimal combo, you'll try to use all of your characters attacks with one of the following properties:

• Launcher/Soft knockdown: This is only recoverable when you hit the ground.
• Ground Bounce: The toon hits and bounce off the ground, making them airborne again.
• Wall slam: The character bounces off the wall toward the center of the screen. Some attacks can cause a hard knockdown after the wall bounce.
• Roof Smash: As far as a know, only Nalzgis has this particular property in one of her moves. She sends her foe to the top of the screen, and then the toon falls down helplessly.
• Quick Fall/Hard Knockdown/Sliding Knockdown/: Characters can't recover at any time and will hit the ground imminently. In terms of combos, these three are as useful as the Launcher/Soft Knockdown and you can have all four of them in a combo, theoretically. You'd likely have to cancel any of these into a Breaking technique to follow up your combo. Hard and Sliding Knockdowns will grant you an OTG chance if you need it.
• Freeze: Few characters have the privilege of freezing their opponents for a short while. It can force airborne characters to a restand (delaunch) position for big combos.

Untechable time for all these hitstun states is invariable as long as you don't use the same attack twice in a combo. You can put your oppenent into the same untechable state more than once in the same combo, the condition is to not use the same move more than once (there are some exceptions to this rule). Note that a special move done with A that causes long untechable time is not equivalent to the same special move done with B or C buttons.

Breaking/Roman cancel

Doing a regular Break/Roman Cancel in the middle of a combo not only resets part of the damage scaling, but also resets the properties of all your attacks, so you can perform the same moves that caused long untechable time before the roman cancel all over again without losing the untechable time properties. You'll need this knowledge to make your combos shine. Still, you can throw one or two roman cancels as pressure tool, why not. There are two types of Breaks, and three types of behavior when performing this dependig on the character you choose.

       BREAK TYPES

• Regular Break: You can only do this after succefully connecting an attack, blocked or on hit.
• Orange/Light Break: Can only be done after specific attacks and very specific timings. You can do this even after wiffing the special move. Timing is allways difficult and you can use it to recover from an unsafe move, as pressure tool, as mixup tool or for unusual combos. Similar to Guilty Gear Xrd yellow and purple roman cancels. This special Break neither reset any damage nor their attack properties. Needs 1/2 meter.

       BREAK BEHAVIOR

• Bully/Ultra Brake: Can be done by Seed, Maria, Mike Patton, Menat, Satsu, Raysen, Alietta, Makutsudo. Forces a dash state on the ground. Doing it in the air makes the character do a fast fall.
• Sauterelle/Catapult brake: Done by Escalayer, Rance, Hanny King, Hatsune, Tiger Joe, Demon Rance, TADA. Forces a jump when activated. In the air forces an additional jump and resets air movement options, making 4 jumps in the same combo possible before touching the ground.
• Stationary/Super Brake: Can be done by Aria, Shizuka, Fanel, Little Princess, Nalzgis and Miki. The toon cancels the last move she was doing and returns to neutral state. It resets air movement options as well.

Otg

Sometimes you can hit your foe while it's lying on the ground after a hard or sliding knockdown to add a bit of extra damage to your combos. The hitstun time scales badly, so only a few hits will be allowed.

Defense

Tech throw

When two players attempt a throw at the same time, the character being thrown will perform a tech throw and get away undamaged, returning to neutral position. Can only be done against normal throws. You can't tech throw if you got thrown at the recovery of one of your moves. Tech throw animation is invincible. All aerial movement options are recovered after doing a thech throw while airborne.

Recovery

• Air recovery: Press 4/8/6/5+D to recover the control of your toon in the air. You'll be invincible at the first frames of the recovery, but you can still get thrown. Your character will recover the control by doing a short hop in the air. 5+D recovers the control while keeping their trajectory. You have all aerial movement options after recovering (airdash, double jump, special guard, etc...).
• Ground recovery: Press 1/2/3+D when landing on the ground. Depending on the button you press you'll get a neutral, backward or forward recovery. Neutral and backward make the character invincible until you regain control. Forward recovery is not really recommended because the character will roll forward for a long distance and invincible time is extremely short at the beginning of the move.

Blocking

After blocking in mid-air, all movement resources are recovered (air dash, jump, special defense, etc...).

Special defense

Depending on the character you choose, you have access to one of these special defensive options:

• Parry: Press 6 (against high and mid attacks) or 2 (against low attacks) just before the enemy hits you. You might think this move was inspired by Capcom's mediocre fighting game SFIII 3rd Strike, but it was actually inspired by Schmeiser Robo. Negates the opponent attack and can be canceled into a special or super move. This technique can be done by Rance, Demon Rance, Mike Patton, Aria and Tiger Joe.
• Just Defense: Block just before the enemy hits you. Move brought to you by Garou: Mark of the Wolves. This reduces your blockstun time, the pushback, and it can also cancels into a special or super move. It gives a bit of meter too. Can be done by Seed and Fanel.
• Push block or advancing guard: Press D while guarding. You can block some moves that are normally unblockable and will push away your opponent, but this will consume some of your energy bar. You can negate all meter draining if you press D at the same time your opponent hits you. Shizuka, Menad, Escalayer and Alietta have this option. This is similar to Faultless Defense from Guilty Gear series, rather than Avancing Guard from Marvel.
• Kof rolling/evading: Press 4/6+D. You will move forward or backward and be invincible for a moment, but you'll be vulnerable at the end of the animation. This can be done in mid-air too. You can also do this while blocking for the reasonable price of 0.5 energy meter. Raysen, Hatsune and Satsu can do this.
• Warzard counter: 214+D. This enables a special guard state that repels all attacks and is obviously inspired by the greatest Capcom fighting game of all time: Warzard/Red Earth. If your opponent attacks you when you have this enabled, you can cancel this state into any special or super moves. It can be done in the middle of guarding animation as well. This is an amazing defense, but it is also the most easy to bait because it has long recovery time, so be carefull. It can be done by Maria, Miki, Little Princess, Hanny King, Tada and Makutsudo.
• Gundam Dash: 4/6+D. Can only be done by Nalzgis. She dashes forward or backward while blocking all incoming attacks. While airborne, she can do the Gundam Dash towards the enemy all the times she want, but only once backwards. This move is inspired by the game Gundam Wing: Endless Duel for the Super Famicom.

Damage reduction

Just like in Melty Blood, you can reduce the damage done to your character by pressing attack buttons trying to time the hits your opponent is doing to you in a combo. You can't reduce damage when being thrown. Damage reduction depends on how well you timed the attack and varies from 30% reduced to 5%.

Miscellaneous

ROUNDS

At the beginning of the round, you can move your character freely before the actual fight starts.

Timer

This is your typical doujin fighting game that prefers to brag about being able to run at 60fps rather than have a proper timer displayed. No, there's no time limit in this game.