Fighters Destiny/Mechanics

Health & Piyori Condition

Characters have varying amounts of Health. Unlike most games which do this, Fighters Destiny's lifebars are physically longer with more Health, making the distinction obvious. Characters slowly regenerate Health automatically, and can regain it faster by holding A+B (holding G/H halts the effect). Different characters regain Health at different speeds.

When Health is drained, the character turns purple and sees stars. This dizzy status is dubbed "Piyori" condition. While in Piyori, you may only move, jump and duck, cannot escape Throws/Locks, and become vulnerable to many Special attacks. You can shorten this condition by mashing A/B, so characters with long Health bars take longer to recover.

Upon recovering from Piyori, your Health resets to slightly below its maximum value.

Point System

Fighter’s Destiny eschews the conventional rounds of fighting games in favour of scoring points. Whoever gets 7 first (default rules) wins.

Ring Out: 1 Point

Depending on choice of ring size, this can be very easy or very hard. Players don’t fall off the ledge, they grab it instead. Attacking them (or making them wait too long) knocks them off for a Ring Out. The ledge can be considered this game’s version of oki (or advantage state, for Smash Bros fans). Your options are as follows:

• A/B (Attack) is akin to a wakeup kick, but very slow. Great frames on contact, but it’s easily reacted to and dodged, where you'll get hit... and wind up back on the ledge.
• 6 (Climb) climbs up the old fashioned way. It’s only marginally faster than kicking, but the climbing animation may mislead the opponent into hesitating and giving you some breathing room.
• 2/8 (Shimmy) clambers along the edge for as long as you hold the direction. Once you release, you’ll initiate the basic climb. Good for stalling on the ledge, but naturally slow and vulnerable.
• 9 (Jump) climbs up and starts a strange, floaty leap to the ring. It’s extremely slow and you have no attack options from this, but may avoid attacks.
• 4/3 (Roll) is a low-profile tumble. Probably the riskiest option, since you can tumble under offense but are a sitting duck as you rise to your feet.
• A+B (Drug Down Fall) can potentially snare your opponent’s foot and get a Throwdown! But if they escape, you’re at neutral and still on the ledge.

Overall, it can be quite a feat to return safely to the stage—but it’s only one point if you fail.

Judge: 1 Point

Essentially a Time Over. Depending on hit accuracy, attacks thrown, damage dealt, and so on, points are tallied. The stronger combatant wins the round. Default round time is 30 seconds.

Throwdown: 2 Points

If a Throw is not escaped, or a Lock KO’s the opponent, or you land a successful parry, or you pull the enemy from the ledge, it’s a Throwdown.

Knockdown: 3 Points

Some attacks are dedicated Knockdown moves (typified by a blue glow) and work regardless of health, while other attacks only knock down when the victim is in Piyori.

Counter: 3 Points

Distinct from a 'counter-hit,' as these are a unique move class. Counters, if they connect with the active frames of another attack, cause a bright flash indicating a successful connect. Counters work on any non-throw attack (including parries, hitboxes pending). These tend to be extremely unsafe on an unsuccessful connect; use caution. You can tech High/Low Counters by holding A+B, but depending on the Counter you can be put into pretty severe disadvantage.

Special: 4 Points

When the opponent is in Piyori condition, characters can use unique moves to score an especially effective knockdown (consider it a fatality, if you like). These Special attacks are usually only usable when the opponent reaches Piyori, but some characters can access Special attacks as normal parts of their movelist. Be aware that some Specials can be avoided by the enemy, even while in Piyori!

Attack Properties

Attacking shares some similarities to Virtua Fighter or Tekken, except Mids only hit dodging opponents, and Throws/Locks cannot be ducked.

Colour-Coding

Attacks often have properties sorted by colour:

• Blue streak: Counter
• Blue/White glow: Knockdown
• Orange streak: Counter-hit launcher
• Red streak: Normal hit launcher

Reel State

"Reels" are attacks that cause a lengthy stun animation on hit. Any attacks dealt to Reeling characters qualify as counter-hit. Recovery from Knockdown attacks, parries and Counters are considered to have Reel state also.

Guarding a Knockdown attack causes the Guarding player to Reel--in effect, turning the Knockdown into a guard break with massive frame advantage.

Mental Attack

These are odd taunts which cause your opponent's Rumble Pak™ to vibrate violently... if they have one plugged in. Due to the nature of this game's unlocked moves, don't expect to experience these much.

Duckable Mids

Mids cannot hit Guard, only Hirari. However, this does not account for ordinary jumping/ducking. Many Mids are "duckable," in that a well-timed duck will slip under the Mid's hitbox. Some Mids are (more rarely) jumpable too. The specifics of these will be noted as required.

This is an important property to consider. A common tactic when the opponent is in Piyori condition is to dash in and use your fastest Mid for an easy Knockdown. But because Piyori is still somewhat actionable, they can time a duck or jump to avoid your attack. Keep this (and the time) in mind when moving in for the finish.

"Okizeme"

There are no conventional downed states in this game! Landing from a launcher causes the victim to instead recover and rise immediately. During this period, they are still vulnerable to attack before Guard and Hirari can buffer in (Guard is available first; see explanation below). Functionally, this makes recovery an OTG state which restands on hit.

"Lazy Throw Escape"

Foreshadowing its appearance in Virtua Fighter 5R by a decade, Fighters Destiny has what is called Lazy Throw Escape (LTE). When escaping Throws, A+B do not need to be pressed on reaction; by simply holding A+B in advance you will escape Throws on the first available frame. Some Throws ignore LTE, but they're rare and will be noted as appropriate.

As this technique allows you to escape on the first possible frame, you cannot perform Throw reversals with LTE. Similarly, Throw reversals ignore LTE.

Because this technique allows players to easily suppress the threat of Throwdowns, it means that Locks (especially frontal Locks) have a valuable niche in opening up turtles.

"Yutori"

Not an explicit mechanic per se, but a useful defensive technique nonetheless (named after a similar technique in Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, Japanese for "ease/clarity"). Here's the breakdown:

• When holding G+H, H is not considered "H," but rather as a second "G" input.
• If thrown, releasing G will still consider H to be a second "G" (as the Throw already checked to see if you held "H," and you "didn't").
• If G is released during LTE, a Throw escape will commence ASAP.

With this information in mind, it is effective to defend yourself by holding A+B+G+H (or 2A+B+G+H). This lets you Guard at one of two levels, potentially allows you to dodge by releasing A+B+G on reaction to a slow attack, and permits a Throw escape by releasing G+H.

The drawbacks to this technique are that you remain vulnerable at one attack level, and still lose to Locks or Inashi. It's not an airtight solution, but it forces the attacker to take more thoughtful turns at advantage (and some characters have great difficulty challenging Yutori).

"Rest Holds"

Since holding A+B (and nothing else) speeds up Health regeneration, there can be situational use in doing that during your Locks instead of mashing. As several Locks are quickly escaped, minus on escape, or both, it can be more effective to "rest hold" and rapidly regain Health while your opponent is busy breaking free. For some characters (particularly Ushi) this can create a very large life differential in lieu of damage.

Named for the uncannily similar tactic in professional wrestling.

Dodge Buffering

As noted in controls, forward/back dashes (and crouch-dashes) can be cancelled into anything. However, because Hirari has no preset animation, it can be held without interrupting a dash.

By inputting 66/44~H_, you will avoid doing a Step and instead quickly advance/retreat while automatically dodging High/Low attacks. This can be thwarted by Throws/Locks (to catch dash-ins) or long Mids (to snipe backdashes), but you can adjust how long you hold H to try and circumvent these answers.

Round-Start Buffering

Fighters Destiny's input buffer is estimated to be 2-3 frames, but during "ready" the buffer accepts single-direction inputs (such as 6B, 3A+B, 7A, etc.) for far longer. By holding inputs in advance during this time, the move will come out on the first available frame as a round begins.

Port Priority

In the event that two Throws/Locks connect on the same frame, Player 1 is considered the "thrower" and Player 2 the "thrown." This typically results in an immediate escape for Player 2 (or a head-start on breaking free if it's a Lock).

However, because of this port priority, Bob's Coconut Crash/Palo Special loop becomes inescapable when done as Player 1 (Palo Special is +0 on escape, but an immediate Coconut Crash will beat anything done by Player 2).

Frame Data & Hitstun

This game runs at 30FPS visually. To prevent confusion, we'll be referring to moves with this in mind (if you like, just double up the numbers yourself for more familiar 60FPS output).

An important note: aside from having values on block/dodge, hitstun in Fighters Destiny has two 'exit points.' The normal frame data on hit can be exited sooner with Guard, jumps, or crouch-dashes.

For lack of a better term, this phenomenon can be called "early" or "late" hitstun. In short:

• 'Light' hitstun exited "early" is 5 frames faster,
• 'Heavy' hitstun exited "early" is 9 frames faster.

Additionally, there is 1 frame of 'unblocking,' so if you exit "early" with G you still lose at least one frame even if timed perfectly.

This oddity can cause various things to become impossible to Hirari, since it's permitted to buffer in later than Guard. When and how this matters will be addressed in Character sections as required.