ANNE
This guide uses numpad notation: https://srk.shib.live/w/Help:Notation#Numpad_Notation
L = Light attack M= Medium attack H = Heavy attack
NOTABLE NORMALS: Far 5H: Good damage, decent anti-air. One-shots the endgame robots and is vital for slime loops.
2M: Great range and pretty fast too. great for dealing with grounded spider-bots in the endgame. Trips bosses on hit
Neutral Jump M: Very tall hitbox that sticks around a while. Another great anti-spider tool
Forward Jump H: Air-to-air of choice. hits pretty high
Jump 2M: Range isn't great but it's pretty fast and it puts your hurtbox pretty high up so it can beat moves other jump-ins can't. always bear it in mind as a jump-in
Jump 2H: Go-to jump-in against grounded opponents. hits pretty far in front and below and one-shots robots. Has different hitboxes at different parts of the animation, which also have different properties: the earlier one knocks back a fair amount, the later one deals less hitstun but doesn’t knock back at all.
THROWS: Suplex - 4/5/6M/H: Fast, leaves opponents on the ground facing backwards near you and recover fairly quickly. You'll be using this a lot.
Knee Grab - 1/2/3M/H: Repeated presses add extra hits, it's better to time the hits than mash or you'll end up doing thunder flash when you don't want to. You need at least 3 hits to match other throws' damage and even then it's slower so try not to use this.
Frankensteiner - Jump 5/6M/H: Slams opponent onto the ground so takes longer the higher up they are. Opponents land in a similar way to 5M/H throw.
Shoulder Throw - Jump 4M/H: The fastest throw you have. opponents land similarly to 5M/H throw but land further away the higher you are.
Piledriver - Jump 1/2/3M/H: Extremely Cool but very slow and leaves opponents very far away so you have to work your way in all over again. Avoid this unless you have a specific strategy in mind.
SPECIAL MOVES: Thunder Flash - Mash X: Blanka Electric. Starts up after 5 rapid presses of any button, keep pressing to keep it going. Button strength determines size and strength; it's best to start by mashing every button at once, then sticking to the button you want. This is great against a handful of bosses and basically useless everywhere else, because each individual hit deals little damage and moderate pushback.
Shooting Star - jump 632X: Air Fireball, button strength determines angle: L= horizontal; M= 45o down; H= down and very slightly forward. Freezes you in place while the move is coming out, then drops you directly downwards. The best special in the game, you can hit anything from basically anywhere using this and it can work as an emergency air brake. Don't go too wild with it because it can leave you vulnerable
STRATEGIES
MOAI: Pick this stage first so you don’t have to fight the miniboss (you can also start with brainy to skip that miniboss but I find this one way more annoying). Start by jumping in with j.2H. When you land, walk up and suplex him. You can usually tag him with a couple of shooting stars as he’s waking up. repeat until KO.
SLIME/FUNGUS: Extremely dangerous if you let him get away from you, and very strong wakeup options if you knock him down, so we're going to not do either of those things! Slime Loop: Hit him with far 5H, then jump over him and hit him with far 5H again; repeat. As long as you keep the rhythm up he'll get bounced back and forth into your next 5H over and over again. He can only break out by going into rage and that very rarely happens, but even in rage you can put him back in Alt Slime Loop (Thanks Fiona!): on round start slide to trip him, then jump over him
FURAIKI/DIABLO: High level: Once you get a knockdown, walk right up to him and wait. As soon as he gets up neutral jump to bait his reversal and hit him with j.2H on the way down. If he charges up furaigeki (electrifying circle into horn charge) and knocks you down you can just casually walk up to him and you'll reach throwing distance in the gap between him finishing the charge-up and starting the attack (thanks Fiona Kaenbyou!) Low Level: knockdown, then use 2L as early as possible so he gets hit right at the end of the active frames. Walk forwards and suplex him. Repeat When he does either version of hurricane kick, wait for him to get close and jump backwards. If you timed it right you'll meet him in the right spot to air throw him. If you're not confident you'll get the throw, j.2M should at least knock him out of it and let you set up the strat above
CENTAUR: Centaur is a Problem and he smells bad Flash bait (thanks Fiona Kaenbyou!!): Hit him once and immediately go into thunder flash. Most of the time he'll respond with spinning disc. you'll either recover in time to block or get hit, but either way he'll be wide open when you recover from that. Piledriver loops: There are 2 ways to set this up: Knock him down in a way that keeps him facing you. Just before he starts to get up jump forwards. He'll get up just in time for you to land a piledriver (j.2H/M throw) but before he can do anything. Use 2M to trip him up, then immediately jump forwards and piledriver him You can get about 3 piledrivers in a row before he goes into rage Knee loops: if you manage to get centaur into a corner and in throw distance you can go for knee grab and if you get the timing just right you'll hit him with 5 knees and then immediately knee grab again. From what I can tell he's much less likely to rage out of this than piledriver loops but if you mess up he can punish you pretty severely. Optimal Knee Loop: Start with a slide, jump over and suplex him as he turns around. Immediately jump over again, then push him to the left a little bit and suplex him again. From here you can use 2M or 5H to stagger him, then walk up and initiate knee loops. You can also wait a little so his own wakeup doesn’t trip you then walk up for knee loop but the timing on that is really tight and you might not get deep enough into the corner to loop right so it’s very risky. When his health is low enough a suplex might kill him faster than knees. (Fiona) Midscreen throw loop! Centaur can’t act while turning around and only uses his rear kick if you attack him. Exploit this by letting him turn around and then grabbing him before he can react. To set this up go for a jumpin, let him attempt an antiair, then hit him with shooting star for a knockdown.
BRAIN GOLEM/BRAINY: Mother/Serpent miniboss: pelt it with fireballs (~3 should bring it down to almost no health) then finish it off with j.5H There’s no consistent strat for this fight, just keep your distance and try to interrupt its attacks with fireballs. If you get in a bad position wait for a laser and go for an air throw after it finishes charging. Ivy's Slow strat: the plan here is to get yourself on the right edge of the screen with your back to the wall. From this position you can jump back as a kind of 3-way option select on knockdown: -if it shoots 3 orbs you can wall jump over them and piledriver it to keep the corner. -if it charges up to shoot the laser you can land, then jump back again and wall jump over the laser and piledriver it. -if it tries to tackle you it'll miss and bounce off the wall so you can j.2H, land then suplex. The rightmost wall has some weird collision so the suplex won't actually sideswitch and you'll keep the corner. This isn't a real OS as such because you need to time the jump differently depending on what you're responding to, but having that same response to multiple options makes it much easier to react.
DRAGON: No matter which dragon you're up against this is the one time you really wanna abuse your air fireball. They often respond to getting hit by blocking and waiting; that's your chance to jump in and throw them.
DUCKER STAGE: Honestly the fastest way to get rid of the missiles is just block them You’ll always be set back to the same point after the missiles so it doesn’t really matter where you stand You can suplex the missiles! There’s no reason to and if anything it slows you down but don’t let me stop you In theory you don’t need to bother with the cannons, you can just scroll past and it doesn’t matter. It’s pretty hard to do that without getting shot so it helps to neutralise them with a fireball and 2H (this disables the gun, you don't need to kill the actual turret) TODO: specific order of robot appearences
DUCKER: The other Big Problem fight in the game. If he knocks you down it’s very hard to shake out of his pressure and his wakeup attacks are hard to avoid Once you score a knockdown jump over so you’re on top of him and start mashing for thunder flash. He’ll take a bunch of hits and slowly get pushed away. You’ll want to stop kinda early so you have a chance to jump out of whatever wakeup attack he does If you can help it try to end the fight to the right of the elevator, so you’re facing left when you get on (WIP) If you can land a sweep knockdown and stay right in front of him you have a very short window just as he starts to get up to jump-throw him to set up thunder flash. Sweeps don’t consistently knock him down, it seems to depend on where exactly you hit but unsure on this.
MECHA GORILLA STAGE: Kill the green robot on the left with an air fireball, then deal with the one on the right however you want 2M and slide are the best ways to get rid of the spiders on the ground. It’s also a fast way to take care of the bikes since they can’t put you in the throw animation while it’s active TODO: specific order of enemies
MECHA GORILLA: Much like Ducker you wanna get the knockdown, get on top of him and mash thunder flash. Because the move makes you float in the air his initial wakeup attack will miss you completely If thunder flash pulls him towards you, carry on doing thunder flash for as long as you can. If it starts to push him away, stop when you see his punch start up, walk forwards and throw him. Repeat. Sometimes he’ll just decide not to cooperate and start flailing his arms up and down, in which case you need to start blocking: you can’t hit him while he’s doing that You can challenge his grounded shoulder charge with 2M TODO: figure out what the heck to do about his jumping shoulder > low kick loops
HAPPY BUSTER ACE: Phases 1+2 are very vulnerable to throws on her wakeup. If you get her in the corner you can piledriver > jump forward > piledriver and she can never escape. Make sure you pause a little when she gets to about half health; she’s invulnerable while changing phase Grab knee may be faster dps than piledriver? The timing to grab her on wakeup is much harder - look for frame kill (Fiona) In general she seems relatively weak to well spaced j2H jumpins. This gets her pushed into the corner where you can do the piledriver loop. if you don't get the piledriver you'll get j2H...which leaves her stunned long enough for an instant air piledriver anyway (Fiona) Move away when she switches to phase 2 (when her health is around the U in BUSTER). She'll be close to the ground now so the goal is to jump in and hit with a meaty j2H as she becomes vulnerable, then combo that into knees. MASH LIKE HELL so the knees cancel into Thunder Flash. This will take a huge chunk of her phase 3 health away and make things much easier Move away when she switches to phase 2 (when her health is around the U in BUSTER). She'll be close to the ground now so the goal is to jump in and hit with a meaty j2H as she becomes vulnerable, then combo that into knees. MASH LIKE HELL so the knees cancel into Thunder Flash. This will take a huge chunk of her phase 3 health away and make things much easier
