Self-reflection is absolutely essential for excelling at fighting games. This advice should not be taken lightly—it is crucial for any player looking to progress. Watching your replays is the best way to practice self-reflection, and fighting game coaches commonly recommend it. However, many new players get lost when reviewing their replays and don’t know what to look for. For those struggling, this article will outline the essential steps needed to learn how to analyze fighting game replays. Without further ado, let’s get into it!
Pay Attention to Your Bad Habits
After playing an online match, win or lose, you need to review the footage to see what happened. Watching your replays in chunks rather than watching only one video can be a great way to see your bad habits and common weaknesses. For example, you might be really bad at anti-airing your opponent, and it shows throughout all the games, no matter what character you fight against. You also might have a bad habit of mashing on defense, which kills you a lot. There are even situations where you might lose against a specific attack a lot against a character. Whatever it may be, watch a whole bunch of your replays in one sitting and see what you consistently find.
Get Into Training Mode and Find Solutions Against Some Things
Alright, so you’ve learned how to analyze your fighting game replays properly. Now, you just need to find solutions to the things you lost to. In particular, some characters in fighting games have crazy mixups and setups that can open up your defense. Learning how to deal with these things are crucial. Most fighting games these days have a record/replay function in their training modes. This allows you to record the things you’re having trouble with and find answers for them.
After finding answers to each problem, write them down in your notebook or note app on your phone. Having a section for each character matchup in your respective game will make it more organized for you.
The Benefits of Watching Your Replays
So why exactly should you watch your replays? Well, it provides much crucial information that will benefit you in the long run. One benefit is that if you run into that player again in another online match, you will already have a game plan in place to do better this time around. If you travel offline for major tournaments, you might even run into them at the bracket! Keep yourself prepared against all the players you fight online because you might encounter them again.
An extra benefit to watching your replays is learning more about the matchup. The solutions you find to your problems can be used against players with the same character. This leads to the last benefit: sometimes, one game plan you have against one player can work against another. Usually, most people who play the same character have similar habits. These are called character tendencies, and learning about them will help you fight against numerous opponents.
No Online? No Problem!
Some players don’t like to play online for numerous reasons and would rather play offline. This is fine, as you can still record matches in person against opponents that you face. You can use a smartphone tripod to record the match or record your footage using console recording settings.
In particular, the smartphone tripod method is highly recommended because it helps for offline tournaments. If you lose to an opponent at a tournament, you can review the footage, see what you did wrong, and create a working game plan that beats them. Try asking that player for a small casual set after the tournament to test your findings.
Wrapping Things Up
Remember that this is a starting point for those who want to learn how to analyze their fighting game replays. It’s interactive and makes the experience fun for some, but other players might have different approaches to reviewing their matches. Don’t be afraid to try this method!
In the meantime, check out our other tutorials for fundamental fighting game concepts:
