Eddy Wang
Skarlet scientist
Hya, today i want to talk about this freaking character who ends up being in the middle of balance controversy.
You see, some people labels Akira as a top tier character on paper and his paper tier placement cannot be denied its greatness, while others think this is all bullshit and to use Akira as good as on paper is almost if not impossible.
Why is that? Well Akira is that type of character where on paper if anything is done to the perfection his tier cannot be denied its greatness which many has labeled as impossible, but to find a human being that good to match Akira's requirements are really rare in the world, not saying it doesn't exist, so as he is not the only fighting game character under this same category from now on, i will place similar characters in this very same category by the name of "controversial tier characters"
Last year Team Ninja did a program which would run any character based on their move list proprieties and frame data and compare them all in order to generate a tier list.
On the computer generated tier List, Akira was the only S tier character based on his tool set, which is of course on "paper"
Many players call that bollocks because there isn't such thing as perfect Akira, besides he has very obvious weakness such as his very linear set of moves, however Akira's weakness is also his greatest strength, if he tends to be as predictable as many people expect him to be with his linear mid punches, it will also be your own demise because he can just hit you with the same exact moves when you think you can counter them with continuous stagger as you try to escape it.
One of his greatness its the stagger potential, when Akira hits you, he hits you hard, on regular hit or counter he can stagger you on very large hitstuns forcing you to reversal him to get out, this is where things get interesting, the hakyokkuken master is one of the DOA characters with more than 10 launchers, being more than half of them mids punches with different speeds, a 1f knee which is considered the toughest move to execute which launches, a 10f jab that stagggers when you're already staggered, command throws which launches when you recover from staggers and along all that, he is also blessed with two moves which are block removal.
yes you've read it right, if you block Akira's overwhelming offense too much, he can just get near you while you're processing guarding/hold his next mid punch or kick and disable your guard with a guard break command which gives him enough advantage for a free stagger with his famous elbow or a jab which will definitely scramble your mind again while trying to guess what his next move will be.
Does that look impossible to do? Looks good on paper right? So what is Akira?
Akira IMO is a character you cannot let be carried away, either by who is playing him, or who is playing against him, too much confidence on relying on his weakness to win is what can possibly make you lose, considering if the Akira player knows what you're looking for exactly you might never get that chance to counter him
The DOA system IMO perfectly fitted into Akira, i hardly see another DOA without him specially, team Ninja made him more fun than in VF series.
Among the few humans who i consider like Akira playing machines are:
for example JC Akira
Or DestructionBomb
And i still dream the day Akira will feature on a tekken game where 1f knee will be just as good as EWGFs
Other characters who share controversial placements on other games:
Tekken: Kazuya Mishima (top tier on paper, players that reached that potential are very few), Kunimitsu (often listed as higher than most chars in TTT2 by the top japan and korean players themselves, however many people didn't exactly got sold by it top labelled her into A+, the disbeliefs labbeled her as B-
Mk9: Skarlet (Very good character, however labeled just in or outside the top10 by most, who ever labelled her higher was considered an upplayer, i still think to this day she was top 3)
Street Fighter 4: Ibuki (Some saying top 3, others saying easy to beat, the balance in between how good and bad Ibuki was most of the time were in equal volume.
You see, some people labels Akira as a top tier character on paper and his paper tier placement cannot be denied its greatness, while others think this is all bullshit and to use Akira as good as on paper is almost if not impossible.
Why is that? Well Akira is that type of character where on paper if anything is done to the perfection his tier cannot be denied its greatness which many has labeled as impossible, but to find a human being that good to match Akira's requirements are really rare in the world, not saying it doesn't exist, so as he is not the only fighting game character under this same category from now on, i will place similar characters in this very same category by the name of "controversial tier characters"
Last year Team Ninja did a program which would run any character based on their move list proprieties and frame data and compare them all in order to generate a tier list.
On the computer generated tier List, Akira was the only S tier character based on his tool set, which is of course on "paper"
Many players call that bollocks because there isn't such thing as perfect Akira, besides he has very obvious weakness such as his very linear set of moves, however Akira's weakness is also his greatest strength, if he tends to be as predictable as many people expect him to be with his linear mid punches, it will also be your own demise because he can just hit you with the same exact moves when you think you can counter them with continuous stagger as you try to escape it.
One of his greatness its the stagger potential, when Akira hits you, he hits you hard, on regular hit or counter he can stagger you on very large hitstuns forcing you to reversal him to get out, this is where things get interesting, the hakyokkuken master is one of the DOA characters with more than 10 launchers, being more than half of them mids punches with different speeds, a 1f knee which is considered the toughest move to execute which launches, a 10f jab that stagggers when you're already staggered, command throws which launches when you recover from staggers and along all that, he is also blessed with two moves which are block removal.
yes you've read it right, if you block Akira's overwhelming offense too much, he can just get near you while you're processing guarding/hold his next mid punch or kick and disable your guard with a guard break command which gives him enough advantage for a free stagger with his famous elbow or a jab which will definitely scramble your mind again while trying to guess what his next move will be.
Does that look impossible to do? Looks good on paper right? So what is Akira?
Akira IMO is a character you cannot let be carried away, either by who is playing him, or who is playing against him, too much confidence on relying on his weakness to win is what can possibly make you lose, considering if the Akira player knows what you're looking for exactly you might never get that chance to counter him
The DOA system IMO perfectly fitted into Akira, i hardly see another DOA without him specially, team Ninja made him more fun than in VF series.
Among the few humans who i consider like Akira playing machines are:
for example JC Akira
Or DestructionBomb
And i still dream the day Akira will feature on a tekken game where 1f knee will be just as good as EWGFs
Other characters who share controversial placements on other games:
Tekken: Kazuya Mishima (top tier on paper, players that reached that potential are very few), Kunimitsu (often listed as higher than most chars in TTT2 by the top japan and korean players themselves, however many people didn't exactly got sold by it top labelled her into A+, the disbeliefs labbeled her as B-
Mk9: Skarlet (Very good character, however labeled just in or outside the top10 by most, who ever labelled her higher was considered an upplayer, i still think to this day she was top 3)
Street Fighter 4: Ibuki (Some saying top 3, others saying easy to beat, the balance in between how good and bad Ibuki was most of the time were in equal volume.
