The King of Fighters XIII/Systems/Attacking: Normal Attacks

Normals

Normal attacks in KOF are fundamentally as strong as in Street Fighter or most every fighting game. At their core normals are the key components in commanding the grounded space, attacking and defending when in the air, hitconfirming combos, creating frametraps, anti-airing, and so forth.

Close Normals

Close normals appear in many fighting games. Once the player is 'close' in on the opponent then using certain button-attacks will cause a different move to be used. One way of thinking of this is that close normals are a type of command normal that only trigger in proximity of the opponent.

In any case these attacks are especially important in KOF.

Instead of a 'low jab' or Crouching serving as the fastest attack as in Street Fighter and many other fighters, the Close and attacks are even faster in KOF (which usually fall in the 2-4 frame startup region). This means that the fastest attacks also inflict heavy hitstun and can be canceled into command normals and special moves freely. Because of this, close normals have many uses.

• Punishing with a Close Heavy attack is easy due to the rapid startup while being converting to a damaging combo.
• If a close normal is blocked then both players are at a neutral advantage. This differs from Street Fighter where it is a universal rule where close attacks are hugely negative if uncanceled. Combined with hop pressure, 2-in-1s into command normals or specials, the threat of the faster-recovering Crouching , and the possibility for the blocking opponent look for an opportunity to Guard Cancel Roll, the attacking player can often continue attacking after a blocked close attack.
• Close attacks have big hitboxes and work as strong meaty attacks plus certain characters have exceptionally powerful close normals that can also anti-air or hit multiple times. Upward, vertical normals like Iori's Close are superb anti-airs on top of being strong offensive moves; Terry's Close is an example of a fast close attack that hits twice and can easily be hitconfirmed off of.
• Throws are activated with and and so a fast, safe close attack will activate should a normal throw attempt fail.
  
  

Four Button Layout

Adjusting from a six button layout to KOF's four button style is important for understanding the differences in spacing and footsies between games. In general, it's as if the 'medium' buttons in Street Fighter were broken down and distributed between Light and Heavy buttons, leaving two punch buttons and two kick strengths.

KOF lacks a 'low forward' kick as an intermediate between a 'low roundhouse' kick and the 'low short' kick. Instead it becomes pertinent to attack either with Crouching which can transfer into a combo easily (and certain ones can even be canceled) or instead committing to a longer sweep.

• Besides counterpoking a sweep or outspacing it with a projectile or other character-specific move, every character in KOF can hop over a read sweep for a combo.
  • Most sweeps can also be canceled on hit or on whiff similar to as in the older Street Fighters. By canceling a sweep into a special move that starts up fast and attacks the low hop space it becomes possible to reduce the risk of having a sweep hopped on.
• Crouching / recovers fast enough to block or anti-air a hop, but loses to heavier, longer attacks such as a Crouching/Standing .
  
  

Standing and heavy attacks are strong grounded attacks that either typically travel far horizontally or cover a higher angle for anti-airing. Horizontal attacks such as Kyo's Standing can end blockstrings, stop grounded approaches, and in Kyo's case hop over low attacks. As a reference these heavy normals closely parallel the nice, hefty Hard normals in Street Fighter III 3rd Strike or Capcom vs SNK 2.

Every character can use their Standing as a quick anti-air against hops before the enemy's attack can become active. Doing so carries a low risk as a jab isn't reliably punishable on reaction.

• Some standing attacks such as Joe's will hit crouching opponents and can be used to quickly pressure the opponent similarly to Ibuki's st.lp or anyone's far in Garou.
  
  

Standing attacks can be grouped into three main catagories and are comparable to the strong standing light kicks in Street Fighter.

• Some hit low, can be chain canceled into, and are cancelable. Daimon's standing resemble's Sagat's st.lk from SFII Super Turbo and functions similarly as Daimon's best grounded footsie attack. The low property forces the opponent to want to respect the attack and crouch block which sets the player up for walking into command grab range. If the opponent doesn't respect the poke then the Daimon player can cancel the attack into a command grab off a hit for a knockdown.
• Other standing kicks have a longer horizontal reach and can still be canceled into specials and command normals. These tools can quickly check the opponent on the ground and open up certain frametraps when canceled. Ryo's standing is a great of this and some SF precedents would be Chun Li's amazing st.lk in Alpha 2 or Abel's st.lk in SFIV.
• The final category is similar to the long horizontal kick, but with an upward angle. These attacks are fast and can hit crouching characters but will more importantly reach higher upward which will in turn naturally anti-air hops. Benimaru's infamous standing can annoy grounded opponents and shut down the short hop space with exceptional effectiveness. Many characters in ST have similar st.lk attacks but their effectiveness is overshadowed by the lack of hops and the abundance of stronger anti-air options.
  
  

Hitconfirms are simpler in KOF from the streamlined button size.

• In Street Fighter the usual hitconfirm combo goes cr.lk cr.lp, cr.mp xx special. A basic KOF confirm goes from cr.B cr.A xx special with the main difference being that the low can be chain canceled into and canceled into specials which eliminates the need to link the low strong as a cancelable move. In a sense the KOF crouching has the range and frame advantage of a Street Fighter low jab but the cancel properties of a low strong.
  • In KOFXIII hitconfirms are often more simple with most crouching and standing attacks being chain and special cancelable on their own.
• Comboing from Heavy attacks is also simper in KOF at times since the player can chain cancel the attack into a command normal and then special cancel off of that. A similar comparison would be is most SF characters had a simple chain combo like Ken's st.mp st.hp chain that could be confirmed into a Hadouken on block or Shoryuken/super on hit.
  
  

Each character can perform a unique Blowback Attack with + that causes a slow but big extra-hard attack that causes a soft knockdown on hit and can be canceled into specials or DMs. The effectiveness of each Blowback Attack varies by character though universally all of these attacks have large hitboxes once active. The stronger blowback attacks can function as anti-airs, long-ranged pokes, and hefty frametrap attacks.

• What makes these attacks especially interesting is that if they cause a counterhit the opponent is put in a freely juggable state which can be followed up upon with quick reactions. This increases the reward of landing a blowback attack as an anti-air or as a grounded frametrap.
• Blowback attacks cause more blockstun than close heavy attacks. Landing one can allow the player to perform even tighter blockstrings into slower specials.
• The startup on a blowback attack is massive which increases the risk of using these moves. A neat way to abuse this is to perform an empty hop against an opponent that likes to use GCCD attacks. The GCCD counter is activated with + so if the opponent blindly presses both buttons hoping for an alpha counter then the player can land and immediately throw the opponent out of the startup of the standing blowback attack.