Daraku Tenshi's unique design approach and downright spaghetti code lead to the game having plenty of mechanics and oddities not typically seen in most other fighting games. Similarly to a game like Heritage for the Future, there are many oddities and exceptions that we have tried to define as best we could, and as such, there is a very high likelihood of there being missing data that simply was not found or documented properly yet. In spite of this, this page should be able to provide the most accurate information with what is currently understood about the game.
Before reading the rest of this page, note that it'll refer to specific types of hit or hurtboxes every so often. For hitboxes, they may be referred to by color, and for hurtboxes, they're either referring to specific body sections or blocking; most of these are relevant and mentioned where necessary. Using a cheat in MAME, one can view these and see that they possess different colors. The colors and what they are will be listed below.
- Lime = Head hurtbox (not relevant)
- Yellow = Body hurtbox, has priority over feet hurtbox if a hitbox hits both at the same time
- Green = Feet hurtbox
- Red = Blocking or parry hurtboxes
- Tan = Hurtbox when knocked down OR alt sitstun hurtbox
- Orange = Collisionbox
- White = Standard hitboxes
- Light blue = Launches on air hit, air techable
- Dark blue = Usually a launcher, usually techable but not always
There are other types of hit and hurtboxes but they're either reused colors with little to no unique effect, unused, or it is simply not known what they mean.
Movement
When grounded, every character is able to walk in both directions, and also dash by double tapping a direction (either 66 or 44). These dashes all work the same as dashes in a game like Street Fighter, where the dash is inactionable until the animation ends, therefore making them a commitment. Yuiren provides the singular exception, as his forward dash is actually a run that can be stopped at any time, allowing micro-dashes (although Yuiren stops in place when the dash ends, rather than sliding). Another note about dashes (excluding Yuiren's run) is that they prevent the character from being grabbed by grounded throws, where air throws will work instead. Characters hit by regular moves during a dash though will not be put into an air state; they'll stay grounded.
All characters can also perform jumps, including forward and back super jumps (2 then 7 or 9). Normal and super jumps function almost completely identically to each other, with the sole difference being that super jumps provide more horizontal (but not vertical) movement. Every character has a 4 frame prejump, with the sole exception of Haiji, who has 8. There also is no landing recovery of any kind when doing any or no action from a normal jump.
POW Meter
This game possesses its own unique meter, known as the POW Meter; the red bar under the character's health. It starts at 0 at the beginning of every round, maxes out at 44 (number visible in Fightcade's training mode) and raises when pressing (not just whiffing!), hitting, getting hit by or blocking moves. The exact values are as follows:
- Pressing any move: +2
- Hitting any move (including throws, not including supers): +4 per hit
- Getting hit: +5 per hit
- Blocking a hit: +3 per hit
1 point of POW is equivalent to 1 pixel on the meter horizontally.
It is also possible to lose 4 POW for every taunt an opponent does. Taunts are cancellable with any action (except if a direction was held when the taunt was performed), meaning they can be spammed to drain POW quickly.
All characters can press HP + HK to charge their POW meter. The startup varies from character to character, although everyone can act out at any point. Once it starts charging, it takes 3 frames to gain 1 point.
MAX Mode
Once at 44 POW, the bar will start flashing and automatically drain until it reaches 0, where it must be refilled again. During this state, you are in MAX Mode, which provides significant changes. The most notable change is that you can now perform super moves, which will automatically end MAX once performed. Another notable change is to the hitstun of your moves, where they all gain an increase based on the type of move they are.
- Lights: +9 frames
- Heavies: +8 frames, cause crouch sitstun when hitting crouchers
- Aerials: +4 frames
Due to these increases, one may expect combos to become significantly easier and new routes to open up, however this is neglecting the fact that pushback on hit (and block) also increases, which can lead to unchanged or even worse combo ability in some instances, meaning MAX isn't exactly always a positive effect.
Due to how easy it is to get to MAX Mode, a player typically enters it more than once per match, which is a major part of this game's explosive nature, especially as MAX allows a few characters to perform powerful, sometimes infinite combos until it runs out.
MAX also affects knockdowns. On spike and slide knockdowns, the facing direction of the opponent is opposite to what it normally is outside of MAX mode (eg. A knockdown that normally has them end facedown will instead leave them faceup in MAX). This is relevant, as characters have different frame data for which side they were knocked down on, and the animation for the opponent going on their opposite side takes longer, allowing better oki. On sweeps, the opponent is simply launched slightly higher and further.
MAX also allows you to perform Guard Cancels, although they work strangely in this game. You can only input a Guard Cancel during the hitfreeze of a move on block, meaning moves with lower hitfreezes will be extremely difficult to Guard Cancel. The Guard Cancel options are LP + HP for Escape Dash (which adds afterimages to it), as well as forward or back dashes. When trying to perform a back dash Guard Cancel, time the first back input as the move comes out, so the second back input has a high window for input. Note that forward dash Guard Cancels cannot pass through an opponent, as it's just a regular forward dash.
Since Yuiren uses a run in place of a dash, he will end up running as normal, although there won't be any sound effects and his head hurtbox is replaced with his blocking hurtbox, which, if hit, will count as blocking a move. Yuiren also can't input anything whilst holding the dash, so the direction must be released first before you do anything.
Offensive Systems
Damage
Damage in this game is random, similar to Street Fighter 2, although sadly no exact damage values are known at this time. It is believed that each hit of a given move has its own range of values to choose from, with the lowest and highest values being rarer than the middle ranges. Damage values can also change in strange instances, such as when inputting 5HK before hit 2 of Roche's 5HK to cancel to r.X, causing the damage to inexplicably lower. If you'd like to help out in finding the damage values, feel free, and be sure to let us know on the Discord!
When cancelling into moves, the move that you cancelled into will get lower damage. This means that links, when applicable, are always better to do for max damage, including linking to specials or supers.
Throws
Throws are performed with either 4/6HP or 4/6HK when close to an opponent, and are all 2 frame startup. The direction you held doesn't actually dictate where the throw sends, as HP is always forward throw and HK is always back throw, with the exception of Taro who has them swapped around for some reason. Yuiren and Yuiran also have access to a unique air throw, done by pressing 2HP when in the air and close to an airborne opponent.
Throws and command throws do not have any whiff animation, meaning if a throw is missed, you will simply perform the button you used to do the throw instead. It should also be noted that some characters have very poor throw ranges, to where trying to get a throw with a back input is extremely difficult to do, so it is preferred to just use forward instead.
It is possible to tech a throw using LP+HP, with each character's throws having their own tech windows. Command throws can also be teched, but the tech window is 2 frames for them, and command throw supers are untechable. When a throw is teched, both characters go into 31 frames of recovery.
There is 20 frames of throw protection after waking up, as well as during hit/blockstun. A specific exception to the throw protection when being hit though, is during what is called alt sitstun, where command throws and pursuit attacks can hit this specific state.
While there doesn't seem to be any kind of throw invulnerability on moves that don't go airborne, collisionboxes for characters can actually push opponents or themselves out of throw range. A notable example is Roche, whose backwalk is unthrowable by a handful of characters, as well as his crouch, which is throwable only by command throws and, due to her thin collisionbox when walking, Yuiran.
Cancel System
One of the immediate differences to other fighting games new players will feel is in the game's cancel system. As the game was set out to be more realistic than its contemporaries, moves do not cancel immediately into another action, but rather have the animation sped up, typically once the active frames ends but this can vary from move to move. This applies to cancelling normals to normals (known officially as 'Rushing Combination') as well as cancelling normals to specials or supers. Due to this, the lack of an ingame combo counter as well as how the POW Meter affects hitstun, leads to new players feeling unsure if their combos are working consistently or not.
How long a move's recovery is during a cancel can vary in the same move, sometimes.
We will use Roche 5HK as an example:
- Hit 2 cancelled: Animation continues at a faster pace, 11 cancel recovery frames
- Hit 1 cancelled: Animation reverses, 9 cancel recovery frames
Another specific note is that cancelling into other normals or command normals removes a frame of cancel recovery, whereas this isn't true when cancelling into specials or supers.
Due to this unique and varying system, the recovery frames in the frame data tend to list more than one set of recovery frames, with the format being <Recovery> | <Cancel recovery>. These frames are counted after the active frames, even in instances where active frames may be shortened on a cancel (such as Harry 5LP; the shortened active frames will be listed in the active frames column if applicable), although exceptions are made with moves like Yuiran's 6HP which outright removes hit 3 if cancelled on hit 2.
Furthermore, the only hard rule regarding cancel routes is going from light to heavy. Otherwise, every character has their own cancel routes (or lack thereof), as well as 'target combos' which are really just normals that are able to cancel into reverse stance normals; there are very few unique moves made to only go after a normal. Cancel windows can also vary depending on what move you're doing, and what type of move you're cancelling into; there's even instances of completely frame perfect cancel windows that only occur on hit/block.
There are also moves that only have specific recoveries on hit/block, which are listed with an asterisk. These are on a fair number of Torao's normals for instance.
Also note that, on whiff, normals can still cancel to normals, but not specials or supers.
Cancel Bugs
Command grabs can actually be cancelled into despite the lack of a whiff animation. As you might've guessed, this allows you to reduce the recovery of moves and let them combo into things they shouldn't normally. This affects Harry and Yuiran.
Another bug is with super cancellable moves. While all supers can only play out the animation with their respective heavy button, pressing the light button instead will actually let super cancellable moves empty cancel. This creates many infinites, and the technique is currently banned in competitive play.
There are also a variety of character specific cancels, some being empty cancels, the others being very tight, sometimes frame perfect cancel routes into moves they otherwise don't lead into.
Pursuit Attacks/OTGs
A small handful of moves are also capable of hitting opponents in a knockdown state. These are typically the 3HK sweeps, but this isn't always the case, and some characters may have more than one pursuit attack. For some, these can also be used after throws, allowing for higher damage off of them. These OTG hits can only occur once, where the opponent is invincible afterwards and can get up normally.
It should be noted that Torao has a bugged knockdown, where if he is hit by a spike knockdown and ends up laying on his back, any move that reaches low enough can hit him. Luckily, the same 1 hit limit on OTGs applies.
Aerials
Aerials work differently in this game compared to others. For starters, there are two types of aerial: rising and falling. If your Y position is rising, then you'll be performing rising aerials, and if it's going down, then you'll get falling aerials. This means that you'll need to wait until the moment you start falling if you want to aim for a grounded opponent (although note some rising aerials can hit a standing opponent if done at the latest possible rising frame, and some rising aerials can hit standing opponents if done immediately.
Another aspect of aerials is how there seemingly is no difference when you press light or heavy versions of either punch or kick. Despite the animation reuse, the frame data and hitboxes tend to vary, so each aerial has its own specific use case. Typically, light aerials are faster and last longer at the cost of damage, and heavy aerials are slower with better hitboxes and less active frames, although this isn't a hard rule.
To differentiate between rising and falling aerials in shorthand, they may be referred to as ris.X or fal.X. Aerial attacks are very important in this game as good anti-air options are few and far between, and they do large amounts of blockstun.
Desperation Moves
Once at 23 HP or lower (max is 97; for Haiji he must be at 15 or lower), the health bar flashes red, which signifies the ability to use Desperation Moves, although they're just the MAX supers able to be used without needing to be in MAX. There are a few supers that become enhanced if both low health and MAX are true, such as Yuiran's [3]46HP, which has a longer animation doing more damage.
Stance Switches
LK + HK perform a Stance Switch, which puts the character into or takes them out of a reversed version of their idle sprite, giving the name Reverse Stance. Reverse Stance provides a different set of normals for characters, the amount of which varying from character to character. The only actions that won't make you leave Reverse Stance are walking, blocking and certain Reverse normals. Some non-Reverse Stance attacks also put the character into Reverse Stance.
Torao can input left or right during his stance swaps and step forwards or backwards whilst also entering/leaving Reverse Stance.
Sitstun
Unique to DT are the three forms of what is called 'sitstun' in the game. Sitstun refers to the animation where a character falls over onto their rear when getting hit by certain attacks.
The first type of sitstun is just called sitstun. This occurs when any heavy normal (not just crouching heavy kicks!) that has no unique property cleanly hits the feet hurtboxes. What 'cleanly' means in this context, is that the hitbox does not overlap at all with a body hurtbox. This will put the character into a mostly invincible state, although the vulnerability frames are seldom usable for combo extensions, as for most characters, they only last 18 frames, with some exceptions.
The second type of sitstun is crouch sitstun. This occurs when a MAX mode heavy hits a croucher. This causes a slightly different animation that for some reason has entirely different vulnerability frames to the normal sitstun mentioned above, which is easier to combo from although still difficult.
The third and final type of sitstun is called alt sitstun. This occurs when getting hit by specific moves programmed to do it, like Harry's r.5K. This possesses not only regular vulnerability frames, but also a different type after those ones end. This specific vulnerability is represented by a tan hurtbox, and said hurtbox is capable of being hit by command throws or pursuit attacks, allowing combos into such moves. If hit by a pursuit attack, this causes a restand.
Sitstun vulnerabilities and invuln can be found below. Note: in the alt sitstun vulnerability column, the first set of vulnerable frames are the regular hurtboxes, and then the second set is the tan hurtbox right after.
| Sitstun vuln | Sitstun invuln | Crouch sitstun vuln | Crouch sitstun invuln | Alt sitstun vuln | Alt sitstun invuln | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cool | 18f | 41f | 32f | 41f | 32f, 24f | 17f |
| Harry | 18f | 41f | 28f | 41f | 30f, 22f | 17f |
| Taro | 18f | 42f | 28f | 42f | 28f, 24f | 18f |
| Yuiren | 18f | 41f | 27f | 42f | 28f, 24f | 17f |
| Yuiran | 18f | 41f | 27f | 42f | 28f, 24f | 17f |
| Roche | 18f | 41f | 28f | 41f | 28f, 24f | 17f |
| Torao | 16f* | 41f | 28f | 41f | 28f, 24f | 17f |
| Haiji | 5f | 54f | 28f | 41f | 28f, 24f | 17f |
The first 3 frames of Torao's regular sitstun are invulnerable, then there's 16 vulnerable frames after.
Defensive Systems
GUR Meter
Under the red POW Meter is blue text that says GUR, with the number 99 next to it. This is a character's guard meter, which starts at 99 at the start of every round, automatically starts to refill (with no grace period) if lower than 99, and will lead to a guard break animation if it reaches 0, done by blocking too many attacks. GUR refill rates vary from character to character, and some moves are coded to automatically perform a guard break on block, like Harry's 214236HK. If you don't want to pay attention to the number, you can instead look at the hitsparks when blocking; the normally bluish white circles turn to orange when at low GUR.
Due to the strangely quick animation of a guard break (5f initial invuln, 30f vulnerability for all characters, totalling 35 frames), some moves actually end up being minus on guard break, oftentimes worse than if the opponent blocked the move normally. Be aware of this in your pressure.
As mentioned earlier, every character has a different GUR refill rate. How it works is that every character has a value that is added every frame, until it reaches 255, in which it adds back a GUR value and underflows back to the start. While most characters have this value reset to 0, some have numbers that don't evenly add up to 255; this causes the excess values to overflow into counting for the next GUR value, which leads to GUR refilling a frame faster in that instance.
Below is a list of all GUR refill rates, in frames as well as showing their corresponding value.
| GUR recovery rate (frames) | GUR recovery rate (value) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cool | 8f | 32 |
| Harry | 7f | 38 |
| Taro | 8f | 32 |
| Yuiren | 11/10f | 25 |
| Yuiran | 13f | 20 |
| Roche | 8f | 32 |
| Torao | 7/6f | 40 |
| Haiji | 6/5f | 48 |
Blocking
Blocking has some rather strange quirks in this game. For one, there is effectively no way to perform a fuzzy overhead of any kind, as characters can actually switch their guard animation during blockstun, which allows them to crouch block and avoid the rising aerials that can hit standing opponents in this game. Another strange property is the fact that a character's hurtboxes change from the regular hurtboxes that allow damage to ones that allow blocking attack.
When these red blocking hurtboxes are hit, the one that was hit (NOT all of them; this is relevant) will disappear for at least 1 or more frames, the duration of which varying greatly between attacks. This actually can cause variable block advantages as a good amount of moves have multiple hits, but can end up missing hits to become less safe, or hitting later to become more safe.
This is also character dependent; for example, on Harry, he possesses 3 stand block hurtboxes: one for his head, another for the body, and another for the feet. Comparatively, Taro possesses only a singular hurtbox on his stand block. Recall earlier how only one of the hurtboxes gets disabled; this is what leads to inconsistencies in multihit moves frame advantages on block.
Below is a list of what hurtboxes characters have:
| Hurtbox(es) | Character(s) |
|---|---|
| 3, stand block (head, body and feet) | Cool, Harry, Torao |
| 2, stand block (body and feet) | Haiji |
| 1, stand block (body) | Taro, Yuiren, Yuiran, Roche |
| 2, crouch block (head and body) | Taro |
| 1, crouch block (body) | Everyone else |
It should be noted that swapping to crouch block from stand block, then back to crouch block and vice versa, will regenerate whatever hurtboxes were momentarily disabled. For example, Harry gets hit in the head block hurtbox, and it is to disappear for say, 5 frames. If he goes to crouch block for a frame, then back to stand block, the head hurtbox on stand block reappears despite it not having been 5 frames yet.
There's also a bizarre bug regarding Roche's stand block animation. When attempting to block moves that are not heavies, aerials or MAX mode specials, his damageable hurtboxes do not disappear for 8 frames. While the game will prioritize hitting the blocking hurtboxes where they overlap, Roche's feet hurtbox actually stick out of the blocking hurtboxes, and when the blocking hurtbox is hit, it doesn't remove the damageable hurtboxes; he has to specifically wait 8 frames. Effectively, this allows the opponent to use multihitting moves to essentially perform unblockables on Roche. This is possible to play around by switching to crouch block during blockstun however, as it'll delete the damageable hurtboxes, and Roche can go back to stand blocking without the erroneous hurtboxes allowing him to be hit.
There is also no form of air blocking in this game.
Wrongblock Penalty
There sort of exists a wrongblock penalty in DT, although it works strangely. On a croucher, any heavy will get 3 more frames of advantage on hit, which also means overheads get this on a crouch blocker. Aerials do NOT get extra frames on a crouch blocker. Low light attacks technically get 5 extra hitstun frames when hitting a stand blocker, although what is actually happening is that the low light is not hitting any feet hurtboxes, which remove 5 frames of advantage.
This can be observed when using something like Taro's 2LK: up close on most characters, it reaches high enough to hit body hurtboxes, causing its normal hitstun, however if spaced to hit just feet hurtboxes, you will lose 5 frames of advantage. The reason you don't lose advantage when hitting the feet of a blocking opponent is because, even on characters with a separate feet hurtbox in their block animation, they don't count as actual feet hurtboxes.
Low heavies also differ in the same way that low lights do, only instead of a different hit advantage, they won't incur sitstun, rather a regular state of hitstun.
Air Resets and Techs
DT features both air resets and air techs. Air resets happen when a character is hit in the air by a move with no unique properties (with the MAME cheat, these would be moves with white hitboxes). The character is invincible until reaching the ground. Air techs can be performed when a character is hit by a majority of launcher attacks (visualised with the MAME cheat by either light blue hitboxes or most dark blue hitboxes). Some launchers cannot be teched from, like Roche's 214P. All characters possess 14 frames of invulnerability when performing an air tech, after which it is possible for them to be hit, although a character can choose to end the air tech invulnerability early at frame 6 by performing an aerial. At earliest, air techs can be inputted on frame 21 from light blue launchers, and 13 from dark blue launchers, after hitfreeze.
Note that for the first 19 frames after hitfreeze, Yuiren is still vulnerable during an air reset, which allows certain niche combos. Air resets as a whole are not invulnerable to air throws, which allows the Yui sisters to combo into their air throws if you were air reset.
Escape Dash
LP + HP will perform a strike invulnerable, forwards-moving maneuver that also passes through opponents, called an Escape Dash. From this, you can either hold LP + HP or just forward to extend it by 30 frames, and during the 30 frames of standing, any attack button will initiate an Escape Attack. Some characters have a punch and kick escape attack, whilst others only have one. EAs will turn to face the opponent if they end up behind them.
If hit during an EA, the character is put into a strange hit state, where they take a fixed 38 frames of hitstun, slide away a bit, and also cannot be launched, meaning they'll stay grounded. This can cause some strange interactions such as Roche's 214P hitting twice rather than once, or 3HK sweeps leading to combos. MAX moves do not increase the hitstun in this state.
Quick Rise
Holding 2 until you land on the ground from launchers will cause the character to skip the initial bounce and laying down animations to get up quickly. Sadly, this mechanic is pretty much useless, as it requires you to not only be hit by a launcher (most of which are techable or have easy combos out of them), but also have landed on your back, meaning MAX mode launchers make the victim unable to perform this due to MAX swapping facing direction. It's best to hold 2 if hit by an untechable launcher in the rare event the combo is dropped, but don't expect this mechanic to come into play often if at all.
