Obscure Mechanics

[jaunger1999]

Hey all! First time posting here. I've been playing a lot of NGB (started my first karma run ever!) and NG2 lately and I've been finding a lot of mechanics I've never seen documented anywhere so I figured I'd share here. I don't know if some of these have names so I'll try to come up with what makes the most sense to me. If anyone wants to add or correct anything please do so.

Moves that let you buffer your next input in the air

Spoiler:

There are certain moves that let you buffer an OL input as long as you're in the air. It's easier to time if you press the button as soon as you're airborne.

Dragon Sword
On wall and During Flying Bird Flip X

Talons
Flying swallow on nonhuman enemies
On wall moves

Probably others.

Enemy Position Sensitive Moves

Spoiler:

You might have noticed that the second hit in the Dragon Sword sometimes causes Ryu to do the spin move at the end of YYY and wondered why that happened.
Well wonder no more. The reason this happens is that the third hit of YYY and the second hit of the X counter are exactly the same move. How do I know? If you do YYY and an enemy ends up behind you Ryu will do the backwards slash in the X counter.

The only other move I know of that's like this is the second hit of ->YY with the Talons.

OT Cancelling:

Spoiler:

In most cases, if the next button in a string is y, timing the press after the buffer window and before the recovery animation triggers an OT instead of the next move in the string, (assuming the enemy is delimbed.)
Basically, just delay your Y press on a delimbed enemy.
I don't think this works with XY launchers.

Strings I've tested this with.
The Y finishers in the Scythe, Lunar, and Vigoorian Flail X strings.
Dragon Sword: XXY, YYY, On landing X, Running YY.
Kusarigama: ->XX (this one's kinda weird because there's no Y press), XXXXY
Tonfa (not as useful here because of Heavenly Justice but still an option): ->XYY, YYY, XXYYY (only with the second Y press I think)

Useful applications: * = input delay to cause the cancel.
Dragon Sword
OL XX*Y: OL X has a high delimb rate and the second X press gives you time to react to whether or not you delimbed an enemy. If you're confident you can skip the second X press.
Y*Y: If a delimbed enemy is just out of reach of an OT you can use this to really quickly and safely close the gap.
YY*Y: The second Y press frequently takes off legs so I always delay my third Y press when using this string.

Lunar
XX*Y: The second X press has a pretty high delimb rate so I always delay the Y press.

Kusarigama
->XX Hold Y

On Landing Instant Running Y (OLIRY):

Spoiler:

I've seen people do this before but never seen it explained. You need to understand this to understand the next mechanic.
Basically hold the left stick (as if you were running) and press Y when you land. It doesn't matter if you jump straight up or in a direction. Because Y, ->Y, and running Y all translate into OTs this mechanic lets you perform an on landing OT.
This is insanely useful in chapter one when you only have the lvl 1 dragon sword. XYX OLIRY and Y Counter X OLIRY are legitimately better than the izuna drop in a lot of situations because you're less likely to be grabbed.
Also one of the best things about the kusarigama.
The only exception for this rule is with the lunar. The same input results in an OL ->Y which is likely a carryover from NGB. Ryu auto targets an enemy with the dragon sword and tonfa (and others) when you do this.

In Air X Into On Landing Instant Running X (OLIRX):

Spoiler:

This is where it gets interesting.
Adding in air x to your jump changes your OL property which allows you to instantly do a running X move. The OL input can't be buffered but there's no startup time when you press the button.
This works with every weapon except the dragon sword to my knowledge.
It also allows the lunar to do an OLIRY as long as you don't buffer the Y press.

Mid string counter attacks:

Spoiler:

So I'm sure it's pretty common knowledge that you can cancel a string by holding block which causes Ryu to automatically enter a block stance if he's hit.
I haven't really tested this but I accidentally hit the block button right when an enemy was about to hit me mid string and all of a sudden a counter attack came out. I was pretty surprised.
Would this work with guard resetting?

A friend who played the game way back told me it was possible to either counter attack or OT if an enemy was about to hit you after letting a UT go. I haven't been able to find anything about this or make it work myself but I suspect this might be the same thing. He also said it might've been patched out so idk.

Kusarigama Demon Cutter Nuances:

Spoiler:

This is more on the strategy end of things but I haven't seen many (or any) people who properly differentiate between this move's variations. There are two separate startup animations of different speeds and they have different delimb rates on nonhuman enemies. It's really hard to say for sure but it seems like the delimb rate is tied to the startup animation speed.
Fast startup = high delimb rate. Slow startup = low delimb rate.

The move grabs enemies up close differently from those far away. If they're far away Ryu does an animation where he pulls the enemy in and if they're up close this animation gets skipped. You're invulnerable either way so it doesn't really matter. If the grab kills an enemy you get different camera angles for the head cutting animation depending on whether or not you have to pull them in. Not really relevant to anything I just thought it was kinda neat.

Most of my testing on nonhuman enemies has been done on gajas so there might be some blindspots in my observations.

-> Hold Y: Slow startup animation. Use this when further away from human enemies after creating space with larger hitboxes (ETs/UTs for instance)

X Hold Y: I'm pretty sure the only reason this variation was included was to be consistent with the way -> Hold Y and X Hold Y work with the dragon sword. I can't think of any reason to use it.

X ->Y: Fast startup. Cuts off a leg which is good because the enemy isn't knocked away so this move can be chained into an OT by holding Y. Not as reliable because only one X press means the enemy is less stunned so they can get out of the grab. You generally want to use this grab after stunning a human enemy with a shuriken or something to reduce the probability of them escaping. This one doesn't seem safe at all against nonhuman enemies.

360Y X or OLX X: The grab part is the same as X ->Y. This variation is insanely powerful against nonhuman enemies given the high delimb rate, fast startup, and the fact that it can be used OL. You get super quick access to an easy delimb and it can be used from a distance so you don't have to risk getting close to enemies with lots of super armor.

XX ->Y: Fast startup. This one cuts off an arm and pushes human enemies away. Nonhuman enemies don't get pushed away so you can hold the y button to automatically chain into an OT. Much more reliable because either the second X press keeps the enemy stunned or the enemy evades the second X press and the grab subsequently catches them. Very infrequently will an enemy escape this grab but it does happen.

Kusarigama/Scythe OT Chain

Spoiler:

You can hold Y and Ryu will do OTs so long as there's a delimbed enemy next to him.
This mechanic is hinted at in the Scythe's move list by the downed enemy move.

Dragon Sword Running YY->Y

Spoiler:

Maybe this is obvious but I wondered why this was even an option for the longest time.
The launcher at the end automatically targets an enemy you aren't in the process of attacking if one is available.
Probably still useless lol.

Multihit move shuriken cancelling:

Spoiler:

Maybe obvious to a lot of people but each separate hit in shuriken cancellable multihit moves can be cancelled. Probably useful for approaching with kusarigama ->X but I need to look into that more.

[d_Nought]

OT Cancelling

Dragon Sword Run X is another one that can quickly go to OT. Dragon Sword XXXY lets you just mash Y at the end to go for an OT, and the sidestep on that move also has neat iFrames.

On Landing While Running

This is definitely something I've been trying to make more use of lately, but I don't see anyone use it other than the God ShowR18 of course (and a few other combo/style players). I think it's most handy with the Kusa obviously, but also the Dual Swords, because Run Y is their most guaranteed delimb move. On the Dragon Sword I'm more of a fan of OL >X though.

Ryu will auto target the running attack on every weapon iirc. He can even turn 180 degrees, but it's something he does on his own and you can't really control it.

Run X on landing will be cancelled if you go down with in air shurikens, but you can still do inair B OL run Y from standing jump, forward jump and wind run.

Also you can OL Run X from the Level 2+ Dragon Sword Flying Swallow on landing.

Shuriken cancelling

One of the coolest things to do is to shuriken cancel a different enemy to the one you're attacking. Seems like an obvious point for people who know about redirection but literally no one does it. It's especially useful in NG2 over NGB because enemies will more readily eat your shurikens. This gives >X moves a bit of an interesting nuance, esp. Dragon Sword and Dual Swords.

Also VF 360 Y I think is the one exception to shuriken cancellable multihit moves (can only be SC'd on the flourish at the end)

A few things I want to know about are:

- Any amusing combo exploits with the OT animations. The Dragon Sword >Y OT on a de-legged enemy (the kick) is pretty famous, and the Kusarigama one slightly less so, but it would be interesting to see if there were any other "OT" juggles.

- iFrames on non-obvious or seemingly unsafe moves. There are occasions where I've tanked an IS in the XXXY leading to Izuna for example, and *sometimes* I feel like I've gotten Lunar XYYYY in a room full of multirocket guys and they all have anti-aimbot activated. Kazama Jin's thread here has a nice observation - viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1914 - when you hit enemies, the hitbox and Ryu's iFrames seem to change versus when you whiff - an example here being that sometimes it's possible to launch 2 or 3 guys with DS >Y if you hit a grounded enemy early in the animation.

- Any obscure Tonfa Heavenly Justice tricks. I kinda like HJ buffer Run X/Y HJ buffer Run X/Y repeat. I *think* if you time it right it has almost full iFrames or at least anti-aim Frames or something like that, but that's just a feeling and not fact. For example, ShowR use it to blow through Dagra Dai's stupid lightning in Sigma 2 (in principle also works in Vanilla but the timing is very tight).

- Things you can do while holding block, aside from the obvious OL UT etc. Would be good to have a list somewhere because I keep forgetting .

[Royta]

Great notes to put together, I knew most of them myself but I'm sure this will be great to link to in future talks I might have with players looking to learn. Cheers for taking the time to write it down Jaunger, really!

> OLIRY is better than Izuna
Note that the level 1 dragon sword doesn't have the Izuna, that's NGS2 exclusive.

> OLIRY kusarigama
Do you have an example of these strings? I rarely do aerial moves with the weapon outside of jumping YXY (? I think that's in the input).

> mid string counter
ShowR shows this off here I believe:

> after UT counter or OT
This is in Razor's Edge by using the hold-moves, don't think NGII has this.

> OT animations
I know the 'dash slash' the Dragon Sword does against enemies without legs can be used as a regular attack. The Dual Katanas also can 'whiff' their OT if you space it correctly, making the animation not trigger but the attack hit. It's insanely powerful, nearly 100% delimb (thus killing a foe who has already lost a limb).

> iframes data
Without data-extraction we'll never get this down to a science but most of Ryu's attacks have i.frames during some part, even basic attacks like XXY. Enemies have decreased agression while you attack and I think also sort of get 'dumb' while you do so (less accurate shooting, IS whiffing etc.)

[jaunger1999]

One thing that I feel is worth adding is that the running X OT trick with the dragon sword doesn't work the same way at lvl 2. You have to wait until Ryu finishes the slash. kinda strange that it's taken away and then given back.

You're also probably mostly right d_Nought about running attacks auto-targeting. I don't think the kg does this OL but probably every other weapon.

What I mean when I say Dragon Sword lvl 1 OLIRY is so useful.
Because
a) XYX and the Y counter have reasonably high delimb rates and
b) OLIRY translates to an OT
you have a pretty good alternative to the Izuna Drop (since you don't have it yet) that doesn't leave you vulnerable to grabs.

OLIRY kusarigama:
running Y has insane range so I often target enemies with in air shurikens to aim it at enemies far off and off screen.

In air X OLIRY is pretty good because In air X sometimes takes off legs so you get an OT. If it doesn't they'll probably lose their head.

In air YX OLIRY is really good against wolves because the in air hits very frequently stun (if they aren't stunned then dodge on landing) and the running Y often makes their heads explode.
Super good against gajas and van gelves too. These enemies love to back off when delimbed so I'll take advantage of the stun to guarantee the OT.

I hope that answers what you're asking Royta.

[Murphy's Ghost]

I knew of a number of these but in general this is a great thread that makes me nostalgic for the days when I could actually play this game pretty well lol.

> OLIRY is better than Izuna

This is one of my chapter 1 staples and even if you had ID / after you upgrade the sword I agree it's still preferable.

[JTB123]

Nice write up man and welcome to the forums

Stuff like this I feel is exactly what is missing when people just start playing, all these little nuanced abilites that are staples of the game yet you only really find them out through tons of play time.

[Royta]

I knew of a number of these but in general this is a great thread that makes me nostalgic for the days when I could actually play this game pretty well lol.

> OLIRY is better than Izuna

This is one of my chapter 1 staples and even if you had ID / after you upgrade the sword I agree it's still preferable.

Yeah Izuna is pretty trash in this game I feel, really a beginners trap. It has its uses but with how enemies work, IS, their grabs etc it just isn't safe enough. Doesn't help that the frame data of certain ID's is trash, meaning you don't even have i.frames while recovering so you get blown out of the sky in your recovery.

[d_Nought]

I knew of a number of these but in general this is a great thread that makes me nostalgic for the days when I could actually play this game pretty well lol.

> OLIRY is better than Izuna

This is one of my chapter 1 staples and even if you had ID / after you upgrade the sword I agree it's still preferable.

Yeah Izuna is pretty trash in this game I feel, really a beginners trap. It has its uses but with how enemies work, IS, their grabs etc it just isn't safe enough. Doesn't help that the frame data of certain ID's is trash, meaning you don't even have i.frames while recovering so you get blown out of the sky in your recovery.

I have the same feeling about Wind Path and Guilloutine Throw, and in my case I wanted to go down the rabbit hole of all these Obscure Mechanics after watching people who are hellaciously good at this game play super stylishly and noticing how little they use Wind Path and GT even against IS ninjas. Guilloutine Throw is good if you can actually get it to connect, because then you can chain it until they die, but IS ninjas especially love to dodge it with circle strafing and rolls, and a lot of the time you end up doing an inair X with an IS stuck which is basically asking to die. I always tell myself it's like wearing the One Ring - it gives you the illusion of infinite power against trashy tac ninjas but will abandon you when you most need it.

I think it's definitely more compelling to play in a way that avoids getting stuck with IS in the first place as opposed to having to constantly iFrame through them, but obviously it's much more difficult. You have to constantly be moving and taking advantage of the stuff in this thread, especially on landing Run and Directionals. I've pretty much exclusively been playing practice saves lately. The first save of Chapter 2, the werewolf and gaja spam fights in Chapter 5, the Cathedral fight in Chapter 8 and Chapter 11 in general.

[Royta]

GT is fantastic but you have to use it 'smart'. You often can find a bad or lacking player if they keep doing aerial slashes by accident. IS ninjas have 3 'states' i.e. attack, encircling and ranged. Usually most go for encircle while one runs towards you. That one you can GT, the rest basically can't.

This is an example of a well timed GT

I saw he was going to throw and did a split second GT to nail him to the wall for a delimb while avoiding the IS coming my way. That's when it's great.

Wind Path is mostly useful for the stagger it generates. Doing WP into shuriken and then the downwards slash is an unavoidable knockdown generally speaking which is fantastic to solo out a foe. Good i.frames on demand too. But again, got to be sure to use it on a foe that's either in ranged or melee mode, not encirclement.

Playing the first fight on Chapter 11 without Ninpo on OLB really helped elevate my game imo. Wish I still had that save....

[JTB123]

Found a very useful bit of tech involving the Dragon Swords ET. Always used to think it was a pretty useless move but on hit against ninjas it guarantees you a follow up FS while they're still grounded resulting in an instand kill. This is devastating if you hit multiple enemies infront of Ryu and knock them all down, the hitbox of the FS is very generous and you can easily take out 3 or 4 ninjas doing this.

Now that I think about it this should have been super obvious but I tended to focus on kills resulting from just ET's or UT's and never thought to try the FS as a follow up.

[Farnham The Drunk]

i got a neat Kusarigama insta-kill grapple (Demon Cutter):
using DC on an enemy who is in a downed state (laying or kneeling) Ryu straight up cuts off his head.
Usage: ever missed Guillotine Throw and did that X in air swipe move? well that downs all ninja it touches, so if it hits, follow up with DC and its an insta kill.
another example would be: XY B to set up and then just >holdY for DC

And i saw some mistakes about DC nuances and wanted to clear things up:

Arm cutter :
>holdY
X holdY
XX>Y

Leg cutter :
360Y holdX
on landing X holdX

So basically all Y grapples are for an arm, and all X grapples are for a leg...

[JTB123]

Just a random note but it's super effective, I show this in ToV7 in the walkthrough but a level 3 windblades hitting an airborne Vangelf is an instant kill. Very useful for the times when you happen to have multiple just hovering over you or when they just refuse to come down.

[jaunger1999]

And i saw some mistakes about DC nuances and wanted to clear things up:

Arm cutter :
>holdY
X holdY
XX>Y

Leg cutter :
360Y holdX
on landing X holdX

So basically all Y grapples are for an arm, and all X grapples are for a leg...

Hey Farnham, are you familiar with the X->Y demon cutter? I noticed you didn't include it in your list of cutters. I guess it probably looks like it should be the same move as X hold Y but it is actually its own distinct move. iirc I didn't talk about X hold Y in my original post because I haven't noticed a difference between it and -> hold Y (though it's entirely possible there is one.)

[Farnham The Drunk]

Hey Farnham, are you familiar with the X->Y demon cutter? I noticed you didn't include it in your list of cutters. I guess it probably looks like it should be the same move as X hold Y but it is actually its own distinct move. iirc I didn't talk about X hold Y in my original post because I haven't noticed a difference between it and -> hold Y (though it's entirely possible there is one.)

well i just tested it and ur correct, and i didnt know that actually... X holdY is different from X ->Y ... thx for letting me know mate! so yeah, X ->Y is a leg cutter and the exception to all the other Y cutters! good thing u saw that! and yeah all other Y cutters are the same, just different inputs...
so the list is basically this now:

Arm cutter :
>holdY
X holdY
XX>Y

Leg cutter :
360Y holdX
on landing X holdX
X >Y

that should be complete now right? any other insights on this?

[jaunger1999]

that should be complete now right? any other insights on this?

Yeah I'm pretty sure it is. I added some new observations about the move in my original post.