The World of 2P: An Ode to +R Sol Pressure
By Sully
Intro
Fighting games are pretty damn cool. Their depth, design and intricacies have been written about to death at this point, with everything from win quotes to individual frames of animation having been examined with the precision of a CSI investigator. You can really talk about anything in fighting games if you want, but one thing I surprisingly don’t see much of are full move breakdowns. Oftentimes people like to make examinations of “bigger picture” concepts, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but a lot of what makes the genre so compelling is hidden in the details. I want to take a look at a small detail in one singular fighting game that holds a lot of significance to me- the depth and flexibility of Sol’s crouching punch in Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R.
This game is like if they made Guilty Gear good or something
In my mind, I like to look at fighting games as engines. All the moving bits and pieces fit against each other in a massive spiral of different consequences and reactions. Maybe this is a side effect of being an editor on Dustloop, but having a clinical breakdown of a character and what they’re capable of doing is really interesting to me. Looking at individual moves is often a good way to get an intimate view of this, as you can see the move in vacuum and think about the ways it impacts the game as a whole. My favorite thing to think about is what the most important move of a character is- not the best, the most important. It’s easy to conflate these terms, and shouldn’t they be synonymous anyways? Wouldn’t a character’s best move also naturally be their most important?
I disagree with this. I often find that many fighting game characters have their most important moves be something completely innocuous. We often think of things like the Mishima Electric Wind God Fist or Marth’s Forward Aerial being the most important parts of a character’s kit, and in these cases you might be right. However, if we take a look at other characters, we might be able to see examples of a character’s most important move not necessarily being their best. Sure, Clark’s Frankensteiner sure is awesome and perfectly sets up his game plan… but I'd argue his D normals are a much more powerful and important set of tools in his arsenal. Clark’s reward for winning neutral is his ability to put you in the muscle blender, but if he didn’t have a set of powerful normals to help him get to that point, he would be far weaker. Similarly, Kazuya’s Mist Step allows him to close the distance and begin his brutal mixup game that incorporates the Electric Wind God Fist, while Marth’s D-tilt helps solidify his poking mastery and demands opponents take riskier options to approach him which he can then catch with his Forward Aerial.
Thank god Ralf f.D was so good it tricked people into not complaining about this. Don't tell anyone!
In that sense, I define “most important move” as being “the move that I feel is most representative of a character’s gameplan”. They aren’t necessarily the move you’ll see the most, but rather the move that they can center their strategy around and begin initiating their greater methods of play. In that sense, you’re free to disagree with me on why I argue that 2P is Sol’s best move, since everyone will take away something from the way that they play him.
So what does this have to do with Sol? And for that matter, which Sol? There’s like, a billion of them across the entire franchise. Well, for today, we’re gonna be focusing on +R Sol in particular, and his uniquely advantageous 2P, or crouching punch. I want to examine all of the potential ways that this move impacts Sol as a character.
sniff Ain't it beautiful?!
Part One: Mr. Badguy, How Do I Love Thee?
The first thing to acknowledge about this article is that I am a huge +R Sol simp. I friggin’ love this character to death. He is one of my all-time favorite fighting game characters, even if I’m totally ass at +R. I have almost 200 hours in the game at this time of writing (which is far more than almost any other fighting game I own), and at least 150 of those hours are playing Sol, either in matches or training mode. And can you blame me? He’s fun as hell! He has this wild, lackadaisical attitude that just permeates his entire kit. So many of his moves have great punch behind them, thanks to either great effects, lots of hitstop or high damage. There’s nothing that gets the good chemicals flowing quite like a Sidewinder loop, and smacking people in the face with a surprise, screen-crossing FB Fafnir never gets old.
One of the most interesting things about Sol as a character, though, is that he has a lot going on under the hood. On the surface, he’s this tough-as-nails, smells-like-gasoline badass. Bad attitude, bad form in combat, bad fashion sense. Everything about him just screams “I don’t care, !@#$ off”. His wild hair, his loose clothes, the way he holds his Fireseal sword in reverse grip, the way many of his moves are lazy and unrefined, and the sheer lack of effort put into anything he does is tangible and enjoyable to watch. For example, his 2D sweep is just him dropping to the floor and kicking his opponents legs out from under them. You get the sense that Sol really couldn't care less about being here or playing fair, so all of his options are blunt and straightforward. Ky’s 6P is an elegant shoulder charge with straight form and elegant spacing; Sol’s 6P is a full-force gut punch.
Get down, make love.
Okay, maybe not that far down.
Then you dig a little deeper into his backstory, and you realize that Sol is holding back a lot. Sure, there’s that whole thing with being a Gear, but you also get the sense Sol doesn’t really care about trying too hard anyways. To him, combat is just a means to an end. As a result, many of Sol’s moves are designed to be lazy, but effective means of pushing his opponent around. For instance, that 2D I described earlier? One of the best sweeps in the entire game, since Sol dropping to the ground lowers his hitbox and lets him low-profile a bunch of stuff. Sol being able to low-profile through his opponents nonsense is a running theme in his kit. Using moves like Grand Viper, Sol can even make his way out of zoning or okizeme situations by ducking under projectiles. He doesn’t dramatically push his way through, or use a big explosion… he just… ducks under shit. If that’s not a testament (not that one) to his kit, I don’t know what is. Sol wants to exert the minimum force for maximum effect, which is an idea that flows into every part of his kit.
This character analysis is important to the subject of this article. 2P is yet another move of Sol’s that is lazy and simple, but effective. All he does is jut at the opponent with the butt of Fireseal, but in doing so opens the door to basically his entire gameplan. You can centralize so much of Sol’s gameplan around 2P that it isn’t even funny, and while you can replace it’s function with similar moves in Sol’s kit (like 5P), it offers so much for him that doing so would be actively skipping out on one of his best tools. Seriously, this little flick of an attack makes Sol a lot more threatening than you might expect.
Part Two: Dissecting 2P
Sol’s 2P has the following frame data: eight damage, Mid hit, 5f startup, 4f active, 4f recovery, +2 on block, level 1 hit, with a tiny hitbox. It has the ability to Gatling into Sol’s entire tree, and has the same stats when Sol is in Dragon Install. Overall, it’s a solid little normal that does the job of being a crouching poke well enough.
2P hitbox
2P frame data
So, alright. The move is good. But why? What makes it so special or powerful compared to the rest of Sol’s kit? I mean, he has so many amazing normals to choose from. 5K is a 3f normal, anti-airs, starts combos, abares, does the dishes, fills in combos, resets pressure, sets up for 5D, waters the plants, and menaces advancing opponents. So why am I not talking about that? Well, I think a lot of people would agree that 5K is probably Sol’s best normal. Remember though- best does not mean most important. Sol has a number of other good options that can fill in the place of 5K if necessary. 2H also anti-airs quite well, as does 6P. Sol can start much better, higher-damaging combos with his c.S and 5H. Sol has a number of good grounded pressure options as well, such as c.S and 2K. His aerial pressure options are similarly great, including a great safejump tool in j.S, a disgusting air button in j.P and a freakish abomination of a normal in j.H, whatever the hell that thing is. One could even make the argument that Sol’s 2S is probably his best button, or perhaps even 2D.
The point is not to evaluate a normal based on whether or not it’s good, the point is to examine how important and helpful a normal is to the gameplan of the character it is tied to. An important normal helps an entire game plan along, and is foundational to the rest of Sol instead of being yet another great tool. To that end, we need to look at 2P in the context of Sol’s greater kit to appreciate its value.
Part Three: The Glory of Strike/Throw, Or: Dude, Just Because It’s Not a High/Low Doesn’t Make It Bad
It’s hard to say what a fighting game character “wants to do”. The objective of a fighting game character can change from game to game, and even match up to matchup. The nominal mathematician's answer of what a fighting game character wants to do in a match is “win”, duh, but the ways they go about doing that can be vastly different. Faust wants to zone you out before going for a mixup, Bridget wants to play keepaway, Chipp wants to be annoying, Nago wants to completely obliterate any semblance of balance, and Sol wants to throw you.
The primary way in which Sol wins his rounds is by winning exchanges in neutral, getting hard knockdowns, and engaging in pressure. Sol gets hard knockdowns from all sorts of things, like ending combos in Volcanic Viper or Bandit Revolver, his basic throw, or sweep. From here, Sol wants to keep you blocking on wakeup using options like safejump j.S, Gunflame FRC, or meaties like 2K or 2P. Once you’re blocking, Sol has you right where he wants you. He can run all sorts of difficult, complex pressure on you to keep you blocking and himself safe from reversals. And then… it happens. He takes advantage of your pathetic blocking and runs up, grabs you, throws you over his shoulder and begins punching you repeatedly into the wall before getting a hard knockdown and doing it all over again. Dope!
Endorphins.
Alright cool, so that’s kinda what Sol wants to do. He wants you to be pressured and blocking for long enough until you get complacent and he throws you. That’s where 2P comes in, as it is excellent for doing this. As 2P is +2 on block, Sol can do all sorts of options afterward to catch you attempting to escape his pressure. He can gatling into his other buttons to extend pressure, or delay them slightly and frametrap. For example, 2P > 5K is a 1f frametrap, meaning the only way to escape is with a perfectly timed DP. On the other hand, 2P > 6P has a much larger gap, but is more likely to catch people mashing as a result. Sol can even choose to ignore these options and throw you immediately, often doing so at such a speed as to be unreactable. God help you if you’re in the corner when he does any of these frametraps, as Sol’s corner counterhit combos are crazy chances to conclude the competition. That is to say, those things hurt badly, easily dealing upwards of 300 damage or more in the hands of a skilled player. The sheer threat of Sol blasting you into nothingness looms large whenever he’s got you on the back foot, and a skilled player can turn even the smallest of hits into incredible damage.
Moving back a bit, 2P also factors heavily into Sol’s okizeme. While it functions incredibly well in pressure, Sol’s most frequent use of 2P is immediately after a hard knockdown. As a powerful okizeme button, 2P is great for baiting DP responses. It recovers fast enough to dodge DPs, as well as leading right into pressure strings (more on that in a second) if your opponent chooses to block. If your opponent decides to Burst, then 2P can be OS’d with 2H to catch it and punish. 2P’s biggest weakness is that it puts Sol right into throw range if you do it too close, meaning Sol needs to space himself out a bit if he doesn’t wanna get thrown and his momentum reversed. Spacing Sol out also has the side effect of making his pressure strings a bit weaker.
That being said, a bit weaker does not mean weak. Sol’s basic pressure string is 2P > c.S > 2S, and it’s a fun little series of buttons that does a lot for him. It spaces the opponent out far enough to cover Sol if he wants to end pressure with a Gunflame, but also leaves him close enough to run forward after it for a throw. Even better, Sol can choose to press 2S again, since it’s mildly disjointed and +3 on block. Doing so lets Sol condition his opponents to sit still and take whatever's coming. He can also run forward and press f.S > 5H, keeping his opponent sitting still without putting himself in much danger. All of this happens as a result of 2P making Sol safe enough to do this. Sure, Sol has better options for okizeme in safejump j.S and 2S, but those are harder to time and have potential for failure, especially if you got a hard knockdown at a high enough point on the stage. If you combine 2P with those okizeme tools though, things get interesting- you can cover 2P’s short range and then gatling into it to gain all the benefits it offers.
All of this information boils down to one fact: 2P is extremely useful for Sol’s gameplan. It enables so much off of so little that without it, Sol would be much weaker. Sol’s pressure cannot be accessed without some place to set it up, and 2P is often the party starter in that regard. While Sol’s later pressure will be dominated by spaced f.S > 5H and Gunflame, 2P can help set it up or feint into a throw. When on offense, Sol’s 2P can be one of his best friends.
Part Four: 2P in Mindgames
Even outside of offense, 2P offers so much to a Sol player. It’s a great button to press in scrambles, since the fast startup will let it beat a lot of stuff. It gatlings into all of his other normals, letting you take a basic confirm into a decent amount of damage. You can 2P > 2K > 2D for a quick and dirty way to get into a hard knockdown, or 2P > 2P > FD to back off and bait a response against an aggressive opponent. All of these uses just help solidify 2P as a powerful, versatile normal… but this isn’t what makes it so emblematic of Sol in my mind. If we take things to the next level, 2P is amazing because of how hard it messes with people.
When you get down to it, Sol is about screwing with his opponents and getting them to suffer for their mistakes. The average degenerate Sol player lives for the feeling of seeing their opponent's face get scrunched up from the hardest read imaginable, with the highest reward possible. The Japanese have a word for this: yomi, meaning the “reading the mind of the opponent”. I call it “endorphins obtained from reading someone like a book and making them sign it”. 2P fits perfectly into Sol’s attempts at mindgames. It can be used for so many things that it’s like a litmus test for Sol’s pressure. He can stagger with it, bait responses with it, or back off with it as he pleases. Sol is a character who can be both remarkably safe and deviously risky, and 2P offers that choice of gameplay on a dime. Either back off and watch your opponent’s response, or capitalize on their ignorance and crush them.
The characters I like to play most in fighting games are these “pressure” types. Adachi, Ragna, Blueku, Nagoriyuki, Jin, Kyo and Rock, Spinal, Striker… all of them excel at keeping their opponents blocking for long periods of time, reveling in their ability to play out their turn. All of these characters like to have crouching normals that lead into pressure, or otherwise safe buttons to start their offense. Each one plays out their gameplan slightly differently, but each one is dependent on that button to mount a threat against their opponent. In that sense, it’s easy to see why I like 2P so much on Sol. It fulfills that role for him, while also offering him a lot of options to suit his mood and situation. 2P defines Sol in many ways, and represents a lot about his archetype and playstyle that I find so addicting. 2P is Sol- his playstyle defined in a single button, supporting him all the way up to top levels.
Part Five: Conclusions and Further Implications
+R is an expressive game with a lot to offer for someone wanting to deep dive into it. All the same, Sol has remained my most played character because he balances neatly between depth and complexity. His basic toolkit is simple, but so much of it is dangerously effective at all levels of play. His combos are highly damaging and easy, but leave so much on the table for optimization and further improvement. And his game plan is about as fluid and diverse as can be expected for a character of his type. Much of this balance between wild and patient is embodied in 2P and the freedom it gives a Sol player. To reiterate, I’m not saying 2P is Sol’s best normal. All the same, I do think it represents a lot of elements of his kit that I like. It fits so neatly into his pressure and playstyle, while silently supporting the more important parts of that playstyle, that I can’t think of life as Sol without it.
I don’t always play Sol the best. Mechanically, I consider myself mediocre, and often do stupid shit like Bandit Revolver at the end of blockstrings or poorly-timed safejumps. But despite that, I still think 2P is perfectly emblematic of Sol and the power fantasy he offers. Once I got a hit of that sweet, sweet 2P > Wild Throw, I never looked back. If you talk to good Sol players and ask them their opinions of Sol and what his most important move is, you’d likely get a different answer from each one. Some might say 2S or Volcanic Viper or Wild Throw or 5K, and that’s great! It’s wonderful that everyone can take something away from Sol that they like. To me, 2P defines Sol, and represents so much about what I love in fighting games as a genre, and this rockstar scientist as a character.