Playing Fighters as an Introvert With Psychosis

Act 1: Fighting games are hard

Fighting games are hard, yet despite the difficulty, I always wanted to get deep into this genre of games. I may be a massive casual who spams Auto Combos in Dragon Ball Fighterz I do my fair amount of effort understanding concepts like the neutral game where both players try and poke each other looking for a chance to open the opponent up for a combo attack and I’ve even got about four or five different fighting games. However, I think I’ve only really gotten hooked on about three of those games. I’ve given each fighting game a fair chance having tried to improve honestly in most if not all of them. Games from this genre can range from simple to complex, the mind games aspect makes all fighting games hard but some games are harder than others as of late.

One of my problems playing fighting games is my lack of confidence in my own ability to play against other players, while on paper playing online would be the best way to enjoy and improve at fighters I still chicken out due to most of my games being on PC and the main way to play PC fighters online seem to be using a program called Discord. I can’t help but feel weirdly shy using programs like Discord as am not one for speaking to others with voice chat. Though I have tried using Discord to find matches of at least two fighting games in the past so I can at least say I’ve given the program a fair chance. I am also quite lazy so any kind of matchmaking had to be a fixed part of the game being played otherwise I would just stick to single-player modes.

To play at your best you need to learn concepts like the neutral game or footies where neither player has a huge advantage and the many different archetypes of playable characters like the all-rounders, Zoners, and Grapplers. I prefer the rushdown archetype myself for their simple gameplan of just rushing down and pressing buttons plus it seems like rushdowns do the coolest stuff in a fighting game so there was that. Though I also enjoy all-rounder type characters as well. Learning characters typically means pouring some time into the training mode where you have the dummy to practice combos on and let me just say combos are tough to learn and apply in an actual match.

Act 2: what games do I play the most?

My favorite game from the fighting game genre is currently Dragonball FighterZ for its simple to play hard to master style of difficulty, it also has auto combos so I could focus more on practicing the neutral game and actually learning my characters (DBFZ is a 3v3 tag game) more than looking up combos on the internet and practicing them in training mode. The fast pace of this game and having my favorite characters from Dragonball to play was also nice as well. They really went all out with their arcade modes as you have courses that change based on how good or bad you're doing in a given stage of the course. It was a nice change from the usual random opponent's other arcade modes in fighting games had.

My other favorite game to play is Under Night Inbirth, the newest version with the least memorable name imaginable. It had a cool rushdown character called Akatsuki who punches with lighting and looks to be a cyborg made by the Nazis in world war two. Not sure how to feel about that but his playstyle just fits me perfectly, just rush down and repeat a combo until the AI dies, I would look for an online match but the Netcode isn’t rolling back so am guessing it would suck to actually play online such is a massive shame because the rest of Under Night is highly polished.

Act 3: Reasons for people to play Fighting Games

The best reason to play fighting games is if you're a fan of shounen anime as in fighting games you're basically going through a personal training arc. The time you put practicing combos, working out the tough situation, and learning the game’s system mechanics which are extra stuff like air dashing, burst, or defensive options. While it’s a lot of work upfront it becomes rewarding once you finally learn a good combo and try it out in a real match. While I am still mostly a single-player guy I do test combos against the AI which is rewarding enough for me.

Other reasons to play fighting games are the unique characters, some of my personal favorite characters are Iori Yagami from KOF2002 UM for his easy-to-pick-up playstyle, and Akatsuki from UNIB for the reasons I stated earlier. I also really like playing Goku and Goku Black from Dragonball FighterZ for having a well-rounded play style. On BlazBlue am still struggling to find a main, I thought I liked Ragna but I might enjoy playing Noel or that Hibiki guy. Most of these characters are rushdown characters while others are simply all-rounders.

Act 4: How Psychosis affects my experience

As the title says I have Psychosis, meaning I hear imaginary and often mean voices in my head. It’s hard enough getting into fighting games and trying to build confidence to play online with other players without the voices in my head constantly trying to annoy me and ruin my life. However when I finally get into a match AI or Computer the voices are minimal but still there. I used to be afraid to play fighting games because I worried that I might lose or be unable to play those games properly, but after taking the time to actually play a lot of different fighting games I realized that I could still do things like learn and practice combos and think as I play these games. However it’s not easy having a jerk living like a parasite in your own mind, in fact, I mostly got back into fighting games as a personal mission to spite my psychosis voices, I know they are not real I know but I still want to get some personal revenge.

In closing, I was able to enjoy fighting games despite both my mental illness and my lack of skill in the genre. I encourage anyone out there with psychosis to give fighting games a try, it’s a hard genre but it’s also quite a rewarding one as well and the Fighting Game Community is friendly and there are great learning resources on sites like YouTube and Reddit that really helped. This has been a fun article to write and thank you for reading.