Asuka R# has the Heart of the Cards - First Impressions - Guilty Gear Strive 

Asuka is now LIVE for GG Strive and here is some thoughts I have on the character. Long story short, dude is f'n bananas lol. I watched the starter guide and my eyes started glazing over because of so much jargon, but when its actually infront of your face its actually 10x more intimidating and difficult to understand. So let me explain to the best of my ability what I think is going on, and lets talk some of the fun aspects of the character!

Legend says that if you let Asuka draw enough cards, he'll cast a spell that just turns off the enemy's console. Bold designs as always, ArcSys.

I love that his overhead is him holding out the book which summons an arm holding ANOTHER BOOK

He takes 40% more damage with shield broken

The diversity between easy and difficult characters in this game is pretty amazing

The overhead tome should be called the "Dome Tome" since it wallops you on your dome.

An important part about his gravity staffs: some of them also affect jump height. In the case of the gravity down staff, he jumps lower, which when coupled with his jD button, means he can do *overhead fuzzies on every character.* absolutely insane character.

Asuka in theory: Balancing all your resources perfectly to control the battle and overwhelm the opponent. Asuka in practice: Haha 2D go wheeee

the R# thing is how in music notation in English it's called 'sharp', in German it's called Kreuz, so R# is still pronounced R Kreutz it's just written in music notation.

Here's what I gathered so far on Potemkin Matchup: 1. Asuka with his mana shield gives him enough defense to survive 3 Potemkin Busters. Not even the opposing Potemkin can do that. Without the shield, of course he can potentially die to 2 Pot Busters. 2. Potemkin CANNOT flick any of his projectiles!!! He can punch them at least, but since Asuka can chain his spells, you'll probably better off just walking and blocking in most cases till he runs low on mana/cards. Slide Head oughta help, but Asuka can still draw/play cards in the air. Needless to say, this matchup's gonna be a nightmare for Potemkin.

he's so much more fun than i could have anticipated, as a kid i always wanted to playing fighting games and TCGs "seriously" and now as an adult with the time and money and patience i have been playing both at a decent enough level for a guy with a 9 to 5...and Asuka feels like a perfect synthesis of why i love, adore, and keep trying to "git gud" at both!

One important thing I found is that if he uses all of the cards in a deck it gets reshuffled, you don't just have 30 cards per deck and that's it. So you don't have to worry about running out of moves by using too many or discarding, just focus on using the right ones at the right time.

I learned more from this than the actual Arcsys tutorial

Mastering the mirror match is gonna be the big brain flex.

Sorta sucks that Asuka is launching now, on the eve of SF6. Like, certainly better than after SF6 cause he'd be lost in the wind, but he's probably not gonna make the splash he coulda otherwise uncontested. That said I guess thats the nature of a juggernaut kinda stepping on your toes, SF6 has to release at some point lol.

I gave up on Strive a while ago, but I still follow it due to general interest. This character is NUTS. People were calling for complex characters, I guess Daisuke went "Monkey's Paw, bitches! Careful with your wishes!"

It's my head canon that Asuka would be a Blue Counter Spell player in magic

Summoning exodia in the middle of battle Edit: I like how the different Asukas also have diferent "Titles"

Cant wait to see people pull it off in tournament

After watching this, comparing Asuka to Nine the Phantom or Touhou Hisoutensoku's card aspects feels pedestrian. Nine controls what spells she gets like Dormammu, and Touhou characters only bring one deck. Asuka is drawing cards from THREE decks, and that's not even the only unique mechanic he has to worry about. Kudos to those who pick this guy up, this may actually be the most technical fighting game character yet. EDIT: Oh gosh, the staffs are practically their own mechanic that change the whole match-up temporarily... There was no restraint here...

The only thing we can say is Asuka gonna be a character that gonna requiere long Work time with his amount of spells, setups, mixes and better damage options.

If anything, Asuka succeeded where the Dragon Quest Hero failed in Smash. Both have complex movesets based on the number of spells, but at least Asuka gives you a clear symbol as to what spell does what so that both you & your opponent can understand what is being used regardless of the language barrier. This was a major issue regarding Hero, as international tournaments basically screwed over anyone who doesn’t fluently know how to read English or whatever is the main language of the tournament. And god forbid if you’re dyslexic, because you’re basically screwed either way with Hero (but that gets into a whole other discussion regarding Nintendo’s negligence regarding accessibility, one that should be had).

you look at asuka's gameplay and it feels like the devs wanted their own nine the phantom or something like that, as she too has a management and spells and mix and match combination thing

Fellow hugger here, I was playing Asuka yesterday against a friend and had a really good time, this character is SUPER satisfying to play. He's not QUITE as hard as things make it seem, imo, at least just to get the basics down. A lot of his spells are fairly straightforward projectiles, so once you learn to quickly identify those and a couple key others (the big blast in front of him IS SO KEY) you get into that groove. Where I feel he is going to struggle though, is that he has a terrible time dealing with pressure, felt way worse than Potemkin. Asuka when keeping the zone with projectiles and his very very blessed normals, just has a pretty good time IF you can manage your resources. But once he loses grip of the flow of the match, things become real hard real fast. You lose mana when blocking so your ability to both endure and counter attack get taken away. The damage he takes IS ridiculous when not shielded and even if you have mana, you need to keep drawing spells. One of his spells is a reversal but I think there might be only one copy of it (it's the ice stalagmite). So I think a lot of his matches will go more or less in this wild swing: If Asuka's winning, he'll knowledge check you harder than an Angel player from KOF at like every interaction (because although MOST of his spells feel straightforward to deal with, you DO need to know if he has his Giganter Kai on hand). However, if Asuka starts losing, keeping him under pressure will so quickly drain him of options (and hope). I'll be scared of Asuka specialists once they are well established though, they're bound to be mega-labbing nerds. Also: That new Potemkin colour so good I'm retiring the modded one I used to use. FINALLY some good pink around Strive!

Rooflemonger: “You, the opponent need to learn Asuka’s cards to see what’s coming” Me, A Sin Main, rushing in and trapping Asuka in the corner “How ‘BOUT No” 😂😂😂

ROOF I HAVE NEVER WITNESSED ANYTHING LIKE THIS CHARACTER IN FIGGTING GAMES....HE IS EFFECTIVELY LIKE 9 CHARACTERS IN ONE...some of his spells could literally be the core mechanic of other characters.

I was kinda confused about how he plays but when I took my time with him, it was way easier than I thought. Def one of the characters I will be playing.

Asuka is quite LITERALLY, Nine The Phantom, Kokonoe, and Platinum the Trinity in ONE character, and I LOVE it!

This character is absolutely wild, he's a zoner, he's a setplay character, he has midrange potential, it's like holy shit I'mma break my brain trying to main him (I main anji pls help)

The Shadow Wizard Money Gang is out in full force! Been meaning to find time to play Strive again. Might as well try him out before SF6 drops.

Meter MANAgement is top priority. That pot buster damage was ridiculous 😮

Long day at work, but I'm always happy to see your videos

I love this and your channel!

Loved your video as always Roofle

Dude, I didn't know Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories got a sequel!

Highkey looks like he should be trying to bring forth the great cataclysm

Love those new colors on Testament

Asuke Spell Tier List for easy engagement (and my enjoyment) hopefully coming soon. Do it Roof. Get the views.

Playing a fighting game and a time limited deck builder together

9:57 it doesn't have any gameplay change but it does have different interactions with characters like Sol and Jack-O

Good lord that barrierless damage.

I’ve literally never noticed that blue shield around his health, that explains a lotttt now

2:30 i almost peed my pants😂

Let’s go!💪🏾💙

Won't ever get sick of hearing Rooflemonger pronounce 'cards' in his Canadian(?) accent!

11:18 O_O'.... HOLY SHIT!!!

GALAXY BRAIN! I'm never gonna play him but I'm so Glad he is in the game.

Seeing Asuka now live in action looks like he's from Touhou Hisoutensoku with the random deckbuilding elements.

I love how spell names are taken from samplers and drum machines, dorkiest of all instruments. Low-pass filter staff, MEtron Screamer 808, SAMPLER 404 -how blatant can you be-. I'm terrible at fighting games but i WILL try to be better at this guy.

Health steal mana charge is a fantastic emergency option at low health since you can't die from it. The only reason to not play Asuka is the disassociation of set buttons. Remembering P=1, K=2, S=3 , and HS=4 will make using his spells much easier. Looking forward to one of your tips and tricks video. Should be your longest one yet.

Looks even more complicated than Angel lol.

Testament look straight out of Mario Odyssey with that color... Also I wonder how many spells Pot can F.D.B?

My brain will need time to adjust to Asuka, but just today I pulled off a test case 3 bunch of summoning projectiles can't tell you how good it felt, still gotta familiarize myself with Asuka in matches, also enjoying his mana shielding health gimmick

HIS ARCADE ROUTE EXPLICITLY REFERENCES ABA. OBVIOUSLY SHE'S IN. WE WON.

Thanks for this. The 3rd vid I've watched to try & figure him out. Tried him in Arcade & couldn't use specials or supers without enough mana or cards. Then I use the card super & have no idea what I'm doing. 😶 At least I can use normals like the sweep, & throw when I try him vs low character level people at my level for him. Nice vid.

Finally! Got the new colors!

Hes the Astrologian from FF14 😆

What's best about the new colors is that it means new modded skin slots

The damage numbers on his health bar is he has a base defence of 0.75... Note that that's the tankiest person in this game, Potemkin the next on down has a defence of 0.93. But when his mana is broken and he loses his shielding all damage he takes is doubled. So now has an effective defence of 1.5 .. Chipp has a defence of 1.26 ..

Asuka D&D 5E Warlock/Sorcerer multiclass confirmed.

8 hour guide for Asuka in progress. lol

Tome to the dome, LFG!

do the gravity effects work on the opponate's fireballs?

Thanks Canadian dude! Kick buns!

Sorry for the off topic everyone, but alongside Asuka, someone had the chance to try the servers? Are they finally fixed, even a little bit?

Well...now people can't say that ArcSys shouldn't put Venom in the game "cuz he's too complex"

Hash is called Doppelkreuz in german, Double cross. Dopple as in Doppleganger so it's a play on his name Asuka R. DoppleKreutz, so it's either an imposter Asuka or That man is controlling the clone Asuka from afar.

The only thing I'm sad about in relation to this character is that I'm pretty sure this was the original intended playstyle (to some degree- It's hard to say for certain because we don't know for certain) for Ramlethal's concept. She was supposed to match the original Valentine's design much more closely, and would have been a spell caster like her original counterpart was. They scrapped that and decided to make Ramlethal her own unique character, but I would have killed to have a spellcaster Valentine in the game- especially if they had the same or similar design as the original Valentine from X2 BECAUSE HER DESIGN IS SO COOL But okay okay... It's for Asuka now and he's definitely a much more impactful character overall. I'm just a little jealous we never got that OG Valentine spellcaster in a *cough* "real" Guilty Gear game. Lol

Great video as always Rooflemonger and yeah Asuka is too complex for my liking. I hope players who pick him up do enjoy him

you remind me of Chef jon from foodwishes. i love his videos too

How do i get color 13 on ps4? When i look at the colors it says unavailable.

you can press up when selecting a color to play as R. Kreutz dos'nt change anything other that the name sadly

how do i get the new skins?? it’s not showing up after the update :(

Man, this character is crazy and I love it. But there are 2 things that kinda bother me. The first is, why is releasing now and wasn't part of the starting roster. Asuka will take hundreds of matches to warm up with him and thousands to master. Those 2 years would have been really helpful for him. The other thing is playing against him. There will be a very limited amount of mains of this char because he is way too complex, making learning the matchup not worth it. But deer God will you need A LOT of matches against him to know what all the spells do, what kind of mixups he has and so on. The player playing him will have a big advantage just because of that. (in like 6 months lol) Can't wait to see him in a tourney at some point but I pity his opponents, cause they will have no idea what hit them.

"Watch out for that extra damage without the barrier" I'll just play tank mage and cast punch

I 8000% love this character, I immediately have found my husbando for life

so now that nine and asuka exist is "spellcaster" an official character type?

I wish Asuka would say "Ore no turn" during his "time stop/shuffle" super

They finally put Oleander from Thems Fightin Herds in Strive

Oh..oh gog..no mana is death!

Why aren't the 25th anniversary appreciation colors available in the PlayStation Store yet?

man that cloak so nice they did amazing job on asuka rng and cards character not my thing way to hard for me also not the best of luck that type of zoning as well much outside of ky and ram i can use lol and that lot of thinking so many spells oh boy i will just stick with hold my swords to the corner you go am in ggs .

Wheres the other skin colour i dont have it but only the red new one

Mom, I found my new main

Why can't I get the free colors from the PlayStation Store?

2:56 is that a DP??

Happy 25th anniversary guilty gear!!!🪅🎊🎂😁🎮

At least I have a better grasp of Asuka R# now than I did watching the starter guide, so I appreciate this. Still would rather play someone else.

GUILTY GEAR IS SAVED! BILLIONS MUST LAB

What happens if you use all the cards in the deck. Please tell me he's just boned.

Asuka's 2D is coded as a projectile. As an anji main this makes me sad.

What in the unholy fuck is his combo notation going to look like?

Little odd he doesn't have a cinematic finish

Use Life Mana ONLY ON EMERENGENCY SITUATION (if you're out of tension and more than half health)

Honestly I don't know how good he will be because I usually enjoy FG with friends and not online, but it's the only character since Happy Chaos that I truly enjoyed playing and love at first sight. I can do complex combos, but I'm not a mechanically gifted player and I usually win with unconventional tactics. The card aspect also draws my LoR player side.

He's a stance character that doesn't change stances.

Asuka has already been a huge blast to lab. Just resetting positions, seeing what combo is possible with the cards you got, and then resetting again to do it over is already fun by itself also,THANK you for pointing out the character specific settings, finding weird synergy is going to be my whole weekend now lol

We gonna be getting an Asuka tips and tricks 👁👄👁?

FYI Sol and GL have no Risc ToD's on Asuka without blue shield so be very careful with shooting out spells

Closest thing I've seen to asuka is black dhalia from skull girls