Kuroko Project

Starting Out

The core of VO is the dash. Dashing is as simple as pressing one stick in a direction and pressing the Turbo button. Your Virtuaroid will move rapidly in the pressed direction until the dash time runs out, at which point it will enter a few animation frames of it recovering its balance, or dash freeze, During this time you cannot initiate any other maneuvers, so you are effectively a sitting duck. And since dashes are fixed length, you will probably be eating a beam shot or bazooka shell fairly shortly if your opponent is any good.[1] Fortunately, dashes may be canceled(incurring minimal freeze): return the stick to dead-center and press the Turbo button again.

One thing to keep in mind is VO's lock-on system. As long as your opponent is within your field of vision, you will have a lock-on and your weapons will track the target automatically. However, if you lose sight of them, your lock on will be lost and your weapons will simply fire straight ahead. So if your opponent dashes to your side, or even past you, you will lose your lock and need to reacquire him. At this point, most FPS players are frantically pounding the sticks[2], trying to get their machine to turn faster.

Jumping is the first hint of 3D movement. Pulling both sticks out to your sides will initiate a jump and automatically recenter your view on your opponent. If you were to pull one or both of your triggers, the VR will also use an aerial weapon. But pressing both sticks back towards each other without firing drops your VR back down to the ground immediately after reorientation. This is known as the jump-cancel, and is one of two major ways to quickly regain your bearing on your opponent. The faster you can open and close the sticks, the lower(and quicker) your jump cancel will be. Needless to say, beginners will be doing this a lot.

The other major way to reorient towards the enemy is to use a dash-attack. Any weapon may be fired during a dash, and your VR will reorient to face the enemy while firing. However, there is a physical limitation: your rotation rate and firing are not synchronized. If you're facing opposite to your opponent, you'll probably empty most of your magazines into thin air before you complete the rotation, and you'll be stuck in dash-freeze to boot. Sometimes this is an acceptable trade-off in a desperate situation, but blindly dash-attacking is far from a winning technique.

The FPS-oriented minds among you already have made up their mind: get to mid-range, side-dash, and circle-strafe him to death! But you've got another problem with dashing attacks: your weapon changes forms and attack power based on your dash direction. Dashing forward results in a stronger variant, capable of knocking a VR down. Dashing to the sides results in a spread of standard shots, that will usually just bounce off your opponent's armor at long range(or miss entirely if you haven't judged the angle between you and him correctly). Finally, dashing backwards will result in even weaker attacks meant to dissuade an enemy from chasing you.

In a nutshell, the core of VO's higher tactical game is to force your opponent to overextend himself via dash-freezing or loss of sight, while still maintaining your own lock-on to land a killing blow. This was originally referred to as Dash-vectoring when the original Virtual On was released, and is now considered to be an expression of the fighting game concept ”yomi”. Predicting your opponent's next tactical move is just as satisfying as it is in Virtua Fighter.

“But you don't need sticks for any of that! I could do the same with pads!”. Yup, you can. Up to this point, it doesn't sound like the sticks add much to the game as long as you have dedicated inputs for dashing, crouching[3], and jumping. However, jumps aren't the only thing you can use the sticks for.

Beginning in VOOT, you may change the direction of your dash as many times as you wish by returning a stick to dead-center and pressing it in a direction up to 90' from your dash vector. E.g. while dashing forwards, you can change it to go either left or right. Once you are moving right, you can then change it to forwards or backwards. This is known as the Watari dash(or “Vertical Turn” in the official literature), and is another basic technique in VOOT: an experienced player can start moving sideways to clear an obstacle or opponent's line-of-fire, then Watari-dash forwards and trigger a weapon to get the more powerful attack. Even better, you can also air-dash: before reaching the apex of a jump, you may dash in the same manner as on the ground. And both air-dashes and regular dashes may be “curved” by using rotation.

Things also change once you move into close-combat(or 'CC'). Once you are within a certain range of the opponent, your HUD will “double” lock-on, and certain weapon bars will begin glowing yellow. This means that the corresponding trigger will now use a physical melee attack rather than a ranged weapon. CC hits can do a frightful amount of damage in a hit, and multiple CC attacks may be linked together much like a Street Fighter title. Couple this with a basic guard/cancel/reversal system, and close-combat becomes a most extremely intimidating situation for a novice. Masters, though, find it one of the most exhilarating scenarios in VOOT.

In addition to CC weapons in double-lock-on range, your VR may now also perform a Quick-Step. By a similar method as dashing(hold your turbo button first, then press your stick in a direction), you can rotate or tumble in fixed arcs around your opponent. And if a CC weapon is available at that range, you can perform a Quick-Step CC attack: your VR will pull out the weapon as they slide around, hopefully catching the enemy with the edge of your blade or fist. Additionally, you can jump and attack instead of Quick-Stepping, which will result in a powerful aerial attack.

Bear in mind that CC weapons have varying abilities of homing or closing to the opponent, and an opponent may guard against them as well. Fortunately, you may cancel your CC attack in several manners similar to other fighting games: by using a different weapon, by jumping, or by another Quick-Step. Quick-Step CC attacks may also be canceled even into another Quick-Step or a regular attack, but jumping attacks may not be. Canceling is a major part of high-level CC play, leading to extensive mind-games. A match between CC specialists has an aura of beauty and hair-trigger deadliness to it that can resemble a Chinese wuxia film.

To sum up the major techniques I've discussed, here's a Chinese video illustrating them in motion, up to CC and Quick-Step canceling(once the interviews start, you can turn it off).

FOOTNOTES
1.  This, by the way, is one of the major reasons why the latter entries in the series were so poorly received. Both Force and Marz had minimal dash-freeze coupled with slow dash speeds, leading to nobody being able to land hits in a consistent manner. VO had effectively transmogrified into a clunkier Rocket Arena, and the serious fanbase shunned it.↑
2.  If you have the chance to use actual Twin Sticks, please don't ever do this. Twin Sticks aren't incredibly fragile, but treating them roughly will wear them out faster, or even break one of the microswitches. Many a VO machine sits alone in an arcade because a frustrated kid did his best to break it, and the maintenance staff has no idea how to repair it. For everyone who was a one-time VOOT player at Seattle Gameworks: I'm talking to you.↑
3.  You can also press the sticks towards each other for guarding against melee strikes or to initiate a Crouching attack. However, your VR won't animate a crouch or a guard on its own: either a weapon-trigger(for a Crouch attack) or being within close-combat range(indicated on your HUD) is required.↑

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