Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

Im going to write a bit about Sasori. Feel free to comment.



Sasori of the red sand (+ deidara)



Recommended support: Deidara (attack mode, team name: artists)

- Standard meleecombo is of medium difficulty to KNJ (Kawarimi no jutsu, art of substitution, aka press block just before the attack connects).

- Normal jutsu: Iron sand senbon, roughly equivalent to Itachis fireball in execution speed and tracking. not quite spammable because of the startup. Has infinite range I believe.
- Air jutsu: Iron sand cluster attack: giant hammer, pretty much the same projectile as when done on the ground.
- Ultimate jutsu: Iron sand world order; after a quick charge Sasori launches a cube of iron sand at the opponent which activates the ultimate should it connect and not be blocked. The cube has quite long range for an ultimate but not infinite.
- Tilt (done by flicking stick forward and pressing B quickly): poison smoke: the puppet dashes forward with few quick attacks and poisons the opponent.
The tilt is quite useful counterattacking technique due to its speed when the opponent is close and in front of the puppet. It should be used to interrupt opponent and activate projectile support at the same time, which would then let the support hit when opponent is getting hit from the tilt attack.

general info:

Sasori is a puppet master and as such has safer attacks than most non-puppeteers. Instead of exposing himself to closerange combat, Sasori lets the puppet do the attacking. If the puppet gets hit when you are not blocking, it will fall on the ground and be disabled for couple seconds, but you wont suffer damage yourself.
When you keep block button pressed and move the left stick, the puppet moves instead of you and is blocking attacks,projectiles and dashes at the same time. Key here is pressing block yourself. If you don't the puppet will let all attacks go thru it.

When you move sasori himself, the puppet will remain where it is. Then if you press guard, the puppet will 'snap' back to front of Sasori.

Using the puppet for blocking is extremely important and one of the most important things in Sasoris repertoire, although the puppet will suffer guard break eventually same as a normal character. You had best dash or jump sideways occasionally to avoid projectiles aimed at Sasori himself and to "reset" the guard damage. Sasori is one of the safest characters, make it count.

Overall Sasori is a medium/long-range fighter (both deidaras support and sasoris normal jutsu have infinite range, so are very suited to turtling and shooting opponent from distance.) When you team with Deidara, support recharges VERY fast, ie. you can call Deidara to attack very quickly again after previous use. I used to have Itachi in addition to Deidara as support but it actually works much better with just Deidara.

Tactics:

Very useful technique against projectile spammers (Deidara, Temari etc) is to block with the puppet and keep inching it forward to give more room to your projectile support. Then the support wont get hit by enemys projectiles and can launch them to opponent who is then knocked down, giving you a chance to get closer. This works very well when you have deidara as your support, because support recharges so fast with him.

Another strong tactic is to call support and force opponent to block it, and at the same time fly to opponent with the puppet to throw him when he is forced to block. Sort of 'unblockable' attack. I say sort of, because throws can be KNJ'ed just like the projectiles. Don't forget to throw the bomb ball for good measure afterwards on the knocked down opponent.

How to get the most out of your projectiles and support: dash sideways and call support when youre moving. Then deidara will land slightly away from you, and since projectiles are aimed at you, they will most likely miss Deidara and let him shoot freely. Another thing is that deidara may end up completely offscreen if you move enough sideways, and his projectiles may surprise the opponent.

Against chakra dashers important thing is to keep your puppet in front of you. They bounce straight off the blocking puppet and end up propably close enough for the puppet to launch a throw or tilt at them. At least if you use support simultaneously to bind them to the spot. Chakra dashing is usually done only by beginners though. Against people who like to chakra dash, dont jump around as the chakra dash will home on you directly and you will be unable to block. Even more so if they have a fast tracking jutsu like Narutos rasengan or Kakashis chidori. Just hold your ground and keep blocking with your puppet. eventually the opponent opens themselves up for counter attack. Use the bomb ball item or puppets tilt for a quick counterattack. Use of support is paramount. Wait til they get a bit further away and start raining projectiles on them.

The plan A is to keep doing the above things to call support and to get the team meter charged. Once it is high enough, deidara joins you on combos and the most important thing: if you hit opponent with jutsus or support projectiles, he will appear and kick the flying opponent back at you. This will lead to:

Comboing the ultimate jutsu

At close to medium range, when your attack support kicks the flying opponent back at you (you have support of type:attack and you have team meter charged) you can press quickly Y,Y,B and launch the ultimate jutsu, which will hit them as they land. This requires that you keep your chakra meter charged up during the fight, don't miss your chance! This works better the closer the opponent is. Good ways to start it: opponent gets hit with deidaras projectiles, or your own normal jutsu (although you need maxed chakra meter to launch both normal jutsu and ultimate in succession).

Sasoris awakening:

Sasori reveals his puppet body and no longer has another puppet to block for him.

Pros: his attacks do MASSIVE damage and his normal attack and jutsu have infinite range and good tracking. Roughly two hits from either the fireballs (Y,B) or the swarm of the hundred puppets (B) causes guard break and if they eat the next attack they are propably dead meat. His tilt dashes forward and attacks with the blades on his back.

Cons: the attacks have MASSIVE startup and can be avoided completely by dashing sideways, throwing shurikens to interrupt. He doesnt have ANY fast attacks in his awakening mode. This means that the awakening propably doesnt have any use against a skilled opponent. If they dont know how to deal with however, they are demolished quickly.

ps. I think the game is interesting enough and comparable to the MMA game at the very least as combat mechanics go. Its just different from what you would expect, melee combos are of little use apart from few characters.
pps. I dont really consider this as a fighting game in case youre wondering about my sig

 

Slight addition to the "normal jutsu equivalent to Itachis fireball" part: It seems that Sasoris projectile actually has two hits on it, meaning if, say Itachi launches fireball at the same time Sasori launches satetsu senbon, the senbon will absorb the one hit fireball and the other hit will hit thru to the opponent who is recovering from the move. Either that or I can block the fireball in time or something. Difficult to test without training mode.

 

Hmm I found the unblockable jutsu trick that Leonard talked about, its not impossible to defend against since you can kawarimi the dash, but I agree its quite cheap. Those characters that have very fast jutsus have an upper hand.

Trick is chakra dash, even when its blocked, the characters bounce back a bit from the impact, and they cant block at that moment. You can time a support or maybe a very fast jutsu into that vulnerability. Did I get it right?[/size]

 

Since you don't see it as a fighting game, all is fine, lol. You're kinda late, though. Even hardcore Naruto communities have dropped the game months ago already. The game mechanics and unbalanced roster is completely and utterly absurd.

 

Yep I already read that, thank you for requoting it.

Would you like to list who the 'god-tier' characters are? Or who are the ones that can cancel into their ultimates? Or have a bit more in-depth discussion? I agree that certain characters are pretty weak, however, I am not sure what the god-tier characters would be, after about 300 online matches. Reminds me of the 'balance' in old street fighters, in that gameplay is sort of ok if you restrict yourself to certain half of the cast..

I would like to know everything or at least as much as possible and only then give my verdict.

ps. I have no trouble finding matches all day long, the game still seems to have at the very least as many players as other fighting games and tens of times more than VF.

pps. The thing that I have liked about NUNS2 so far is that correct defense is difficult and rewarding. Kind of like VF.

ppps. Hmm my original post has lot of inaccuracies in it, but I guess thats to be expected when writing after only couple days of play. Im slow to learn. His ground jutsu projectile has three hits on it.

 

I recorded some of my online matches. Nothing fancy. I already knew of the tilt->ougi, or chakra dash->tilt->ougi with Sasori but I havent practised them enough. Quite difficult to do with online latency. Couple times I tried to start the tilt-'infinite' but fumbled

Imo hopping sideways and launching shurikens is more annoying to me than any of the 'broken' ways of getting ougi through. The thing is that Sasori is very vulnerable to that cause in his chakra dash he stays put (and is vulnerable to shuriken) and the puppet does the dashing.

On the other hand Sasori is invulnerable to the KnJ-cancel-ougi that I think most people have considered the most broken thing.

Against hokage Naruto
Against Gaara
Against Itachi
Against maxrank Deidara
Against Kirin Sasuke
Against another Itachi. I lose this one for activating awakening when I shouldnt.
Another maxrank deidara