I got to play yesterday, it was awesome! I used 3 characters, Litchi 3 times, Carl once, and Noel once. I had zero wins with Litchi, one with Carl, and three with Noel.
rite now everybody is a scrub so we're jus messing with basic combos and trying to figure out how to play. Nobody is really comboing into and out of throws, nobody is Rapid Cancelling, nobody is using Barrier Guard.
people are using the "burst" tho, on offensive it freezes your opponent for a second leaving them open for a combo. You get one Burst per round, it does not refill over time like in Guilty Gear. But when you use it your life bar goes into Danger Mode which means your defense is lower so it is not wise to use it at the beginning of a round like most people in GG do.
One guy there was able to figure out basic shyt for Litchi and Taokaka pretty well, another guy got good with Ragna, another with Jin, and a couple guys got good with Bang Shisigami.
about the characters I played:
Litchi - very hard for me to use. When you're in possession of the staff her normal attacks really exploit the whole B and 6B are different (if you understand Guilty Gear notation) so I had a hard time figuring out basic combos. Her move with the staff (41236D) puts her into a stance and can be followed up with an attack and you can combo into this but I had a real hard time getting it down. I played with her 3 times and couldnt get comfortable with her.
Carl - I beat one guy by turtling and using his puppet all day to attack. When you give a command to the puppet there is a large delay between command and execution, and if the puppet is hit while it's activated then it cancels its attack. I'm curious as to how his playstyle will eventually turn out becoz his puppet does not move unless you move it (by holding down D while you walk), but you can also teleport the puppet beside you with 22D. Without the puppet I had a real time just controlling Carl himself but apparently one of my buttons was broken and had to be fixed after I lost. I lost against another Carl player and all we were doing was turtling until our puppets ran out of energy and went into commission (a la Eddie from Guilty Gear, we had to wait for the puppet to recharge) and we had to fight Carl vs Carl. All our matches ended in time outs since he was so hard to attack with by himself
Noel - she's awesome! Her basic combos are quite easy to chain together, and her drive move puts her in a custom dial a combo state. I was not able to combo into her drive from a standard combo but I always did follow up with it anyways, even if the opponent blocks it still pushes his block meter and can lead to a guard crush. I locked down my opponent in the corner and kept on doing Noel's drive combo until his guard did get crushed, and then I jus did another Drive combo to attack him.
about character observations:
Taokaka - like Chipp, very fast and can combo you for days, but her moves dont do much damage. Her super move which is like Beserker Barage does good damage tho.
Bang - the coindoor on the machine broke and one guy was stuck playing single player while we waited for it to get fixed and during this time he got pretty good with Bang. He found a combo that can link into his super. Also his drive moves sets the opponent on fire, and every time it connects he gains a token. Once Bang gains 4 tokens he can transform into Super Bang which makes him real fast and cool! The transformation itself is very impressive and fun.
Jin - pretty standard character, he can freeze you tho. he can do a combo, end it in a freeze, and hit you a couple more times since you're vulnerable.
Ragna - also pretty standard, but his ability is to absorb your life like wtf... I saw one round where at the beginning of it he ate a combo, then he went on to win the round and by the end he had full health back. They say this game is balance but I would love to understand why this character was given such a seemingly unfair property.
Tager - I didnt see anybody play him except one dood and it wasnt anything special... I only wanna mention him becoz the nite before I heard someone had 66 wins with him. It was by Mike Z, a top Guilt Gear player who I hear was given a test copy of the game so it makes sense he'd understand how to play more so than anyone else. I'd really love to see how he plays in action.
Arakune - he seems real random, a lot of people were using him but I cuoldnt really figure him out and see what makes his playstyle special and unique. Everyone who was using him was playing hit and run style.
Rachel - I only saw one person use her and he lost, but in the videos I posted there's a lot of Rachel love so you can watch those instead.
so I still suck at the game but hopefully I wanna go back in like a week and jus play to learn more.