Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition just released, and schoolgirl series veteran Sakura Kasugano alongside it. I expect modern players to be most familiar with her SFIV incarnation, but the one in this game plays about halfway between her Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter X Tekken versions. Since she’s free to play for a week and because so many people would be trying her out, I worked quickly on this guide of her essential combos, so that players can quickly learn the basics and start developing their neutral game. Here are your best bread-and-butter combos that I’ve found for every common scenario. This video features anti-airs, punishes, confirms, counter-hit combos, crush counter combos, juggles, and more.
This Sakura bread-and-butter video is not the full Sakura tutorial I’m working on, but rather simply a guide to her basic optimal combo routes. The combos are all my own findings, alongside a few things I’ve observed from other players. Sakura’s combo routes seem somewhat straightforward, so I’m fairly certain that most of this footage is fully optimal. Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly encourage anyone watching to point out further damage or setplay improvements in the comments, for both me and the other players, so that I can amend them into the final video when I release it.
Last balance patch, I made a series of videos explaining the balance changes for each character and how they affected gameplay. Now, Arcade Edition has brought a much bigger change list. I’m going to start making a pair of videos a day for about the next month, each focusing on a different character a day. One video will be an explanation of the character’s 2nd V-trigger, with some basic VT2 combos. The other will summarize and demonstrate the balance changes that character received. I encourage everyone to follow along since it’s important to know what each character can do, even if you don’t play them.
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