The Most Technical Characters In Fighting Games

A great strength of fighting games is usually the diverse cast of characters. This means that players have more and more ways to express themselves. 

While some characters are easy to use and are great for beginners, there are others that will require the player to dig deep, while some others are a great vehicle for player expression in terms of how difficult they are to use. 

In this list, we’ll take a look at the most technical characters in fighting games. This is a subjective list and is by no means exhaustive. 

With all of that said, let’s get into it. 

Menat (Street Fighter V)

The character who is introduced as Rose’s apprentice is easily the most difficult character to get a handle on in Street Fighter V. Menat is a very powerful character in the right hands and some pros such as Sako and Rikemansbarnet did some great work with her. 

What makes Menat such a challenging character to use is her need for impeccable spacing. She has stubby normals and she typically doesn’t do much damage but rather gets her damage as a result of her incredibly long combos which add up to sink the opponent. 

Menat’s V-Trigger 1, Wisdom of Thoth, can be difficult to deal with both for the user and the opponent. In it, she summons six balls of soul energy and then manipulates them while trying to deal damage to the opponent. Controlling when each ball is released and the technique required is no mean feat. But once you get the hang of it, Menat is a lot of fun. 

Skarlet (MK9)

Skarlet was introduced into the Mortal Kombat roster in 2011 with Mortal Kombat 9. She was a DLC character and was a blood ninja who looked like Kitana and Mileena. 

Soon enough, a lot of people gravitated to her due to her great normals, fast walk speed, and rushdown property. However, she was also pretty technical to use. This had a lot to do with her meter management. While Skarlet excelled at a lot of things, one of her weaker points was her lack of options without meter. So her ability to wakeup or defend herself was significantly reduced without meter. 

This meant that anyone using her as their main character had to balance how they used meter and ensuring that the opponent did not restrict their access to metered moves. She was changed a lot of MK11 where she became more of a zoner, but people who played Skarlet in MK9 remember her fondly. 

Vatista (Under Night In-Birth)

Vatista is regularly cited as one of the strongest characters in UNIclr and she is also the most technical and difficult to use. 

This ancient being will decimate enemies in no time, but to use her optimally, you’ll really need to arm yourself with all the skills you can muster. A lot of her difficulty stems from her high execution. She is a charge character which means you have to hold down a directional button and then release it along with some commands to get a move out. But, that’s not all as while most charge characters feature a charge back or charge down mechanic, Vatista also has charge up and charge forward commands. This can be difficult as you typically don’t want to be moving forward while charging or jumping. On top of that, some of her combos require the charge motions and also the use of negative edge which is an intermediate to advanced technique in fighting games. 

Vatista requires a lot of work, but once figured out, she is a very rewarding character. 

Painwheel (Skullgirls)

Of all Skullgirls’ cast of colorful characters, one of the strongest and most difficult to get a handle on is Painwheel. The character has a tragic backstory having been a normal girl that was experimented on and turned into something she did not recognize. She was unable to return home as she feared her parents would no longer recognize her. 

As a fighter, she is insanely strong and is able to solo through teams of three with ease in the right hands. Her ability to fly and incorporate it into her combos make her a very useful character to use. However, she is also pretty technical as you have to marry her unorthodox movements with her combos to make her viable. For this reason she is regularly considered as the most difficult character to master in Skullgirls. 

Zato (Guilty Gear -STRIVE-)

Zato is a character from GGST who is a lot of fun to watch when handled by a professional. But, learning him will take some patience and will require you to exercise quite a bit of diligence. Zato is a puppet user, a fighting game archetype which is generally considered difficult because you are usually controlling someone else. 

This is the main challenge one will face with Zato as his ‘shadow,’ Eddie is like another character who can also be hit and needs to block and protect itself. If you can get the handle of it, Zato is pretty cool as he has overhead combos and so many other things to hit the opponent with which they will certainly hate being thrown their way. 

Interestingly, if you are new to fighting games, Zato might be a lot less difficult to play as you don’t need to unlearn some of the fundamentals you may have picked up from other games. 

C. Viper (Street Fighter IV)

C. Viper was a character introduced to the Street Fighter series in Street Fighter IV where she was a law enforcement officer looking to bring down S.I.N. from the inside. In competitive play, she gained notoriety after placing second at Evo 2011 in the hands of pro player, Latif. 

What makes Crimson Viper a little difficult to use is her precise execution for combos. She isn’t the best character, but requires a lot of skill to put her combos together. She also has great tools but they must be used smartly to work for the player. Since a lot of her normals are slow, it makes her susceptible to whiff punishes from more seasoned players. But, if you can overcome all that, C. Viper is an excellent character to pick up. 

While this might have been a list of the most technical and difficult characters to use, this should not deter any player who wants to pick up a character. They are all great and as long as you are having fun, difficult should be the last thing on your mind.