Anime and Video Game Insight

Soul Calibur 3 has been out for awhile, at this point everyone who plays more or less knows their characters.  The arcade version is out now and Tira plays quite differently from this.  None the less, I’ll just cover basic Tira for console.

Tira is pretty much the worst character in this game (lowest tier), on the ground floor with Raph and to some extent Rock.  Playing her at a tournament level requires a good deal of patience and absolute knowledge of the basics.  Her damage is bare minimal having very very few good natural comboes.

A few things about her stances and infinites, they’re unsafe, and won’t typically work more than the first time you throw it out.   So more or less just avoid using them.

Top 10 List

A,A – Natural combo and fairly safe to throw out anytime you have frame advantage.  Know how to do basic lock downs with A’s.

2A – Shuts down anything agressive that is close range, deals with anything that A,A may not deal with.

4A – A decieving low, on lock down, this is mind games and fair damage.  On counter hit you get 6B free.

B,B – This is most of her damage.  Spam it often on frame advantage.  It beats out people who try to duck A,A spamming if you can read it.

WsB – Huge damange off of tech crouch.  Tira doesn’t have much of that, making this amazing if you can catch wiffs, highs, or punish extremely slow moves.

WsA – Amazing range, a good overall fodder move.  Safe as long as you don’t wiff.

WsK – Tech crouch fodder move, it’s just a good move throw out at close range.

6,6A – Knocks down, decent range, this is the move to catch steppers for the most part.  Punishable by A,A on block by most characters, but for what it does, it’s a solid move.  You can mix it with throws, or buffer 4A and fake people out with it as well.

6,6B – Safe launcher.  Just juggled with A+B.  Pretty spammible, pretty steppible, use when you want to punish from a distance, overall safe if you can force them to block it.

3,3B, A : A – The _best_ move Tira has.  This can be 60 to 90% of your real damage.  It’s a step punish, it’s NATURAL COMBO.  It’s HUGE damage.  Make sure you can just frame the last input most of the time if you plan to make Tira your main character.  Without good placement of this move, Tira really will have pretty much nothing…

So that’s the top 10, stuff I left out are throws (good damage, make sure to memorize which way they ring out), and her B+K jump moves which are fairly decent.

So there you have it, a quick guide to the worst character in Soul Calibur 3.

Bonus: Tira Cosplay.

~Fei