![]() Instead of asking you to practice combos and get out the optimal damage, Nidhogg makes it clear in a single poke that if you lose the neutral you’re losing the game. The effects of losing control of the space are immediate too - the loser dies grotesquely while the winner literally runs away with the advantage. Footsies in fighting games often require you to keep in mind the opponent’s options - the moveset of kicks, punches and special abilities available to them - but in Nidhogg your weapons are almost always drawn, pointed and threatening each other’s space. What makes Nidhogg 2 unique in this regard is the way it allows you to visualize your effective ranges. If you’ve ever seen fighting games played at a higher level, the rhythm will immediately seem familiar. When using the foil or knife you’ll find yourself instinctively jabbing at the opponent while shuffling back and forth. These pokes occur in Nidhogg 2 as, well, literal pokes. When neither player is at an advantage, a mental contest begins, in which each player considers their own options while “poking” at the other with short, quick attacks, trying to find a gap in the opponent’s guard. Regardless of what game you play, this back and forth contest for control of the screen forms its backbone. Spacing, or “footsies” as it’s colloquially known, is the core of a fighting games. That dynamic was definitely at play in the first Nidhogg, but the sequel adds new weapons and complications which give Nidhogg 2 clean analogues to the three main fighting game concepts I’m going to cover here: spacing, mixups, and matchup knowledge. Most games allow you to exert your influence on a space, but what makes fighting games interesting is that it's two human players vying for control, and often both are aiming for different advantages. But look closer and you’ll see that the fundamental skills needed to succeed at Nidhogg 2 are the same as those you’ll use in other fighting games, just at a smaller scale.įighting games, like many others, are fundamentally about controlling space. It lacks the flashy combos, technical skills, and diverse rosters that help give fighting games their depth. Nidhogg 2 might not seem like the obvious choice in fact, some might not even consider it a proper fighting game. So keeping that in mind, I’d like to suggest a very different alternative to learning the genre’s core concepts: Nidhogg 2. Even with games like Skullgirls, Guilty Gear Xrd and Under Night giving you in depth step-by-step tutorials, there’s an overwhelming number of options to learn and keep in mind. ![]() But with so much choice one problem remains: fighting games are an intimidating genre to learn. There are fighting games for almost every taste, whether that’s epic family feuds involving demons and bear bodyguards, slapstick platformer shenanigans, Tetris anime crossovers, or cutesy horses kicking each other across the screen. We’re living in a fighting game renaissance.
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