I play a lot of different fighting games. My favorite is Virtua Fighter but I also like Tekken, DOA, King Of Fighters, Samurai Showdown, Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc...

My problem is I never focus on one to become really good at it. I go back and forth and play all of them.

The combos on some of the games are quite hard to remember, particularly Street Fighter IV and its expansions. Also, since many of these games are highly competitive, I usually find myself getting beat every single time, which frustrates me.

But I still play them for the wrong reasons.

You know there are a lot of people talking about combos here. Weird that.

People are overthinking it. Sure you could say there are combos but to me you are learning it wrong. I have a friend, he's a big SF4 fan and he's better than me at it but I'm still alright. He learnt his moves and playstyle as a set moves; jump, high kick, low kick, upper cut, super, that kind stuff from the modern era. This is dull because it has no flow or originality to it. He then bought Tekken Tag 2 and he learnt button for button a move to do a tag combo with Jin and King (the way he did it was no different to dance dance rev). He'd learnt that and only that and not how to just play the game, so when it came to him vs me in SF, he'd beat me 3/4 matches but when it came to Tekken, because his moveset was so predictable in Tekken I'd win every time (much to his frustration). Pick random characters and there wasn't much point because I learnt how to play the game overall, tactics and movement, what buttons worked with any character not just 1 or 2.

The fun of these games isn't learning set moves or string of combos, it's just going with the flow, unlike modern FPS or shooters, they can be won by button mashing after all.

By naming "flow" you are totally right. Especially with Street Fighter you somehow learn when you play extensively the game timing and get used to every move, time, duration of moves and so on. Once you get the feeling of the game there really is a flow in there and then you easily beat anyone who does not feel that flow, in my opinion.

Back in the 90's I had this flow feeling completely with Street Figher Alpha 2 on Saturn. My friends went nuts and blamed faulty controllers although we changed them, of course. I could choose whatever character and my friends, too, and it made no difference. Sure, some matches were closer than others but in the end I mostly won (we played vs until one had won 20 matches).

I was really a part of the game and was in perfect control of it, changed from defensive to super aggressive as I liked and almost played "automatically" if you know what I mean. Combos then come automatically and special moves, too. They are just part of the general flow in the game, not the crucial part of it.

Oh, well, for the most part, I just try to adapt.  Rarely do I find myself hating a fighting game so much that I cannot play it.  Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 being the only game that comes to mind.  And, SCV, kinda.

I don't think bound broke TTT2.  No two Tekken games have ever been the same.  They've each added something drastically different from sequel to sequel, with only Tekken 1 & 2 being similar.  Lars has always been difficult to defend. against.  I don't like his character for story reasons, though.  I hate that he's Kazuya's brother (why?!) and that stupid hair of his.

Rage isn't only when your health is low.  That is Tekken 6.  In TTT2, your rest character gets rage when your point character falls below 50% in pairs.  On singles, tag combos cause instant rage, and you get it again when your health falls below a percentage.  So, if you have a single character, you can get rage twice per round.

Spamming in Tekken is never a good idea.

In Tekken 7, rage has no effect on the character what-so-ever.  It only allows you to do your super move, which are called rage arts.

I play them xD  But honestly I think fighting games are intimidating to people.  You can only get so much out of the story/arcade/single player.  The real fun in fighting games is the competitive scene, and boy is it competitive.  A lot of people get in a match and get destroyed and quickly give up.  People who play fighting games often put 100s of hours into them and know every little thing about the character they main.  So getting into a fighting game is a little rough when you lose match after match.

For the people who stick with it, its very rewarding and addictive.

Me playing against somebody a little new at the game


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Me Playing against more experience players.  Notice a big difference from the video above


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Me playing as a new character.  Notice i struggle a lot more


View on YouTube

I don't have to watch the video to know what you mean. When you fight against someone who doesn't know what they're doing, you can walk all over them, yes, but you're NOT playing your best.

Why? Because the noob isn't putting proper pressure against you to force you to think and take chances. A good opponent will do that. Force you to think, and not feel like you can do what you want, so you're NOT going to go for the meaty combos just because you don't know if you're going to be able to pull it off against them. And, if you get the chance, you better not drop it.

Exactly.  A lot of new comers come into fighting games thinking its just about pressing buttons and they dont realize how technical it actually is. 

But luckily the FGC is pretty nice a lot of the times and will take it easy on new opponents or sometime help them entirely by showing them what to do

Post you video on here when you post it.  Id like to hear what you have to say :)

I can't do anything but agree with you on this.

But like I said, I feel Bound broke Tag 2, you might not but my example I mentioned before was the reason I feel it's just not up to Tekken standard, I rarely play it anymore (only at friends house) but would happily play 6 all day long.

This is why the brawler sub-genre was created because most fighting games alienate gamers. The creator of Super Smash Bros took notice of this. It affects sales.