« INO'S RUN DOWN OF SFIV'S ABEL »

Another great entry from Ino on Street Fighter 4's Abel. Thanks to poonage (love that screen name) from SRK for the translation.

The "Part 2" doesn't have a summary for each character, so I'll slowly be doing all of the text for one character at a time.

First up, Abel:

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General:

My first impression of Abel was that at worst, he'd be one of the four best characters.

Perhaps that impression was right.

Strong points:

In addition to his loops and rushdown being an extremely simple 2-way mixup, if you pay close attention to frames, you can construct an extremely low-risk offense.

In other words, think of it like Makoto from 3rd Strike:
"Since I can bully you with either a command grab or an attack, I can actually do nothing and then kill you however I want".
In this way, you can develop an extremely stylish offense.

A strong point even compared to Zangief is that by choosing the alternative to not attack and "waiting to see what happens", you can go for the best possible combo to punish with.

As far as footsies go, Abel has stuff far scarier than his normals such as command roll, flip kick, and his fast dash. These kinds of moves allow patterns that are difficult to deal with, so in a game like Street Fighter 4 which overall doesn't allow you to rush in, Abel is accompanied with a different play style.

In addition to the amazing ability of Forward+MK -> Dash --> Guard (even frames) or hit (guaranteed combo),

You have a small frame advantage after dashing if they guard a Level 1 Focus Attack, and you're especially dangerous against characters that Standing Fierce will connect while they're crouching.

And if that wasn't enough, there's his Ultra.

It will of course go through command (not charge) projectiles,
It's fast enough to punish a backdash on reaction,
It's going to do some damage no matter what.

Essentially, when playing footsies against characters with projectiles and high priority moves (like rolling) Abel may not be the strongest character, but saying he's amazing the moment your Ultra is ready wouldn't be an exaggeration either.


Weak points:

The fact that all of Abel's tools for getting around attacks all have openings is probably his main weakness.

A move that avoids throws, a move that avoids hits, a move that avoids lows; at any rate, he's too well-balanced (lol)!

For safe ways to escape,
Depending on the situation, you have change it up between backdashes and command grabs, and that's the main thing that raises Abel's difficulty to use.
Furthermore, besides a weak punch version Super, anti-air is difficult.
If you can dash under every jump, that's a different story, but . . .


In conclusion,

While noting the point of his strong two-way mixup,
He has good frame advantage, good ground crossup ability,
Even defense needing complex answers with the joystick,

Yeah,
Surely, besides being the one character I would recommend to a VF player,
I can, with confidence, especially recommend this character to players who want to love the game for a long time.

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Up next: Chun Li.