Welcome again to KarpTech. I apologise for the delay between the articles; its been difficult looking for appropriate material to write for; the topic today is rather dry as well. This information, is among the fundamentals behind Melty Blood today, and is what sets it apart from other fighting games.

There are 3 key system features in Melty Blood that I'm going to talk about today. They are as follows:

1. An A attack can always chain into another A attack. This applies both ways, meaning you can chain from 5a into 2a and vice versa. This also applies even if you whiffed(missed) the A attack; and also if you have already previously used the A attack before. This means that doing 2ab5a2a is possible in this game, due to the above properties.

2. A whiffed A attack can cancel into any other move normally possible on hit during its recovery frames. However, you can only chain into moves that you haven't previously used in your attack string. For example, if you had done 2ab5a, you could cancel the 5a's recovery frames immediately into 2c, before waiting for the 5a to recover fully. I refer to this as whiff cancel fake(because its typically used to punish attempts to punish a whiff cancel).

3. Reverse Beat - This one is a little more obvious, but still has to be stated. All normals that are normal-cancellable have no restrictions on which normal you cancel into. Although the primary use of this is for whiff canceling(whiffing an A attack to negate the normal recovery from a heavier move), there are also other uses for it. Some players may claim that reverse beating(rebeats) significantly lower the total damage of a combo; this is also not always the case. Details to follow.