Niko

Did the timing for Carl's summon combo get easier in Continuum Shift? I used to have a hard time with it in BBCT (getting it only about half the time), but in BBCS I can do it consistently. I'm pretty sure my input habits did not change.

Agreed. I was looking forward to their special intro. At least there's some character specific lines... Therefore I would like to second this request!

Can she cancel the cartwheel into her distortion? I'm pretty sure I got my CH fishing stuffed by that before.

I'm pretty confused about some aspects of this matchup. Why is Hakumen able to do a counter mid-combo without instant blocking? Scenario is getting a 2A 5A 5B hit and then he counters me out of the 6B followup or something similar. I've had the same happen when I use too many jabs in a sandwich loop (2A 5A 2A 5A 5B 2B 6B 6D etc.), but these last few times he was blocking just 3 hits when he countered me, so it doesn't have anything to do with combo proration. When Ragna tries to mash Inferno Divider out of a tight ground loop I get a free CH reset every time as long as I don't drop my combo, but that doesn't seem to work against Hakumen. Is it a mistake to keep the loops tight on Hakumen? Also, I did gear special against a Hakumen jumping in with j.C -- I even saw the startup animation -- but instead of getting hit he simply blocked it. Does his black void thing grant him invincibility? I've noticed Hakumen ignores Nirvana's claps when cutting them with a C attack, so I speculated that the same thing might have happened with Laetabilis Cantata. One last question: The Hakumens I play tend to counter my ground followups after a blocked j.C (j.C blocked, 5B followup gets countered) or even after a j.2C allecan crossup hit (j.2C allecan crossup hits, 5B followup gets countered). Am I too high in the air? Dropping inputs? Or is Carl's block-/hitstun just too pitiful? Any pointers would be appreciated.

That last part was positively creepy. Thank you very much for translating this story, it is greatly appreciated! Now I'm curious what made Carl leave that place and what happened to his aunt and uncle.

What do you do if he just runs away to spam clouds and bugs all day, only to teleport/airdash out as soon as you get remotely close? Carl seems to lose air to air and Nirvana is too slow to chase down Arakune. So how do you get him into a combo? I keep reading that his normals (pre-curse) are the worst in the game, yet he just steamrolls my Carl -- there must be something I'm overlooking! Help? Now that Nirvana no longer eats clouds and Con Brio can be blocked in the air, this is my personal worst matchup, bar none. I'm at a complete loss on what to do against the black squiggly.

My bad then. I automatically assume people refer to her human form when they use the name Ada instead of Nirvana. Still got me curious though!

The one I'm most curious about is indeed Carl's story. Even more so, now that you mentioned that Ada was still human!

Would it be too much to ask if you could supply a synopsis of the stories that don't have a translation yet? That would be positively awesome! Regardless, thanks a lot for the full translations you already posted.

I was wondering about that as well. The first time I cleared Score Attack I had 1.01 installed already. Even though I uploaded the score, it does not appear in the rankings. Neither does any of my friends, for that matter...

Learning how to actually use Carl efficiently was a lot harder for me than the technical execution of his moves. That will only come with tons of matchup experience. Expecting results after two days in training mode with any character seems a bit too optimistic...

Since I played Carl exclusively in Calamity Trigger, it actually took some getting used to simple concepts such as dash cancelling when doing the challenges for the other characters. I finished Carl's with little trouble, but I'm stuck at 30% for some of the supposedly "easy" characters to this day. Take that as you will. Some people might argue the contrary: that you can never bring out your best potential if you spend a lot of your time playing (and gathering matchup experience for) sub characters instead of your main.

I would also like to say that I approve of the updated Carl forum icon. Yay!

Maybe I'm just consistently unlucky with my spacing, but it seems to me like Hakumen's j.2A beats Carl's j.A clean... EDIT: It just occured to me that you meant j.IB > j.A, not j.IB or j.A. My bad.

RE: Makoto challenges, are you sure about this? I noticed her challenges do not count towards the total percentage of challenges completed. I was hoping even an amateur like me could unlock those last two gallery illustrations using the DLC character challenges, so this was one of the first things I checked out.

Try killing the frog. I usually poke it with 2B and retreat as soon as Rachel gets close -- after a few times it's dead. If you get cornered, try to use 236B through George XIII. Out of the unlimited characters in Score Attack, Rachel always gave me the least problems (I will agree though that she is much easier if she decides not to whip out her frog). If you're talking about a human-controlled unlimited Rachel instead... why would you?!

Yay! This will be helpful to so many players such as myself. Thanks in advance for putting in all this time to document everything and giving good advice to the community.

You might be on to something. In the material collection, there was a boob chart which went Litchi > Taokaka > Nirvana > Nu > Noel > Rachel -- with the exception of Taokaka, this does seem to reflect their actual tiers in CS!

I main Carl and feel bad about the infinite, to the point where I don't use it. Sure, it feels like an uphill battle every time, but especially against some of the easier to loop characters it doesn't seem like I actually have to fight for my wins if I just keep doing the throw + clap thing. Continuum Shift style mixups are also much more entertaining to watch. And making the game fun -- not just for myself, but also for my opponent -- is the main focus of my own mentality when playing BlazBlue or any multiplayer game online. Different strokes for different people.

Are you using the analog stick or the directional pad? I can't do anything reliably on the dual shock controller stick. Also, did you try mapping D to R1 instead of X? It makes performing combos involving Nirvana on the PS3 pad much less of a pain.

Carl fits into the Creepy Child stereotype. His character design on the other hand looks really unique to me, top hat and all. This is the first time I hear of such a principle, but I think you might be on to something here! It's eerie how I can't think of one character where this rule doesn't apply.

Well, a hat/helmet with wings is an iconic symbol generally associated with valkyries in Norse mythology. It's just the initial connection I made when I saw Tsubaki's Continuum Shift design, and it stuck. I'll give you that!

Tsubaki is not just based on the valkyrie lore, she looks the part entirely -- she even transforms into one for her astral finish! Not to mention her collected, studious personality type (Noel, Tsubaki, and Makoto form the stereotypical triangle of friends seen in school settings, complete with Jin for a love interest). I personally don't mind clichés; BlazBlue does a great job at taking the familiar and adding a unique twist. But singling out Tsubaki as the pantheon of originality seems arbitrary at best.