Is it possible to Just Guard attacks from behind

soul-calibur-5

I'm currently making my way through the Legendary Souls mode, and I must say I have never seen so much A.I. cheating in my life. While I am used to the computer cheating from my time fighting the extremely difficult A.I. in Soul Calibur III, there was one thing that caught my eye as being extremely odd.

While I was fighting Kilik, I managed to get behind him. From my past experience with the Soul Calibur games, I know that it is impossible to guard or guard impact attacks from behind, and you also can't shake off grabs. However, when I went to attack him, he somehow Just Guarded my blow!

Is this just more A.I. cheating, or can human players do this as well?

Best Answer

I should probably have let someone who is actually good at Just Guard test this out, but yes, you can just guard while facing away (both on Voldo and other non-back-blocking characters).

If you'd like to confirm (as I did), Voldo is very easy to turn around with (4A), and Pyrrha's attacks are practically impossible to just guard just like everyone else's easy to time. Head to training, set the AI to Mode: Check Skill and State: Attack and Guard. She'll use B and guard repeatedly. Alternatively, you can use the recorder to set up an attack yourself.

Alternatively, using the same setup, you can confirm using Ivy's 22B~BE or 88B~BE (BE being Brave Edge, A+B+K), which turns her around.

In general in fighting games, the AI is typically able to take advantage of things that are very difficult for human players to do, but it's never exclusive to the AI - given enough time and practice, the moves and techniques observed there are (almost) always achievable by human players.