Before now, I was a VERY casual fighting game player. My experience consisted of beating MK9's and MKX's story modes and one or two arcade modes in each game, a couple matches of Street Fighter 2 and Killer Instinct with friends, and a handful of matches of different Smash games. I wasn't super interested in them because I was too intimidated of getting my ass beat by online players and it's only recently that fighting games have started including more and more single player content for people like me.
The past few years, I started diving into the hack and slash/character action/stylish action/spectacle fighter genre with games like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, God of War, etc. and I just adore these games. I'm finding it harder and harder to play games with more simplistic melee combat after playing through games that excel at it so well. However, the thing about this genre is that it can also be intimidating to newcomers because some of the combos are a little complex and encourage you to play through them multiple times in order and practice in order to get the full experience.
Weirdly enough, playing through these action games has, like, tuned my brain into being able to pull off weird button combos faster and faster to do flashy attacks and shit. Around the time Bridget was announced for Guilty Gear Strive, I decided I would try to dip my toes back into fighting games and after practicing in the game for a bit, stuff that used to be too complicated for me now makes me go "yeah I'm just gonna do this one move against the AI a thousand times until I can do it consistently," without even blinking. Playing in training mode doesn't feel like a chore anymore, it's just part of the game. It's as much content to me as a story mode is, and even though I still get my ass kicked, I at least have fungetting my ass kicked.
Tl:dr I played a different genre of games that requires a lot of practice and somehow that made labbing in fighting games a lot easier and more fun
Thats cool I might try those games then. I recently started playing the Movie Battles mod for Jedi Academy after having played it for a little while a few years ago. For some reason I can grasp how the lightsaber wielding works a lot more easily this time around but combos still seem kind of impossible to pull off consistently. Not sure how some people do that.
Honestly I thought the lightsaber mechanics in Jedi Academy were overhyped when I tried playing it on PC and console. I mostly see it recommended with the dismemberment mod and I think that mod is what really carries it since no other game has anything resembling what a lightsaber would really be capable of.
But if you're interested in the action games I mentioned I would suggest DMC5 Special Edition. I think that would be a good starting point because it's easy to learn but difficult to master while also being pretty high budget. You can also get the DMC HD Collection which has 1, 2, and 3 but those games are quite old now and 2 is one of the worst games I've ever played.
Oh yeah the saber mechanics in the base game aren't really anything special but the MB mod changes things up a lot and adds a lot of complexity
Thanks for the recommendations, I'll check that out!