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