Pokkén Basics Chapter 5 What is Neutral?
Pokkén Basics is sponsored by streamtechreviews.com
Table of Contents. Use ctrl+F to navigate to the desired section.
5.1 What is Neutral
5.2 Importance of Winning Neutral
5.1 What is neutral?
This is perhaps the most debated philosophical question about fighting games and thus in Pokkén Tournament. Today I'm going to give my answer on what neutral is, and why having control of it is key to winning a match. I was originally going to make one chapter called duel phase strategy just like my field phase guide, but there are just so many important concepts to cover I decided to just break them all down into their own chapters. Winning duel phase or any fighting game really comes down to winning neutral. So why not start with the most overarching question, what is neutral?
When your character is not committed to any action and can move freely, meaning they're not crouching, jumping, blocking attacking, etc. they are considered in a neutral state. But when people talk about the neutral game, they're talking about spacing. Neutral is the midrange game where both characters can move freely, the characters are not point blank and when neither character is in the corner.
5.2 Importance of Winning Neutral
Your definition of neutral might vary slightly, but anyone will agree on its importance. Fighting games start off in neutral. And the way you get damage is by winning this war of spacing. Winning neutral either nets you damage directly from pokes, grants you a knockdown to allow for mixups, or pushes the opponent towards the corner.
Winning neutral does not mean avoiding approaching the opponent and purely poking at them. It just means seizing control of the space on the screen, regardless of how you do it. I think this is why characters like Blaziken get a bad reputation. Blaziken gets torn to shreds if it tries to out-zone or out-poke characters like Mewtwo or Lucario. Instead it wins neutral in other ways. It can take advantage of the opponent's tendency to play reactionary to get in close uncontested or whiff punish anti air attempts.
Neutral has all kinds of elements besides just footsies, or poking with limbs and projectiles. It includes, jumping, walking, dashing, lunging and anything else to go from a position where you can move freely to gaining some sort of advantage against an opponent. Full screen Flare Blitz from Blaziken, 6X from Mewtwo, Fire Punch from Charizard, half screen Lucario Bone Rush... those are all neutral. Should you actually be doing those? Probably not because they are unsafe on block and very punishable when just thrown out randomly, but they still count as neutral and still lead to real rewards. Do not ignore them or you'll be eating a lot of them. In Blaziken's case, its reward from winning neutral from one EX Brave Bird is it pushes towards the corner, causes a hard knockdown, and forces a mixup. Don't worry I'm going to go into all the conventional and fundamental aspects of spacing like footsies anti airs and corner control. But I needed to set the ground work and establish that playing conservatively and whiff punishing is one approach to neutral, but it's not the only one, and no fighting game only consists of that.
Every character and player has a slightly different objective on the ground or in the air when comes to neutral. Some want to rack up as much chip damage as possible and win by time out. Some just want to get one knockdown and start their mixups and make the opponent guess until the round is over. But to some degree every character in almost every fighting game benefits tremendously from forcing the opponent towards the corner or the wall. So much so that I would consider that a universal goal of fighting games. Next chapter I'll explain why pushing the opponent towards the corner, avoiding it yourself, and preventing and punishing opponent's attempts to escape are vital to winning games. See you next chapter!
