DNF Duel — Everything you need to know

Basic moves

Having spent some time in the game, I’ve gotten a good idea on how DNF Duel plays out. You can dash by pressing forward twice, and holding it down will cause your character to run indefinitely. Pressing back twice will grant you a very generous backdash. Three backdashes can bring you from right in front of your opponent’s face to maximum screen distance. Throws (or grabs) are executed by pressing A+B or holding back plus A+B for a backwards throw. Throw techs are performed by pressing A+B as soon as you are grabbed, regardless of direction. Pretty standard stuff.

You can dodge by pressing forward while guarding. This being as good a time as any to mention that the game does have a dedicated guard button. However, you can guard the traditional way by holding back. This does have the downside of meaning that cross-ups are functionally useless in the game, similarly to the Mortal Kombat series. Your dodge does cover a good amount of distance, but has a lot of recovery. If used recklessly, you can get punished for it.

A guard cancel (or alpha counter) can be performed by pressing B+Skills while guarding. As of the open beta, guard cancels don’t appear to be very effective, but this can change as development moves forward. There are also ground and air tech rolls in the game. The former happening as soon as you hit the ground after being hit, and the latter when your airborne stagger ends. A direction can be held to tech forward or backwards as well.

Special moves (that use the Skill button) act more like command normals and do not consume MP. Special MP moves consume MP and can be used with either a simple motion or a more traditional fighting game motion input. For example, Berserker’s Raging Fury uppercut can be used with either down + the MS button or by doing a dragon punch motion (forward, down, down-forward) plus the MS button. While using the simple motions is obviously easier, the traditional input versions of moves will consume less MP and allow it to recover faster. This gives new players a crutch to start out with, but rewards full mastery of the system with more difficult inputs.

Next up is the more advanced mechanics of the game.