Top 5 Guilty Gear Strive characters for beginners

The highly anticipated Guilty Gear Strive is the most beginner-friendly and mainstream entry in the series and was designed with the intent of pulling in as many new players as possible.

Despite all this, Guilty Gear Strive has a notoriously high learning curve, and even in its most vanilla state, it may prove challenging to pick up.

This list will go into the easiest to use characters in Guilty Gear Strive. Learning to play these characters will help players grasp the many unique mechanics Guilty Gear Strive offers.

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The Top Five Guilty Gear Strive characters recommended for beginners

5) Chipp Zanuff

Official promotional art for Chipp (Image via Arc System Works)

There is no doubt Chipp has the most tools in all of Guilty Gear Strive. He can teleport, command, grab, uppercut and throw shurikens in the air. These are just a few.

However, he is still a high-risk character as he is balanced out by his extremely low health. Making mistakes as a Chipp player is far more punishing than as anyone else.

With his incredible speed and mobility, Chipp players must learn to navigate through the screen and avoid as much of the opponent’s offense as possible while looking for opportunities to deal damage.

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4) Ramlethal Valentine

Official promotional art for Ramlethal (Image via Arc System Works)

Ramlethal’s giant set of swords allows her to control a good portion of the screen with just her normals. She can poke easily and apply deadly mid-range pressure compared to the other characters of Guilty Gear Strive.

She can also throw her swords at the opponent as projectiles, although they reduce the range of her normals and specials until she retrieves them again. On that note, she has one of the best and easiest to use supers in Guilty Gear Strive, a full-screen high damage energy beam.

It’s these unique features that require Ramlethal players to be extremely aware of their enemy’s and their position whilst also cycling their tools to maintain pressure.

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3) Sol Badguy

Official promotional art for Sol (Image via Arc System Works)

One of the two starter characters of Guilty Gear Strive and perhaps the most iconic.

Sol’s fiery normals and projectiles allow him to exert a ridiculously good offense. One of the defining moves in his kit, which has a reputation for being an extremely crude offensive option, is his wild throw.

Sol players will condition their opponent into being scared to do anything but block. Taking advantage of this fear, they’ll execute a wild throw on their blocking opponent to score a huge combo and massive damage.

Reading the opponent’s state of mind is an important skill to master as a Sol player. He has an execution barrier that will not permit recklessness and button mashing.

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2) Ky Kiske

Official promotional art for Ky (Image via Arc System Works)

Ky is a swordsman with the ability to manipulate electricity. His sword allows him to apply a good deal of pressure from mid-range with his normals, but his best tools are his projectiles.

He can unleash bursts of lightning from many angles in any one of two variants: a small fast-moving projectile or a large slow-moving multi-hitting projectile. Setting up and using these projectiles is the main priority of a Ky player.

What makes Ky shine as a beginner character is his extremely basic game plan. The objectives of the game are never blurred when playing as Ky. Spam projectiles when far away, set up slow projectiles over the opponent when they’re knocked down, and contest normals in neutral.

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1) Giovanna

Official promotional art for Giovanna (Image via Arc System Works)

Giovanna is one of the two new characters added to Guilty Gear Strive, and judging from her kit and design it looks like this is the character that ArcSys would like to push the most on to new players.

Giovanna players quite literally can score wins by being reckless. Running up to their opponents and pressing random buttons is a decent strategy. Whereas running up to opponents and mixing up her diverse specials to surprise them is an incredible one.

The main reason Giovanna players can get away with button mashing is that the bulk of her moves can be stringed together.

They can also be canceled into specials that are extremely hard to punish.

Not to imply that skill isn’t involved with her, as competent Guilty Gear Strive players can easily deal with generic Giovanna spam. Good Giovanna players will have to learn to outsmart and trick opponents who put up an iron defense.