Command Moves

Command Moves/Command Normals (Unique Arts), also known as (Lever-Input Arts) are a staple mechanic in fighting games.

These attacks have a simple input, normally being a single direction followed by a button that does not involve crouching. While they are stronger than regular attacks, they are still slightly weaker than Special Moves by comparison, but still open up a lot of options; in The King of Fighters series, these can be used directly after regular attacks as a combo, and often can be cancelled into a Special Move.

Attacks like Kyo Kusanagi's Ge-Shiki Gofu Yo are overhead attacks, which means these attacks cannot be guarded while the defender is crouching, and are grounded unlike jumping attacks.

Similarly, attacks such as Iori Yagami's Ge-Shiki Yuri Ori are specifically designed to be used as cross-up attacks, which make the defending player push the opposite direction to block, as they will be hit from behind not guarding properly. It is also an example of a midair command normal, which is one of the few other other options other than than specials/supers, for a character to chain any of their jumping normals into.

Uniquely to the KOF series, command normals tend to have different properties when chained-into or done standalone. Most overhead and/or low-hitting command moves when chained-into, lose such attack height properties in trade of coming out faster and also being cancel-able (as some command normals like in older fighting games, are not cancel-able into anything and may also be slow on startup when used standalone). This is likely to balance out the series' penchant for short-hop-based offense as most of the overhead mixups tend to come from there in staggered gaps as opposed to full-on oppressive blockstrings.

While as a result, many chained-into-command moves tend to lack in the high-low-mixup department that likely would be more covered by a characters' set of special moves in question (special moves do not lose their overhead/low properties if chained-into, unlike command normals). However, characters with cancel-able command normals tend to have them be strong bread-and-butter tools for the most fundamental of their combos.

Even then, it should be noted that on their own, most command moves are rather slow on startup to a degree regardless if chained-into or not. There can be some characters with command moves that come out fast enough when chained-into-from a light attack to properly combo, while there exist some command moves too slow to combo properly from light attacks which may require heavy attacks instead.

To often make use of high-low-mixup-type command normals in blockstrings to properly disorient the defender's guard, the attacker can have the ability to "late-chain" or link any of their cancel-able normals into the overhead/low command normal in question to have it still retain its specific-attack-height properties like on standalone, but at the cost of a fluid blockstring or proper chain-cancelling.