After furiously mashing all the buttons on my controllers for years, I stopped playing fighting games. SoulCalibur. Street Fighter IV. The horrors of Mortal Kombat II. No matter how hard I tried, some fights were simply too difficult, the combos too meticulous to master.

In early 2021, I started trudging through my Xbox 360 backlog. Filled with games I had long forgotten about, I started with those I really wanted to complete, like Resident Evil 4. Although tedious at times (especially collecting every item in Beautiful Katamari), I enjoyed reliving some fantastic titles.

SoulCalibur IV

This March, I picked up a copy of SoulCalibur IV. The last time I played this game must’ve been in 2012, which feels like an eternity ago. It was never my favorite game, but I wanted to complete all of its achievements. So, I fired up my Xbox to do just that.

After reviewing the achievements I still needed, I started working my way through my list. A handful were simple: “Perform 20 Just Impacts” or “Collect all weapons for five characters.” The rest asked for quite a bit of legwork.

As I grinded through countless fights to accumulate some 3 million gold, I asked, “Why do I do this to myself?” I just ran through the campaign as all 32 characters and dragged myself to the top of the Tower of Lost Souls. Now I have to repeat the same fight until I have enough money to buy everything. I kept pushing forward, calculating and recalculating the amount of gold I needed until I could buy the final item.

In retrospect, this grind took a fair bit of time, but wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. As my last achievement popped, I felt proud of myself for completing another fighting game (one of the first being Mortal Kombat Arcade Collection, which was ten times worse).

Soulcalibur V

After debating which game I wanted to revisit next, I chose SoulCalibur V. As opposed to the comparatively mild grind of the fourth game, the developers kind of lost their minds with this one. Here are some of the things the achievements asked you to do:

1. Land 20,000 attacks.
2. Move over 87,600 meters during battles.
3. Defeat 240 warriors of varying difficulty.

The first isn’t so bad, especially if you love fighting games. The second requires a lot of backing away from your opponent, but nothing a rubber band on a controller can’t handle. The third? Oh my. Each fighter is ranked according to their difficulty (for example, an E5 opponent literally cannot fight, while an A1 feels nearly impossible). When I tackle achievements like this, I usually start with the hardest battles to make my life simpler. You know, get the worst over with?

Well, that was a mistake. When you hit the A-ranks, the fights can be insanely difficult. If your hit doesn’t connect, you’ll find yourself being juggled around with no remorse. I found ways to “cheese” my way through fights using Mitsurugi’s jumping katana slash and Astaroth’s rapid battle axe spin, but this obviously didn’t work for every fight. After being relentlessly taunted far too many times, the game forced me to reassess my tactics. I started experimenting with different characters to see what worked best against each opponent’s playstyle.

The two most difficult fights I encountered were an A2 version of Pyrrha named “Irasea” and an A3 version of Leixia named “Vanessa.” The first strings lightning-fast combos together without giving you much of a chance to respond, while the second essentially does whatever she wants.

After dozens of tries, I beat Irasea with Mitsurugi. I continued challenging other fighters and claiming their titles before Vanessa finally reappeared on my screen. She beat me up, over and over again. No matter what I tried, the battle always ended with her taunting me. Sometimes I’d win a round, and then she would decimate me for the next three. I eventually prevailed through sheer luck.

In the end, some fights were easy to figure out, but others required an absurd amount of luck and skill to gain the upper hand.

Success through Perseverance

If there’s one thing I learned through this process: Anything can be possible with perseverance. Nothing is guaranteed, but I used to be absolutely terrible at fighting games. Now, I can put up a decent fight. I had a similar experience with the Dark Souls series, but I’ll save those thoughts for another day.

Since June, I haven’t played many fighting games as I’ve been focusing on games like Fallout 76 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 for the time being. My backlog has a fair number of fighting games like Mortal Kombat X and SoulCalibur VI waiting for me. But when I finally go back, I know I’ll be able to win.