Cassandra's my favourite. Since I play at arcades, I need to know what I'm up against before I choose Cassandra though because she's a bit of a niche character and she's only good at counter-attacking. So I normally only use her against people/characters I know how to play against (can't counter-attack without knowing their attacks!)

Usually, I'll test the water with Nightmare if I'm in the dark as to who I'm challenging and how they play. I can regulate the style of play with him so that I can go easy against a noob and really get into the stances and mixing up if I'm against a pro.

Kilik was my first ever character and I'm rather solid with him. But it has been a long time. He's a bit linear and plain with some decent mix-ups but since he relies a lot on low attacks to catch out opponents, he's not so good against human opponents who know their stuff.

Cervantes was a bit of a joke and I don't why I decide to take him up, but after I had gotten half-decent enough with him to beat around some of the more average blokes at the 'cades, I stopped.

Ivy is a work in progress. I'm in the midst of learning Summon Suffering. I know how to do it (like duh) but the so-called "crack monkey" method isn't sufficent against good players. Because you can (and should) space out the command input for SS over really really long frame period, you can actually do attacks in between putting in the combo for SS. I've seen people do this and it's just damn tricky. Buffering off one move doesn't cut it anymore fellas, you need to buffer it off about 3-5 to make it unsuspecting and successful otherwise they'll just duck under it.

Raphael. I don't really know how to use him effectively but he's a fun character for beating up noobs etc. He's also a little similar to Cassandra but his crouch dash isn't as adaptable and necessary to success as Cass'

I know how to use some other characters but I wouldn't dare take 'em to the arcades. Mitsurugi for example, is very similar to Nightmare in play style (stance mix-ups, power moves in between horizontal and vertical pokes and jabs etc.) so he's not so challenging. Astaroth isn't a hard character to learn but a hard character to master, quite often a pro can school you with a character that's even slightly faster. But I've seen people use him with some success. It's quite remarkable.

But it's characters like Taki, Talim and Maxi (lesser extent, Voldo, but I've played against A LOT of Voldo in my time) that baffle me. Whenever I try to use them seriously I get the anime sweatdrop effect. Because these characters are just sooooooooooooooo good at mixing up moves, it's difficult for a counter-attacker like Cassandra to predict it. It also makes it hard for a comparitively slower character like Nightmare to even get an attack in. There go my best characters and quite often, the match.

I talk muchly.