Counter Hit

Counter Hit (カウンターヒット) is the act of interrupting the opponent’s attack with an attack, which is a classic mechanic in many a fighting game. This occurs any time the player’s attack hits the opponent before their attack is active. A counter hit will be notified by the “Counter Hit” dialogue on the screen, and the opponent’s character will flash red. Compared to normal hits, the hitstun/un-tech duration on a counter hit is increased (which can carry to other subsequent hits in the multi-hitting move used to land the said counter hit), in addition to other benefits such as hit effects that don't normally occur on a standard hit. As a result, it becomes easier to follow-up the attack with a massive-damage combo, usually since the victim suffers from extended hitstop frames while the attacker is often free to act sooner as they go through their usual animation frames.

However, akin to Arc System Works' prior famed fighting game series, Guilty Gear (and unlike many other fighting games), counter hits in BlazBlue do not actually incur a bonus damage increase on their own. However, classical bonus damage increases have  been added in Centralfiction, though in a specific range often around 10%.

There are certain attacks that cause a Fatal Counter (フェイタルカウンター) that have been added in since BlazBlue: Continuum Shift as a codifying “bonus/stronger counter hit” mechanic. When it happens, there will be a notification that says, “Fatal Counter” on the screen (while the announcer says “FATAL”). When a Fatal Counter occurs, the hitstun period/untech time for each proceeding attack is extended by roughly 3 frames within the whole combo afterwards. These normally allow for combos that normally would not chain (which can also allow crouching-only combos to work off of a Fatal Counter in any scenario).

In Continuum Shift and Chronophantasma, like with normal counter hits, Fatal Counter hits originally did not incur bonus damage on their own until Centralfiction.

However, any form of Fatal Counter that can occur automatically under special non-counter hit conditions cannot additively-stack with a prior Fatal Counter hit in the same combo, though the 2 extra frames from hitting a crouching victim will indeed stack. Most Fatal Counters are often attacks mapped to the C button, with the most recurring one being 2C (until Centralfiction, which normally becomes 6C instead).

Normally in the case of Fatal Counters, most characters normally have around 2-to-3 attacks in total that can inflict it (and some characters would have just 1) in Continuum Shift. In fact, in the said installment; Ragna, Bang and Carl were originally the only characters with only one Fatal Counter attack before Chronophantasma. However, Makoto also partly thanks to her Drive mechanic, has the most amount of Fatal Counter moves in the series.

With the Fatal Counter mechanic in mind, a majority of fighting games after BlazBlue: Continuum Shift make use of a similar mechanic (such as Persona 4: Arena, also developed by Arc System Works which gives it a 20% bonus damage increase unlike in BlazBlue); this makes BlazBlue: Continuum Shift one of the first fighting games to introduce a bonus/stronger-counter hit mechanic in the genre, next to the High Counter mechanic from French Bread's Melty Blood series (carried over to Under Night In-Birth) which works differently (High Counter hits merely have extended untech time, especially airborne ones being completely unable to be air-teched) and also predates the Fatal Counter.