Yea, It's fine when it's someone within 4 hours away, but beyond that it goes horribly. Can't install hamachi since my antivirus won't let me install it even when it's excluded from checking and put as a trusted program.
If you can host via direct ip, we can still try to see whether it lags or not, if you want.
I personally don't lag with anyone in the world who has a decent connection, in Europe, in America, in Asia, it's all the same for me ( ̄ー ̄) .
Hey um...can someone fully explain how this is supposed to work?
Well, the system is quite weird and sometimes very unfair (I don't know if its due to some bugs, but I already went from +40% to -60% in 1 second without receiving any single hit or playing defensively), but in general, try to make the match (and rounds too) last the longer you can and try to make it to 3 round, since the popularity will raise a lot at the end of the 3rd round (this is just if you want to get to the 100%)
You'll win some popularity if you hit your opponent just when he's attacking to "cancel" his attack, or when you're casting a spell (even if you fail it. So cast it as soon as you can to be able to cast a second one sooner).
Some combos are giving you some popularity but I still don't get why.
Stunning give you some popularity bonus too, so you can also try some "stun-combos" if you know some. Some spells are stunning your opponent too.
For what you said with the first hit, it's like a
"jan ken pon" like I said before, you can try to directly do an attack at the beginning of the game and hope your attack will hit him first, or directly rush back and try to approach in a safe way to get the first hit.
But I personally don't like this feature of the game, 10-15% popularity for a single first hit is way too much.
Finally, you can also use the
Miko's scepter item that will slowly grant you some popularity as long as you cast it, it's quite useless in fights since the game is promoting aggressivity, but when you cast some slow danmakus that stay in the screen, you can use it as a shield to raise your popularity.
You can also use it after stunning your adversary, it can grant you some % popularity that can make you win a close fight.