So if you're one of the poor souls that has to listen to me rant about Guilty Gear every single day, I'm very sorry. Thankfully this is a website where you can filter this stuff out! But hey, why would you do that?
If you've never heard of Guilty Gear, here's a quick rundown. Guilty Gear is a series of fighting games (and a few other genres here and there) that was first released in 1998. Notable entries include Guilty Gear The Missing Link, also referred to as GGML (1998), Guilty Gear X (2000), Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R (2012), Guilty Gear Xrd -REV2- (2017), and the most recent installment, Guilty Gear -Strive- (2021). From the very beginning, Guilty Gear has always been about fast paced, energetic gameplay with an emphasis on execution capabilities. Also the music absolutely rocks.
Anyways, I'm here to talk about one of the series staples: Roman Cancels, often shortened to "RC", with variations adding a letter, such as "FRC" meaning "Force Roman Cancel", or "YRC", meaning "Yellow Roman Cancel". Depending on which game you're talking about, the meaning of each one can change. For example, Xrd and Strive have very different definitions of YRC, where in Xrd it's a cheaper version of the normal tactic, and in Strive it's a defensive maneuver.
Roman Cancels originate alllllll the way back from GGML, where you could use "Charge Cancels". Missing Link wasn't very balanced, and one of the main features was every character could charge a special attack, leveling it to make it stronger for a singular use. However, the animation for the charging could be stopped at any moment, and since you could cancel a grounded attack into a charge, this allowed you to use moves that would otherwise be considered very unsafe, in an absurdly safe manner, even allowing for infinite combos, and inescapable pressure.
However, with the introduction of Guilty Gear X, this mechanic was officially introduced and rebalanced to become a mainstay of the series, known as the Roman Cancel. In GGX, by participating in each round, you earn "Tension", alternatively referred to as your super meter. You could use 50% of the entire gauge to use a powerful attack, or you could spend 50% to perform a Roman Cancel, which would cancel the animation of most attacks, permitting that they actually hit the opponent. This allows for more interesting and dynamic combos, while attempting to faithfully balance them in a way that won't lead to issues like infinite combos in GGML. To perform one, all you had to do was press three attack buttons while the attack hits an opponent.
Guilty Gear XX however, introduced a new type of Roman Cancel, a "Force Roman Cancel", also known as FRC. Instead of spending 50% of your tension to cancel the animation of a move whenever it hit, you could instead time the three button input to a specific point in certain animations, and cancel it for 25% instead, meaning you could do it more often, if you had the skill to do so. Part of the balance around this was that you no longer had to actually hit the opponent, you just had to time it. This meant that moves that were previously unable to be Roman Cancelled, now could be, such as projectile attacks. Although not every move had this technique applied to it, so it wasn't really all too wild despite how cheap it was in comparison. Some FRC timings however, were notoriously difficult, and as different versions of the game released, the timings and places where this technique could be performed were modified. In these games, you may have heard some people refer to these by the color of their animations. Regular Roman Cancels were Red, hence RRC. Force Roman Cancels were blue, although most people stick to the use of Force to differentiate it from the newest game.
Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- completely changed the mechanic, however. There were now three different types of Roman Cancels, distinguished by their color: Red, Purple, and Yellow. Together, they all shared a similar background, as they cost tension to use, and now they created a screenwide slowdown effect that didn't effect the player using them. You could now do even MORE impossible combos thanks to the slowdown, and it made routes easier to confirm thanks to the mechanic. RRCs were similar to their previous iterations, and there were also PRCs, which could be performed whenever an attack whiffed, although the distinction was mostly just in the color. Both would cost 50% of your tension bar. There was the third kind, however, the YELLOW Roman Cancel, which could be performed whenever you weren't doing anything, or during the startup of an attack (meaning before it could actually hit anyone), and would only cost 25%. Specifically YRC ended up being pretty controversial among a lot of fans.
Finally, we have the most recent entry, Guilty Gear Strive, which completely changed and differentiated each of the different types. Now, Red, Purple, and Yellow Roman Cancels were all completely different from each other, and a new type was added, Blue RCs, as well as the ability to cancel the slowdown effect, and the ability to slightly move during their use (in previous games, using one would temporarily freeze you in place). Red RCs now had little slowdown, instead creating a shockwave that bounces your opponent into the air for more combos. Purple RCs are still done on whiff, but this time also on the startup of an attack, and create a short slowdown effect, like the Xrd iteration. Blue RCs are done during neutral, similar to the old YRC, and create a much heavier and lingering slowdown effect. YRC is now a defensive tactic, which is used during blocking to get an opponent off of you. YRC actually replaces an older mechanic, called Dead Angle Attack, the reason for which I imagine was to simplify inputs since it already had an input similar to a completely different mechanic. Functionally they're very similar. In an update to Guilty Gear Strive, a "rebate" was added, where if you cancelled the slowdown effect by inputting another attack during the cancel animation, you would get back 10% of your tension, making it slightly cheaper. All of these now cost 50% tension.
Anyways, that's a short history of the series defining mechanic, and how it changed alongside each new main entry in the series. I'll probably end up writing more later at some point, so stick around if you'd like to hear more rambling about these games.