Wild speculation about as-yet-unreleased characters

Hype!
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I seem to recall in the old forums we had a thread for wild, baseless speculation about how as-yet-unreleased characters could work, so I figured why not revive that sort of thread here? It was fun.

I feel like Quince should probably take a lot of design cues from Chizuru from KOF. Maybe Chizuru combined with Chris. He should have a fair number of moves where a second, illusory copy of him appears, clearly. I also feel like he should probably be one of the 5 HP Club, because of his presumable mixup-based gameplay.

A while back I summed up my feelings about what Menelker should be as “Divekick Grave.” (This was back when there was debate about whether Grave should go from having a divekick to having a normal jump-kick.) He should definitely be a more aggressive, rushdown-based Grave with only 5 HP. Instead of wind I feel like an air fireball is guaranteed, but what to do with ground C? Maybe something like Valerie’s air B? Like, a close-range crossup-oriented attack? I also feel like his Yomi counter should probably leave his opponent nearby, in easy continued-rushdown range. And obviously his super should be the Deathstrike Dragon for 3 damage. (I also think his stance should be Grave’s except with his back to the camera, and slowed down considerably)

Some of the other Shadows characters seem like they would be really challenging to adapt to an actual fighting game. Persephone might work as a high-mobility grappler kind of akin to R. Mika or Shermie? Gloria seems really difficult to put into a fighting game without breaking the game. Gwen’s shadow plague still seems like a problem without a convincing solution (give her Mech Zangief armor? Keep her at one-hit-chip status at best? Give her — gasp — only 4 HP?).

Some characters seem simple, though. Troq should have 7 HP and maybe play like a combination of T. Hawk and Boxer, I think. Lots of charging and an anti-air, and probably 2-damage throws? Actually, this is less straightforward than I thought.

Onimaru could be interesting. Not really sure how to best adapt his “single big hits” gameplay from Yomi, if at all. Grave has that sword move, which seems like it would be perfect for Onimaru. Hmm.

Another interesting question is whether we might see any of the new heroes from Codex in here, even in theory. Characters like Bigby and Drakk have zero fighting game analog at all, essentially by definition, so they’re more or less blank slates should things eventually make it that far in the year 20XX.

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Onimaru does 2 damage on his strikes and only needs to chip you twice to remove an HP?

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Yeah, maybe. But only with quite slow attacks, or something.

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I don’t have a lot of experience with fighting games, so take this for what it’s worth.

Onimaru’s a tactician and a one-hit wonder. What if he had a “set-up” for each of his slashes, with a limited attack area (what’s the term for this?) So his specials are exactly overhead, or exactly to hit a dive kick, or exactly in front of him (two of those, depending on what it does for his matchups), but you have to press the button twice. The first time you press the button, he has some kind of wind-up (which should be very fast), and he’s invulnerable while in the wind-up. Maybe he has a combination of set-ups (for mind games). So, special 1 into special 1 is different than special 1 into special 2 and so on. Anyway, his slash is really powerful and really fast, but the recovery animation is really long. If you don’t hit your opponent, you get punished. So it’s a lot of samurai posturing work. His normal and air moves should all involve miniaturized BBB’s (like his Yomi Ace), which slow the opponent down so it’s easier to hit them. Or they could explode, doing no damage but setting up one of Onimaru’s slashes (much like Rook’s Kirby move allows him to move closer). So one explodes and floats the opponent at just at the dive-kick height. Another explodes and rockets them directly overhead. Maybe the explosions are random? I’m not sure if this is way overpowered or not, but I think it fits with some of the flavor of Onimaru from Yomi.

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I really like that stance->slash idea for Onimaru. It’s almost like a rekka chain, but the first rekka is just a step forward or back without hitting, and then you have to quickly decide whether to continue. It seems like that would feel very cool.

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As someone who has been in my university’s kendo club for a couple years, this sounds amazing. If the Shadows characters get added and Onimaru doesn’t do something along these lines, I will be extremely sad.

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There are lots of different ways to make this guy work! I really like the “sword stance” idea above; reminds me of playing Nightmare in Soul Calibur (one of the best done “big guy with sword” ideas I’ve seen implemented). Variable rekka chain with “horizontal” and “vertical” slices seems good, especially if there’s a laggy unblockable mixup in there! Valerie already has the crossup on her Three Colors chain and Setsuki can Throw in many different areas of her mixups, so I think for design breadth somebody should have either a very high chip move or a straight unblockable in theirs. Onimaru seems an okay candidate!

I also think Onimaru should have a OHKO move. In other games, IKs and OHKOs are kind of fake (even though there are always setups, they usually aren’t consistent or real, and instead the “best” way to try to land it), but maybe Onimaru could have a real OHKO that matters, has an awesome animation, is important to his overall gameplan, etc.

Should it be his Ground Super? It could be, but maybe it doesn’t have to be. Usually Fantasy Strike supers are some kind of utility/guaranteed damage type thing, though not all characters have to follow that same format; Onimaru could be the exception. He’d still have an air super (Clockwork Soldiers?) but Martial Law (the OHKO) would just be another way to use your meter.

Now, the other question; is this move UNBLOCKABLE? I mean, he has to have an unblockable move, right? Should that be one of his specials? Or do we bake the flavor into the OHKO super? Is an unblockable OHKO super too good? Not necessarily; it’ll depend purely on the frame data and the hitbox of the move. The thing to be careful about is setting it up meaty after a Yomi Counter (assuming his Yomi Counter knocks down at all!) but other than that, it could totally be a real move.

I’d also like to see it not have a super flash or anything to draw attention to it, UNTIL it hits. This could be a part of what makes it more ambiguous and terrifying; you have to be well versed in how the move looks on startup, and not just react to the flash/cinematic. Then after the giant swing finishes it would drain his meter, leave him completely defenseless (full combo punish for the opponent).

shrug What do you think?

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40 frames of startup but unblockable

150 frames of recovery

Swing for the fences, Onimaru

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Hmm…Unblockable…ultra armor…but really, really slow. Like, it has to charge like SF3 Denjin.
BUT…maybe he gets to use it early, at the cost of only doing 3 damage? Less? A slow increase in amount dealt? Or maybe increasing at an increasing rate?
Such a move would be best in the corner, after a knockdown. How invulnerable would it be again? trike? Throw+strike? T+S and anti-super as well? Not invulnerable so much as unflinching…just spitballing here…

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This is sounding better and better… I’d like to suggest that if/when development begins for the Shadows characters the dev team should watch some kendo videos (and anything else that’s based on samurai techniques) to get a feel for how he should move. Sadly, the most authentic kendo-inspired thing I can think of is the high-low mixup between aiming for a head strike or a body strike, but that seems impossible to add in Fantasy Strike as it is.

Regardless of how he gets his damage in, it could be interesting if his “safe” attacks are safe not because of their frame data, but because he passes his opponent and puts enough distance between them that they can’t hit back (safely). That’s how almost all attacks work in kendo, and it would make him unique because he might not want to put his opponent in the corner (because then he couldn’t get far enough behind them).

I don’t know… That seems like the kind of move Menelker would have, right? If some move other than Deathstrike Dragon is a OHKO, that would be kind of weird. That said, if you really want Onimaru to have one, maybe a throat strike? That would also justify it being unblockable, but the downside is that those are actually kind of fast in kendo… So maybe not. Either way, I’d be inclined to make it really strong (maybe 2 or 3 damage and knockdown?), but not instantly lethal on its own.

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Continuing Onimaru: Final Authority just makes his slashes come out instantly for a short time?

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Slightly different topic: completely different character. We’ve been talking about Oni for a while.
I get the feeling that Gwen might be right at home with the Killer Instinct cast, but that doesn’t mean a thing here. Is there any way to pull from their relentless, repeated strikes and remain balanced in this system, or should we try barking up a different tree entirely for her moveset?

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bigby should be modeled on that mage character, rasputin, from the world heroes series. actually, the character sports enormous magical hands which in dungeon and dragons are all spells created by a wizard named “bigby”

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You know, the other day I found myself thinking about how much I loved Makoto from SF3 as a sort of end run around the cliché that all grapplers must be tall muscle guys, and instead is a grappler who is short and built around high mobility. I started wondering if maybe, just maybe, if we get the Shadows characters, there might actually be something to the jokes about “Gwen is secretly a grappler” in terms of how she might best be realized as a video game character.

Gloria, though, man, I dunno. Having a healer seems kind of anathema to a fighting game, since the main reason she worked in Yomi was because she could spend her own HP as a resource to damage the opponent. Maybe she could be less “healer” and more “temporary buffs”?

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There are plenty of examples of characters in fighting games that has healing options. Frank West, Phoenix Wright, and Phoenix from UMvC3 has healing options, Sin Kiske from GG heals some times, Yoshimitsu and Lei from Tekken has healing things. So it wouldn’t be out of the place to have a healer in fighting games.

Persephone should have the “input a move for your opponent” thing. When hitting with Mistress command, you enter a Geiger super time-stop thing, where you enter in a specific command for your opponent, then you get to punish.

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Alternatively, if you hit with Mistress’ Command, you could just have the opponent freeze for a short amount of time, and the first move you hit them with counts as being a counter-hit or something.

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That seems like a very easy way of doing it. I would enjoy the option to use up super meter for someone, and then just get a jumpin punish for it.