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Named Abundant Shrine in the English, but here I'm calling it by it's original name. I've little need to explain the whole get-go, but this place is essentially a farm where crops grow thanks to Landlos. I don't think there's much need for images seeing as how most of ya have probably been to Fertility Shrine in your B/W games.
You start off in the middle of the stage of what's supposed to be Landlos' shrine. As you can see it doesn't obstruct player's paths, though the roof can be stood on as a drop-through platform. The background consists of a forest just so you know what the scenery is like.
There's not much else to say about the stage's initial layout other than the yellow-ish areas around what's supposed to be soil. These are crops which are present at the start of the match, acting like the ones from Landlos' Neutral Attack as quoted:
Landlos laggily generates a random minature field of crops where his tail as that’s as wide as Marth and tall as Kirby. The crops can be walked through without problems and pose no threat to anybody, on the contrary – if you press neutral A next to the crops you can chow down on them to heal 5%. The patch of crops can be used four times before there’s nothing left to eat, but a use of it regenerates every 10 seconds. If Landlos uses this move on a chunk of ground that already has crops, the crops will become renewed.
The only difference to these crops is that each one (per SBB of land) has the same amount of HP as one would heal a player, so they can be destroyed if one would see them as a threat.
This farm-like stage is a fairly large one, with the stage's width being 1.5X that of FD and there still being some potential for air lovers - except that they have to land for the crops. This is one stage where the land truly provides, and it shows it. Ground-based campers who are good at walling off their foes will have a lot of fun on this stage, essentially being immortal as they can heal off 20-80% every 10 seconds. It's up to you whether you want to camp and live off the land or prevent your enemy from doing so and simply destroy all the crops to prevent any players from being able to heal.
Remember then shrine in the middle that you forgot about because you were too busy eating crops? If you stand in front of it for 1 second, your character will kneel in prayer for 2 seconds, having invincibility to prevent interruptions. After 5 seconds, Landlos will fly by in the background to re-nourish all the destroyed crops - now obviously this ONLY works if Landlos is not in the game, otherwise he'll be the only thing that can (re)make crops (which are by default invincible of course unless you have a anti-trap move). Oh, and characters cannot pray if they: 1: Have destroyed a crop (they'll try to but will fail. Some characters can be forgiven, and some will always be forgiven though this depends on the character you're using. Best use common sense) 2: Are a Heavyweight/Lightweight Male/Female Antagonist (sorry guys, you're only good for destroying) 3: Are incapable of praying at all
The above may sound absolutely stupid to even consider typing and placing, but in-characterness is important methinks.
Anyway, knowing that you can pray for revived crops, you technically have 2 sides: protect the crops or destroy them. Everybody wants to heal themselves but you really have to consider that you're enemy is in the same position. And if you destroy the crops you may not be able to pray for them back. Especially if a player picked Landlos just to annoy you.
From what you've garnered, the Fertility Shrine is pretty peaceful. But every farm has it's pests, no? For Fertility Shrine, these pests come in the form of those 2 dudes Tornadus and Thundurus, those Legendary Pokemon you all hate so much for good reason.
FEAR THEM...
If you've seen them in action in Pokemon Black and White you know very well what these 2 are capable of. Their coming is shown through a dark cloud that approaches the Shrine from over the horizon. Wind equals Tornadus and lightning equals Thundurus, the cloud acting as a 10 second forewarning. Both Pokemon cheat by staying out of harm in the background (they are Pranksters, no?) observing the torture they give you. Oh, and Landlos is NOT affected by anything his lessers would give off and will not be targeted by any attacks.
If it's Tornadus that appears, he'll send powerful wind energy from his tail towards the screen that hinders all the players by cutting their speed speed by 3/4 and doing 2% per second. That's not all either; if a player is not able to hold on, they'll literally be blown into the screen, smashing into it before falling unconsciously for a KO. The damage required for this varies with a character's weight: every "1" out of "10" allows a character 20% before they'll be knocked down, so you have nothing to fear unless you're using a lightweight. Then again you do have the crops that you can use to heal yourself, giving good reason to feast on them. Tornadus will blow for 10-20 seconds before leaving.
If it's Thundurus that appears, he'll float above a random character every 5 seconds to fire a lightning bolt that's 2.5X faster, wider, and more powerful than the one our good friend Pikachu produces. These bolts are extremely dangerous, so you should roll out of the way if you become Thundurus' target. You can use the roof of the shrine to protect yourself from one lightning bolt, but it'll be destroyed if you do so before being magically restored once Thundurus goes away. Thundurus' lightning is also capable of destroying crops, which is pretty bad on it's own.
By the way if all players are using Landlos on this stage the other 2 genies will never appear.
How wretched, this candypop stage is supposed to represent FFX? Auron must be spinning in his grave (<- spoilers)
General stuff//
Anyhow, the stage itself is that glowing platform. You can also stand on the two cymbals either side of the buddha, though that is not entirely reccommended. That buddha loves to bash on those cymbals, so every so often he will hit one or both of the cymbals acting as platforms. If you happen to be standing on one when that happens, not only will you be stunned from the sheer force of the vibration, but it will also catapult you straight into the air, where you will be at the mercy of your opponents and the inevitable meteor smash they will clonk you with.
Visual stuff// Like certain moving stages (e.g. Space Armada) the stage tends to roam around, exploring the stadium. The platform is also constantly (and slowly) spinning, like a chicken in a microwave, though the camera does a good job of keeping itself perpendicular to the action, so it rather looks like the stadium itself is rotating around the stage. There's also spotlights, floodlights, discolights, deadlights, and other luminous junk to make everything look colourful and active.
tl:dr? Flashy stuff is going on all around you, but it doesn't affect any of the fighting.
Gimmick stuff//
Something that does happen from time to time that will annoy you, occurs when the spotlights shine directly into the camera, blinding everything in an array of strobe colours. When the lights pass, everything is suddenly flipped horizontally. Things on the left are now on the right, and vice versa. Unlike that annoying effect on Spear Pillar, this isn't an illusion; so if you push right on the analogue stick, you will move right.
..So what happened? It's nothing terribly magical or anything. The camera has merely moved from in front of the stage, to behind it. Hence the only thing different, is the angle you're looking at the brawl from. It'll still be disorientating for anyone new to the stage, to suddenly find everything flipped around, but at least it isn't outright lieing to you (unlike that OTHER stage )
I've been thinking for a while; why the hell isn't there anyone commenting on the minis being made? It would be nice to get some feedback on them, or at least have people post their thoughts on if they liked it or not. It'd be like nobody commenting on your set and then it appearing on the Top 50 for a reason not understandable. Since the minis are a quick read I've decided I'll give my opinion on them for now.
I've never heard of this game before Mr. Minecraft was posted, but seeing as how you did a Extra for the character I can see you are a fan of the series (that's what's so good about this mini, you can do extras for sets you admire and show people you like the series and stuff). Anyways, Creeper sounds annoying as hell; I think you managed to capture this trait 100% perfect with him exploding in your face with little to no time to react. This is a short, but sweet entry.
...I was planning on doing something for Auron, but eh you can do whatever you like, even if it means lampshading the fact that something from FFX-2 doesn't represent Auron, but that's kinda irrelevant seeing as how I could just do something Ronald McDonald related extra for any of the 84 other movesets made so far (which I could do hehe).
I don't really have any kind of opinion on the stage and stuff, but it looks like you pretty much nailed it pretty well for a concert stage. The stage would be pretty flashy to play on and stuff. It's a nice job I say, but this is expected from you all the time, no? There'as also fun music which is cool.
---
While we're at it, can somebody PLEASE make an extra for Ronald McDonald? I'll be your friend.
¬_¬ Here's an extra I slapped the M logo onto... FRIEND GET!
Golden Arches
This is (or rather "was", as it was abandoned shortly into Brawl's development) a shiny new game mode, curtesy of McDonalds. "Golden Arches" is selected in the same way you'd select "Coin Match", and it plays out eerily similar to a 8 minute 5 Stock Brawl without items. In fact, if you're lucky, that's all it will be...
More frequently however, at random points throughout the match (typically averaging at 30 second intervals), the familiar "ba-ba ba ba baaaah" jingle will ring out, signalling that the match's rules have changed in some way. How have they changed? At random of course! And you won't know what changed until you stumble into it. How devilish!
So here's a list of the more tolerable rule changes. These ones simply toy with the physics of the match, and typically appear during the first 4 minutes of the match. Bear in mind that all rules can be stacked on top of one another, and that a possible rule change is the removal of a previously summoned rule;
Traction now fluctuates, switching from ice to sand, and anything in between, every time a player moves
When attacking, players teleport backwards 1 stagebuilder block, perform the attack, then teleport back
1st jumps are tripled in effectiveness, but additional jumps do nothing to gain height.
Projectiles, traps and so on, all exist in the background layer, meaning that players will only be hit by them if they spotdodge.
When rolling, players automatically continue rolling all the way to the edge of the current platform
Instead of idle animations, players fall asleep, become stunned or become frozen.
The speed of Dashing is reduced to that of Walking, and vice-versa
The floor becomes lava (though it doesn't look any different), launching foes into the air every time they stand on it longer than 2 seconds
Being airborne deals 5% passive damage per second... to the opponents
Solid ground acts like a drop through platform, allowing players to drop through and jump up through it.
Horizontal momentum takes players in the opposite direction it's supposed to (e.g. dashing right, will make the player move left, while still facing right)
Players are magnetically attracted to one another (though they are repelled from eachother if they are teammates)
Player size (mini, normal, mega etc) changes depending on their current position within the match. For example, the player in 1st is mega-fied, while the guy in last is shrunk. This does not alter the player's weight however.
The digits of the players damage counters are reversed every 10 seconds. 19% for example, would become 91%. If a 0 is moved into a higher digit, it becomes a 1, so 280% would become 182% instead of 082%
Damage dealt to one foe is spread equally among all opponents.
These next rules occur later on in the match, typically messing with how KOs work. Again, any rule summoned, stacks with all the previous ones;
Entering the prone state counts as a KO
Player gains a free stock after reaching 300% damage
KOing a player, counts as a KO against a player selected at random
Suiciding adds a stock instead of removing it, though they still lose points for SDing
Idling adds an extra stock for every 2 uninterupted seconds.
One extra stock is randomly given out every 30 seconds.
Players are removed from play if they accumulate 15 or more stocks.
Dashing into a player KOs them. If two players dash into eachother, the larger one KOs the smaller one
When being KO'd the number of Stocks the player loses is [2 minus (Damage% Divided by 100)]. If the result of this is negative, the player gains stocks instead.
KOing the same player twice in a row KOs you too.
Receiving damage causes a stock marker to fall out of the player. If this marker is knocked offstage before the player can pick it up, that stock is lost. If all a player's stock markers are knocked out of him, and he is then KO'd before he can pick any up, he is removed from play, and all the stock markers become the property of the player who made the KO.
All players are KO'd whenever a new rule is summoned (i.e. whenever the "ba-ba ba ba baaaah" jingle occurs)
Being KO'd does not reset a player's damage to 0, but merely removes up to 100% of it.
Free Stock items (much like those found in SSE) appear at random. A very similar looking "evil version" (which removes stocks instead of adding to them) may also appear.
Towards the end of the match, rules affecting the match itself begin appearing. Unlike previous rules, only two of these can be stacked with eachother. If a third rule appears, the first one is annulled;
KOing adds 30 seconds to the match's remaining time
KOing removes 30 seconds from the match's remaining time
Every hit adds 1 second to the match's remaing time
One player suddenly becomes CPU controlled
The timer begins counting up instead of down. The match ends when the timer reaches 8 minutes
Surprise! The match is really a Coin match. The more stocks a player has, the more coins they start with (100 coins per stock)
The goal is no longer to have the most stocks/points/coins remaining, but the least. However, you still lose if you lose all of your stocks.
Stocks don't even matter now. The match is purely time based. When this rule appears, every player's stocks are converted into points. If this rule is annulled, the points are converted back into stocks via [stocks = points divided by 2]
If the match ends via time-out, even the results screen won't be free from the influence of the Golden Arches. The game's winner is decided via one of the following, completely fair, methods (chosen at random naturally)
The winner is simply whoever won. No tricks, really.
The winner is whoever lost
The winner is whoever was launched at the highest speed during the match
The winner is whoever presses A (or start) first on the results screen
The loser is whoever presses A (or start) first on the results screen
The winner is chosen at random
The winner is whoever won the previous match played (even if that character wasn't in this match)
No-one wins (No Contest)
The winner is Mario
And finally, once the match is over and done with, Golden Arches throws one last parting shot at its players.
The rules active at the end of that match are saved, becoming the STARTING rules whenever another Golden Arches match is played
Mann Manor is map that appeared during TF2’s Scream Fortress Event, it appears a 3-stage CP map that takes place in Redmond Mann’s mansion. The map is haunted, as the spirit of Silas Mann was killed here. Silas Mann used his willpower to become the Horseless Headless Horsemann who haunts the map to this day.
The platform on the left is as wide as Battlefield, the platform in the middle is slightly wider then Battlefield, and the platform on the right is longer then both. The top platforms are half the size of Final Destination.
Standing on the Control Point (The line in the middle of the stage) for 30 seconds changes the RED Emblem to an emblem that would fit your character. If the match ends with, say, Wesker and the Scout having the same amount of stocks, but Wesker owns the control point, sudden death is skipped and Wesker wins.
At random intervals during the match, the Horseless Headless Horsemann spawns from the control point.
The Horsemann is the size of two Ganons standing on top of each other. He is extremely slow, his dashing speed being the speed of Ganon’s walk. As soon as he appears, one player screams and has a skull above their head, they are now “It” (unrelated to any Stephen King movie). It will be the Horsemann’s target, only attacking anyone else if they’re in his path. He swings his axe forward, dealing 20% and high knockback to It and anyone around him. It can pass on his title to anyone he attacks while he has a skull above his head. The Horseless Headless Horsemann will be defeated by taking 60% damage, but will still spawn after that.
I've been thinking for a while; why the hell isn't there anyone commenting on the minis being made? It would be nice to get some feedback on them, or at least have people post their thoughts on if they liked it or not. It'd be like nobody commenting on your set and then it appearing on the Top 50 for a reason not understandable. Since the minis are a quick read I've decided I'll give my opinion on them for now.
Personally, I'd be more concerned about the ridiculously low activity level regarding sets and their comments. I've posted two of the last four movesets, and Flame Hyenard was over 2 weeks ago. Also, with Smady and the other regular commenters kidnapped by MW to make sure Tutankoopa wins disappearing, practically nothing's happening on the commenting front either. (Seriously, I've gotten about 3-4 comments between both of my last two sets, and I don't think other people are faring much better.)
I quite like this mini, despite not having played the map ever (I only mainly do 2fort all day erry day, but I'll occasionally do a Gravel Pit or Dustbowl). Horseless Headless Horsemann is really cool as a stage hazard. Thankies :D
I give you another mini...
Airman's Item: Item-2
If you only had the Item-2 you could beat Heatman's stage. But no, that pesky Airman won't let you have it.
The Item-2 is unlocked after defeating a level 9 CPU of Airman with MegaMan9: MegaMan. It is a little rocket propelled platform that will let you glide safely over any obstacle.
Throwing the Item-2 after picking it up will make it float in place one Stage Builder block away from you in the direction you threw it. Landing on it will let you control it by holding L or R (you can't use your shield while on it) and tilting the control stick in the desired direction. It moves about as fast as ROB's Up Special. The Item-2 acts as solid ground for you, the rider. It only has fuel for five seconds of riding, but you can jump up and down to conserve fuel.
I'm lovin it! You're my friend. All the rules, especially the Stock-related ones, are really creative. People could use them for their movesets. I also loled really hard at imagining the McDonalds jingle playing randomly in the match and how a random player could just win randomly. I'd probably just put down my controller and wait until the match is over until I do anything and just hope that I won. Come to think of it, it would be funny if there was a rule where the match could restart once just to piss off all the players. I also noticed that there are no sound or aesthetic related effects.
This is Reginold the Nightmare Fuel Wizard. Reginold is the arch-enemy of Keith, the wizard of audio. You see, unlike Keith, Reginold is silent. Unable to speak, Reginold plots his evil dark magic against Keith, planning to take over his role as the only audio-based one in all of Makeyourmovia.
Reginold appears in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as an Assist Trophy that, unfortunately, doesn't do much assisting. When summoned into battle, Reginold raises his wand high as yellow sparks shoot out of it! This is Reginold's evil muting magic! After a brief few moments, all the characters and the music on the stage will become mute, causing the Smashers to fight in silence. Reginold's not done there though...
Periodically throughout Reginold's 40 second duration, Reginold will unmute the world. At this point, the Brawl becomes like that one minigame on WarioWare; "Don't Move!" If anyone moves or attacks, their character will make sound which will enrage the evil wizard Reginold! Reginold will then target that character and zap them with an unavoidable sphere of energy! This causes the player zapped to fall into the Nightmare Fuel Realm; a horrible world that is home to Reginold! The character will free fall (in a brief cutscene) through numerous horrible sights, screaming the entire time. A few moments later, the Brawl will continue as normal as Reginold once again mutes the stage. After approximately fifteen seconds have passed, any character sent to the Nightmare Fuel Realm will fall from the top blast zone and smash into the stage. Just hope you don't fall while the game is unmuted or Reginold will send you right back. . .Oh, and you'll also take 36% per trip. . .so don't make a sound. . .
I am the Man who arranges the Blocks.
That continue to fall from up above.
They come down and I spin them around.
‘Till they fit in the ground.
Like hand in glove.
The Man who Arranges the Blocks originates from the popular Youtube Music Video to Pig with the Face with a Boy’s song: A Complete History of the Soviet Union, Arranged to the Melody of Tetris. It’s highly recommended that you watch it to get the full gist of this mini. The Man himself is a humble worker who, seeking fortune, moved to Moscow. However, he claims that they are “making me work until I’m dead”.
If Tetris gets a minion crate (If you’re asking how they do it, if Tetris lands on an item, it will use it.), The Man will pop out, looking disgruntled as the background music changes to that of the previously mentioned song, The Man singing along. You actually have partial control of The Man, him having his own miniature moveset, you gaining control of him by pressing the L or R button and switch back the same way. The Man has the weight of Ike, but activates his moves much more quickly, almost Shiek-like, he jumps as high as Marth and has no specials or true aerials: simply performing his tilts in the air. Seeing as this is a mini-moveset, this will not have any sort of lag estimation: just use your head. He disappears once his song is done or he’s KOed.
Small Note: The Man can actually ride on blocks while they’re in the air, rule of cool.
Jab – The Revolution: The Man swings his hammer in front of him. As the name implies, this turns any foes in front of him as though they had been caped, dealing 8% damage to his victims. In addition, this forces your opponent to drop any blocks they’re currently carrying.
Forward Tilt - “They come down and I spin them around.”: The Man cheerfully grabs his hammer and performs a horizontal swing in front of him. This does pitiful damage, dealing only 3% and slight stun. However, as the name might imply, this will spin any block he hits, causing them to spin for 4 seconds as though they were using Mach Tornado. This does 2% each time it spins, 2 times per second, 8% in all, with the last hit having great knockback.
Up Tilt – “They descend upon me from up above.”: The Man whacks his hammer above him in a manner similar to Dedede’s up smash, dealing 6% and light knockback. What this move excels in is it’s practical purpose: If any blocks are above him, he will send them back into the air at the height and speed of Sonic’s Up Special, the blocks dealing 4% to anyone hit by them.
Down Tilt – A Generic Hammer Swing: Couldn’t think of anything else. The Man swings his hammer at the ground, dealing 4% and blahblahblahblah. If he’s on top of a block, he’ll knock it downwards, faster then the Down Smash but otherwise identical.
Forward Smash – “Made by the men in Kazakhstan”: With an identical animation to his forward tilt, The Man swings his hammer in front of him, dealing more damage then his FTilt: 5% uncharged, 14% fully charged. If the Man hits any block, it will zoom forward as Sonic’s speed, the distance depending on how long he charged: 1 SBB at minimum, 7 at the maximum. The Block gives great knockback to anyone it hits, as well as doing 6%.
Down Smash – “A collective regime of peace and love.”: During the charging of this move, the Man pulls out a block-shaped Walkie Talkie and yells into it, a fellow Soviet Worker appears behind him. The Soviet Worker, while looking far different from The Man, is identical in moveset: the key difference being that he cannot move blocks. The Worker is AI-controlled, the level being set by how long you charged. (1 uncharged, 9 fully) The Worker can tank up to 20% before being KOed.
Up Smash – Scaffold Scuffle: As you charge this move, the Man points at the ground menacingly. Nothing happens if you C-Stick this. However, if you charge this: A Scaffold will appear from the ground, the height depends on how long you charge, 1 SBB with minimum charge, 5 SBBs is the maximum. The Man can climb up and down the Scaffold like a ladder. The Scaffold can take up to 15% before being demolished.
Taunt: The Man only has one taunt, he pulls out his accordion and starts playing to the melody of the song as long as you hold the button. If the Man is standing on a block, he sits down to do this.
You know, you have a very good point, Nicholas. Here, I have a few old comments lying around on my computer and I don't think they'll be multiplying any time soon:
NECKY - BKupa666
I had comments on Necky (and Sarkhan Vol just below) once upon a time and I do hate rewriting old thoughts, so I'll keep it brief and to the point. I find Necky to be completely ingenious in implementation; this is one of those rare cases when playstyle and character are entirely inextricable and, as we see, it's perfectly possible to do it with an uber-generic character. In fact, it's often easier.
I read the set a while back, so it's had time to ferment in my mind: now I'm bothered just a little bit by the very thing I love about the set, its unique gameplay. Necky feels like he's playing an entirely different game than the opponent, barely concerned with knockback or damage or recovery - that's my first issue - and his ground moveset is an afterthought in every sense of the word, as he'll spend so little time not in the air. And Warlord raised an excellent point with the issue of air inputs; it feels like a balance thing, but it's really an error in implementation that you just can't overcome, by design.
SARKHAN VOL - LegendofLink
I used to be a fan of Magic. Very fun game. Lots of interesting thematic material in it, too. I'd stopped by the time the new Sarkhan was released, but I have very vivid memories of the old one terrorizing me.
Anyway, there are some things I really love about this set and some implementational (surely that's a word?) foibles that I can't get over. One thing that's awesome is the way his gameplay is just as focused on conveying a narrative as it is on playing uniquely. Basically, Sarkhan is red - the color of impulse - and on the one side he has his connection to life and on the other a connection to death. Black is the more tempting path, and it beckons him with great power, but, like the Ring, it's only a temporary power, and like Faust making his deal with the devil, it comes at a price. This is the story this set is telling, right?
It makes me wish choosing the path of darkness had a more noticable price - or, actually, any price at all. You lose one moveset and gain another; apart from a crazed animation, what's the cost? I'd like for Sarkhan to lose some attacks without gaining replacements, or, better yet, to only gain access to his new attacks for, say, twenty or thirty seconds. What better way to sum up the impulsiveness, ambition and greed that causes his downfall? Of course, this would be tough to implement if he didn't "refresh" after every stock, and I can totally see why you didn't let him do that in the first place. Whatever, whatever - it's a fiercely unique and, in many ways, very brave set.
By the way, what happened to Ouendan? They must have had a million supporters and half as many movesets before Brawl came out - Daddy, back me up here - but they haven't so much as been mentioned in about two years in MYM. Are none of the MYM regulars fans? It's the kind of character I could only see Mendez making a moveset for...
JACK FROST - wrkngclsshr
With this set, I think you've established your very own movesetting identity: Jack is peppered with instances of light creativity - ever-so-light - that add up to a simple playstyle very much resembling Brawl characters, but pulls it off in such a way that the reader can't help but look at it as a triumph of characterization and effective, "soft" move interactions.
One thing I love is the Jack's infectious joy at the creation of every snowflake. Another is the whimsical, irreverant approach he has to the actual fighting part - he may very well just be playing around in the snow on like a kid at Christmas. Gameplay-wise, I love his passive-aggressive nuisance playstyle, that he's aggressive but does it without ever wanting the opponent to be too nearby (much like Zephyr, another gem this contest has seen). I love the way the Dash Attack can be strung together if you have enough snowflakes to force the opponent to slide about the stage, through your snowflakes and eventually right into a Smash or a grab.
Others have accused Jack's snowflake production as excessive, but I feel it's supposed to be excessive. Warlord accuses the set of lacking flow, but he must have been in a grinchy mood or something to miss Jack's "aggressive camping", his remarkable pressure game, and the sudden, renewed relevance of freezing the stage. Ice-based characters were a huge fad back in MYM 5, likely kicked off by Shellder, but you still dig deep enough into the ol' character well to come up with something very fresh, wrk. Well done.
PYRO JACK - Smash Daddy
As I read, I was mentally preparing a critical comment in which I derided the set's seemingly heavy filler and, as ever, difficult writing style ("Revealing a small black cauldron from within his coat, it seems to be holding some sort of red dust inside of it"???? That's the worst sentence MYM has ever seen, man!).
Then there was a moment - for me it came with the FSmash - when it all clicked and I said, "Wow, that's clever. Yes. Yes, this makes sense." I take back that sludge-style comment: you make your movesets in a way opposed to Warlord. Instead of parading your cleverness, you obfuscate it (to borrow meanie's favourite word and probably the coolest word I've learned from MYM). I think you're like the movie director who was once a film critic - you show such a comprehensive knowledge of the ingredients that make a moveset great, but you're not always entirely able to connect with your audience. Your movies - or in this case, movesets - can come off as dry and academic when really they're among the most thoughtful and even artistic you can come across.
I'm being really vague and not especially helpful as a critic here, but I was truly startled by the moment halfway through the moveset when I stopped looking at Jack as a disparate set of traps fused with a muddled aerial affinity and started seeing him as the hovering, mischievous specter running on fuel, patience, and carefully allocated resources. As with Muk, I come away with an immensely positive impression and a playstyle so carefully put together that it brooks no argument.
JACK THE RIPPER - Smash Daddy
I'm slightly unsettled by the message you two are sending by opening with a lovely, Christmas-y snowman, then transitioning into a specter that feels like he showed up for the wrong holiday, and finally taking the natural next step to... a serial killer. By the time I get here, it's pretty much been forgotten that these are Christmas sets, and we're getting into sheer bloody murder.
Jack's red-tinted fixation on damage, pain and blood communicates character just as well as Jack's whimsical glee at his own snowflakes and Jack's muted showmanship through his pyres. I'm endlessly impressed with this aspect of the three sets, me.
I'm a bit of a sucker for berserker-style sets that are obliged to never stop attacking by their own mechanics - it's why I made Skeleton, a character who has to keep attacking because he can't play in half-measures, can't start throwing away limbs and be left with only half a moveset. All or nothing. Jack here plays similarly but for a completely different reason - one could say that he has to fuel himself, as Jack has to fuel his fires and Jack his stage-freezing abilities. Here the ammo bank he draws on is no less than violence toward the foe. If he wants to be able to mount an effective offense, he has to get in a single time and simply never ever let up. If he trips up, loses his bloodlust, the tide of battle shifts. It's a simple but potent playstyle concept and, as ever, one that only clicked for me toward the moveset's end. Your sets are completely incompatible with skims and, although I read Auron with a certain amount of attentiveness, I'm starting to suspect I should go back and pay still more attention this time around. Consider me, as someone who was never a big fan of Von Kaiser, thoroughly impressed by your evolution over the course of MYM 8, Daddy.
PENNY GADGET & INSPECTOR GADGET - Junahu
Your feasible implementations are hard to quibble with, Junahu, because you've so often poured more thought and subtext into them than MYM is used to. Often complaints come to mind and then a more careful reading shows that they were never really well-founded, or weren't there at all.
I think that it's also sometimes a matter of confidence in your own movesetting.
My first problem with Penny is the organization. Sometimes I feel the extent to which you get flashy with it ruins its flow; and here, certainly, the retro, unpolished look you were going makes it a tough set to engage with. Add the fact that in Inspector Gadget you're having us read a character that we're never going to get to use (in theory, of course - we're not going to get to use anybody in MYM, are we?) and you have a tough nut to crack. Being inaccessible is not a negative in and of itself, but I expect a Beau-like payoff or an HResque revelation in the playstyle section, and this isn't really the case.
I, like others, find Penny's behaviour sometimes out-of-character, but you've thought of that already. I also don't see the use of NSpec as an attracting or repelling tool when it only affects metal characters and the two of them have no way of turning the foe metal. Surely Gadget could have some attack that involved handing the opponent some sort of bowling ball or something?
JALORDA - Hyper_Ridley
Yo, yo, HR - I get what you're doing with this moveset, a natural progression of what your movesetting has been moving toward since circa Vile. Often this set reminds me of your PSA moveset for Weavile. You're pushing the very boundaries of in-Smash in terms of attacks and I feel like a moveset like this posted under a different user might earn a very different reaction from Warlord.
Jalorda doesn't have traps, or hard move interactions, or even many soft move interactions. He has attacks that are downright generic, like the FSmash, and even its most eccentric moves are light stuff as far as MYM goes. You're heavily preoccupied with describing attack animations, with details, and with balance. I see these things as a positive - I think that a Jalorda implemented into Brawl would be a good deal more practical and interesting than an Inspector Gadget, a Victreebell or a Tutankoopa. For you, the individual moves are all a part of a giant clock; Jalorda is a Brawl set, but not a Sakurai set. It's Sakurai if he had been conscious of playstyle, not the postmodernism of meanie or the character-worship of Junahu when they're both at their most faithful to Brawl. This is how he would have done it.
The problem, in the meanwhile, is that we are just reading, and just reading there's not much in Jalorda that really gets my gears turning. His playstyle is brilliant next to what he's meant to be compared to, but he's not there - and I have to compare him to the thought experiments MYM is speckled with, and make a choice.
And yet... the uniqueness of the set's priorities and all of the skill it's assembled with really speak to me. You're a bit of a relic, HR, and it's clear you've been out of it a while, as I have, but I'm truly glad you made this set and would still love to see more.
I think I hinted at it in my last comment wall, but one thing that deeply unsettles me is how prevalent Pokemon sets are nowadays. Every other set is for a Pokemon. Is it because Pokemon are blank slates, have so much potential, etc etc, or is it because we're slowly approaching that bizarre, once-unthinkable day when we run out of characters? I wonder...
BLAZE THE CAT - Junahu
I'm going to get hideously unprofessional and subjective talking about this set, but you of all people should be okay with that, right, Junahu?
This set, more than almost any other, suffers by comparison to one that was posted right alongside it. Both this and Jalorda (I typo'd that as Lajorda twice before catching myself (ONO)) look for a place right alongside an existing Smash roster. However, while Jalorda sifts out the creativity in feasibility through a better grasping of the way a metagame evolves from intuitive use of open-ended, seeming disparate attacks... Blaze gleans its creativity from a move interaction that essentially, as you put it, toggles between two movesets. I'm still firmly of the belief that move interactions are very good at making the reader feel smart but that they have nothing on a more natural interconnection of attacks when it comes to theoretical implementation. In sets like these that are all about implementation, that makes Jalorda the more successful project.
Of course, looking at the set on its own merits, I very much admire what you've done. Warlord conceded that this set is not all bad, and that's quite a feat for one that touts Sakurai as openly and sacriligiously as this one.
One other thing, though, following up on what I had to say about Gadget: I think this set represents the very worst that can come of your organizational style. The colouring and stylistics are so varied from section to section that the reader is unable to draw any clear lines between it and the character you aim to represent. I love your organization when you shoot for simplicity and consistency, as with Cutesy or Clefable or Nurse Joy, but when you go crazy with the effects as you seem to have done for the sake of a retro look here I think the set becomes overwhelming.
MIROKU - half_silver28
The unfortunate reality of the Inuyasha anime is that none of the characters really have any reason for being there. They're introduced in a couple of decently fleshed-out episodes and then become generic party members who mostly just serve for exposition and, in the case of Miroku, a token lecher comic relief character. It's a shame, because the concept of his curse is an intriguing one.
Likewise, this set doesn't really know why it's there. There's nothing in the character to suggest an interesting moveset but the Wind Tunnel, certainly, and I think its implementation is a bit problematic - sure, it's too powerful a force to include unmodified, but having it so weak if the foe is undamaged just does not follow and allowing the foe to just roll around it is plain messed up. And anyway, when all is said and done, it's an alternate kill method that just involves pulling the opponent toward you after damaging them instead of knocking them away. It's a minor distinction.
The rest of the set has some sparkling moments - I like the use of sutras in general - but is divided between overcreative, vague traps and fairly generic staff maneuvers with the occasional tacked-on effect. It's not your best set, silver, but hey, it's clear from the extras that you made it out of your quasi-retirement strictly for the sake of the character and I can't say it's not a good read.
N. BRIO - MasterWarlord
Man, are liquid traps this MYM's obsession the way invisibility was all over MYM 7? This is really getting a bit excessive, no?
Anyway, it's a Warlord set, which means that we can expect to be given a simple premise and have it explored in every single direction in a number of ways that will come as a surprise and make us go "Aha..." It's got brilliant interactions and fascinating grabs and versatile gameplay. So what's new?
As far as I can tell, N. Brio doesn't bring much to the table, and maybe it's got something to do with the fiftysomething Warlord sets I must have read by now. I am experiencing fatigue. Your approach is impervious to change and although you're still capable of turning out surprises like the marvelous Antonidas, in a set like this I see that you're defiantly spelling out move interactions as you go along, forcing square pegs into round holes in your endless quest to make every attack's place in the playstyle part of a very broad, very large but no-less-dull flowchart. For my taste, what N. Brio can do is too broad, too versatile, and at the same time too restricted to what's written into the moves and their connections. It's cool for the mad-scientist aspect of his character to have such a messy, scattershot playstyle, but it bothers the part of me that's looking for some sort of definition, some notion when to stop putting in good ideas just because they're good.
Just to spell it out more clearly: smart set, very well-done in its own right, but it creaks under the weight of its own excessive content. Don't take this whole comment to mean that I like Jack the Ripper more than N. Brio, though.
By the way, what happened to Ouendan? They must have had a million supporters and half as many movesets before Brawl came out - Daddy, back me up here - but they haven't so much as been mentioned in about two years in MYM. Are none of the MYM regulars fans? It's the kind of character I could only see Mendez making a moveset for...
The Elite Beat Agents did have a sizeable fan-base in the years before Brawl came out on this forum, but the dwindling most likely was inevitable what with the mass market penetration for those games ending at around about that time as well. Mendez would also very much be my first pick for the author of such a set.
As I read, I was mentally preparing a critical comment in which I derided the set's seemingly heavy filler and, as ever, difficult writing style ("Revealing a small black cauldron from within his coat, it seems to be holding some sort of red dust inside of it"???? That's the worst sentence MYM has ever seen, man!).
Then there was a moment - for me it came with the FSmash - when it all clicked and I said, "Wow, that's clever. Yes. Yes, this makes sense." I take back that sludge-style comment: you make your movesets in a way opposed to Warlord. Instead of parading your cleverness, you obfuscate it (to borrow meanie's favourite word and probably the coolest word I've learned from MYM). I think you're like the movie director who was once a film critic - you show such a comprehensive knowledge of the ingredients that make a moveset great, but you're not always entirely able to connect with your audience. Your movies - or in this case, movesets - can come off as dry and academic when really they're among the most thoughtful and even artistic you can come across.
I'm being really vague and not especially helpful as a critic here, but I was truly startled by the moment halfway through the moveset when I stopped looking at Jack as a disparate set of traps fused with a muddled aerial affinity and started seeing him as the hovering, mischievous specter running on fuel, patience, and carefully allocated resources. As with Muk, I come away with an immensely positive impression and a playstyle so carefully put together that it brooks no argument.
I have to admit, my heart dropped when I read that first paragraph. However, I'm delighted with how much you enjoyed the set in the end - and I completely agree with your analysis of my sets' reception at times. I prefer to be more subtle in how I operate, which can lead to those who skim or are impatient readers finding the whole experience quite frustrating. Of course, I tried to fix that with Auron, but then people say the whole thing is far too simple - to those people, I would again say that there's a far deeper playstyle to that moveset which is extremely easy to overlook or underestimate.
However, I've probably blown my own horn for too long in this reply. Thanks for the insight.
I'm slightly unsettled by the message you two are sending by opening with a lovely, Christmas-y snowman, then transitioning into a specter that feels like he showed up for the wrong holiday, and finally taking the natural next step to... a serial killer. By the time I get here, it's pretty much been forgotten that these are Christmas sets, and we're getting into sheer bloody murder.
Jack's red-tinted fixation on damage, pain and blood communicates character just as well as Jack's whimsical glee at his own snowflakes and Jack's muted showmanship through his pyres. I'm endlessly impressed with this aspect of the three sets, me.
I'm a bit of a sucker for berserker-style sets that are obliged to never stop attacking by their own mechanics - it's why I made Skeleton, a character who has to keep attacking because he can't play in half-measures, can't start throwing away limbs and be left with only half a moveset. All or nothing. Jack here plays similarly but for a completely different reason - one could say that he has to fuel himself, as Jack has to fuel his fires and Jack his stage-freezing abilities. Here the ammo bank he draws on is no less than violence toward the foe. If he wants to be able to mount an effective offense, he has to get in a single time and simply never ever let up. If he trips up, loses his bloodlust, the tide of battle shifts. It's a simple but potent playstyle concept and, as ever, one that only clicked for me toward the moveset's end. Your sets are completely incompatible with skims and, although I read Auron with a certain amount of attentiveness, I'm starting to suspect I should go back and pay still more attention this time around. Consider me, as someone who was never a big fan of Von Kaiser, thoroughly impressed by your evolution over the course of MYM 8, Daddy.
Haha, you know, I'm so glad you read, let alone commented this. I had you in mind when making this set, what with the overarching horror theme and zombie-esque moves that are more-or-less all-encompassing. You were certainly an inspiration in making this set. This was a very fast made set, so it was my purpose to create a very simple playstyle - also considering the character practically doesn't exist. As always, I love my K.Rool comments.
I think I hinted at it in my last comment wall, but one thing that deeply unsettles me is how prevalent Pokemon sets are nowadays. Every other set is for a Pokemon. Is it because Pokemon are blank slates, have so much potential, etc etc, or is it because we're slowly approaching that bizarre, once-unthinkable day when we run out of characters? I wonder...
I don't think we can run out of characters with how most MYMers operate. Most sets that aren't Pokemon are villains, secondary protagonists or even characters who lack a personality [minions]... and it has mostly been like this since people started to become more serious about playstyle in Make Your Move 5 or 6. People seem genuinely afraid of creating movesets for the obvious choices, but there is some odd anxiousness about continually making sets that revolve around characters no one else knows due to character bias, that will never die.
Poke Ball, go! Jesus Christ what is that abomination?! Why, it's a mini for Victreebel; Weepinter! Weepinter, like any other Pokemon, has a chance of coming out of a Poke Ball item when it's thrown but can also appear inside of crates as a Crate Enemy (with a slightly different function. . .)
If summoned from a Poke Ball, Weepinter screams its name (trust me, if you thought Bonsly's cry was ear **** you ain't heard nothin' yet...) and flails its hands about wildly in the air. You see, when Weepinter is waving its hands vapidly around like a Parkinson's sufferer, it's actually casting a move; Hypnowder! This move puts anyone within a Battlefield platform (excluding the summoner) to sleep for an extended period of time (eight seconds!). Striking a foe will wake them up as normal and they won't fall back to sleep or anything so try and let Weepinter do his thing and spend this time taunting or something else that's equally annoying.
Once Weepinter has put the foes to sleep, it uses its signature move; Dream Leafer! Vomiting up a slew of leaves, this razor-sharp attack actively seeks out sleeping opponents and lodges a leaf in their brain near instantly; it then begins sucking their life out! This heals the summoner of Weepinter for as much as it damages the foes hit by Dream Leafer (which is roughly 2% per second for eight seconds). After eight seconds are up, the opponents will wake up regardless of whether they were attacked or not and Weepinter looks around before exploding violently. This does no damage or knockback at all and is purely for the sake of being random.
Weepinter also has a small chance of appearing inside of a crate however! If you bust open a crate with Weepinter inside, the Ghost/Grass type will flop to the floor and start oozing at the mouth as it dies horribly. It seems the Pokemon universe wasn't ready for gene splicing. . .
As soon as King Boo opens the minion crate, 15 Boos fly to the top of the screeb and converge into Boolossus, before dropping onto the stage with a large thud. Boolossus has been downsized for Brawl, reduced to about half the size of Giga Bowser. From here, Boolossus proceeds to do short little hops across the stage, making a thud with each one. Foes crushed under Boolossus take 15% damage and are pitfalled, possibly giving the King a good chance to send out some Boos and cause same damage.
Boolossus can tank up to 20% stamina before he separates, turning back into 15 Boos. These Boos are identical to the ones King Boo can summon with his Neutral Special, but with reduced health: About 5% each. After 20 seconds of being onstage, the Boos that haven't been KOed will reform back into Boolossus, him getting smaller and dealing less damage (1%) with every boo lost, as well as losing 2% every time he reforms.
In addition, King Boo has two unique interactions with Boolossus. By using his Down Special, he can phase through the Boos before they reform, giving him an even more god-like defense, he can only have 14 Boos shielding him, including the 7 he already has. If he uses his Neutral Special and the Boos run into Boolossus, they will merge with it, increasing it's size and damage with every single Boo.
My first problem with Penny is the organization. Sometimes I feel the extent to which you get flashy with it ruins its flow; and here, certainly, the retro, unpolished look you were going makes it a tough set to engage with.
haaaa, that unpolished look is actually just a lack of polish. I had to rush to make the Christmas deadline. Though I was definitely planning to make the organisation a nostalgic blend between Cutesy and Clefable. If nothing else, it would have kept the reader's eyes from defocusing so much.
Add the fact that in Inspector Gadget you're having us read a character that we're never going to get to use (in theory, of course - we're not going to get to use anybody in MYM, are we?) and you have a tough nut to crack. Being inaccessible is not a negative in and of itself, but I expect a Beau-like payoff or an HResque revelation in the playstyle section, and this isn't really the case.
I don't know what kind of finale people were expecting, but the Inspector himself was not it, he's the equivilent of an extra. That's why he's on a completely separate post.
Actually, in all honesty, I wanted to not include a moveset for the Inspector at all. Much like how your Caterpie moveset titilates the reader with thoughts of a moveset that never existed, I wanted Gadget to be whatever the reader felt represented him.
I, like others, find Penny's behaviour sometimes out-of-character, but you've thought of that already
Yes, I have. Extensively.
In a few ways, I tried to aim for a similar 'developing character experience' as Tutankoopa, as it really seems to be the pinnacle of generating empathy from the player.
As you might have guessed, I do a lot of ripping off of you, now that you aren't around enough to call me out on it.
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I also don't see the use of NSpec as an attracting or repelling tool when it only affects metal characters and the two of them have no way of turning the foe metal. Surely Gadget could have some attack that involved handing the opponent some sort of bowling ball or something?
I definitely did not want Gadget to be consciously interacting with Penny, or for his actions to imply an awareness he shouldn't have.
I think I hinted at it in my last comment wall, but one thing that deeply unsettles me is how prevalent Pokemon sets are nowadays. Every other set is for a Pokemon. Is it because Pokemon are blank slates, have so much potential, etc etc, or is it because we're slowly approaching that bizarre, once-unthinkable day when we run out of characters? I wonder...
It's because Pokemon already have movesets and playstyles, but are nonspecific enough to be reinterpreted in virtually any way. It's the right amount of definition versus flexibility that allows any MYMer to pick up a random Pokemon and quickly sketch out something cool for it to do.
I'm going to get hideously unprofessional and subjective talking about this set, but you of all people should be okay with that, right, Junahu?
I honestly thought the creativity with Blaze stemmed more from the kineticism of the character. There aren't many sets that try to understand the politics of movement. And most of them that do, treat with them in a fairly digital sense, sacrificing much of their proposed freedom in order to explain themselves to the reader.
I'm still firmly of the belief that move interactions are very good at making the reader feel smart but that they have nothing on a more natural interconnection of attacks when it comes to theoretical implementation.
I wont turn around and claim contrary to this, since I do agree with it.
But I have to be firm here and state that the choice to use hard move interaction was entirely in the service of the character. Despite being so stoic, Blaze is very emotional, and her flames seem to act in kind to her thoughts. Hence I felt that activating the flames had to always be a conscious decision on the part of the player, to better show the nature of her restraint.
One other thing, though, following up on what I had to say about Gadget: I think this set represents the very worst that can come of your organizational style. The colouring and stylistics are so varied from section to section that the reader is unable to draw any clear lines between it and the character you aim to represent. I love your organization when you shoot for simplicity and consistency, as with Cutesy or Clefable or Nurse Joy, but when you go crazy with the effects as you seem to have done for the sake of a retro look here I think the set becomes overwhelming.
Looking back on it, I can definitely see what you mean about the colours betraying the emotions of the set. I was hoping to embue the set with an energetic pacing, but my annoying habit of colour coding individual sections of the moveset breaks up that flow something aweful.
I really admire the risky abrasiveness of how these Sonic games were presented, and I think that Sonic Rush presented itself this way more for Blaze's benefit than Sonic's. The harsh chunky lines, and all those grinding irritating tunes felt (to me) like this was the way Blaze sees Sonic's world.
I assume I failed somewhere along the line to bring this across, but there's always next time, right? (on that note, is Emolga ok aesthetically?)
Incidentally, I still love the unscrupulous honesty of your comments, especially when it comes to people like me. I do wish you'd come back to us, but having random lurk visits (like a health inspector making a surprise check up) is fine too..
It's been quite a while since I've been here, just thought I'd pass by and I just learned Smashboards has got a mobile version, might participate again in the next contest, good luck to everyone who participated in this contest!
Might just try and do a Mortal Kombat moveset before the deadline finally!
Man, are liquid traps this MYM's obsession the way invisibility was all over MYM 7? This is really getting a bit excessive, no?
Anyway, it's a Warlord set, which means that we can expect to be given a simple premise and have it explored in every single direction in a number of ways that will come as a surprise and make us go "Aha..." It's got brilliant interactions and fascinating grabs and versatile gameplay. So what's new?
As far as I can tell, N. Brio doesn't bring much to the table, and maybe it's got something to do with the fiftysomething Warlord sets I must have read by now. I am experiencing fatigue. Your approach is impervious to change and although you're still capable of turning out surprises like the marvelous Antonidas, in a set like this I see that you're defiantly spelling out move interactions as you go along, forcing square pegs into round holes in your endless quest to make every attack's place in the playstyle part of a very broad, very large but no-less-dull flowchart. For my taste, what N. Brio can do is too broad, too versatile, and at the same time too restricted to what's written into the moves and their connections. It's cool for the mad-scientist aspect of his character to have such a messy, scattershot playstyle, but it bothers the part of me that's looking for some sort of definition, some notion when to stop putting in good ideas just because they're good.
Just to spell it out more clearly: smart set, very well-done in its own right, but it creaks under the weight of its own excessive content. Don't take this whole comment to mean that I like Jack the Ripper more than N. Brio, though.
Doesn’t bring much new to the table? Oh right, making new and unique playstyles doesn’t count as something “new to the table”, in order to do that, one has to take a completely different approach to movesetting with each and every moveset they make to get your approval, based off your zany comments that are separating you from Junahu – he’s too sane to be considered your other half. At least I can still predict what the hell Junahu will like. You have no goddamn criteria anymore.
I do like N. Brio –because- of his lack of a flowchart while still having a moveset that still has massive amounts of legitimate playstyle. I do remember back in the day with Dingodile when you said that a set could only have one main thing – suicide killing and camping at the same time was too much! (Hehe) I originally had the intention of making Brio’s monster form exclusively for KOing and Brio’s regular form for damaging, but honestly I came up with too many ideas and it felt like too much of a cliché to force two forms to play like that. While I vastly prefer a highly interconnected playstyle over versatility, I like to get it into my movesets if possible – I feel that Brio is probably the best I’ve done with it and probably the character that would be best to implement, Cairne close behind. Even if I wanted to create some sort of “dull flowchart”, I would’ve struggled to do so due to the extra inputs I had with the extra form and the fact that I don’t want to skip out on inputs in a contest that loves it so.
What’s so amazing about Antonidas compared to –this-? Is it his Palatino Linotype font that makes him a different type of moveset? Because it’s sure as hell not being a camper with the only newly introduced factor being good at running away. Or maybe it is, as you seem to only like my movesets when they have extremely streamlined playstyles that are so obvious I don’t have to show them to the reader on a regular basis. Perhaps it reduces the need for playstyle summaries, as that’s easily the worst part of Brio, though I still manage to give some purpose to the section in sets like Landlos or Nappa.
The Pyro is a class from Team Fortress 2, who as his name implies, is just a bit of a pyromaniac…In Brawl, the Pyro functions as an assist trophy…When summoned, he will go around the field, shooting anything and everything with his flamethrower…It functions like Bowser’s fire breath, but it lasts 4x as long as the Koopa King’s...If somebody is shot by the fire, they will be set on fire and run around like chickens with their heads cut off, unable to attack and taking 5% per second…Pressing any button will cause the foe to fall onto the ground into their prone state, and if they roll to get up from here the flames will be put out…Remember, stop, drop, and roll…When the Pyro runs out of fire, he’ll just whack people with his flamethrower for 15% and good…ish knockback…Pyro lasts 30 secs…
I wanted to tell you that Justine should focus more on the cape, but then I thought it would be awkward if the moveset was just entirely the cape – then I looked up the character and that was essentially the entirety of her powers. So yeah, just focus more on the cape. Justine’s moves she has to herself are the main part where the set fails, and are largely just there just so, y’know, Justine has moves to herself so she can actually fight alongside the cape. Just the character by herself, sure, not much potential, but when Justine has some sort of outside force to interact with in her generic melee moves, I could see you doing a lot more with this. As is, you keep the generic melee moves generic and still treat them as a perfectly legitimate playstyle as you reference them on a regular basis, with no attempt to actually connect them to all of your cape shenanigans. Even the cape doesn’t really do all that much beyond just stun/slow foes for Justine, though considering the fact that Justine exists to capitalize on the foe in these states it’s something. In a contest like this, the set was definitely worth posting, far, far more-so than Black Cat, but I think with a bit more work this could’ve reached your quality standard for the meat of your movesets this contest.
Vegeta is more-or-less the poster boy of DragonBall Z – pulled back from the edges of destruction in the manga due to a massive fan following of the character, he goes through deep emotional development over the course of the four sagas that is highly uncommon throughout the rest of the series. Starting off as an arrogant prince of the saiya-jin race (which by the time of DragonBall Z, has already been destroyed), he comes to Earth to try and use the DragonBalls for his own selfish desires [like so many others], but suffers a humiliating defeat to saiya-jin low-class Kakorot, known to us as Son Goku.
Although going through a rather extreme morality shift as time goes on, Vegeta never loses any of his tenacious attitude and aggressive nature, constantly mocking or insulting the other protagonists who he deems to be foolish or insignificant. Unlike his henchmen Nappa, Vegeta isn't outwardly fond of simply creating havoc, but does seem to have a narcissistic streak, even attempting to blow up the Planet Earth when his fight with Son Goku appears not to be going in his favour. Nonetheless, he follows a strict code of honour, like most saiya-jins, meaning he abstains from any form of dirty fighting and carries himself with a royal degree of pride.
This pride can prove to be Vegeta's downfall, however, as he shows several times in DragonBall Z to vastly overestimate his own power, or underestimate his opponent's. This especially becomes apparent when fighting Cell in the Android saga; practically dooming Earth due to his own lust for a challenging enemy. In the same vein, Goku acts as a sufficient rival for Vegeta and this is a running theme in the series. Appearing in all the sagas of DragonBall Z, this moveset focuses on his Saiya-jin Saga appearance.
At a measly 5'3”, Vegeta is barely taller than Falco, though his pointed hair gives him a slight edge on that, though not being part of his hitbox. His falling speed is reduced from insane quantities to allow for some more time in the air, where Vegeta will feel most at home. His movement speed and traction are good, but what aids his air game is the float – capable of keeping him in the air for around three times as long as Peach, and at the same pace; this giving Vegeta great opportunities for stalling.
Special Mechanic:Zanzōken
Vegeta benefits from being a proficient user of Zanzōken in DragonBall Z, a technique that takes advantage of the user's extreme speed to feign teleportation, leaping from one area to the next instantaneously. Rather than actually teleporting, Zanzōken is merely making one very fast movement in a single direction.
This is portrayed in Vegeta's moveset by allowing him to instantly travel one Ganondorf [height] in any of the four cardinal [horizontal and vertical], or four intermediate [diagonal] directions. This is accomplished by pushing in the desired direction while Vegeta is using any kind of charge move - be it the Galick Gun, or one of his smashes. This lets him get the drop on his opponent, making some of his longer charge times viable in Smash Bros. Using Zanzōken doesn't necessarily end a charge - unless said otherwise, as long as the input is held the charge will continue. Vegeta will remain facing whatever direction he was before using Zanzōken, unless it specifically targets a particular opponent.
Neutral Special:Galick Gun
Clasping two hands behind his back in a fashion not dissimilar to the Kamehameha, Vegeta charges fuchsia-coloured energy, creating a volatile aura of spiritual energy, and even some odd crackling lightning if this move is charged to high levels. Speaking of charge, it takes between 1.25-1.75 seconds to fully form a Galick Gun - the fully one-and-a-half seconds will enable the player to further delay the attack for a further possible 0.2 seconds by holding the input.
If not fully charged and the input is released, Vegeta will bring his arms forward and direct a light purple energy wave - the Galick Gun - in the direction of the nearest opponent, or straight forward if they are respawning. This being around the height of Bowser, and dealing consecutive hits of 2% 8-14 times depending on charge. This beam travels at Sonic's running speed; it will be stopped by an opponent if hit, otherwise it will continue until the blast zone or when it hits a solid part of the level, sticking Vegeta in place for 1-1.5 seconds as he performs the attack. At full charge, Vegeta will simply return to his normal fighting stance, surrounded by the familiar fuchsia aura from the Galick Gun, indicative that he has one charged and ready. With a minor start-up lag of 0.25 seconds, Vegeta will fire the beam if the neutral special input is pressed.
If the input is once again held down rather than pressed when fully-charged, Vegeta will retain a stance far more similar to the one pictured above, as he gathers even more ki energy into his Galick Gun beam - vulnerable for a further 1.25 seconds, Vegeta will then actually shout, "Galick Gun, Fire!," as a beam now 1.5 Bowser's width and traveling at twice Sonic's speed shoots toward the nearest opponent. Vegeta himself will now also be surrounded by a bubble of energy, dealing 11% damage to foes who touch it and knockback that bumps them onto the beam. The beam now deals 12-16 hits of 2% and breaks shields instantaneously. If an enemy is hit, the beam will slow to half its speed, but take them along with it - easily being able to push foes off the blast zones.
Up Special: Fake Moon
Vegeta forms a rounded orb of energy in his hand as pictured, tossing it behind him - the ball travelling at Ganondorf's running speed horizontally, while getting further into the background as it goes. After traveling for about three-quarters the size of final destination, the ball stops, staying there until the end of Vegeta's current stock. After it's out, this input causes Vegeta to immediately teleport to an adjacent level vertically with the ball, as long as it's within two Ganondorfs of his current location - this can be used once before having to refresh it again. When on level with the ball, the Saiya-jin Prince stares at the Fake Moon - even when performing other moves.
Doing so for ten seconds straight will trigger the Great Ape transformation - which is below the regular moveset. Likewise, simply being within a Ganondorf height of the ball and going idle will cause Vegeta to stare at it, also starting off the trigger for Great Ape. This ball will remain there until the end of Vegeta's current stock - meaning he has to set it up, but requiring little-to-no start-up or end lag, it's difficult to punish.
Down Special: Power-Up
Taking the archetypal DragonBall Z "charging up" stance, Vegeta begins to "power up," clenching his fists and adopting an increasingly tense stature. Doing so causes a fuchsia aura to surround him, identical to the one from the Galick Gun. The aura will start off almost invisible visually, but grows in strength for all time spent using this move. After five seconds of total use, Vegeta's aura becomes strong enough to actually push away opponents within a Bowser's width of him, also repelling projectiles that deal damage lower than 6% - but only when the Down Special input is held. Visually, the aura would now be violently pulsing around Vegeta, even greater than if he had charged his Galick Gun fully. Foes will have to run toward the Prince of all Saiya-jins to attack him at melee distance, though other strong projectile users should have no qualms. Prince Vegeta also gains the use of another Zanzōken when powered up like this. When not holding down the input, Vegeta retains the aura, but not the other effects.
Past the benefits this move has with your Fake Moon - being that opponents can no longer simply walk up to you and slap you out of it, as this can be used in conjunction with staring at the moon - it also functions as a charge "untimer." The time spent powering up, erases charging time on all applicable moves - from his smashes, to his Galick Gun. So you can immediately use your smashes, but at the cost of decreasing how "powered up" Vegeta is by the amount of time you would have spent charging that move fully. Obviously, trying to use a move with a greater full charge time than you have powered up will simply cause you to start charging that move normally. In the case of Galick Gun, the "kind" fired depends on how powered up you are - if you have stacked enough to cover both the charge time of the original, plus the fully-charged Galick Gun, that will be the one you use: otherwise, the one it will be is the other.
Side Special: After-Image Technique
Standing perfectly still in place, Vegeta's slight movements he would normally have stop - his image becomes almost static, with a tinge of transparency and slight waviness to the way he is drawn. Of course, Vegeta's image is now a fake - as he's using a technique a little different from Zanzōken; the player currently has control over Vegeta's movements, allowing him to move around the stage at his normal speed for two seconds. If any attack is initiated, he will appear again, though the after-image itself will still disappear after the two seconds are over. While moving around, he is also susceptible to attack, which will also bring him out of the move. Holding down the input will cause the Saiya-jin Prince to simply stay in place, alluding his opponent and appearing half-a-second later exactly where his after-image is.
Neutral or Jab: Shadow Strike
The input when pressed causes Vegeta to perform a simple punch-punch-kick combination, dealing 3-3-5% damage if all hits connect - which they will, if the first hit lands on an unguarded opponent. The last hit - the kick - can be sidestepped, but if the input is held at that point by the Vegeta player, he will instead lower his body into that plane and kick into the foreground, hitting background foes and causing them minor hitstun upon their return to stage. If held for longer than a second, the kick becomes a shield-breaker, as well as a meteor smash that can be angled up or down. The move, now transformed into a viable knock out option, deals between 12-16% depending on charge, and can be charged for up to an extra 1.1 seconds further. At this point, the move can be used along with Zanzōken for some minor gimping or purely attacking an opponent who is dodging the attack.
Dash Attack: Punch to the Gut
The Saiya-jin Prince dashes forward at literally invisible speeds, disappearing from view for the second-long duration of the attack. If an opponent is within three Bowsers, Vegeta will initiate, otherwise simply appearing at the end of the attack - which is useful purely to gather distance. A shielding opponent will simply suffer a loss of half their shield's strength, as Vegeta backflips back to a small distance away from them. Opponents not shielding are, as the name says, punched in the gut - this dealing 10% damage, but no knockback; the opponent falls to the floor in agony, due to the severity of the attack. They will stay on the ground for at least 0.5 seconds, longer if their percentage is higher, giving the player time to set up a carry-on attack while the grounded opponent recovers. During the period of "dashing," the move can be angled upward - instead aiming for airborne opponents that are up to a Ganondorf off the ground. If hit, foes will free fall, making this deadly on moving stages and adding to the time in which Vegeta can prepare a follow-up, as he remains in the air.
Forward Tilt: Directional Energy Blast
The Saiya-jin Prince puts one hand forward, shooting an energy blast as thin as a Pikmin forward, with a bulbous blast that is around the size of an unexploded smart bomb. Visually, this causes a slight shadow effect on Vegeta, making him appear black for the moment that the attack was fired. This beam travels at just above the speed of Sonic's dash, travelling until it hits a blast zone. This part of the attack deals actual knockback, basically just forcing the opponent away akin to a slightly less powerful version of Falco's laser, while dealing damage of 6%. If avoiding the blast, but hitting the beam, the opponent similarly suffers 6% damage, along with flinching and set knockback of just under Ganondorf's height vertically. If the input is then held, Vegeta will continue launching blasts from both hands, shooting another 0.7 seconds after the last. Zanzōken can be used while the input is held down here, allowing for Vegeta to further hit opponents with even more energy blast if they tried to jump over the first, as well as hitting foes on the rebound who jump on top of the beam, being knocked upward.
Up Tilt: Retreat and Counter
Taking those Saiya-jin Prince private tutoring sessions to mind, Vegeta remembers the art of defence - backing away by one Bowser, before immediately attacking. If the foe attacks, the Prince is more-or-less guaranteed to hit, with a sore punch that deals a paltry 6%, but stacks on some hitstun to enable some light combos if the foe was gullible. If the foe was not gullible, holding the back direction causes Vegeta to stop in motion, at which point the use of your After-Image Technique would be particularly confusing. If a foe is shielded while being hit with this move, they will suffer pushing knockback equal to Marth's dashing speed, whereby only after one-and-a-half seconds can this be cancelled. If pushed back to the edge, they will fall off and grab it. This puts them in a good position for a follow-up, such as a gimp, from Vegeta. However, a well-timed spot dodge will avoid the punch altogether, though there is only a small amount of end lag on the end of the attack that is punishable.
Down Tilt: Tactical Swipe
Vegeta performs a swipe in the air with one of his arms from the background into the foreground, causing a slight 5% damage and flinching knockback - the move has no start up or end lag, so it can be performed fast to interrupt opponents. If the foe is being pushed away due to shielding during your up tilt, this attack will target their shield for half its health - severely weakening it. This won't allow for much of a set up on the already sliding foe, but it will slow them by sixty-percent of their movement speed, meaning you can potentially follow up with your Punch to the Gut to break their shields. Generally, this combination should keep your opponent from shielding against you on the ground.
Forward Smash: Axe Handle
Hands clasped together above his head for between 1.2-1.8 seconds, the Saiya-jin Prince brings them down to hit anyone within a Kirby of him - shielding opponents being pushed back for a Bowser. This damages for between 15-20%, but also has a unique pitfall-like effect whereby the opponent is caught laying down in solid platforms, surrounded by cracks and broken parts of the level, created by the pressure of the downward axe handle. To escape, the opponent has to button mash as much as they would for a grab - increasing in length if they have a higher percentage - once out of the hole, it remains on the ground, whereby any further axe handles into it are now 1.5x the difficulty to escape from as a grab - becoming progressively "deeper" the more times someone is axe handled into it. If performed on a fall-through platform, the opponent will be sent through the platform, entering a free fall beneath it for a couple of seconds. If used with Zanzōken and thus in the air, this move has the same effect - foes smashed down travel at double their normal fall speed before hitting the ground for an extra 10% damage.
If a double-powered up Galick Gun is shot at someone within one of these special pitfalls of Vegeta's, they are pushed through the stage even further - at the pace of half Ganondorf's walking speed and creating a hole as long as their body is tall. For every sticky bomb covered in distance, getting out of the hole is again made 1.5x as difficult, giving the Prince plenty of time to build Power Up or get into his Oozaru form and win the match. It is possible, especially on smaller stages, to actually push an opponent through the entire stage, causing them to fall out of the bottom and potentially be forced into the bottom blast zone. An opponent can escape this by recovering around the ledges of the stage or flying straight up through the hole they just made. These vertical tunnels can be a good source of gimping from on-stage, or another way to recover from underneath.
Up Smash: Static Beam
A static field begins to build around Prince Vegeta's upper body, creating a swarm of running electric charges, over a period of 1.5-2 seconds. During this time, a light blue aura of energy matching the blue colour of the attack pictured above will also surge momentarily on Vegeta. After this, a beam the size of Bowser shoots out of Vegeta's head, moving at the speed of Sonic's dash, from three Ganondorfs in height or until it hits a blast zone at maximum charge - the beam doesn't disintegrate in mid-air, this is simply when Vegeta is forced out of the attack. The trajectory of the beam can be angled slightly left or right when the beam is first shot, meaning that at most it can hit halfway between the middle-edge of Final Destination if shot and angled from the centre of the platform. Due to his body being the measure for the beam, the Prince of all Saiya-jins will suffer some end lag, though Vegeta can manually cancel out of it after half-a-second of firing it.
If hit by the blast, foes suffer knockback in the direction it was going [if angled, they will go in that direction] capable of knocking out at around 110-150% depending on charge. Foes who avoid the blast, but are hit by the beam suffer damage of 2% per hit and hitting 10-15 times depending on charge, with the beam shooting "through" them and dealing flinching damage as it passes. Like the Galick Gun, the beam is large enough that air dodging is made impossible - foes hit will suffer the rest of the damage, probably on top of a follow-up by the Vegeta player.
Down Smash: Explosive Wave
Crossing his arms and clenching his fists at his shoulders, Vegeta starts to charge up a slight amount of electrical static around his body, this lasting for 1-1.5 seconds. He then throws both arms out violently as pictured, creating an explosion of energy: even damaging enemies in the background. Damage runs from 15-20%, though the knockback is the unique property in this move. It's set, but entirely dependant on the distance to Vegeta when he performs the damaging part of the move - and also grows in circumference depending on charge.
If within a Kirby at low charge, or a Bowser at maximum charge, the opponent will be sent with knockback that can easily gimp off-stage, or knock out an opponent through the side blastzone at around 130%. Knockback will be dealt on a lowering scale from up to a Ganondorf in height away from Vegeta, up until one-and-a-half Ganondorfs at full charge - the lowest amount of knockback being that the opponent is simply pushed a Bowser away from the Prince. Mixing this in with Zanzōken, Vegeta can have a very successful run in terms of gimping opponents off-stage.
Neutral Aerial: Ki Blast
Run-of-the-mill as far as DragonBall Z goes, but as Vegeta is one of the founders of such tropes as the energy blast, he doesn't mind being associated with it. Taking a stance with his arm held over his head, he begins to charge the blast pictured. If simply pressed repeatedly, the Prince of all Saiya-jins throws smaller ki blasts - these are the size and shape of a red Pikmin, accelerating in speed from Ganondorf's walk, to Ganondorf's run, but peetering out if simply left to float in mid-air for longer than five seconds. The blasts will home in on the nearest opponent, simply causing flinching damage and a minor 4% damage. The Saiya-jin Prince can throw these out at the rate of two per one-and-a-half second, making for some minor spamming if you want some time to set up more important attacks.
If the input is held down, Vegeta will instead throw a larger energy blast, the size of Captain Olimar himself, which likewise homes in on the nearest opponent, but now travels at Luigi's running speed and peters out after travelling for longer than five seconds. These deal 8% damage along with knockback that can knock opponents out above the 250% mark. These take about 1.1 seconds to create, though, so either mix them up with the previous one, or be careful when you use it. When powered up fully with Vegeta's down special, the neutral aerial will automatically fire the stronger energy blasts at the rate of the smaller ones - once per one-and-a-half seconds, though deteriorating the Power Up by half-a-second whenever used.
Forward Aerial: Boundless Assault
Bracing himself in a slightly hunched over position in flight, the Saiya-jin Prince then explodes forward at double the speed of Sonic's dash for up to four Bowsers in distance. As he does this, Vegeta's depth horizontally can be controlled - being able to fly up or down a Mario in height. Used normally, this is simply a good recovery move - in conjunction with his up special, he can get back to stage pretty easily. The real use of this move comes when hitting an opponent in mid-air - Vegeta forces them along with him in mid-air, doing constant damage of 2% per half-a-second as he goes. At the end of the move, the Prince stops abruptly in mid-air, sending the foe with knockback dependant on the momentum and angle that was being flew before being thrown off. They suffer hitstun while this happens, allowing for no time to air dodge, though they have a window for DI at the end of the move.
If attacked like this while next to a solid platform, Vegeta will tackle an opponent into the side of it for 12% damage - similarly creating a unique pitfall like in his Axe Handle move, whereby the opponent has to escape with grab difficulty. If this sideways pitfall is within a Kirby's width of a formed tunnel due to a use of the Galick Gun on someone in a pitfall, they will fly through the platform and instead be stuck on the tunnel wall, suffering 1.5x the grab difficulty. This also provides extra finesse, as the player has to either manoeuvre up the death trap of a tunnel Vegeta has created, or try to fit through the hole they were launched through. Just like with a regular pitfall, a fully-charged Galick Gun will send an opponent through the stage and indeed out of the other side if it's short enough.
Up Aerial: Surprise Kick
Prince Vegeta considers his up aerial an absolute essential. He attempts a risky Surprise Kick, dealing 8% damage to opponents and allowing for plenty of follow-up considering they are above Vegeta. Due to the non-exhaustive nature of the move, it has little start or end lag. Knockback is dependant on the opponent's position compared to the Prince - if on level or above him, they will simply be kicked straight upward at a sixty-degree angle, not being capable of knocking out reliably until well above comfortable percentages. If the opponent is below Vegeta, they will be sent straight forward. In both cases, the opponent suffers a second-or-so of free fall upon exiting the move.
Back Aerial: Wild Sense
Nothing beats the tried and tested - relying on his keen power of sensing and foresight in battle, Prince Vegeta adopts a slightly defensive stance; telegraphing the move for any as eagle-eyed as the Prince of all Saiya-jins himself. If attacked, it is revealed to all be a ruse, as Vegeta's false image is cut like paper, the momentum of the attack blowing it away like dust. The opponent is then greeted by Vegeta overhead, axe handling them downward much faster than in his forward smash - causing 12% damage and similarly pitfalling them in the ground laying down, but this time with 1.5x the escape difficulty compared to a grab. This does stack with the regular growth of visited pitfalls, boosting the escape's button mashing by just over 2x if successful. If the opponent does not attack the fake, guarding Vegeta, the Saiya-jin Prince will appear where he normally would with the axe handle, vulnerable for 0.3 seconds, where he can be punished by the opponent.
Down Aerial: Scissors Takedown
Vegeta takes a stance like pictured [arms up, legs slightly tensed], aiming to land on his opponent's upper body. If a foe comes into connection with the Prince, he takes them down with his legs - using a surge of energy to propel himself and the victim down at the speed of Sonic's dash, passing drop-through and continuing in the air for 5-8 seconds, depending on the opponent's current percentage. If no solid ground is hit, Vegeta will then simply disconnect from his opponent by jumping off of them, leaving himself a Bowser above them whereby he has full use of his specials to get back to the stage, and his opponent may not be as lucky. If solid ground is hit, the opponent takes set damage of 11%, being left - like Axe Handle - stuck in the stage in a pitfall-like effect, which they need to button mash out of.
This move has a significant secondary use if opponents are not hit - the Prince of all Saiya-jins can further penetrate pitfalls he's created in his Axe Handle, acting as if he were an opponent in making the hole even deeper, and thus harder to escape from [1.5x]. Once inside, Vegeta can camp in this part of the stage, likely as it may be that the hole is only a few feet deep, thus any tactical advantage is truly lost. It does provide an area from which to expand your demolition, however, as energy attacks will cause more parts of the environment to be destroyed. Specifically, your Explosive Wave creates a concentrated beam shooting out of each exit of the tunnel, travelling up to Final Destination in length at the speed of double Sonic's dash. Opponents hit by it take 2% damage over a maximum of 10 hits, with knockback similar to Lucario's final smash - flinching at first, then strong knockback that knocks out at the top blastzone, being a comfortable move to kill with starting at 120%.
Grab and Pummel: Disrespectful Hold
Being that he's of a low stature, Vegeta can only hope to perform this grab on foes bigger than him (there are plenty) by forcing them to their knees. His range is a little below-average as well due to the nature of the grab [grabbing them by their clothing / neck]. As a pummel, Vegeta knees them in the stomach or applicable body part, dealing 2% a second.
Special Throw: Final Galick Cannon
If a Galick Gun has been charged through the use of Vegeta's neutral special, a unique input can be used to throw - the special input links Prince Vegeta to the Final Galick Cannon. Punching his opponent in the stomach, he then unleashes a blast of energy point blank. Foes are dealt 10% damage, as well as horizontal knockback capable of knocking out starting at around 150% - Vegeta can hold the input down to continue pushing them back for up to three seconds, this being as far as three to five Ganondorfs in distance depending on the foe's current percentage. Using this move will spend up the charged Galick Gun. The victim does not retain a hole in their chest or any other kind of visual touch after this move has been performed.
Forward Throw: Saiya-jin Pride
Shoving his opponent forward a little, Prince Vegeta takes on a slightly tense stance as he prepares a punch, his hand jumping with static energy surrounding it. If hit, the opponent will take 7% damage, recoiling backward into their tripped position, allowing for further follow-up by Vegeta. However, they are given a chance to spot dodge once shoved away; but by holding the input, the Saiya-jin Prince can charge the move for up to another 0.2 seconds before executing it, making it deal 10% damage. Furthermore, Vegeta has the ability to use his After-Image and cancel out of the move completely by pressing the special input during this charge time, allowing for him to also chase foes who rolled or jumped away. Due to super armour on Vegeta during the move, attacking him will not stun him out of it.
Backward Throw: Setting Up
Vegeta simply tosses his opponent behind him, causing 8% damage and knockback that allows for an immediate comeuppance with his Zanzōken due to the perfect position the foe will be in if they do not DI out of it. If they do DI out of it, he can still potentially combo them with his chasing moves such as his After-Image and Forward Air, due to a prolonged free fall for the opponent. Unlike other throws, this free fall will actually last for as long as the opponent is in the air, meaning they have to hit the ground before they can defend themselves against the Prince of all Saiya-jins - if they DI too close to him, Vegeta can actually re-grab them in mid-air, potentially even performing his back throw again, making the safest bet for escaping being the ledge.
Up Throw: Blasting Off
Grabbing his opponent more tightly and bringing them more toward him, Vegeta then starts to visibly "power up," his aura violently surging. After around a second, he's off like a shooting star into the air - travelling vertically, at the speed of Sonic's dash. From the beginning, the time left in which the opponent could struggle out of the grab has been quadrupled, as Prince Vegeta hangs onto them extra tightly in the air - having free reign over his direction, having controls based on his upward trajectory. If nothing is pressed, he will continue flying up with the opponent, simply disconnecting with them at the apex of the stage - leaving both of them high and Bowser apart, which may or may not benefit the match-up. This also happens if the opponent breaks the grab through button mashing. If held left or right, Vegeta can steer himself back toward the stage, at any point kicking away the opponent a Ganondorf in distance before they regain control, dealing 5% - possibly leaving them in a bad situation. If actually hitting the stage, the Saiya-jin Prince's unique pitfall comes into effect, whether on the side, top or, in this case, at the bottom of a solid platform, dealing 10% damage if he accomplishes this. On stages with multiple large levels, this should be very possible and as a result, fairly easy to recover from once escaped
Down Throw: Bon Voyage Barrage
Grabbing the opponent even more roughly, Prince Vegeta then starts to hover slightly in mid-air, before taking he and his opponent in front of the stage, then descending below it and back into the normal plane of depth of Smash Bros. Once there, Vegeta actually lets go of his opponent in a most mocking fashion - being stuck in place for the next 0.8 seconds, as the foe is apparently getting a free shot on his royal highness. If left untouched, Vegeta comes out of this temporary vulnerability to become playable again. If attacked during this time - Prince Vegeta blocks, countering them with a flurry of punches and kicks dealing 14%. This is balanced out by his majesty's mercy, kicking the opponent back up and onto the stage where they lay prone in the spot that the throw initiated, saving them the stress of trying to recover by themselves. A specific criteria in which you'd want to use this move is when Vegeta can easily recover himself, or at least better than the opponent can. On larger stages, it may be inadvisable to use this move; it functions as a decent suicide in this case, if your opponent is willing to die along with you instead of suffering the damage.
Final Smash: Super Explosive Wave
Flying up to the centre of the stage, Vegeta begins to curl up his stance and develops an aura similar to that of a Super Saiya-jin due to the yellow or golden tint, at which point he is vulnerable to have the final smash stolen. If it isn't, then the stage looks similar to how it is pictured above - strokes of wind violently slashing at the screen, as Vegeta begins to curl up even further and his aura grows to a gigantic size. After about two seconds of this, Prince Vegeta suddenly throws both arms and legs out to their highest extension, causing a vaporising blast to cover the entire screen in white, excluding blotted highlights on characters and parts of the stage. Everyone within five Ganondorfs of Vegeta at this point is hit for 25% damage, with knockback dependant on your distance to him. Anyone within a smart bomb of the initial explosion is "vaporised," with a stock deducted from them. To make this easier to achieve, Vegeta can use his Zanzōken as many times as he wants during the charging part of the move.
The Prince of all Chasers
What Vegeta is built around is offence: his Fake Moon, which is essentially a guaranteed victory, represents a constant reason to chase your opponent forward, being that you want to stay in eye contact with the ball and need to control the momentum of the match to make sure this happens. There are many ways to do this - the starting point will generally be to withhold your Fake Moon, however, and simply play it by ear until your opponent is at a safer percentage. Starting off with moves like Dash Attack, Forward Throw, Up Tilt, Neutral A in combination with moves like your After-Image Technique [side special] should allow you to get a foothold in the match in terms of momentum if used properly. If caused to retreat, your more run-of-the-mill projectiles in Neutral Air and Forward Tilt can come in handy to save a lost battle. These are staying on the ground as approaches, but your opponent probably doesn't have a choice - unless they are experienced in Vegeta match-ups, you can likely get a handle down on them with moves like your Back Air, Down Aerial or Forward Air in terms of being defensive and trying to push them back. At early percentages, getting them back is all you really need to do, but later on you will be using these same moves to possibly help in your gimping.
After you've either gained momentum on your opponent by pushing them to the edge of the stage, or simply racking up damage, you may want to consider either going for an early Fake Moon attempt, or simply trying to gimp them off-stage. With the Fake Moon, it's likely you'll be unsuccessful in actually triggering the Oozaru transformation, but it's a very good way of pressuring your opponent into trying to attack you, giving you a stock advantage and thus a Fake Moon to throw away. Vegeta has plenty of defensive capabilities - your throws such as Back Throw and Forward Throw are great for setting up gimps, which can be useful if you want to try and buy some more time for more offence later. Although you may not have had time so far, this may be the point to start using moves like your Forward Smash in tandem with your tilts to try and get a foot in the door in terms of your special pit-falling abilities; the dilemma here being that you don't want to do this alongside your Fake Moon. Moves like your Explosive Wave [down smash], Up Tilt and Down Tilt are good moves for disabling your opponent to then follow-up with an attempted grab. Basically at this stage you won't have had enough time to build up charge in your Power Up [down special] to really start getting pay out, so you'll have to make do with lesser forms. As the more difficult part of the playstyle for Vegeta, this phase is indeed very much advisable after you've gained a foothold in terms of momentum, so you can keep pushing.
At this stage is when you really want to start charging up your Power Up, as well as trying to land some of your more persuasive positioning moves like your Up Throw and Forward Air, as well as using in tandem with your Axe Handle [forward smash] and Back Air, getting your opponent stuck into holes in the floor or getting them out of your way. At this point they should be at a comfortable enough percentage that your throws start being a real danger for them, being that they can lead to powerful gimps with the Back Throw or Up Throw. If you can even get a bit of Power Up done, using your more powerful moves such as your Up Smash, if you can get your opponent in the air [which shouldn't be difficult] or Down Smash if your opponent still persisting in trying to pressure you themselves, these moves should prove a wrench in their works, punishing them for trying to pressure you.
The next stage in your playstyle is the one that will probably require you either to have built up Power Up - and thus being able to properly pressure your opponent away - or to be very good at the footstalling, and used your limited time to Power Up to even create some limited stage destruction. Once you have gotten a large amount of Power Up, you can start going crazy on your opponent with both your smashes and projectiles - your Neutral Air here can prove a real damage racker, though a huge drain on your resources. Similarly, your Galick Gun [neutral special] is a reliable go-to due to its dead-on accuracy. It is probably at this time that you may even be going for a knock out with lighter opponents - which can be easily achieved with even a light build-up of energy spent on your Down Smash, if you're quick enough with the Zanzōken - moves like Up Throw and Forward Air stop being about pressuring away your opponent, and start being about the set-up. Of course, if your opponent can be knocked out, they're probably keeping their distance due to your throws; though they can't afford to let you charge, and a use of your Fake Moon at this point would also be highly dangerous for an opponent who shouldn't be trying to pressure you. If you've successfully gotten to this point - and created a culture of fear with your opponent - you're on the path to victory.
Assuming by now you have had time to use Power Up, which is pretty essential, you have what it takes to win. With your opponent on the defensive - or attacking blindly to try and stop you from using your smashes, either is fine - you can start to attempt going for the knock out. Either start up with the long-forgotten starting line-up of moves - tilts, Neutral A, Back Air to catch your opponent off-guard, or simply pursue them with moves such as your side special. After this, setting them up with a well-timed Forward Air, or Up Throw, should put them in a good position for your Up Smash - remembering to use Zanzōken if they're a particularly slippery enemy in the air, and angling it properly. Of course, this is best used on foes who are not very adept in air; if you can, gimping them off-stage is a safer approach, or trying to rack insane amounts of damage through combinations of Galick Gun and your pitfalls, which should be sizeable by now. If you actually managed by this point to create any system of tunnels, it may be possible to combine a Static Beam [up smash] with an Explosive Wave [down smash] used in the tunnel for some real aerial bombardment, which would also work very well on larger opponents. In terms of your gimping game, though, you have plenty of options - your Forward Air, again, along with a combination of your Neutral Air, throw in some Side Special to throw them off as you go for a Up Aerial [hey, that exists]. If you aren't satisfied yet to go for an actual gimp, you can always bring them back to the stage with Forward Air, general pressuring from Back Air, or force them onto it with Galick Gun. But when you actually want to go for the gimp, your safest option is probably either going to be Down Throw or Forward Smash, though these will have to be timed correctly, otherwise you're just going to waste Power Up's time, or lose momentum in the match due to the charging up of further smash moves if you already screwed up, putting you back a stage in your playstyle.
Of course, if you aren't satisfied with simply going for the knock out, gimping, generally being a massive prick to your opponent, you can always throw out your Fake Moon if you still have it. This is more in terms of trying to set up your next stock than going for this one, as your opponent probably isn't going to be well-equipped to stop you at high percentages. As with if you used it at the start of your game, following its traversal along the stage with moves like your Up Tilt, Dash Attack, Down Tilt, Forward Air, or Up Throw will allow you to keep the pressure on the opponent in a more defensive way, stalling them from interrupting you. At this point, anything you had in Power Up is obviously completely useless if you're going for the Oozaru - so blast away, throw Galick Guns; go nuts, in the spirit of Vegeta. If you do succeed at this point in going Oozaru, obviously you've won the current stock, but you'll want to capitalise on this transformation as much as you can. Though, considering how powerful the form is, your opponent has probably already lost if they let you get it. Then again, Vegeta's pressure game is strong enough that letting him get the momentum first in a match may be his opponent's downfall.
Vegeta's Oozaru, or Great Ape form is featured prominently in DragonBall Z. While his Galick Gun functions as his last resort when humiliated by a low-class Saiya-jin, the Oozaru form is an uncouth move for Prince Vegeta, being that it is primarily used for conquering planets by the Saiya-jins, and isn't really fair play in a duel. Others such as Goku and Gohan are not able to retain of themselves during the Great Ape transformation, meaning they can't talk, are very destructive and forget all that they know. Due either to his highest class in the Saiya-jin race, or due to training offered to him because of him being an elite, Vegeta is able to stay in control of his Oozaru form. Of course, even transformations like Super Saiya-jin cause some slight changes in behaviour; Oozaru is no different, apparently making the user more bloodthirsty even if they are in control of the transformation.
The sheer size and weight of Vegeta means it's practically impossible to knock him out by conventional means. As is true of all Saiya-jins - lower class or elites - cutting off the tail means the Oozaru transformation ends, which is represented here by 70% damage to Vegeta's tail, whereby he will revert back to normal.
Vegeta's statistics mostly get huge boosts - the only negatives being his aerial movement, due entirely to how difficult it is to move quickly at such a size Nevertheless, he retains his float - his traction and ground movement improve simply from the effects of being so large. What's most important, though, is that Vegeta can rack up amazing amounts of damage on himself - up until around 550%, you're never going to be in any danger.Vegeta’s exact measurements in this form are three-and-a-half Bowser’s width and triple Ganondorf’s height, with his tail extending about a platform out behind him: due to how powerful his recovery is as well, this will be your main target. After transforming back - or being knocked out, as hard as that is - Vegeta's Fake Moon will no longer transform him into Oozaru form for that stock.
To ensure Vegeta isn’t combo fodder, he has several various immunities and resistances.
Vegeta is entirely immune to grabs of any kind. If you want to grab him so badly, do it –before- he transforms.
Only hitting Vegeta’s tail or his head will cause him to take any form of hitstun, and even then he only takes 75% of the regular hitstun. If you hit him while he’s already in hitstun your attack will deal no hitstun whatsoever. If you do something like a multi-hit move, be aware that Vegeta will become entirely immune to hitstun for 5 seconds if he is forced into it 4 or more times within 5 seconds. He is also entirely immune to hitstun from moves that only flinch and deal no knockback until he reaches 125%.
Vegeta’s main body takes .75x of the regular damage dealt to him, but his tail takes 1.25x the regular damage – this extra damage doesn’t boost the damage done to the tail’s HP, only boosting the damage added to his percentage.
Vegeta takes no knockback from set knockback moves under 100%, 25% of their knockback under 200%, half their knockback under 300%, and so on.
Vegeta cannot be tripped, forced into prone, pitfalled, frozen, and is immune to other similar status effects.
Vegeta can swim for 5x as long as a regular character, negative status effects last 33% as long on him, and requires 2.5x the normal amount of units on various KO mechanics (I.E. Valozarg’s corruption) to be KO’d. If a status effect lasts forever, it is only 33% as strong.
If Vegeta is somehow forced into some sort of grab based situation where he must escape he escapes quadruple as quickly as a regular character.
Vegeta can no longer use Zanzōken.
GRAB: SUFFOCATING CLUTCH
Prince Vegeta uses his hand to try and scoop up an opponent off the floor - this has incredible range due to the huge size of the great ape - sliding his hand down and across for the distance of half of Final Destination. If successful, Ape Vegeta then holds them in his hand like a doll; the escape difficulty for this move is insane, clocking in at five times the normal amount for a grab. This gives Vegeta plenty of time to toy with his prey, though he'll start off by simply squeezing the life out of them. Vegeta can do this for damage of 6% per second. He can walk around as normal with the foe in hand, to position himself for throws - pressing the standard input plus the direction will initiate the throw.
In this form, his throws are all throwing the foe in the direction of the input pressed - dealing 11% and knockback capable of knocking out at around 140%. While being thrown, foes are a hitbox that deal damage based off their weight, Bowser dealing 35% and KOing foes at 60% - essentially an instant kill. If an opponent is thrown into your pitfalls created in your regular form, they will be sent hurtling downward, further deepening the hole by a Kirby in distance and through the bottom of the stage if there is less than that remaining. Likewise, if thrown in a way that they go through a side pitfall on the side of a platform, they will go through horizontally for an instant KO. Use the down throw is a special case - Vegeta uses his tail to wrap around the foe; squeezing them just as he does in his pummel, for 15% straight damage before they are released, though Vegeta turns around and stomps them into the floor [created a three-times deep pitfall when he does] afterwards, meaning they can't attack his tail.
NEUTRAL SPECIAL: GALICK GUN
The Great Ape starts to charge up the Galick Gun in its arms with a major 2.5 second start lag, immediately causing a large amount of energy to surge directly around. Those within a smart bomb radius will be lifted on the ground into a suspended free fall. Vegeta then aims and fires toward the nearest enemy. The beam is the size of Ganondorf's height in width and travels at double Sonic's dash speed. Not only this, but Vegeta can keep on firing the move for a further five seconds. He can also angle the move whilst firing, able to fire it directly diagonally up and forward, and down and forward. If hit by the beam, the opponent immediately loses a stock. While this is a risky move for Vegeta, it's made even more risky by the fact that it leaves him vulnerable for a couple of seconds - though it's more than worth it if you can kill the opponent.
NEUTRAL A: STOMP
Put simply, Ape Vegeta stomps. For as long as you hold the input, or for the single time you press it, he stomps at random on the platform, being able to stomp once every 0.8 seconds. Opponents caught underneath him when he does this suffer 10% damage per stomp, being stomped into the ground in Vegeta's unique pitfalls as he does this. For every further stomp, the difficulty of getting out becomes 1.5x as harder - as in Vegeta's normal moveset. Even if no opponent is hit, the pitfalls are created, allowing for Great Ape Vegeta to very easily set up for a knock out through his throws.
DOWN TILT: AGILE GIANT
Vegeta seems to mutter under his breath for a moment, before slowly retreating into the background with his back to the screen, continuing like this for as long as you hold the input. Prince Vegeta has to continue doing this for at least 0.7 seconds, though it can be charged for up to 2 seconds. When the input is released, Vegeta bounds back onto the foreground, knocking opponents off the "front of the stage" and dealt 25-30% damage. If successful, the foes pushed off the front of the stage are forced to try and recover from the bottom to the top, while also being harassed by Vegeta. If fully-charged and hit, foes suffer an instant knock out - the kind where their faces hit the screen.
UP SPECIAL: GIANT VAULT
Turning to face the screen, Great Ape Vegeta then uses an extreme surge in his aura to power a straight flight up - flying behind stages if he has to do so to avoid him. As in his down tilt, Vegeta will hit anyone he hits when coming into the foreground if he does avoid a solid platform by going in and out of the platform, except this time they hit his chest and are automatically grabbed. If a stage isn't in the way, the Great Ape is a moving hitbox that knocks out starting at 150% and causes 10% on touch. Otherwise, Vegeta simply stops in mid-air after travelling for three Ganondorfs, then comes down like a steam train, meteor smashing anyone who is below him into unique pitfalls on stage or their deaths off-stage. Anyone who is on the same level as him when he hits the ground is caused to trip.
DOWN SPECIAL: MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE
The Great Ape turns his omniscience to the area just below him, then pulling up a huge fist and punching the ground. Any opponents caught within this extremely small hitbox are dealt 30% damage and a regular old pitfall in the ground, where they can be stomped to death. If no one is hit, however, the move has the merit of bending the stage ever so slightly at that point - causing a curve inward on the Great Ape. Due to his humongous size, the Great Ape will not be effected by it - enemies on the stage will now automatically slide downward, going faster if Great Ape's down special is used more. The obvious use of this is to simply make them easier to grab.
FORWARD TILT: CHOP
Turning his attention to the skies, Vegeta starts to swat at the air with his palm - making a figure-eight motion almost with the pattern and hitting foes in the direction his hand is currently swinging. If hit, an opponent will suffer 15% damage, and knockback similar to Master Hand's cross-stage slap, sending them upward if hit when the hand is heading toward the background. Generally you can rely on a knock out with this move around the 150% mark, though it's actually mostly useful to hit foes who are trying to jump over you and attack your tail.
UP TILT: HEADBUTT
Vegeta hunches backward slightly with his neck, positioning his head so it's lying back on his shoulders, then vaults forward the distance of half of Final Destination with his head a platform in front of the rest of his body. While the entire Great Ape Vegeta here becomes a hitbox - capable of knocking out an opponent starting at 170% and dealing 20% damage - the head is the strongest part of the move, dealing 30% damage on hit and knockback that, if the top of the head is touched, is almost always an automatic knock out due to how high up it. The move isn't spam-able due to the amount of time it takes to charge up the initial vault forward, but it should be more than enough to deter those who want to go around the back of Vegeta and attack his tail.
SIDE SPECIAL: EXPLOSIVE WAVE
Mirroring his regular form's Explosive Wave in many ways, Oozaru Vegeta starts out with the basics; curling up into a ball slightly in mid-air, he stays like this for between 4-4.5 seconds. Widening his legs and arms out to their fullest extension - which, for Great Ape Vegeta, is several platforms long - Vegeta lets out a terrifying cry, as a massive white explosion surrounds his entire body. The long charge time for this move is because of the range - any opponent within a smart bomb radius of Vegeta, which may well be the entire stage, take damage of 20% and knockback that can kill starting at 150%. The extra .5 seconds you can charge is purely to catch your opponent off-guard, as this move can potentially be air dodged. Though this move may seem like real bait for the opponent to attack Vegeta's tail, they are deterred from doing so - the Great Ape's body emanates with the Explosive Wave's energy for three seconds after using the move, making it a constant hitbox that deals 10% and mild histun. If grabbed - which is made easier through the hitstun - Vegeta's hand deals constant damage of 3% per half-a-second, which can be stacked on top of his pummel, though this will only last for a short while.
FINAL SMASH: SUPER EXPLOSIVE WAVE
Great Ape Vegeta immediately travels to his greatest current pitfall, using his gigantic weight to create a Great Ape-sized hole in the ground in that area of the stage, going as deep down as the tunnel. Once there, he takes his stance from his regular Explosive Wave - arms and knees closer to his torso. However, elements of his regular form's final smash are present, the Oozaru being surrounded by a golden tinted aura and swipes of electro-magnetism in the air around him. At any point during the 5 second start-up time, the foe can attempt to attack Vegeta in his tunnel - but it's unlikely to work, as his tail will be at the bottom of it, difficult to attack. Prince Vegeta can also cancel out of the attack at any time by holding the special input for 0.5 seconds, though sacrificing the smash ball: it won't be hard to retrieve as an Oozaru. Once fully-charged, Vegeta throws back his limbs, once again covering the screen in an impenetrable white light. All of the platform, from Vegeta's feet and above, is destroyed, leaving little room in which the opponent can wriggle out of pitfalls or indeed simply get around Prince Vegeta. If within the tunnel at the time, an opponent is instantly vapourised; anyone within a smart bomb of the "tunnel" when the move is performed is dealt 15% damage and knockback that can KO starting at 100%.
Nappa is a heavyweight male antagonist from Dragon Ball Z, a series with no shortage of such antagonists. Nappa was originally a general in the army of the Saiyans – an alien race of beings who’s most obvious difference from humans is a monkey-like tail that can be used to transform into gigantic apes. Despite his high ranking position in the army, Nappa seemed to care little when the vast majority of his race was wiped out and continued going on with business as usual.
What is Nappa’s business? Anything that involves killing or destroying things – it’s not hard to find things to occupy Nappa. When having to wait for time to pass, Nappa goes out to kill innocents and those generally weaker than him for fun. When faced with significantly weaker foes, Nappa typically holds back in order to toy with them, less his fun be over too quickly. The bald villain enjoys fighting multiple people at once in particular, as this just further inflates his already overflowing ego. Nappa doesn’t particularly mind that he’s being forced under Frieza when it just means he gets to do more of what he loves anyway.
Nappa has far too much pride to even think of fleeing when things start looking bad, his pride being so great that he can easily overestimate his battle powers and underestimate his enemies. That said, when it becomes clear that Nappa has an actual fight on his hands, he is still capable of taking battles very seriously as he uses every technique in the damn book to make sure that he can keep his ego as inflated as possible.
Standing at 6’10”, Nappa stands a head taller than Ganondorf, meaning that even Ganondorf’s purpose as a unit of measurement has been made obsolete. He’s also around 1.3x wider than the dark king of evil, and when he has a fall speed on par with Fox he’s pretty much definitive combo fodder. That said, his meaty fall speed can actually help Nappa escape combos when in the air, which he naturally prefers to be in due to his poor ground movement and superb float. While Nappa’s float only moves him about at half the speed of Peach’s, it lasts for an incredible long time, quadruple that of Peach’s. In addition, Nappa can actually go up and down during his hover as well, though only as fast as the Gerudo Warlock’s walking speed.
SPECIALS
DOWN SPECIAL – EXPLODING WAVE
Nappa gets into a constipated position as he starts going to power up as his fists glow with energy, then raises up his arm and two fingers, causing a gigantic red explosion the size of a smart bomb blast to come out of him. The explosion deals knockback away from Nappa that KOs at 120% and16%. . .But this is if you’re using it on-stage. Off-stage, if a foe is below you this can obviously KO much more feasibly, much less when you take into account you can move around during the Warlock Punch level starting lag with your float. It’s only all the easier when Nappa has permanent super/anti-grab armor on the move and can even start up the move during hitstun. While the move is entirely uninterruptible and there is no ending lag, you are prevented from spamming this move over and over because it takes 12 seconds to charge the move back to its original strength and size, taking 5 seconds before the move can be used at all.
Aside from gimping, this is obviously excellent GTFO. This is further enhanced by the fact that any ground caught in the blast will have chunks of it fly upwards 3 Ganondorfs into the air, the chunks being the size of Bowser. The ground chunks are solid and aren’t hitboxes as they go up, but their undersides deal 13% and spike foes downward as they go down, meaning if you set them up in advance they can provide decent defense as they fall back down.
While the chunks of the stage being shot out of the ground don’t affect the stage at all, the chunks of ground are solid, and anyone or anything who was standing in the area that the ground shot out of will be standing on top of the ground chunk. The chunks of ground only refresh first and second jumps, no other recovery based options such as Up Specials and floats. When the chunks of ground land back onto the stage, they’ll slowly sink into the stage over 5 seconds rather than sticking around as permanent stage alterations.
Nappa can further break down these ground chunks by using this move again on them before they hit the ground or while they’re “sinking” into the stage, causing them to explode into 3 smaller Wario sized chunks that got shot off at random angles at Mario’s dash speed, dealing 8% and knockback that KOs at 200%. The random angles these smaller chunks are shot at makes camping with them impractical, but they’re still excellent up close.
UP SPECIAL – POWER BALL
The main racial feature of Nappa’s race, the Saiyans, are their long monkey tails which enable them to transform into Great Apes up to 100 feet tall. In order to complete the transformation, Saiyans normally need to stare at a full moon, but as a Saiyan elite Nappa is above such a situational use of the form, able to generate “artificial moons” he can stare at to complete the transformation.
For this move, Nappa generates a white orb of energy 1.5x the size of Bowser, which then floats up 2 Ganondorfs. If Nappa stays on the same vertical plane as the moon and faces it for 10 seconds, he will complete his transformation into a Great Ape – the great ape moveset is after Nappa’s main one.
A second use of the move has Nappa fly upwards in a sudden burst 2 Ganondorfs, being a weak hitbox that deals 7% as he does so. If both uses were on the ground, this will make Nappa on the same vertical plane as the power ball, ready to begin the transformation.
NEUTRAL SPECIAL – EYE LASERS
Nappa fires lasers from his eyes with very little lag straight ahead, which are the size of Falco’s lasers but travel much more slowly than said lasers, half that of Ganon’s walking speed. The lasers deal 8% and decent hitstun on contact, but it’s rather hard to hit with the slow telegraphed nature of the lasers. The move can be charged for up to 2 seconds to increase the speed of the lasers to go as fast as Falco’s, and the charge can be stored like the Neutral Specials of DK and Samus. Even if you don’t feel like charging the lasers, you can use their initial slow speed to your advantage, as they’ll ricochet off of anything that can’t be hurt by them, including your Power Ball from Up Special, the stage, and ground chunks (Of either size) thrown into the air from Down Special. The lasers expire by either damaging something, going off a blast zone, or 5 seconds pass. A particularly nice use is to fire an Eye Laser directly upward from underneath your Power Ball to make it ricochet back and forth for its entire duration.
You may’ve noticed that quadruple the duration of Peach’s float, AKA Nappa’s float, isn’t 10 seconds, meaning it’s impossible for Nappa to stare at his power ball long enough to transform. That’s where this move comes in, as when charging you can angle Nappa’s head to look upward and downward, getting rid of the need for Nappa to be on the same vertical plane as the Power Ball. Nappa will continue to look in this direction when you stop charging assuming you don’t fire the lasers, and Nappa doesn’t skip past the charging phase of the move even if he’s fully charged, waiting for your command to do so. Vertical movement is disabled while floating and charging this attack at the same time to make it easier to angle.
SIDE SPECIAL – IMPACT BOMB
Nappa charges up an energy ball in one hand with a full second of lag – somewhat inconvenient, but easy to get around with your float - before throwing it directly at the nearest foe. It travels at .75x Ganon’s dash speed, and on contact with anything it explodes into an explosion 1.5X the size of Bowser that deals 12% and knockback that kills at 160% on contact. This also completely and utterly ***** shields, meaning it’s a superb way of zoning foes to convince them to move from the spot they’re currently on, as well as potentially motivating them to come into the air where there’s no ground directly underneath them that will cause the impact bomb to detonate immediately after they dodge. Aside from annoying defensive characters, it can be used defensively while you’re staring at a power ball from Up Special attempting to transform. If the starting lag is too much of an issue for you, if at no other time you can use it as soon as you knock the foe off-stage while the foe can’t interrupt you. This will give the foe something to dodge on the way back and let you get in another easy hit.
If this comes into contact with large ground chunks created from your Down Special, it will detonate them into 3 smaller ones like if you used Down B again on them. If the blast from this move comes in contact with the ground, a small indent will be made on the stage that’s only half a Kirby width deep. The width of the indent is determined by how much of the blast overlapped with the ground. This effect cannot stack, so how is such a small indent in the stage relevant to Nappa?
Nappa has several tools for putting foes into their prone states which we’ll eventually get to, and foes are unable to roll up out of the indents from their prone states, rolling against them like walls. It can also interrupt foes who are dashing across the stage, as if they run into an indent they’ll have to do an ever so slight jump to get out of it, making a great emphasis on aerial combat. If the whole stage is one giant indent, the effect is obviously irrelevant, so this prevents mindless spamming of this move (Though you can trade the indents –for- mindless spamming) - especially considering the foe can run over to existing indents while you charge up the move so they end up connected, limiting them from being particularly effective at limiting the options of foes in prone. Of course, you can send an Eye Laser on it’s way ever so slowly over there by making it only get to its destination by being reflected off something to block the area off. If you can somehow manage it, a stage that’s in a checkerboard pattern with indents and regular stage alternating is ideal, but impractical to make. If you –do- make it, though, foes are able to roll off of normal parts of the stage into the indents while in their prone states, so don’t think that no matter where they are they’re sitting ducks.
GRAB-GAME
GRAB – CONDESCENDING GRIP
Nappa reaches downwards onto the ground, seemingly targeting smaller characters like Kirby and Pikachu with it. However; the fact you can use your grab from your float means that the downward angled grab can be used to hit foes on the ground while you’re up above them in the air.
In addition, Nappa has an additional purpose in reaching down to the ground – if he doesn’t hit anyone he’ll instead rip up a chunk of ground 1.5X the size of Bowser, which he can perform his pummels and throws on. Uprooted ground chunks behave identically to those thrown in the air from Nappa’s Down Special, being solid just like them and able to be shattered into smaller non solid rock chunks upon being hit by Down Special.
DOWN PUMMEL – CONDESCENDING GRIP
Nappa reaches down with his hand not holding the foe in an attempt to grab something else, meaning he can grab two foes, two chunks of ground, or have one of each in his grip at the same time. Unless stated otherwise, Nappa’s pummels and throws are always executed on both of the things he’s holding at the same time.
NEUTRAL PUMMEL - SQUEEZE
For foes, this is simply your standard every day pummel, dealing 4% per pop at a slightly below average speed. Used on chunks of ground, however, the ground will burst into 3 chunks like the small chunks created when you use your Down Special on the ground, destroying them. Grabbed foes will not take the knockback of the chunks, meaning you can reach down and grab some ground before using this pummel in order to increase the damage. This does more damage over time than just pummeling normally, but won’t work until the foe’s at higher percentages.
SIDE PUMMEL – MEAT SHIELD
Nappa holds whatever’s in both of his hands in front of/behind him to use as a meat shield, holding it there for as long as you hold Z. As you continue to hold it, you can move your meat shield around with the control stick in order to either give you the best defense or to shove a victim you’re holding into harm’s way. Better yet, you can move chunks of ground around to better reflect an eye laser towards the foe.
UP PUMMEL – JUGGLE
Nappa throws up his foe into the air ever so briefly before catching them with his other hand. The whole move only takes around .15 seconds, meaning if the foe was mashing anything other than the jump button the whole time they were in the grab they’ll get caught in it again due to executing some random move due to button mashing, refreshing the grab timer. Nappa also has the option of canceling this pummel into any of his other moves, meaning he can choose to hit the foe with a quick upward targeting attack rather than re-grab them.
If you’re holding a chunk of ground in addition to a foe, you won’t be able to re-grab them but they’ll instead splat against the ground, taking 7% and be in their prone position on top of it as you re-grab the ground. If you’re holding two foes, you can potentially re-grab them both, but only the lighter of the two will end up getting damaged and taking stun, it varying based off how different the gap in weight is – Bowser does 20% to Jigglypuff. If they’re the same weight, they both take 1% and flinching, but it’s their own stupid fault for being cheap and picking two of the same character in doubles.
FORWARD THROW – COLLOSSAL HEAVE
Nappa throws forward the first thing he grabbed, dealing 8% and KOing foes at 150%, then throws the second thing he was holding in his grasp after them with significantly more force, dealing 13% and KOing foes at 100%.. If you want to switch the order they’re thrown in, simply use your Up Pummel to swap the items you’re holding beforehand.
The fact that the second thing Nappa throws is thrown so much more forcefully means it will inevitably catch-up with the first thing he throws. If it’s two characters, the damage and knockback dealt to the character thrown first is determined by the difference in weight between the characters, Bowser dealing a godly 35% to and knockback that KOs at 70% to poor little Jigglypuff. If you threw a chunk of ground after the character, the ground will spin around as it flies through the air – it typically hits the character when it’s facing horizontally, then goes into an upright position. If a character hits the ground chunk when it’s horizontal they’ll splat against it and take 15%, sticking to it long enough for it to go upright and be stuck in their prone position.
While this move –is- insanely powerful, hitting with the second thing in your grasp is far from guaranteed – the victim can just fastfall to avoid it. If you’re throwing the foe off-stage, though, fastfalling is needless to say quite dangerous. Even if you throw them on-stage, forcing the foe onto the ground enables you to pester them further from the air.
UP THROW – FACE OFF
Nappa throws his foes into the air so they crash into each other, dealing slightly more damage to the lighter of the two foes than he would in his Up Pummel, holding onto the lighter of the two foes as he flies up. Nappa proceeds to swing around the foe to get above them, then stomps down on both foes at the same time, dealing 10% to each of them and leaving them stuck in prone on the ground, Nappa standing on top of them, looking down on them with a cocky smirk on his face.
If one of the things you threw was a chunk of ground, Nappa will always use it as his base for swinging around instead of the foe. This causes the foe to get stuck in a sandwich between Nappa’s feet and the chunk of ground, being right in Nappa’s face stuck in prone with nowhere to really roll to on either side, leaving them insanely predictable. The chunk of ground will fly up 7 Ganondorfs over 2.5 seconds, 1 of them taken up by the throw animation, before falling back down to the floor over 3 more seconds.
If you just try to re-grab the chunk of ground you’re standing on top of and use uthrow again while it’s still going up, it will go up so fast Nappa will lose his grip on it and be unable to swing on top of it. If you do so while it’s going downwards, the chunk of ground will simply fall out of Nappa’s grip due to it moving so quickly. No free infinite stalling.
DOWN THROW – SMASH
Nappa throws the lighter of his two foes to the ground, then the heavier one, dealing slightly more damage to the lighter of the two foes than in the uthrow. The lighter one ends up in their prone position while the heavier one ends up in their tripped position, sitting on top of said character. If you only have one character to throw, this deals 11% to them and causes them to bounce off the ground, KOing them at 160%.
When you have a foe and a chunk of ground, Nappa smashes the chunk of ground over the foe’s head, causing them to impale the ground as they get stuck in the middle, dealing 16% to them. Aside from this impressive damage, this will cause the foe to have to walk around awkwardly with a little skirt made of earth stuck around their waist, unable to get out of it. This halves the movement speed of characters while doubling their falling speed and weight (If their natural falling speed is very low, 6/10 is their minimum fall speed with this move), making it easy to both keep foes on the ground and gimp them. While the added weight of foes can occasionally prove to be an annoyance, you can detonate their earth skirt on demand by using your Down Special like a regular ground chunk, causing the earth skirt to detonate into three smaller chunks that deal 8% as normal. Foes can force their earth skirt off themselves by button mashing it off with 1.5x grab difficulty.
This has additional use if you have more than just 1 opponent, as it lets you make the gap in weight between foes larger, enabling Bowser and company to become such good bludgeoning weapons that they can essentially kill Jigglypuff in one hit.
BACK THROW – EARTH CARROUSEL
Nappa lifts up both of the objects he’s carrying in his hands, holding ground chunks from the sides and holding them so that they’re solid platforms, then starts spinning around repeatedly. The sides of ground chunks deal 5% and weak knockback during the first bit of the attack, but for the majority deal 12% and knockback that KOs at 180%. Foes deal damage based off their weight as usual, Jigglypuff dealing 5% and flinching while Bowser deals 20% and KOs foes at 110%. Nappa starts floating if he wasn’t already, able to move left and right during the lengthy 3 second duration of the attack.
Why can’t Nappa move up and down? Because inputting up causes Nappa to angle the objects he’s holding upwards towards the sky, while inputting down causes Nappa to just drag them across the ground as he spins – of course you don’t have to commit to either extreme and are more than free to do anything in-between. Dragging foes across the ground is how you actually damage grabbed foes with this attack, dealing 4 hits of 1% per second as they get dragged. Dragging chunks of earth across the ground causes them to start shattering apart as you grind them against it, their power diminishing alongside their size, but the chunks of the earth breaking off will fly forwards 2-3 Battlefield platforms, dealing 5% and flinching – 3 of them come out per second on average. Once Nappa is done spinning, he releases both of the objects, dealing knockback that KOs at 150% and boosting the power of the objects he threw by 1.5X.
Obviously this throw isn’t all that threatening for foes you’ve actually grabbed – it’s better to grab some chunks of ground or some spare heavy foes in a FFA and use them as battering weapons against foes. The fact Nappa can move left and right enables this to be both a godlike approach and retreat, much less when Nappa even has the option of firing projectiles from this stance – not just earth chunks, lasers too, what with his ability to tilt ground chunks he’s holding. You might think that the ability of foes to stand on top of ground chunks you’re holding is a weakness in this attack, but the physics on top of them are realistic – foes will get pushed away from you while standing on them as you spin at a rate of Ganon’s walk, and if you tilt the ground chunks they won’t be able to walk on it but will slide down them anyway due to their solid nature.
Of particular note is if you managed to get a foe in prone on top of a pillar before performing this throw – attempting to get up/perform a get-up attack will fail due to the momentum they’re spinning around at, so their only choice is to roll – they still won’t get up at the end of their rolls, though. However; they can roll off the sides of your ground chunk platforms, unlike regular ones (And yes, they can do this at any time, not just in this move), which will result in them getting up successfully. This can potentially enable you to stall the foe long enough to throw the ground chunk they’re on before they can roll off if you keep predicting correctly and tilting the ground chunk the opposite way they roll. . .But tilting it the same way also has its uses, as it will boost the momentum of the foe’s roll massively and cause them to travel quadruple the distance they normally would, rolling through the air if necessary – do I smell gimp? In addition, if you’re dragging pieces of earth along the ground as you throw them, they’ll slide along the ground in that position, not hitboxes but solid walls, leaving foes in prone helpless to resist getting dragged along – by the time they get up they’ll of already slid their full length.
STANDARDS
DASHING ATTACK – THUNDEROUS CRASH
Nappa continues to dash for as long as you hold the A button, slowly accelerating as he goes – after dashing 2 platforms worth he reaches his max dashing speed of 7/10. There is no hitbox as Nappa dashes. Upon release of A (Or if you just tap A as you dash), Nappa will do a massive leap forwards, going up 1.5 Ganondorfs into the air at the peak of his jump, using his momentum to go forwards. His body is a hitbox as he goes up that deals 7% and weak knockback, and his feet are a hitbox as he goes down that deal 15% and spike foes. The distance Nappa travels with his thunderous leap spans anywhere from 1.5-5X Bowser’s width based off his speed when he starts the jump, and he –can- go off ledges, so using this as an alternative means of movement is only advisable on gigantic stages or if you have your back to one side of the stage.
If you just casually press A, though, the distance Nappa leaps is perfect to hop over a indent in the ground from Side Special. This isn’t faster than jumping over it normally, but it gives you a hitbox in the process. What –is- faster is if you’re in an indent and want to travel to another indent, but there’s a piece of regular ground in the way, enabling Nappa to freely leapfrog around a checkerboard-style arena.
FORWARD TILT – PRIDEFUL SMACKDOWN
Nappa dons a cocky grin as he looks slightly downwards and smacks at a downward/forward angle – the downward part is needed to hit small characters what with his height, but Nappa in general likes to look down on his foes anyway. Due to the downward nature of this move, this doesn’t deal traditional knockback but rather causes foes to slide across the stage. If they reach the edge of the stage, the remainder of their 100% horizontal knockback will be taken traditionally, foes in the air who somehow get hit by this also taking traditional knockback. The move deals 11% and knockback that KOs at 170%, with a minimum knockback of a Battlefield Platform.
If a foe slides into an indent from your Side Special nothing immediately happens, but if they slide –beyond- the indent they’ll trip over backwards as they come out of it and fall into their prone state (Taking an additional 3%). They won’t stop sliding, though - if they slide off-stage while still in their prone state they’ll come out of it, but if they slide into another indent along the way they won’t slide out of it due to being so low to the ground in their prone state.
DOWN TILT – KARATE CHOP
Nappa does a forward/downward angled karate chop with one of his arms, dealing a meager 6% and knockback that will never really kill. Aside from being fast, this move will sweep out dashing foe’s legs from under them, causing them to fall onto their stomachs and into their prone states. This also has use on foes who are already knocked down, as it will interrupt any rising attacks and cause the foe to get knocked back onto the ground. It can also interrupt regularly getting up, but this attack is slower than doing so (Which is very fast) and can’t reliably prevent it unless you predict it well in advance. This attack is yet another option for chopping up ground chunks into 3 smaller ones to form some brief hitboxes, and what with the move’s ability to interrupt rising attacks is in general an excellent option when you and the foe are both on top of a ground chunk (Probably via uthrow). If you miss, they’ll just get hit by the extra chunks.
This can also cause foes to fall over into their prone states if you hit them while they’re sliding from your ftilt. In order to actually catch up to the foe you sent sliding, they’ll need a decent amount of damage to slide a decent ways, and you’ll need a good chunk of stage to pick up momentum with your dashing attack to overtake them. This requires very specific positioning, sure, but it also doesn’t require you to set up any indents in the stage.
NEUTRAL ATTACK – FURIOUS ASSAULT
Nappa punches or kicks with one of his limbs at random, dealing 2% and very slight knockback forward per hit. Nappa can do up to 5 punches/4 kicks per second by mashing A, the kicks making up for being slower with more range and doing a good bit more knockback, around as far as most characters can roll. If Nappa is attacked from the front while rapidly attacking in this move, he will automatically block the move and take no damage or knockback from it, and his punches and kicks out-prioritze grabs. Nappa will automatically approach foes in front of him at a speed about as fast as somebody using rolls to transverse the stage, floating just barely off the ground so he can still kick as he does so.
This move has notable ending lag and Nappa has no way of turning around during it, making this otherwise godlike move have a very obvious and vulnerable weak point. While you can’t counter-attack Nappa immediately or roll away due to him chasing you, he’s entirely vulnerable if you just roll behind him. The main thing that makes this move half decent is if you have either some ground chunks that are falling down/incoming eye lasers/an indent in the stage from Side Special behind you, giving foes something to roll into to prevent an easy escape and punish. While if a foe rolls into an indent in the stage they won’t get directly punished, it will at least be frame neutral and it lets you move the foe over there so you can smack them with your ftilt. If they don’t resist, then you’re just moving them closer to the edge so you take them off-stage for a gimp.
UP TILT - HEADBUTT
Nappa does a headbutt upwards with his massive bald head. This is as fast as Dedede’s utilt and just as powerful, but Nappa doesn’t jump up, the size of his head isn’t exaggerated, and Nappa’s a fair bit taller than Dedede, limiting the range on this move a lot in comparison with Dedede’s version – it’s pretty much strictly anti-air.
However, Nappa’s always been a smart one – he knows how to use his head when he needs to. If he hits a chunk of ground with this his bald head will impale it, the top of his head sticking through it and hitting any foes that were standing on that part of the ground chunk. After impaling it, Nappa will reel back briefly before thrusting in the desired direction, throwing it away just as powerfully as when he throws chunks of ground with his bthrow (18% and knockback that KOs at 135%). Nappa –can- throw the ground chunk back up into the air to juggle it if he wishes, keeping it around until he gets a chance to hit a foe with it. Nappa can impale any thin solid surface with his head, but he’ll just pop his head out of the platform with brief ending lag if the platform isn’t destructible.
SMASHES
FORWARD SMASH – BREAK CANNON
Nappa opens up his mouth wide as he charges a sphere of energy in his mouth, powering up with startlag on par with Ike’s fsmash, then fires a massive beam as wide as Mario which reaches until either it hits something solid or a blast zone. Nappa will continue to fire the beam for 2 consecutive seconds, during which he’s a sitting duck. The beam is very easily angled, enabling Nappa to hit foes in the air, but Nappa is unable to move the beam as he keeps firing it over the long duration. The beam does 13-22 hits of 1% and flinching per second, and there is a very slight push effect while in the beam that will push you in the direction the beam is being fired.
If you’re hit off-stage by this move, DIing upwards out of it is impossible due to fall speed existing, meaning you’ll essentially have to DI downwards out of it, then sit below it and stall in the air until it’s over. Obviously, not all characters can do that, but they can jump back into the beam ever so briefly to regain their jumps before DIing back down out of range. DIing from the upper half of the beam to the bottom takes .8 seconds on average, though, meaning this is a good way to get extra damage on foes you’ve knocked off-stage without even bothering to pursue them.
If this hits a ground chunk, it will be rocketed along the beam’s path at an incredible speed, absorbing the hits of the break cannon but quickly being disintegrated as it does so. The ground chunk isn’t a hitbox as it moves, but it’s still completely solid. The ground chunk will travel the entire distance of Battlefield before being disintegrated and all in .35 seconds, making this a superb way to push foes off-stage and damage them with this move, or, better yet, to gimp a foe already off-stage.
UP SMASH – LASER DRILL
Nappa turns to look upwards as he fires continuous laser beams from his eyes, reaching anywhere from 2.5-8 platforms. Contact with the laser beams deal 25-35 hits of 1% and flinching, the last hit doing stun on par with Zamus’ dsmash. Once Nappa initiates the two beams upwards, he moves them around in a small circle very quickly, only small enough for bite size characters like Kirby and Pikachu to fit through.
This is rather impractical anti-air when your utilt blatantly outclasses it, but this can saw out a Kirby width’s worth of a ground chunk up in the air above you, and the laser itself can obviously hit foes as well. Characters wider than Kirby are unable to fall through the hole and treat the empty space as solid ground, though Kirby and Pikachu can go through it freely. Doing so isn’t a particularly big advantage, though, as the part Nappa sawed out will fall downwards much faster than the rest. While it does nothing by itself, if hit by an attack before it hits the ground it will be treated like a Soccer Ball – you can headbutt it back up through the hole with your utilt to make foes think twice about coming through the opening after you. Yes, foes can just dair it down to Nappa, but Nappa’s utilt will always out-prioritize the small chunk of ground he drilled out. If you dislike small foes coming through the hole anyway, you can just give them an earth skirt to make them too wide to fit through the hole.
DOWN SMASH – QUAKE STOMP
Nappa stomps down hard with one of his feet, dealing 10-20% with his foot and knockback that kills at 220-180%, nothing special. More importantly, anybody within 2 platforms standing on the current platform he’s on will get knocked up into the air – anywhere from a set Kirby height to vertical knockback that KOs at 140%. Due to how weak the attack starts out, the starting lag is basically non existent, all the lag involved being charging.
The uncharged version of this move is adept at interrupting foes – no, it won’t interrupt attacks, but if you use it in the foe’s face when you predict an attack, it’s very possible they’ll use an aerial while they’re ever so briefly in the air then have it canceled into landing lag, due to how fast the move is and how briefly they’re in the air. This becomes even more threatening if you’re both on a chunk of ground going upwards (Probably from uthrow), as foes will almost immediately hit the ground after having been in mid-air due to the ground coming up underneath them.
Of particular note is the fact that this won’t knock foes out of their prone states, and foes who are attempting to use a get up-attack/get up normally will be knocked down back into their prone state if they’re in mid animation, meaning rolls are the only way to properly get up – this makes tech chasing all the easier to predict, as the foe only really has the options of rolling left or right.
AERIALS
NEUTRAL AERIAL – ARMY STOMP
Nappa turns to face the screen, folds his arms, and bends his knees inwards towards his body for a brief bit of starting lag, then kicks out in any direction you choose so long as you don’t angle it upwards at all. Nappa looks somewhat as if he’s performing that silly Russian kicking dance – as we all know, all burly bald men in existence are Russian – if Space Australia exists in DBZ, surely Space Russia does as well.
The stomp deals 10% and knockback that kills at 170% away from Nappa, nothing too impressive, but Nappa is dealt the same amount of knockback away from the foe. The primary use of this kickback is to stay in the air without having to rely too excessively on your float, enabling you to stare at your Power Ball longer for your Great Ape transformation. In addition, while foes are still in stun from the knockback, they’ll be in their reeling state as if footstooled rather than their traditional hitstun animation – if they land on the ground in this state they will immediately enter prone. This makes the move worth using in a campy fashion as you float above the foe, what with the juicy reward of putting the foe in prone.
FORWARD AERIAL – DIVING TACKLE
Nappa does a diving tackle forwards, swooshing his arms in front of himself to try to grab something as he does so. Should Nappa grab someone successfully, he’ll hold them up against his body, the foe able to escape at regular grab duration as Nappa starts falling at 1.5X his regular speed. Upon contact with the ground, he’ll slam on top of the foe for 15% and leave the foe in their prone state lying on their backs. The foe is unable to move as Nappa laggily gets up from over their body due to him standing on them – though beware he’ll go through this same end lag whether or not he lands with a foe under him.
This might not seem like it has much use off-stage aside from run of the mill (and incredibly risky) suicide KOs, but if you land on top of a ground chunk that you’ve knocked off-stage with the foe, you can KO them and still get out alive. The fact they’re stuck in lag while you get up off of them gives some time for the ground chunk to fall down further, and they then have to actually get up from their prone state before they can bother recovering. While it might seem incredibly hard to pull this off, and it is, it’s made far easier when Nappa’s float is taken into account – while Nappa is floating, he won’t fall downwards at all in this move, enabling him to move over to get on top of an off-stage ground chunk so he won’t just do a suicide KO. Beware that at any point before Nappa slams the foe into the ground they can escape with regular grab difficulty, so don’t expect to pull off these KOs at –too- early of percentages.
BACK AERIAL – CLOSING IN
Nappa enters the “Superman pose”, his limbs fully extended with his legs straight like a soldier and his arms out in front of himself, fists clenched. As he enters the pose, he does a backwards shuttle loop, flying upwards immediately as he flies in a circle pattern to end back up where he originally was. There’s enough room in the middle of the radius where Nappa flies to fit a character 1.5x Bowser’s size. Nappa’s not done after one circling, though, as he quickly flies in a circle twice more, tightening the circle each time. For the entire duration of the move, Nappa’s fists are hitboxes that deal 13% and knockback away from where Nappa is currently facing that KOs at 130% - much earlier if the knockback is downwards and the foe is off-stage. It takes Nappa 1.35 seconds to complete the entire duration of the move. While the move has no start/ending lag whatsoever, it can still seem a tad awkward to use. . .But when you take into account your float, the move becomes an absolute terror as you keep moving about to keep the foe inside the area you’re circling – if they’re inside it by the end of the move they’ll inevitably end up getting hit due to said circle becoming too tight. Circling a ground chunk a foe’s on can be a good way of convincing them to stick around for the whole ride, which can be devastating if it’s falling off-stage.
Nappa turns to look at whatever he’s circling throughout the entire duration of the move (Spying it through the corner of his eye), which might seem irrelevant at a glance until you realize Nappa’s initial circle has –just- enough room to fit inside his Up Special Power Ball inside. If something solid, such as said Power Ball, prevents Nappa from tightening his circle, he’ll just circle as tightly as he can for the entire duration of the move. Needless to say, hugging the Power Ball so closely, moving around so much, -and- turning your fists into a powerful hitbox makes this an excellent way to build up the time you need to stare at the Power Ball to complete your Great Ape transformation.
UP AERIAL – NOT-SO RANDOM FLIP KICK
Nappa does a flip kick, his legs a hitbox for their rotation around his body. The legs only deal 1% and flinching, but they have a rather strong suction effect that drags foes who get hit by the move along for the entire duration of it. The suction effect is incredibly small and won’t help you get in the initial hit, only preventing foes from escaping. If a foe gets hit for the entire duration of the attack, they’ll take 11%, the final hit doing set knockback of 1.5 Bowsers forward.
If at any time during the move Nappa drags the foe with the flip kick into walkable terrain, they’ll get slammed against it, taking 10% and entering their prone state as Nappa laglessly comes out of the move. When you take your float into account, this means you can snatch a foe up a bit above the ground as your legs go up above you, then float downwards to slam them into the ground. If you can manage to catch a foe with your legs early on in the move, you can potentially even slam them into a ground chunk flying through the air.
DOWN AERIAL - SWOOP
Nappa turns to face directly downwards as he enters the Superman pose. From here, Nappa dive bombs the ground at a ridiculously accelerated pace, double his already meaty falling speed. Nappa’s fists are a hitbox here that deal 16% and spiking knockback, with little lag to enter this outside the stall part of the stall then fall.
However; Nappa is one of the few heavyweights that has something to save them from dropping off the bottom blast zone in his flight. He’ll only dive bomb the ground for as long as you hold A, swooping upwards in a curve upon release- he’ll end the attack a Ganondorf below and 3 Ganondorfs in front of where he started the attack, giving Nappa even better horizontal recovery. Just keep in mind that the arc Nappa goes in is a “U” shape, so if you do it too late you may hit the ground for horrible landing lag/the bottom blast zone as you go into the curve part of the “U”.
If Nappa’s fists collide with a chunk of ground, his fists will impale it, causing him to drag the ground chunk along with him. His arms slowly dig into the ground chunk as well as he carries it around, grinding up the ground chunk into nothing over 2 seconds, knocking up particles of earth that do 3% and flinching – not much, but enough to keep anybody on the ground chunk from leaving. You can obviously use this for a suicide KO, but if you can manage to grind the whole chunk away you’ll immediately spike any foes standing on the chunk with your fists. Foes can DI away from the flinching, yes, but you also can DI your fall slightly and can initiate the curve when the chunk is almost gone to buy a little more time – just make sure the chunk doesn’t go horizontal or the foe will fall off the chunk. Of course, if you’re less ambitious, you may be perfectly content to just drop them off, much less if you’re close to the bottom blast zone.
FINAL SMASH - PLANET DECIMATION
Nappa goes up into the air as he charges up a large blast above his head with both hands, laughing maniacally as he does so – he charges for 2 seconds, and the Smash Ball can be knocked out of him during this time (Though he has super/anti-grab armor). After charging, he throws it down at the stage once it’s the size of a smart bomb, dealing 35% and knockback that KOs at 50% (Insta KO). Once it hits the stage, it gets completely destroyed, nothing but 6-8 ground chunks getting shot up into the air. Foes must stand on these ground chunks as the screen slowly starts scrolling down and Nappa’s float gains an infinite duration. The rate the ground chunks fall at differs with varying levels of randomness, meaning foes will typically have to shift from chunk to chunk to avoid falling off the bottom blast zone (Standing on them renews Up Bs/floats in the Final Smash). Of course, Nappa is very adept at keeping foes stuck on top of one of them as it goes down, or he can simply destroy all the ground for foes to stand on so they have no choice but to fall down to their deaths.
This lasts 15 seconds before the characters finally hit the ground, landing on a generic looking neutral stage on the ground below the floating stage/inside the earth of a stage normally on the ground. Despite being a neutral stage, the stage is still connected to the ground like Yoshi’s Island to indicate we’re no longer up in the air. The main thing that separates this stage from a real stage is the fact that there are craters in the main platform from crap having fallen down into it – there will be 3-5 random indents like those from Nappa’s Side B in this stage. Bits and pieces of the destroyed stage can be seen in the background, and environmental hazards from the original stage that could potentially realistically function after falling down that far still stick around in this new stage – the most obvious example being character based hazards like Kraid, Tingle, and the Ultimate Chimera.
PLAYSTYLE
Nappa typically wants to just get some space to himself when he doesn’t have ground chunks, but it’s not like it’s hard to make them what with that super armored Down Special of his. Nappa doesn’t want –too- much space, though, as if they’re too far away he’ll struggle to board the foe onto one of them. Once he has them, his objective typically becomes to relentlessly pursue foes, but to always keep a ground chunk between him and the foe, as he can essentially attack through them with moves like utilt, usmash, and to an extent fsmash. If foes are playing campy and not just playing into his hand with a mindless approach, Nappa has plenty of tools to move them out of the corner, such as his jab, ftilt, and fair (Grab them, float, move to where you want them to be, drop like a rock). If you can set up some impact bombs properly, to get a small checkerboard pattern somewhere, your ftilt becomes a very reliable way to force a foe into the same spot consistently, which can be very handy if that spot is close to the edge.
When you’re close to the foe with a ground chunk nearby, you can either lead into damage racking by knocking the ground chunk skywards, or you can attempt a gimp KO early. Nappa in general can KO very early, as he still mainly focuses on gimps even when the foe has a high percentage, it just becoming easier at that point. If the foe is particularly frail or easy to pressure, you can just persistently hammer them off-stage and use it as pseudo damage racking as a back-up plan in case your kill attempt fails. In order to take them off-stage and bring a ground chunk along with you, it’s generally best to get them to the edge with a move like ftilt, then grab them and send them flying with a casual fthrow. With this method they’ll typically be separated from the ground chunk by the time you get there, but if you send another after them you can keep the foe stuck to it until their death with a good chunk of your aerials – dair, fair, uair, take your pick. Not that you need a ground chunk at all, as a simple Down Special can be enough for a gimp if you predict the foe will only barely make it back to the stage. If you predict the foe is going to just barely not go off the blast zone, an fsmash is also a nice way to give that extra push to finish them, especially if there’s a ground chunk floating around somewhere in the way. If things look bad and the gimp attempt is going to fail, you can just use some casual Side Specials to tack on some more damage. If you do this commonly enough, you can potentially make the foe routinely dodge them enough to use them as a distraction to hit with something actually useful for gimping, such as your bair or nair.
Nappa’s safest way of getting up ground chunks to play with is his Down Special, what with the superarmor all over the place, but with the cooldown on the move it’s not always an option, and against defensive characters giving them set-up time may not be particularly wise anyway. If you’re on cooldown on your Down Special, you can either pick up a single ground chunk with your grab and just use your pummels to defend yourself as you try to grab another, potentially going into your bthrow if things start looking really bad. While using a throw means you’ll lose the chunks you’ve picked up, they’ll typically stall enough for you to use the Down Special to get 2-4 more chunks for free. Your Eye Lasers can become a lot more useful while you’re reduced to this brief stalling state, as your pummels enable you to shift around where the lasers will be reflected from to better defend yourself.
Of course, this method of stalling is only if you couldn’t care less about your Great Ape Form, which is so overpowered it’s essentially an instant win button if you can pull off the transformation, even enabling you to get a good lead on the foe’s next stock. When you’re waiting for your Down Special to cooldown, why not go up into the air and stare at your Power Ball? If Nappa has no intention of actually hurting foes and just wants to pull off his transformation, he can become very hard to touch, largely due to his float. Just playing campy with your float and using your nair/grab to hit foes below you can work quite well (Particularly if you can manage to nab a ground chunk as well before the foe gets there), and the threat of your transformation will force defensive characters to come out of hiding.
Nappa can’t float during the entire waiting period for his transformation, though, and while he can stall out long enough with his float to regain at least a weak version of his Down Special with superarmor attached, the fact he’ll of used up the float means he won’t be able to move while he charges, causing him to take massive damage as he does so. This means you’ll have to play to an extent on the ground if you expect to actually pull off the transformation – it’s generally best to start on the ground then go to the air to finish it so you can cover the last couple of seconds needed with either your Down Special superarmor or by circling the Power Ball with bair. To survive the 5 or so seconds you need to on the ground, you’ll want some indents in the ground from your Side Special which you can use to force the foe into prone, preferably two close to each other so they won’t slide too far away. Wouldn’t more space be beneficial? You’d think that, but one of the best ways of stalling out the time is to keep the foe from getting up for as long as possible with your dtilt and dsmash. If they’re up against the side of an indent, it’ll be all too easy to predict when they finally roll to the side, at which point you can promptly punish them when they get up, preferably with a grab. Needless to say, Eye Lasers can help significantly in this tech chasing bonanza, blocking off a point for the foe to flee to.
Nappa certainly doesn’t have to transform at all, being extremely viable without his Great Ape form. However; what should make you want to try to use the form is the sheer threat of transforming that complements Nappa’s natural playstyle. Having foes come to Nappa to prevent him from having 10 whole seconds to himself still enables him to play campy with his float when defensive foes would otherwise be perfectly content to kick back and relax, enabling him to easily stall for the cooldown on his Down Special so he can summon more ground chunks at will to use with his main playstyle of constantly keeping the foe eating dirt under his boot – even in the air.
GREAT APE FORM
The Great Ape is pretty much what you’d expect – a gigantic, civilization destroying ape. Simpleton protagonist Saiyans don’t know how to control themselves in Great Ape Form and simply give in to their beastly instincts. . .On the other hand, Nappa, who’s not only a Saiyan Elite but the general of the Saiyan army, retains complete control of his Great Ape Form, even being able to speak normally. Great Apes generally don’t differ much from one another, but Nappa’s Great Ape form is differentiated by its girth and its forehead being larger, matching Nappa’s baldness in his humanoid form. Aside from this, Saiyan armor has a purpose besides having ridiculously oversized shoulder pads – it shapeshifts alongside Saiyans as they go into their Great Ape forms.
The tails of Saiyans are what enable them to transform into their Great Ape Form, and once they reach said form cutting off their tail will force them to immediately revert. Due to Nappa’s godlike weight and recovery in this form, the only way to finish him off if you let him get into it is to attack his tail, which has 70 stamina.
Nappa keeps his float perfectly in-tact in this form, and while his newfound girth makes him a tad less aerodynamic his ground movement improves simply because of his size. Needless to say, a remotely competent Nappa will –never- die in this form until, say, 650%? Considering you have to knock him –entirely- off a blast zone what with his recovery. . .Nappa’s exact size in this form is triple Ganondorf’s height and quadruple Bowser’s width, with his tail extending out a Battlefield Platform behind him.
To ensure Nappa isn’t combo fodder, Nappa has several various immunities and resistances.
Nappa is entirely immune to grabs of any kind. If you want to grab him so badly, do it –before- he transforms.
Only hitting Nappa’s tail or his head will cause him to take any form of hitstun, and even then he only takes 75% of the regular hitstun. If you hit him while he’s already in hitstun your attack will deal no hitstun whatsoever. If you do something like a multi-hit move, be aware that Nappa will become entirely immune to hitstun for 5 seconds if he is forced into it 4 or more times within 5 seconds. He is also entirely immune to hitstun from moves that only flinch and deal no knockback until he reaches 125%.
Nappa’s main body takes .75x of the regular damage dealt to him, but his tail takes 1.25x the regular damage – this extra damage doesn’t boost the damage done to the tail’s HP, only boosting the damage added to his percentage.
Nappa takes no knockback from set knockback moves under 100%, 25% of their knockback under 200%, half their knockback under 300%, and so on.
Nappa cannot be tripped, forced into prone, pitfalled, frozen, and is immune to other similar status effects.
Nappa can swim for 5x as long as a regular character, negative status effects last 33% as long on him, and requires 2.5x the normal amount of units on various KO mechanics (I.E. Valozarg’s corruption) to be KO’d. If a status effect lasts forever, it is only 33% as strong.
If Nappa is somehow forced into some sort of grab based situation where he must escape he escapes quadruple as quickly as a regular character.
MOVESET
DOWN B – EARTH SHATTERING STOMP
Nappa stomps down forcefully, dealing 20% and knockback that KOs at 150% with his foot. Rather than a simple earthquake effect along the platform, though, 3 of Nappa’s usual ground chunks 1.5X Bowser’s size and Nappa’s usual 3 smaller chunks that aren’t solid get shot up out of the ground, the bigger chunks being closer to Nappa. The first chunk closest to Nappa gets shot up the same amount as it does in your uthrow (Their bottoms dealing 13% once they start falling as usual), while the small chunk farthest away from you only gets shot up double Ganondorf’s height and has its’ usual power of 8% and knockback that kills at 200%.
UP A – COLLOSAL LEAP
Nappa jumps up triple Ganondorf’s height and spins around as he does so, whacking foes with his tail for 13% and knockback that kills at 165%. Once he starts going downwards, his feet deal 15% and spike foes, and upon landing he causes a quake effect on either side of himself. Unlike with your Down B, this only causes the smaller non solid chunks of ground to get shot up into the air, 3 per side. Aside from recovery, this is just in general an excellent defensive move to get foes away from your tail, turning it into a hitbox briefly, turning you around, -and- creating some good GTFO hitboxes with the smaller ground chunks.
SIDE A – GIANT FIST
Nappa smacks straight forward, but the move has impressive ability to be angled, you able to angle it enough downwards to smack into the ground (And actually hit people not in the air). This deals 16% and knockback that kills at 110%. If you smack a solid ground chunk with this move, it will take the knockback of the move as if it was Jigglypuff at 75%, the sides of the ground chunk being a hitbox that deals 22% and knockback that kills at 80%. If the ground chunk hits the stage, it will explode into 3 smaller non solid chunks as if it was hit by regular Nappa’s Down Special. You can obviously smack around ground chunks as projectiles, but due to how far Nappa can smack these around and how fast they fly, it can be particularly deadly to smack one somebody is standing on.
NEUTRAL B – BREAK CANNON
After some very brief start lag where you can angle Nappa’s head in any direction as he charges, he turns to face the screen and fires a gigantic beam from his mouth. The beam is as thick as Wario and extends out infinitely. As Nappa keeps up the continuous beam from his mouth, if you aimed Nappa’s head downwards/upwards you can press left and right on the control stick to move the beam to and from or if you aimed Nappa’s head to the left/right you can move the beam up and down on the control stick. The beam moves incredibly slowly at half Ganon’s walking speed due to the energy Nappa has to put in to keep the beam up at all. Whichever directions –aren’t- used for the main movement of the beam will cause Nappa to move the beam into the background/foreground, able to hit foes dodging into those planes. The beam does 20 hits of 1% and flinching per second, foes able to DI out of it in 1.2 seconds on average. Nappa can keep the beam going for up to 10 seconds, but requires 30 seconds to fully recharge the beam.
Very visible cracks can be seen in the ground where Nappa fires the beam – if you make a 3D circle by moving the beam from the background and the foreground, then causing any sort of quake effect with Up A/Down B will cause a ground chunk the size of the circle to get shot up from the ground rather than any chunks that would regularly show up there. This can enable you to create an absolutely massive ground chunk potentially, although the weight of the chunk increases proportionately with the size of it, making it fly less far when you smack it around and get shot up out of the ground less forcefully, the power of the chunk weakening as you’d expect. Make sure you’re close to the ground chunk you’ve sawed out so it actually get boosted up a decent distance. While this has drawbacks, the main benefit is how insanely easy it is to catch foes with such a massive hitbox. If the larger chunk gets smacked/thrown into the ground, it will sink into the stage over 5 seconds rather than shattering, potentially able to be re-grabbed before it does so.
GRAB GAME – MONSTROUS CLUTCH
Nappa has five grabs – his neutral grab has him turn to face the screen and grab with both hands, while his forward, up, and down grabs are simple grabs with one hand in the input direction. Nappa can still grab a ground chunk with his down grab as normal. While Nappa has one foe grabbed, inputting Z plus a direction has Nappa reach out to grab in that direction with his free hand, while inputting neutral Z has Nappa execute his pummel of smacking his hands together. Smacking two foes together does damage based off the difference in weight as usual, Bowser doing 25% to Jigglypuff – and not ending the grab. Smacking a ground chunk into a foe causes them to be dealt 16% and get an earth skirt like in Nappa’s regular dthrow, while smacking two chunks of ground together causes them to shatter into 6 smaller chunks that deal 8% and knockback that KOs at 200% as usual. Nappa’s grab is 1.5X as hard to escape as a standard one.
Nappa’s throws are all generically throwing the foe in the input direction, dealing 12% and knockback that KOs at 130% and turning the foe into a hitbox that deals damage based off their weight, Bowser dealing 35% and KOing foes at 60% - essentially an instant kill. Throwing a ground chunk has an identical effect to punching it with your Side A. Throwing/smacking a ground chunk at one already in existence will cause it to shatter into 6 smaller chunks, which all go flying off in different directions – four of them in the four cardinal directions, two of them in two of the four of the diagonal directions, chosen at random. They travel at Captain Falcon’s dashing speed, a bit stronger than normal, dealing 11% and knockback that kills at 165%. Nappa throws one foe at a time, starting with the one he grabbed first.
Nappa’s Back Grab has him attempt to coil his tail around the victim – grabbing a foe with your tail won’t cause Nappa to stop motionless and wait for an input to throw, him able to move around as normal. He has no pummels or throws for people caught in his tail, but if you use your Up A you’ll automatically release the foe and whack them with your tail for free.
If you grab a chunk of ground double the size or more of a normal one (sawed out with your Neutral Special beam), Nappa will grab onto it with both hands and turn to face the screen. From here, you can press up and down for Nappa to raise and lower the chunk, and left and right to tilt it. If you tilt it too far, foes won’t be able to stand on it, but you can tilt it back up enough to be solid before they slide off if to force them back to the middle of the ground chunk. Nappa is able to throw the ground chunk by inputting Z and a direction, able to throw it just at a rate just as fast as he normally throws a regular size ground chunk due to using both of his hands to throw it. Nappa throws gigantic chunks so that they the solid part always faces the way they’re going to go, and they’re not a hitbox when thrown – they’re simply completely solid, meaning if your ground chunk is large enough you can throw a gigantic solid wall off-stage to drag foes to their deaths. Inputting Neutral Z when you have a gigantic rock chunk held in your hands enables Nappa to fire a Break Cannon shot from his mouth at the nearest foe, skipping the start-up lag but only firing it for 1 second, unable to fire another for 3 seconds. This gives some incentive to expose your head rather than just lifting the ground chunk above it to protect it.
SIDE B – SWEEPING PUNCH
Nappa stand on one foot as he reels back his entire upper body and extends out one of his arms behind him, clenching it into a fist, then does a absolutely gigantic sweeping punch in an arc over where he was initially standing. As the arc goes directly over himself, Nappa stands up again, then as the arc reaches in front of him Nappa stands on one foot again as he bends over forwards. If there’s no stage blocking Nappa’s arm, Nappa will almost make the arc complete a full circle. Anybody hit by Nappa’s hand will be dragged along with it, him doing this entire drawn out motion faster than the foe can get knocked away, taking 5% every quarter of a second as they get dragged. At the end of the move, they take 18% and horizontal knockback that KOs at 90%, or they get pitfalled if they hit the ground first before Nappa can complete the arc with his arm. While this does have a laggy duration at 1.5 seconds, floating around can make the awkward hitbox significantly easier to connect with.
Actually KOing with this move can seem awkward, the only practical use seeming to be pitfalling foes with it, due to Nappa throwing the foe towards himself at the end of the move. . .You’d think that, but if you use the move close to the edge while facing said edge, Nappa will reach down far enough at the end of his arc to throw the foe under the stage! This can be used for incredibly cheap KOs at early percentages as you throw the far just far enough so they get stuck under he middle of the stage, helpless to recover. If they have much more of a percentage than that, you’ll probably throw them so they can reach the edge at the opposite end of the stage, which is generally a bad idea.
DOWN A – BEATDOWN
Nappa rapidly punches down towards the ground. He starts punching faster and faster the more you press A until he eventually reaches a speed of 10 punches per second after 2 seconds. Each punch does 5% and a decent amount of set downward knockback, but it has a more notable effect on foes who are grounded – the force is so powerful it causes foes to sink into the stage. One punch causes the foe to get 5% submerged – with only this level, foes just have a bit of lag coming up out of the ground, but at 10% submersion foes must button mash out of it like a weak grab to move or use attacks involving their feet. The “grab escape difficulty” for this is double your submersion percentage divided by 10, so at 10% submersion it’s .2x grab escape difficulty. Whenever a body part becomes buried, foes can no longer use it, until foes just becomes pitfalled at 50% submersion. Nappa can continue to do this on foes who are already pitfalled to submerge them even further, it being almost twice as hard to escape at 95% submersion. At 100% submersion, the foe falls through the platform to the underside of it, meaning the foe is pretty much dead if they were in the middle of the stage. If the foe is standing on a ground chunk, each punch submerges the foe by 10% rather than 5%, and at 50% submersion the ground chunk becomes an earth skirt around them rather than the foe getting pitfalled.
What about those pesky foes who can actually recover from under the middle of the stage? This move still has use against them – punching the ground with no foe will cause one of Nappa’s small ground chunks that deal 8% to get shot out of the underside of that part of the stage. Every fourth punch Nappa does will cause a standard sized ground chunk to get shot down, which can easily drag foes to their deaths.
UP B – TRIUMPHANT RISE
Nappa turns to face the screen and laughs evily as he clenches his fists and raises them in the air triumphantly. This can seem to be somewhat of a generic recovery as Nappa goes up for as long twice as fast as he can float up, able to go up to 10 Ganondorfs before having to recharge over 20 seconds. His fists are hitboxes as he does this that do 10% and vertical knockback that KOs at 150% due to how high the fists are in the air due to Nappa’s size.
Used on ground chunks, Nappa acts as if smacking them about with his Side A, but Nappa has a far better target in mind with this move. . .The entire stage. Nappa can lift the stage only half as quickly as he normally goes up due to the strain it puts on him, meaning with a full charge he can bring the stage upwards 5 Ganondorfs. The stage slowly falls back down into its intial position after Nappa’s done with it – if he lifted it up the full 5 Ganondorfs, it’ll take 20 seconds to fall down, meaning Nappa can’t get a permanent net gain in how high the stage goes. In any case, the stage being higher has obvious advantages when Nappa has a perfect recovery and can get foes off-stage so easy, but it can be particularly potent on foes who are currently under the stage.
If you input this move as a smash, Nappa flies up twice as fast as he normally does, but only half as far. If he makes contact with the stage while like this, he’ll cause 3 regular ground chunks to get shot up out of the top of the stage at the two parts of the stage his hands hit.
NEUTRAL A – CHARGE
Nappa turns to face towards/away from the screen laggily over .75 seconds, then starts retreating into the background/foreground, continuing to do so for as long as you hold A. Nappa can retreat into the background for up to 3 seconds, and must do so for a minimum of at least .8 seconds. Upon release of A, Nappa rushes towards the playingfield at a rate 5x as he retreated. Should a foe get hit, they’ll take 12-45% and get knocked twice as far as Nappa retreated in the opposite direction. Foes will automatically DI back towards the stage at double the speed Nappa retreats, meaning it takes them as long to get back to the main playing field as it takes Nappa to retreat. What’s the point of the foe being way off in another plane where you can’t hit them? Simple – they can’t make contact with anything in the main plane, including the stage, meaning they’ll fall right past it.
Of particular note, if you hit with the max charge version of this move, it’s an instant KO. If you smacked the foe towards the screen, the character’s animation where they smack against it that sometimes plays when a character gets star KO’d will play. Obviously this move is made viable by your float, considering there’s a minimum charge time of 1.55 seconds, you can just constantly move to overlap the foe. With such a long telegraph the move –would- be dodgable, but this move isn’t dodgable and ignores shields – the only real option is to retreat the hell away from him. If foes are trying to interrupt your .75 seconds of starting lag where you can actually be attacked and they fail, they’ll only make themselves more vulnerable.
FINAL SMASH – PLANET INVERTER
Nappa flies underneath the stage, grabs it, then flips it upside down. Unless the bottom of the stage is very flat, characters won’t regain jumps from coming into contact with the stage and will instead simply slide off of it, sliding more quickly based off how steep the terrain on the bottom of the stage is. Even if it is flat, this can be used to net a KO quite easily – just float upwards as you flip it to trap the foe underneath the bottom of the stage. Nappa holds the stage like this for 2 seconds before flipping it back.
What? Nappa already –DESTROYED- the stage as his regular Final Smash. It’s pretty hard to top that, and Nappa will be getting the vast majority of Smash Balls in this form due to his sheer range and power anyway.
PLAYSTYLE
In Great Ape Form, Nappa ultimately wants to get the foe under the stage to gimp them, assuming just generically pushing them off the stage doesn’t work in the first place. While this can immediately accomplished by just landing a Side B, this is quite possibly his single hardest move to land. You’re better off forcing the foe off-stage by smacking/throwing some chunks off-stage to drag the foe there, or, y’know, just attacking them directly. If you manage to make some space by attacking them directly, creating ground chunks becomes more plausible due to their range.
Once they’re off-stage and have a good ways to recover, you can force them under the stage for good by charging up your Neutral A as they come, then releasing as they arrive. Obviously the foe can’t really run away if you block off the stage, and it can guarantee the gimp KO quite easily, assuming you knock the foe far enough off-stage. If their recovery is good enough to still resist that, you can use the time to saw out a giant portion of the stage with your Neutral B, then when the time’s right throw it off the stage and drag the foe with it, obviously at an angle so the solid part isn’t face-up. You don’t particularly need to knock the foe off-stage for this, either, as it doesn’t matter if the circle is filled in – you can still move the beam into the playing field to defend yourself as you shoot it around.
Your final method for getting the foe off-stage is your down A – it’s generally best to get Nappa going a bit by punching at the air a while before going after foes if you actually want to get them into the ground before they get out and go to punish your tail, considering the end lag to come out of the move can be somewhat annoying. If you succeed, though, you can make the foe come out right in the middle of the underside of the stage. Even if they can somehow recover, you can just continue spamming Down A in their path to send ground chunks through the bottom of the stage to impede their progress.
While it can be insanely hard to not just have mindless fun in this form seeing how you you’re so powerful that you look down upon the gods, if you want to pull off a clean sweep from this form you’ll need to be protective of your tail and try to use your ranged attacks more rather than coming in directly. The further away the foe is, the more time you have to yourself to get them further and further away – the opposite end of the stage not being the limit. If they get far enough away and you want to continue playing conservatively, you can just work on sawwing out a chunk of the stage with Neutral B so you can make sure they don’t come back the next time you knock them away. Of course, it’s not like there’s particularly much need to play conservatively – if the foe lets you get to this form, they’re gonna have one hell of a time mounting a comeback. Not only does dealing 70 damage to your tail not KO you, when you go back to your regular form with tons of damage, you even have an obvious suicide KO with your fair to try to take the foe down with you.
NAPPA’S MAX POWER LEVEL
Nappa typically likes to toy with his enemies when they’re significantly weaker than he is in order to get any sort of fun out of battle. However; when things actually get serious and you pit 3 people on a team against Nappa, he gets serious and starts powering up, reaching power levels well over 9000. His entrance animation gets replaced by him grinning cockily as he throws his armor off and powers up in the stance shown in the picture.
Here is Nappa’s list of more simplistic changes that can be found on any boss – all of these overlap with his regular Great Ape Form, with the exception of them occasionally being weakened, so feel free to skim.
Nappa’s weight is tripled – a character with a average recovery would die at 300% with this weight, but Nappa probably won’t die until around 400%.
Nappa can be grabbed, but takes no hitstun from throws or grab releases whatsoever.
Nappa takes 80% of the regular hitstun a regular character does. If you hit him while he’s already in hitstun your attack will deal no hitstun whatsoever. If you do something like a multi-hit move, be aware that Nappa will become entirely immune to hitstun for 5 seconds if he is forced into it 4 or more times within 5 seconds. He is also entirely immune to hitstun from moves that only flinch and deal no knockback until he reaches 90%.
Nappa takes no knockback from set knockback moves under 100%, 25% of their knockback under 200%, half their knockback under 300%, and so on.
Nappa cannot be tripped, forced into prone, pitfalled, frozen, and is immune to other similar status effects.
Nappa can swim for 2x as long as a regular character, negative status effects last 50% as long on him, and requires 1.75x the normal amount of units on various KO mechanics (I.E. Valozarg’s corruption) to be KO’d. If a status effect lasts forever, it is only 50% as strong.
If Nappa is somehow forced into some sort of grab based situation where he must escape he escapes twice as quickly as a regular character. Yes, this includes actual grabs.
And now, here are the more direct changes to specific moves and what-not that are actually worth reading.
Nappa only needs to stare at his Power Ball for 7 seconds to transform into a Great Ape.
Nappa’s already incredibly long lasting float time is doubled, giving him a float that lasts 8x as long as Peach’s.
Nappa’s Down Special generates twice as many ground chunks as normal, and it takes only 6 seconds to recharge fully, requiring 3 seconds of recharging for you to be able to use it at its weakest.
Nappa can move around his fsmash beam upwards and downwards as fast as Ganon’s dashing speed as he’s firing it.
Nappa’s regular grab becomes a down-grab input, while his his neutral grab input becomes a grab reaching out to both sides with low lag and good range, both of Nappa’s hands being grab hitboxes.
Nappa’s grab becomes twice as hard to escape, as well as the difficulty to get off one of his earth skirts.
Nappa’s Eye Lasers last for 15 seconds rather than 5, Nappa able to have many slow moving lasers rebounding about at once as zoning tools.
Great Ape Nappa’s tail gets a boost in stamina to 120.
Great Ape Nappa’s Neutral A has no ending lag, and shoots foes out a fair more towards the screen than it regularly does. This means Nappa can potentially infinite a –single- character with the move, but more importantly means he can shoot ground chunks/other foes at the foe already flying away/towards the camera. This makes them all the easier to infinite as Nappa can juggle a character to keep them constantly away from the main battlefield with this, as well as simply being great damage racking – ground chunks deal 15% to foes, and heavier foes do more damage to lighter foes as usual, Bowser dealing 35% to Jigglypuff.
BOSS PLAYSTYLE
Nappa wants to disable as many foes as possible, but Nappa doesn’t have any arbitrary way to trap foes to get them out of his hair beyond grabbing them directly, which generally leaves him vulnerable to other foes he hasn’t grabbed. Nappa’s ability to float around while he has foes grabbed is absolutely vital here, and you’ll need to repeatedly use foes as meat shields and projectiles against each other early on as you try to get any form of space. The main thing that handicaps Nappa here is the fact that he can only hold 2 foes at a time, not 3. Nappa’s primary goal will be to try to knock a single foe off-stage so he can take care of the other 2 with his beastly grab-game – if he can manage this, Nappa can pull off his transformation quite while everybody is disabled at once very early on. Ideally, Nappa will want to dispose of the middleweight of the group so he can repeatedly use the heavyweight as a battering weapon against the lightweight.
Of course, that’s only the ideal situation, much less considering you can’t change the direction you’re looking at while you have something grabbed. You’re going to have to repeatedely peg people off-stage and do your best to use your ground chunks as walls – preferably moving walls to push people away. Actually KOing them isn’t so much your concern. If you KO them, then they’ll have less damage and make it harder to knock them away, making it harder to get free space to transform. While winning in Nappa’s regular form is certainly possible, it’s far more practical to just go for Great Ape Form when your float is now long enough to last the entire duration you need to stare at your Power Ball.
You generally want to send all the foes you’re repeatedly throwing off-stage in the same direction – not only so you can use their body as a living projectile, but also because it’s exceedingly hard to not hit –somebody- with your Side B/Fsmash from the comfort of the stage, or just more ground chunks you throw off-stage at the foes with your grab-game. Your Down B is still as excellent of a gimper as ever with its gigantic area of effect, enabling you to potentially block multiple foes from reaching the ledge. Considering the cooldown is now so much lower, you can use it for gimping –and- for creating ground chunks. This same mentality can be applied to hitting foes from below with ground chunks blocking foes off from attacking you as you pelt them with usmashes and utilts – said utilt is particularly helpful with that one annoying foe arrives to interrupt your fun, as after you hit a foe on a chunk above you, the platform can just be thrown at the pressuring foe.
Once you reach your Great Ape form, you’ll generally want a constant cycle of knocking one person off/below the stage, then knocking the person you previously knocked below the stage who just made it back right off of it again. Knocking foes towards/away from the screen with your Neutral A can also substitute as a way of keeping a foe occupied, preferably juggling them en mass to keep them away as long as possible. In some ways, Nappa prefers having two foes to fight over one due to the second foe functioning as a battering weapon to decimate the main target with, most notably in his Neutral A as he potentially sends enough crap flying at the foe to knock them against the screen for an instant KO. The main person who ruins Nappa’s fun is always that one third guy – two’s company, three’s a crowd. This is why Nappa always wants to try to keep one foe disposed of in some way, the most obvious method being his tail grab. Speaking of his grab-game, Nappa is capable of grabbing three foes at once in Great Ape form, not just two, so he can potentially decimate the entire enemy party with it alone.
Considering Nappa’s Great Ape 3v1 playstyle is to remove the foe who annoys him the most from the picture entirely, then to just mark the character who annoys him the second most as a target, you pretty much need a perfect party in order to actually beat him. The third character in this equation is generally reduced to being Nappa’s battering weapon against the character he’s trying to kill – this character will have the most chances to actually do anything, so having a weak link in your party really hurts against Nappa. The ideal party to take him down consists of three characters who are all around the same weight, have godlike recoveries, and simply are quite comfortable in the air in general. The three characters best not all be air specialists, though, as Nappa’s ground-game, most notably his grab-game, is still very competent. Characters who can pressure Nappa are preferred, considering Nappa makes a better use of time to himself than any defensive character, what with the threat of his transformation constantly looming over you. . .However, it’s exceedingly rare for pressure based characters to have good recoveries (There’s a reason Meta Knight is broken), most of them being defensive characters. Considering how pressure characters are in such demand, you’ll generally have to make do with a defensive character or two in the mix, the pressure character helping to buy them the time they need.
MATCH-UPS
NAPPA VS. VEGETA – 40/60, VEGETA’S FAVOR
The largest similarity Vegeta and Nappa have between them is their ability to go Great Ape over 10 seconds. Nappa doesn’t have to be on the same exact vertical plane while Vegeta does, making things a tad biased, but Vegeta is much more able to easily approach Nappa to interrupt him than visa versa. Vegeta will prefer to just go offensive here seeing Nappa is such definitive combo food, further pressuring Nappa once he wastes his Down Special just as generic GTFO. The other reason Vegeta has to go offensive, though, is that he’s so utterly outclassed defensively by Nappa, with just an occasional projectile, his other stage control options requiring him to actually hit Nappa into the ground and pitfall him to get much going. Seeing Vegeta approaches so much naturally and does it so incredibly well, Nappa will obviously tend to play defensive more, which also means he’ll probably be attempting a great ape transformation more. Nappa will have to go out of his way to keep up ground chunks created from his Down special with his grab-game/utilt, though, considering how liberally Nappa has to use his Down Special it in this match-up, less he be forced to slowly pick up ground chunks with his grab. Vegeta also gets around Nappa’s ground-game with idents/forcing foes into prone with his ability to teleport up off the ground and use his smashes in the air, as well as his float which is much better for pressuring and pursuing Nappa’s slow float.
Not only does the stereotype of the faster, smaller character being the better damage racker apply here, though, but also the stereotype of the bigger and bulkier character being better at KOing. Going off-stage for the gimp is very awkward for either party what with both of them having excellent recoveries, it being quite possible for gimping attempts to backfire – Nappa is notably better at causing these backfires with his nair and his fair suicide KO. Vegeta’s gimping is almost entirely up-close and personal, but Nappa has the option of doing some much safer gimping from the safety of the stage with his Side Special/Fsmash. Nappa actually –does- have a safe way of gimping directly in his Down Special as well, what with it’s huge area of effect and superarmor, but if he uses it here in addition as general GTFO he’ll struggle to make that many of the precious ground chunks he needs. Vegeta’s weaker power and weight is less of a factor when both Saiyans rely mainly on gimps to KO and both their recoveries are so good, and if Vegeta is conservative with his teleporting mechanic he can potentially go around Nappa’s fsmash.
NAPPA VS. KING BOO – 70/30, NAPPA’S FAVOR
Nappa certainly has his share of familiarity with ghosts. . .In any case, Nappa doesn’t rely on his shield that much due to preferring the air where he can’t shield anyway, so either King Boo shouldn’t bother with sending ghosts to eat away at his shield or he should capitalize on Nappa when he comes down out of the air. Considering Nappa –is- constantly in the air, though, King Boo’s ring of Boos to punish him for dodging can be even more useful and can bring him down to the ground where he’ll be forced to dodge on a more regular basis.
While this is all well and good for making King Boo’s hits hard to avoid, King Boo’s hits aren’t particularly threatening even when he’s guaranteed to hit with most of them, much less against a super heavyweight with godlike recovery. While King Boo has a good recovery of his own, if he’s so concerned with investing Boos to whittle down Nappa’s defenses he’ll be rather helpless against Nappa in close combat. Finding a balance is obviously very important for King Boo if he hopes to succeed – he just better be glad his shield even protects against grabs. If King Boo becomes too defensive, though, he won’t have many Boos to spare to really deal with Nappa just going defensive himself and going for a Great Ape transformation. King Boo’s attacks being so largely made up of projectiles gives him little in the way to knock Nappa out of it if he doesn’t use Boos to block off Nappa from dodging his attacks, and a simple ground chunk wall held up with a side pummel can be quite a pain in King Boo’s side, forcing him to move around Nappa faster than he can shift the shield around. Nappa may struggle a bit to kill King Boo normally, sure, but getting to Great Ape Form is all too realistic for King Boo to win this match-up too often.
NAPPA VS. DORMAMMU – 40/60, DORMAMMU’S FAVOR
Dormammu can’t directly pursue Nappa up into the air, no, but with several of his attacks reaching all the way to the top blast zone he has little reason to chase after him personally. Dormammu’s recovery can also prove overly troublesome what with how perfect it is – the fact it’s a perfect portal recovery means he can just stay far away from the stage as he recovers, out of the way of any attacks you send at him from on the stage. Of course, this also means that if you’re competent you can get a free hit in on Dormammu when he comes back to the stage. Most notably, it will be exceedingly difficult for Domammu to get much mileage out of his mindless ones if you play your cards right – get an indent in the ground next to the Mindless one, then repeatedly use your ftilt to lauch Dormammu at his own minions. The fact Nappa prefers the air also means Dormammu will be dealing with the Mindless Ones more than Nappa in general, making it questionable whether he should even summon them at all.
Dormammu generally plays very defensive and campy, which would make one think that Nappa just forces an approach with the threat of his transformation, but Dormamu can pretty easily throw up a gigantic pillar of flame, particularly potent at knocking Nappa out of his bair. Instead, Nappa’s going to have to play “rushdown”, which he actually can do against defensive characters when he needs to, just from above with his float. Dormammu can still threaten Nappa out of the air with a firewall to make things more difficult for him to even pressure in this way, so Nappa will need to quickly use a uair or fair in order to take him into prone. If Dormammu can keep Nappa out of the air well enough, he can potentially even make use of his Mindless Ones.
Seeing Nappa has to approach and has significantly more trouble approaching from the air than usual, he’ll have to approach from the ground, largely made possible by grabbing two ground chunks, then floating towards Dormammu as he uses his bthrow. When he gets up to Dormammu, he’ll want to be trying to throw a ground chunk under Dormammu up into the air, as the air is where he’s most vulnerable, and you can use your usmash/utilt on him with ease from there. Most notably, his obligatory generic stall then fall dair is blocked by the ground chunk underneath him, leaving him all the more vulnerable. If Dormammu uses his portal to escape this, you’ll want to pressure him as much as possible before he can get up another, as this is your one real chance to successfully gimp him. It’s an uphill battle, but it can certainly be done.
NAPPA VS. EMOLGA – 80/20, NAPPA’S FAVOR
Emolga is a Flying type Pokemon, which leaves him with a great recovery. . .However, the fact that he’s a Flying type Pokemon who can’t actually fly leaves him with only a great –horizontal- recovery. Emolga’s lack of a good vertical recovery combined with his featherweight status leaves him rather vulnerable to gimping. If Emolga wants to recover, he’ll need to spam jumps off the side of the stage to generate those tiny electric projectiles to get back, but if Emolga does this he’s basically just assuming the worst will happen and he’ll immediately be sent off-stage, considering they don’t last that long. However; each time Emolga recovers off the side blast zone there will be more projectiles for him to use to regain more jumps to get back to the stage, meaning Nappa won’t want to knock him off the same side of the stage repeatedly – or really knock him off-stage at all until he’s ready to kill him.
If you want to damage rack Emolga first, you’ll want to knock him skyward rather than off-stage and hit him from below with usmash/utilt. While he can fall through the opening in a ground chunk made by usmash, you can just slap an earth skirt on him and it’s no longer a problem. Emolga absolutely –hates- having an earth skirt in general, as it limits his air game and prevents him from making that many electrical projectiles as he jumps, due to them falling and hitting the ground almost immediately. Emolga’s lackluster vertical recovery is also further hampered by said earth skirt. Once he’s off-stage, a casual Down Special is all you’ll typically need to finish the job.
Emolga generally struggles too much to damage rack Nappa when he has an earth skirt on, much less when you take into account Emolga’s grab on large foes is pretty pathetically weak – he’ll be happy to just use the time for some more set-up and take an occasional 2% from a pummel. Because of this mediocre grab, Nappa can spam his shield a lot, making a forced grounded battle for Emolga even more difficult. Nevermind how utterly impossible it is for Emolga to ever actually KO a super heavyweight with excellent recovery, what with how hard it is for him to make a halfway competent Elecball.
NAPPA, DIGLETT VS. ELECTIVIRE, BOWSER JR. – 50/50
It seems Nappa’s caught a Pokemon after all. . .Remember how any ground chunks that come up out of the ground/Nappa picks up will have any characters standing in that area then be standing on the ground chunk? Yeah. Picture that with Diglett. . .Nappa can ferry Diglett around wherever he wants to go on a ground chunk. If Diglett simply just casually spams Earthquake on the platforms, Nappa can just casually use his bthrow/pummels to give the duo almost invulnerable protection/approaching prowess. Diglett can make it even more awkward for foes to actually stand on the platforms by “jumping”, creating mounds on the ground chunks. Nappa best be wary of bthrow, though, considering he throws the chunk Diglett’s on at the end of it. Of course, Diglett can just go over to Nappa and poke him out of the move before he throws him away. Rollout is Diglett’s main other option from his perch that can make him so godlike, considering it immediately gets a head start from Diglett’s position higher up above the main stage – much less if Nappa uses his side pummel to tilt the ground chunk Diglett is on.
Bowser Jr. will be the duo’s main target due to him enjoying time to himself, considering Electivire has to actually hit people to “set-up”. As Nappa keeps going to pick up Diglett, he can also scoop up goop onto his platforms to get rid of it on the main stage. If Diglett himself finds it troubling being on the same ground as goop, Nappa can just go off-stage and tilt the chunk to make the goop wash off while Diglett stays firmly rooted in the ground Nappa’s holding. Bowser Jr. –can- still get set up if he’s persistent enough, but Nappa can just hover up off the ground, taking Diglett up with him – this just gives Diglett’s Rollout boulder all the more speed anyway. Nappa has to land eventually, though, and when he does you can sure as hell bet Electivire will take the one chance they’re actually open to actually attack them and get some charge. The main goal for Bowser Jr. and Electivire should be to separate the two, as Diglett in particular falls very easily to Bowser Jr. if Nappa can’t support him due to constantly being on the ground with Bowser Jr.’s goop. Should they successfully separate them, Electivire will mainly be blocking off Nappa from going to aid Diglett while Bowser Jr. puts the hurt on him. Electivire also in general vastly prefers to separate his foes in a 2v2, as he can’t get much comboing done if there’s a second foe to knock him out of it.
While it might sound very difficult to prevent them from reuniting, it’s more possible than you’d think with Nappa’s huge, heavy, super fast falling frame. Nappa will have have to rely on his Down Special significantly just to escape Electivire’s combos, which will give Electivire a good amount of time to go beat down on Diglett during Nappa’s start-up lag – if Diglett was getting ***** by Jr., he’ll be in for a hell of a beatdown when Elecitivre’s free to come over. Sure, Nappa can threaten Electivire and Bowser Jr. away when he comes to unleash the Down Special, but it’s very difficult to not catch Diglett in the blast as well. Granted, Diglett is incredibly short and Electivire is very tall, so it’s possible to just hit Electivire, but it’s near impossible to catch Bowser Jr. in the blast without getting Diglett in it as well. While Electivire may not have much time to do –that- much damage to Diglett with Nappa coming after him, he can still get some more electricity racked up in order to further pressure Nappa when he can’t just hide behind his Down Special.
While Electivire and Bowser Jr. can utterly destroy Diglett when Nappa messes up, it’ll take a good while for that moment to actually come up. Even when it does, it is still quite possible for Nappa to wrap up the battle by himself – mostly by using Bowser Jr’s goop against Electivire with his ground chunks, and by how easy it is for Nappa to avoid Bowser Jr. entirely in general. Of course, Electivire can knock Nappa into Jr.’s goop and the fact Jr. can tack on a few hits to Electivire’s combos opens up whole no realms of possibilities for both characters. . .It’s still very much in the favor of the team in the 2v1, but the fact Nappa has a realistic shot at all is enough to make the match-up a comfortable 50/50.
NAPPA VS. KLINK, NERO CHAOS, ERUFUUN – 65/35, NAPPA’S FAVOR
Nero Chaos and Klink have similar weights, but Erufuun is a featherweight. Combined with the fact that Erufuun is by far the most blatantly annoying character in the match-up, Nappa wants Erufuun’s head on a platter above all else. . .Or rather he would, if chasing after the little bugger wasn’t so insanely impractical due to how ludicrously fast he moves through the air from one end of the stage to the other. If Nappa wants to take Erufuun down, he’ll have to rely largely on using his Down Special’s gigantic area of effect to nerf him down towards the stage/off the bottom blast zone when he zips by, or on the massive range of his fsmash to hit him when he’s far away. Either way, Nappa will rarely if ever get a chance to grab Erufuun, rendering his difference in weight compared to the other characters rather irrelevant.
Erufuun will be setting up traps in the air while Nero will be summoning minions on the ground, leaving there little place safe for Nappa to go. Klink will be the one left to defend Nero, who will be left very vulnerable sacrificing so much of his health to create so many summons, with occasional assistance from Erufuun as he zips by in his whirlwind. If Nappa can get any time to himself, he can kill all of Nero’s summons and hopefully hit Nero/Klink too with an fsmash, but it’s improbable to assume he’ll actually get the time to do this. Either way, killing them doesn’t accomplish much, as while Nappa cannot get stuck in Nero’s goop, it’s still threatening to Nappa if Nero turns the goop into snakes to form a single godlike hitbox.
One would think Nero would die in an instant considering how incredibly vulnerable he will be, but focusing on Nero would leave Nappa vulnerable to Klink, who will inevitably be circling around Nappa with his two halves and firing projectiles between them, strengthening them. Nappa will generally have to go up into the air to avoid being encircled by Klink, but this leaves him vulnerable to Erufuun. In conclusion, Nappa will simply have to deal with Klink – which isn’t actually all that hard, as Klink’s recovery sacrifices one of his halves in order to make it back to the stage. In addition, a single gear is half as light as Klink when his two halves are united, meaning Nappa can slap an earth skirt on Nero and use him as a battering weapon to utterly destroy one of Klink’s halves. Considering Klink is a joke with only one gear, Nappa may want to not finish him off so he can focus on Nero, as if he kills Nero all of his annoying sludge will be purged from the stage. Nappa can exclusively focus Nero from this point on if he wants, as unless Klink wants to outright suicide to regain his other gear Nero’s just a punching bag. While Erufuun will be largely controlling the air, Nero and Klink don’t give much reason for Nappa to even need to go up into the air. Erufuun will have to drag his spores down to assault Nappa to prevent him from utterly destroying Nero and Klink, which will then leave the air open for Nappa rain down hell from above and to much more easily transform into a Great Ape. This team is too defensive, Klink’s recovery is too poor, and Nero is too frail with his self-damaging moves to realistically succeed at finishing Nappa, Erufuun being the only particularly good member of the party. Nero’s ability to heal can make him much less frail, but he can’t turn his goop into snakes if he always just heals back up, only able to use the beast-like animals to control the stage, which are too cumbersome and predictable.
NAPPA VS. JACK FROST, PYRO JACK, JACK THE RIPPER – 42.5/57.5, JACK BROS’ FAVOR
Ripper has a difficult task thrust upon him being the sole pressure based character of the Jack Bros., having to pick up the slack on the part of the other two being more defensive. Considering Ripper is easily the frailest of the bros with his craptastic recovery and he’s constantly in your face anyway, he’s an obvious choice to get rid of first, but it can be tempting to keep him around for awhile considering he’s a fair bit heavier than the others at a 6/10 in weight. Frost is 4/10, not that large of a gap, but Pyro is a mere 2/10. Pyro is the largest threat once he gets set up by far, so taking him out first is generally advisable. Taking advantage of the fact that Ripper sticks to you like glue so well, you can use him as a battering weapon in your pursuit of Pyro, as Pyro’s recovery is also rather poor if not given set-up time. Frost is the main thing preventing Ripper and Pyro from getting destroyed with his constant spamming of projectile-esque moves, proving to be a very annoying thorn in Nappa’s side. That said, Nappa can still pull off early KOs against Ripper and Pyro if he’s quick enough about it – how utterly these two get destroyed by themselves speaks volumes for how good of a pressure character Ripper is. If Pyro manages to get set-up, though, not only does he make the ground a living hell for Nappa, he can actually get up so high that even Nappa can have trouble reaching him, making the air also a living hell as Pyro just rains hell down on Nappa. Nappa isn’t entirely shut down, as unlike most other characters he –can- get to Pyro and can even attack him from the ground with his usmash and Eye Lasers. Most notably, Nappa can approach up to Pyro with superarmor on his Down B, then launch Pyro off the top blast zone seeing he’s so insanely high up in the air already. This is supremely predictable, though, and Pyro’s air movement is better than Nappa’s, leaving Nappa often to just waste the cooldown on his Down B and give Frost more set-up time.
It may take a stock for the Jack Bros. to really get going, but if Nappa continues to ignore Frost then Frost will set up a lot of snowflakes which he can use as ammo on the next stock, enabling Pyro to easier set up. Nappa can just go over to Frost at this point, but then Pyro just gets set-up instead. Pick your poison. . .Of course, Nappa can just go for his transformation into Great Ape, but this is probably the one part of the game where Ripper’s “power” in being a slow bruiser of a “pressure character” becomes useful, as it can generally push Nappa far enough away to interrupt the transformation. This interruption problem can be easily addressed by Nappa actually paying attention to Ripper and finishing him off, though, and considering he’s so slow and has such a terrible recovery there’s not much that can be done to save him. Nappa can pull off the Great Ape in the end and win, certainly, but he’ll of been so utterly destroyed by the other two Jacks during that time and they’ll have so much set-up that Nappa will have an actual fight on his hands at that point. If Frost predicts the transformation, he can just save up snowflakes for when Nappa transforms then just use all of them on his tail.
NAPPA VS. SPIRITOMB, SARKHAN, BLAZE – 30/70, TEAM SPIRITOMB’S FAVOR
Sarkhan is blatantly heavier than either of the two other characters, but Spiritomb doesn’t really give a crap about taking knockback, leaving only Blaze in much danger of Nappa’s grab-game. Blaze is quite good at playing hit and run, though, meaning she can survive on while still getting in actual hits. Tracking down Blaze can be a pain, and while Sarkhan is useful as a battering weapon it’s generally easiest to just do away with him first. If you don’t deal with Sarkhan, not only will he set-up traps, he’ll transform into his later, more beastly stages while his traps are still up and force you into them with his newly found strength. Spiritomb is nigh indestructible, what with Nappa having to move his stone like any other character, meaning he almost –has- to be saved for last.
Thankfully, Spiritomb can’t actually do much of anything. . .Unless he sacrifices his durability for the ability to plague Nappa with his two curses. Thankfully, the effects of permanent status effects are reduced on Nappa, meaning he only takes 7.5% and very weak knockback every 4 seconds, and has his power cut in half. The damage isn’t so much a threat, but the cut to your power level is absolutely horrific. What’s worse, Spiritomb can just immediately rejoin the action again as Blaze/Sarkhan throw his keystone off the stage and he can beat on you while you have the curse on. Due to Spiritomb sacrificing a stock for this effect, though, he won’t be able to come back on the final stock, killing himself for good. Nappa will want to pressure the hell out of Spiritomb, considering he has to channel for 4.3 seconds to pull off the first level of the curse, but pressuring him doesn’t actually kill him, and killing him is impossible when other foes can force Nappa to drop Spiritomb’s keystone. Besides, if Nappa somehow pressures Spiritomb enough, Spiritomb only has to channel to cause the periodic damage to take place – he can slap the power nerf, the one he actually cares about, onto Nappa at will.
Considering the battle will be incredibly long and drawn out, a rushdown for Sarkhan is kind of out of the question – he’s going to have to stay in his earlier forms for an extended period of time if he wants to set up that many traps, and Sarkhan is really the only trap setter for the group while Blaze provides decent offense, so it’s generally a good idea. In particular, one of Sarkhan’s most valuable moves is his “madness” nair, which KOs foes regardless of weight at 120% - it counts as a KO mechanic, instead KOing Nappa at 210%, or 300% in Great Ape form. None the less, this is still significantly faster than Nappa would die earlier, and if Nappa goes Great Ape it’s hard for him to not get hit by traps what with his size. His zany methods of turning Nappa into a cpu/into Charizard are too impractical and laggy to pull off, so he’s best off in the earlier forms anyway. Aside from simply pecking at Nappa to let Sarkhan set up easier, Blaze is also very adept at knocking Nappa about the stage and into Sarkhan’s traps. The most obvious method Blaze has is her bumper, but her grab is also exceedingly useful when combined with her bad traction to drag Nappa across the stage. Nappa will want to create random indents in the stage to interrupt her sliding grab/sliding moves in general, but this gives Sarkhan more time to throw traps up onto the stage. Nappa’s lack of knockback due to Spiritomb makes it extremely hard to catch a breather by knocking foes away, having to rely on fleeing, which, again, Sarkhan appreciates, and going Great Ape won’t guarantee victory with Sarkhan able to kill Nappa at as early as 300%.
Granted, in the endgame where Spiritomb’s dead and Nappa’s on his last stock in Great Ape form, Nappa doesn’t have to rely on his power and can just knock Sarkhan and Blaze through the bottom of the stage with his Down A/toss a giant ground chunk sawed out of the ground from Neutral B off-stage. Blaze is more killable due to her recovery being more lackluster, much less considering Nappa will want to use Sarkhan as a battering weapon against Blaze, seeing it’s the only real way he can muster up that much power. Sarkhan and Blaze will have too much of a stock lead for Nappa to have that great of a shot of coming back, though, even though it’s exceedingly rare to see anybody besides Sarkhan survive.
Nappa is certainly an interesting set, it seems a bit OoC for a character as violent as Nappa to play campy, though Nappa doesn’t have a particularly deep character to stay true to anyhow. That aside, he’s got some great stuff working with his abuse of the chucks of ground he forces out of the ground, and his creation of a crater-filled battlefield that he can just float over while foes struggle to make it over to him. Then he can get high up and force foes to come to him by camping or staring at the moon to transform into King Kong Donkey Kong the Great Ape. His grab is particularly fun what with being able to grab two foes or chunks of ground to smash into each other or use as batting items. I admit that Nappa reminds me a bit of Alex from Street Fighter once he gets up into the air: possessing a downward dive that can drag foes down with him and his aerial grab that can also bring them down. Nonetheless, his aerials combined with the threat of his down special and his float make him near godlike as a gimper.
There’s little that I can pick out to criticize about this great set, though there are a few things. Most notable is the up smash, which is mostly useless outside of a super-situational interaction with the chunks of ground assuming there’s one above him. Sure his up tilt can knock that piece of ground back up, but it seems unlikely that there would be much space he can cover by doing that that his up tilt doesn’t already cover. And considering only small characters can fit through those sawed-out gaps, this move seems to stick out among everything else as not useful. While Nappa’s ape form is kind of more like an extra, you don’t make it just generic OP super boss and instead improve everything that Nappa already does: he can grab 3 foes at once and he still mainly kills by “gimping”, knocking them off the stage and using his insane range to finish them. And since Nappa is already fit to deal with multiple foes at once, he easily fits into the role of a 3v1 set with only minor buffs.
Aside from the overall campy playstyle, you did a good job of making Nappa’s egotistical personality shine through in the set, and while Nappa does lean towards broken, it makes sense considering his role in the DBZ series (though he does get epically owned in the end). Overall, this is quite a cool set that’s probably my second favorite of yours this contest behind N. Brio. Nice job here.
Vegeta comment will come soon, after he destroys Nappa for his weakness.
Keldeo is one of the 3 'secret' Pokemon of the 5th Gen that Nintendo doesn't want us to know about. Little is known about it, except that the 3 Musketeers took pity on it and made it a unofficial member. It's specialty lies in gliding across waterfronts and fighting with it's feet. Keldeo is based off d'Artagnan of the 3 Musketeers and possibly a kelpie, a supernatural water horse said to lure people onto it's adhesive back and drown them.
Keldeo is capable of standing on water like land, never being able to drown. Relevant because Keldeo will obviously make water.
Specials
Neutral Special - Rain Dance
Water bubbles from Keldeo's hooves the instant this move is used. Whenever Keldeo would would walk/run/dash the water stays behind as a puddle that acts like normal water; this lasts for 1 second per SBB worth of it, but will never fade if a enemy is swimming in it. Whenever Keldeo would jump the water falls below it as a SBB-sized shower that gives enemy a footstool effect. The shower itself increases a puddles's timer by 4 seconds if it touches it. The water-buff lasts for 2 seconds. Keldeo cannot re-use this move until all puddles/showers are gone; puddles will usually last some time, but showers will go as soon as they come.
This move gives Keldeo some nice control game. It can either set up a puddle that can mess up the enemy's ground game or keep them vulnerable in the air.
Side Special - Aqua Jet
Keldeo sticks it's horn out before charging at Sonic's dash speed for 4 SBBs. Enemies that touch it's horn in the process take 7% and are dragged along with Keldeo until it stops moving, taking 1% per SBB they travel with Keldeo for and a final 5% that KOs at 200%. Despite this being a grab it can be blocked by shielding, which halts Keldeo's travel in the process. This can be used in the air but Keldeo only travels 2 SBBs and enemies won't be KOed by the knockback or if Keldeo travels off-screen. If Keldeo uses this move on water this move's average start-up lag is halved and Keldeo travels 2X fast until it reaches the end of the ground, even if it means going off-screen and KOing itself.
Regardless of whether you've water set-up or not this move is quite a good poking tool. It can even be used to spread water, which is nice.
Down Special - Work Up
Keldeo hops joyously as a red aura surrounds it. Consequently Keldeo's ground and aerial speed is increased X the number of seconds you held this for as long as the same amount (example, Working Up for 2.4 seconds increases your speed by X2.4 for 2.4 seconds). This move is difficult to punish with Keldeo being able to use any move out of the buff. If a mere speed boost isn't enough to lure campy enemies away from their position the thought of Keldeo being able to use Rain Dance to spread more puddles and showers should do the trick. This move only works on ground however and Keldeo cannot use it for 1/2 the time the original buff lasted for once it's over.
Up Special - Surf
Keldeo spouts water from it's hooves while moving on it as a at walking pace in either direction. The platform water expands at 3X Keldeo's walking speed (7X if Keldeo has Rain Dance buff on) and will continue to spread out until Keldeo decides to stop the move or is hit. The water inflicts 5% to enemies who touch it but otherwise it has no way of stopping enemies from attacking Keldeo out of this move to make for a easy gimp, but if they try standing on the water they'll just fall right through. Once Keldeo stops the move or is hit the water will splash straight down, pushing enemies with it at a intensity based on how wide it is. At weak stages the water will usually go through the enemy quickly so it doesn't go well as a gimping tool unless it happens to be as long as FD. If you use this move above or on ground the water will stay around for as long as a water puddle under the same conditions, with this one having the standard wet-floor-increase-tripping effect that doesn't apply to Keldeo. Using this move on Rain Dance puddles refreshes the timer by however much the Surf water would have lasted for. Additionally, if any enemies are in water the Surf water will push them deeper into the water by however wide the Surf water was.
Technically this gives Keldeo a bad recovery game, but it's quite useful for attacking purposes. Because the width of the water grows as Keldeo walks and therefore increases Keldeo's recovery, this move is absolutely insane with Work Up. With it you can gimp the enemy with a torrent of water, which increases their fears of
Grab - Adhesive Back
Keldeo does not have a normal grab like other characters. It's 'grab' requires the enemy's lower body to make contact with Keldeo's back, much like the kelpie before it turns into a grab as usual. Keldeo does not have it's own set of throws, but is free to do whatever it wants while carrying it's enemy around.
Standards
Standard - Horn Jabber
Keldeo sticks it's horn out as the tip glimmers. Getting into the position is laggy, but from here Keldeo can move back and forth in the direction with it's walk/run/dash and a single jump while it's horn stays out as a hitbox that does 2% with flinch to enemies touching it, with Keldeo stopping for a split second when it hits something.
Because Keldeo can keep out a damaging hitbox while moving it's difficult for the enemy to fight back. They can't easily attack Keldeo from the front, and they can't attack from above or they'll be grabbed. Their best bet is to attack Keldeo from behind as it has no way of turning around...pray that there's no water behind the water horse. This move is quite good for pressuring the enemy to force them into a position you want.
Dash Attack - Hard Kick
Keldeo turns around mid-dash before kicking the enemy with it's rear legs. Somewhat telegraphed, but the kick has powerful force that does 11% that kills horizontally at 170%, as well as sending Keldeo back 1.5X the distance it moved when dashing beforehand at the same speed. You can use this move for some nice spacing in order to prepare Rain Dance or use Work Up.
F-tilt - Horn Flier
Keldeo sticks it's horn out before slashing it upwards. The moves hits in 2 waves, the first doing 3% with flinching before following up with 5% that knocks the enemy into the air 3 SBBs high. While the move suffers from range for a F-tilt, it's capable of hitting enemies above Keldeo with good timing; aerial enemies touching the tip of Keldeo's horn suffer a damaging 15% and are hurled into the air 5 SBBs high. The set knockback cannot kill, but is capable for setting up for a grab or more time to use Work Up.
U-tilt - Fencer Dance
Keldeo gets on it's hind legs before jabbing it's horn upwards, doing 8% that KOs upwards at 200%. What makes this a good anti-aerial is that Keldeo has to raise it's body to attack, an act that can keep the enemy off-guard if they were expecting Keldeo to try and grab them.
D-tilt - Horn Deflier
Keldeo jabs it's horn downwards with a bit of lag to cope with. The move does a light 3% but forces enemies off ledges. More importantly if this move is used on water Keldeo will dip it's head into the water and jab right underneath it, pushing enemies back down into the water to increase their chances of drowning. This only works once however as Keldeo is pushed back by the force of the move, which is already laggy enough to begin with so you can't continuously pin a enemy in the water.
Aerials
N-air - Acrobat
Keldeo faces the screen while spinning, aiming it's horn in the background. Spotdodging enemies in the range of Keldeo's horn take 5% from it, allowing the water horse to kick off them to fly in whatever direction it desires 1 SBB, refreshing it's aerial game in the process.
F-air - Aerial Ace
Keldeo swipes with it's horn 5 times, with each hit inflicting 4% that KOs at 334%. This move is lengthy in duration, which makes it quite useful for battering at enemies with Keldeo's good aerial speed.
B-air - Rear Attack
Keldeo turns before giving off a mighty kick with it's legs. While slow, this is very powerful, inflicting 25% that KOs at 115%. Kledeo doesn't have much range with it's feet, but it can be used to intercept enemies trying to jump out of a pool in order to KO them.
U-air - Overtaker
Keldeo raises it's horn upwards for a moment. Victims take 5% as they get impaled with the horn, but not for long as Keldeo acrobatically launches itself from the enemy, essentially acting as a footstool from below that refreshes Keldeo's aerial game.
D-air - Horse Acrobatics
Keldeo flips upside-down before falling in a stall-then-fall manner, a mere 7% with flinching to enemies in the way. If Keldeo uses this in the air, it's sure to die, but on ground it'll enter it'll take 5% and enter it's downed state.
With a enemy on it's back this move can mean doom for them. It's technically not a wise thing to try a suicide KO in the air, as enemies can escape and leave Keldeo for dead. If Keldeo lands on the ground with a enemy, it'll do 10% to them and leave them in their downed state instead of itself. Landing in water leaves the enemy at Keldeo's mercy to drown for extra time until they get off Keldeo's back, to which they then have to get out of the water themselves. Keldeo cannot do anything if it decides to dunk it's enemy's head in the water until they escape from it's grab.
Smashes
F-Smash - Aqua Tail
Keldeo swishes it's tail up and down for as long as you hold A. Regardless of charge, the swishing of Keldeo's tail is no less pathetic in terms of the effectiveness of a jab. This move gains it's use when Keldeo's tail makes contact with water. Here, Keldeo's tail causes the water to wave up and down rapidly (2-5 SBBs), increasing the chances of catching enemies. In addition, the water drags enemies forward or backward at Ike-Jigglypuff's dash depending on whether the control stick for this smash was done right or left. Finally the enemy drowns 3-7X more quickly, however if they reach the end of the water they'll get out of it, reducing the chances of initiating a drown. This is really nothing more of a water-controller that can be used to put enemies off guard.
U-Smash - Bubblebeam
Keldeo fires 2-8 SBB-sized bubbles from it's hooves, which scatter about while travelling upwards at Ganon's run. These allow Keldeo and it only to get inside a bubble and use it's air game while floating upwards before the bubble pops within 3 seconds of Keldeo being inside. Keldeo can jump or fall out of a bubble, which pops it but refreshes it's jumps. While this move may sound extremely useful it's set-up can be ruined easily since foes can pop a bubble just by touching it.
D-Smash - Sacred Sword
Keldeo sticks it's horn out before it flashes into a white mystical blade as wide as 1-2 SBBs. Enemies hit upon the initial creation take 18-25% that forces them into footstool state. After the creation Keldeo keeps the move out for 0.5-2 seconds, with the sword doing 3-6% KOing at 400% when it touches the enemy. The greatest quality of this move lies in it's control factor as well as being able to keep enemies underwater for longer, yeah...
Final Smash - Secret Sword
Keldeo raises it's horn in the air, which glows with intense power for a second. Keldeo then slams it's horn down, now a 3 SBB spanning energy beam of light that does 45% KOing at 70% to anyone hit by the sword of destruction.
Playstyle
Keldeo is technically a close-range pressure character of sorts. Right off the bat we have Work Up which is what you'll be wanting to use as bait against enemies who fear that you may become too fast. When it comes to advancing on the enemies you have a few options, including Dash Attack for sending yourself back or Side Special for sending your enemy back. Either option you can use Rain Dance to turn the ground you tread on into a puddle of water that's dangerous for the enemy to tread on. If you can pull this off it marks the beginning of Keldeo's control game.
How enemies react to your controlling method will most likely depend on how much ground you were able to cover in the first place;. If you were on FD and managed to cover the whole stage with water, you can bet that enemies will have nowhere to go compared to a stage like Temple where you won't be able to cover the entire stage. Knowing this for the former cases, there's a good chance that enemies won't let you get away with covering the stage in water, which is unfortunately for them, an easy thing for you to do. Keldeo technically lacks defensive because of the poor range it's horn possesses, so you have no choice but to get ahead of the enemy.
Haven't really gone into Keldeo's so-called excuse for a grab in much detail. This thing is more of a positive mechanic for Keldeo than anything else of sorts, technically preventing the enemy from attacking Keldeo from above to a degree, or just letting Keldeo seize it's enemy if it jumps underneath them. All grabbing the enemy really does is, other than interacting with Keldeo's D-air and allowing for a weak suicide KO option, is let Keldeo control it's opponent's positioning, whether it wants them in the air, middle or edge of the stage it can take them wherever it wants without the foe burdening it.
If you manage to ravage the stage to the opponent's disliking and they want to go in the air now because of it, you've got some nice aerial options in order to deal with them since the air is essentially where Keldeo wants it's enemy. You've got your grab which you can use to place the enemy at the end of the stage in order to gimp them, or the U-air which you can use to place yourself in the air and then set-up a Surf to ravage the enemy. Even worse if you've already got your water out. Keldeo can also use it's N-air to punish spotdodgers trying to resist Keldeo's grab.
Don't forget about Keldeo's U-Smash as a set-up move over Work Up. Placed right, it can give Keldeo quite a good aerial game or Surf-set-up. It's not essential though.
Drowning the enemy sounds nice, though it's one of those things that's determined by %. You've got moves like Surf, F-Smash and D-tilt to keep enemies at bay and stall long enough to them drown....but who actually drowns these days? The truth is that drowning is not really what you're aiming for, it's only a distraction for the enemy. You've got to hit the enemy with a regular move in order to win effectively. Keldeo doesn't have a large pool of KO moves, it's best one by far is it's B-air, which may be hard to hit unless you've got the right circumstances, such as hitting a foe who just got out of the pool. The only 2 other noticeable options are the Dash Attack and Side Special, both which are momentum-based moves capable of giving off quite a nasty surprise, though they require the enemy at high percentages. And really, Keldeo isn't the best at damage-racking or anything.
Overall Keldeo is a character who's a close-combat control based character. It can say and get control fast, but has to act as quickly as so. You have to keep the enemy on their toes with your acrobatic fury and ability to shut down ground games, or else they can overwhelm you easily, considering that Keldeo has no decent recovery of any sorts.
If it isn't too much trouble, does anyone know where I can find good movesets to read for Viewtiful Joe, Geno, Shadow, Rayman, and Krystal? I've always wanted to see movesets for them.
MYmini results are up boys and girls. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
1. Golden Arches by Junahu (2 votes)
1. Boolossus by Davidreamcatcha (2 votes)
1. Creeper by Kholdstare (2 votes)
2. The Pyro by DiamondFox (1 vote)
2. Luca Concert by Junahu (1 vote)
2. Weepinter by MarthTrinity (1 vote)
2. Reginold by MarthTrinity (1 vote)
2. The Man Who Arranges Blocks by Davidreamcatcha (1 vote)
Our final MYmini for this MYM contest will be. . .
Make an extra for a MYmer! This concept was submitted by getocoolaid and the leaders decided upon it. Honorable mention goes to Katapultar who submitted out only other possibility that the leadership determined may be a bit much to work with. Thank you both though for your ideas!
Welcome to the User Rankings! Every Monday, I'll be compiling the entire of the last week's activity in the thread and showing off, just who is the most active member? The point of this exercise is to recognise the most dedicated among us – those make your movers who are currently pushing the boundaries, as well as highlighting all movesets made by them.
To get on this list, you need to have made a moveset in this or a previous Make Your Move, as well as having posted in the Make Your Move 9 thread. The cut-off point for tallying is 12AM on Monday; other removals or changes are at my own discretion. The breakdown of points is as follows:
25points for a Moveset 15 points for a Joint Moveset 5 points for a Secondary Submission 4 points for a Comment 2 points for a Secondary Submission Comment 1 point for a Regular Post +Regular Posts do not stack
The reason for the combination of both weeks is two-fold - one, the first week was entirely unremarkable, with only one set posted and barely any activity in Make Your Move at all: two, I simply forgot. My bad.
Nonetheless, we had an impressive fortnight from a handful of people. Top of the heap was Katapultar in his first win in these rankings, mostly due to rather short mini comments, but covering many that others completely ignored, ending the week on a high with his latest set, Keldeo. In second was KingK.Rool, coming back to us again for a short time and posting ten comments. Despite his frequent absence, his wisdom has not aged a day; always nice to see him in Make Your Move. Last but not least, Master Warlord triumphed with a few comments, on top of minis and a moveset in Nappa. This set may very well be the highlight of the fortnight; definitely a highly-recommended read, even if from someone so close to its production.
Remember to check out the stadium to find all of the sets mentioned.
Crazy Wigglytuff is an assist trophy that you can summon to the battlefield. Once summoned, it moves into the background, and just sits there. Staring. Staring into your soul. Forever. Crazy Wigglytuff does not move or act itself, but if any player stands within a battlefield of platform of Crazy Wigglytuff for more than three seconds while facing the creature, they begin to take sanity damage of 5% a second, and their shields automatically drain. This stacks over time, and decays very very slowly, so over the course of the match, eventually even getting near Wigglytuff can mean instantaneous damage and weakened shields.
The only way to remove Crazy Wigglytuff is, of course, to kick him. If you've taken the effect from Crazy Wigglytuff's existentially horrifying existence for at least ten seconds, he will apparate as a ghostly image on the stage foreground itself, their own insanity creating an illusory form. Crazy Wigglytuff takes no damage or knockback, but if he is struck with a kicking attack Crazy Wigglytuff is instantly forced from the battlefield permanently... until an assist trophy calls him back again.
Hey! It's KingK.Rool! We remember him, right? He was only here just last week. [THIS] is totally his theme tune
This delightfully eccentric rogue turns up from time to time inside of Assist Trophies (though he insists he is not an extra) in order to dispense useful (?) words of advice. He trails behind his summoner, studying their movements and patterns, analyzing them with all the insight of a CPU player. Once convinced he knows you better than you know yourself, he turns his back to the stage, and a speech bubble appears, spouting some helpful hints. Most of them are simple things such as "shielding attacks stops them from harming you" and "some characters are good in the air", but they are still for the most part relevant to your current character and behaviour.
Sometimes he might impart some slightly more helpful guidance, such as "Your movements are too predictable. They lack passion." or "Your foe jumps at the sight of you. Jump too, and follow the coward.". Such comments are based on actual analysis of the match thus far, helping the player change their style to better defeat their opponent. Of course, since the foe can also see these hints, KingK.Rool may end up inadvertantly helping the opponent.
Once three hints escape Rool's sleazy, mustached lips, he departs, possibly forever, or maybe just until tommorrow.
oh, by the way, KingK.Rool has even more musical themes, one for every moveset he's made. A random one plays quietly in the background whenever he appears. Listen;
Well, well, well...looks who's returned: it's kirbywizard from MYM6! He's ready to cast a spell over MYM, quite literally. His presence one bred quite a few memes in MYM, which are ready to be harvested to good use.
When summoned from his Assist Trophy, kirbywizard uses rewarp to beautifully teleport to a random enemy's location. He'll then proceed to use Brawl Kirby's Inhale with 2X the pull and range for 3 seconds. If he gets a enemy in this time he'll traditionally swallow them before spitting them upwards for 15% with set knockback 3 SBBs, beautifying their face by 2 levels in the process (if you know what I mean ). Like his pink-counterpart, kirbywizard naturally copies the enemy's B-move, but he's not a glutton. Instead he kindly uses his magic to give his summoner the enemy's B-move using a chant that lasts for 2 seconds.....unfortunately the spell is badly executed, causing the summoner to 'suffer' from a special effect based on what incantation kirbywizard used:
40% I am tree I won’t budge: The summoner is unable to move, but is invincible. This lasts for 10 seconds. Better hope you have ranged moves. 30% Mr. 2 Bon Clay remix because he is epic: The remix set of Mr. 2 Bon Clay appears and fights alongside the summoner. Since he is epic he is at Lv7 and has his own stock to fight with, making it difficult for the enemy to do anything. 10% *Rap music plays* Rap music plays in the background. That is all. 9% Canada what you gonna do:Bear Hugger's Final Smash comes into effect. The summoner is not affected. 1% Pretty God: The summoner becomes invincible; has their negative mechanic(s) removed; has their positive ones topped and kept that way; power, speed, jumps, range are all tripled for 30 whole seconds. Once those 30 seconds pass they get the Smash Ball aura to use their Final Smash. If you're playing as Abomasnow or against one the chances of this happening become 25%.
If you are the opponent I'd strongly suggest not trying to dodge kirbywizard's Inhale. If you do, he'll transform into kirbywizard's Bear Hugger (not MasterWarlord's set for him) and assist the summoner until he is KO'ed. You naturally don't want this to happen because Bear Hugger is supposedly overpowered...
Everyone's favorite host of the MYM Awards has appeared in the form of an Assist Trophy! half_silver28 (Silver) has the same dimensions as Cammy, and has much of the same stances and animations. Silver, however, has a small movepool of attacks she can preform, unlike Cammy:
Gently Fondle - If the foe is close enough to grab Silver, she will instead grab them. Silver will hold the foe much like Snake's grab, but will smirk and gently... fondle them. This heals the foe of 10%, but after they are released from the one second grab they will be unable to shield until they get hit by an attack.
Grapist - This can happen under the same scenario as the first. Silver will instead jump at them, curling in a ball and spinning at the same time, and land crotch-first on their face. She will then proceed to roughly grape them. Diddy Kong's Side Special is a good example of what graping looks like. Every hit deals 5% damage and has a purple splashing effect on the foe's face. Silver can rack up up to 20% damage with this.
Psycho Crusher - If the foe is within a Battlefield platform's distance of Silver, but not in grabbing range, Silver will instead go spinning at them, surrounded by purple energy. This can deal a devastating chain of hits if it connects, totalling 50%. Foes, be sure to dodge this- if you are under the effects of a fondling then you can't shield!
Omnomnom - Silver dons Galacta's helmet and opens her mouth, licking her lips and laughing. This creates a suction that is as long as two Battlefield platforms in front of her. Foes who get caught in this are vored by Silver, taking ten hits of 2-3%. They are then spat out of her mouth, and she says, "You taste delicious... almost as delicious as M. Trinity..." and titters.
SILVER STRIKE! - This is Silver's ultimate attack. Near the end of Silver's life, she will pull out a long, silver, Buster-esque sword. She will then exclaim, "Silver... STRIKE!" and slash the foe with it at a blinding speed. The only way to block it? Power shielding it. Anything other than that will simply falter under Silver's massive girth... Needless to say, this automatically KOs the foe.
Silver lasts for ten seconds. Be sure to make friends with her and all during the match- if you win with her repeatedly, she will often show up on the match results screen to give you a large trophy or medal, as if you won and award or something. Neato!
Tired of being pushed around by everyone else, Plorf joins Brawl as a Fiend character! Can your combined forces defeat this angry MYMer?!
As soon as Plorf appears on the stage, he'll take on the form of Plorf. Plorf is just your average headphones wearing kid who sits in place eating his lunch as he listens to what is most likely Daft Punk. Unlike most Fiends, Plorf is one you should -NOT- attack. If you let Plorf just sit there and eat his lunch in peace...everything will be just fine. If you attack Plorf however. . .
If a player attacks Plorf, Plorf will hurl his sandwich to the floor and scream, "LEAVE. PLORF. ALONE!!!" as he transforms into the INCREDIBLE PLORF! In this form, Plorf has 340% Stamina and takes no hitstun or flinching from any attacks! If you enrage Plorf, you have no choice but to fight him! Plorf acts somewhat like a boss at this point and has several unique attacks. . .
Onix-pected
Plorf lets out a roar as he reaches into the stage. No matter what stage you're on (no matter how small), Plorf will tear a gigantic Onix from beneath the ground! Plorf will then scream "PLORF SMASH!" as he swings the Onix along the stage! If you remember from Plorf's set, Onix is pretty huge; the only way to safely dodge this attack is to leap over it when he swings. If you do get hit by the swung Onix, you'll take 20% damage and high knockback! Be cautious though, Plorf will sometimes swing the Onix twice before hurling it off stage. . .
Master of Robots
Plorf smashes the ground with his fists as he lets out a loud roar. This causes several random robot masters to start raining from the sky onto the other characters! Fortunately, these robots aren't active so they won't fight you or anything. . .but they will deal 12% and a downward spike if they hit you while falling. Worse still, Plorf can pick up these Robot Masters and hurl them at you with incredible speed! If you're struck by a thrown Robot Master, you'll take 19% damage and medium vertical knockback!
Unnatural Disaster
As everyone knows, Plorf is often sighted and the locations of various natural disasters...and some horribly events within history. Watching...always watching...either way, Plorf uses this to his advantage as he roars and leaps off the top of the screen. Suddenly, Plorf will appear close to the screen, his back turned to the camera. At this point, various natural disasters will occur ranging from tornadoes (that act exactly as they do on Hyrule Temple in SSB64/in Auron), earthquakes (which cause everyone to trip uncontrollably for several seconds) and even the sinking of the Titanic (which causes the stage to be submerged beneath water, foricng everyone to swim).
After about 15 seconds of dealing with these disasters, including some not listed here due to sensitivity issues such as the Trail of Tears or the JFK Assassination (Plorf has apparently witnessed all of these...), Plorf will leap off the top of the screen. A few moments later, Plorf will come crashing down HOLDING THE MOON IN HIS GRASP. When the moon collides with the stage, it creates a massive explosion that covers nearly all of Final Destination. Only being off stage will save you here (or ledge grabbing) so be cautious of this. If you're caught in the explosion, you'll take double the damage and knockback of a Smart Bomb explosion so avoid this at all costs. Fortunately, Plorf is very vulnerable to attack afterwards as he has to catch his breath for a few moments.
Sound of Music
Plorf removes his sacred headphones and cranks up the volume of his music to incredibly loud levels! All opponents near Plorf will be pushed away at speeds greater than the wind on Pictochat, forcing them to run towards Plorf or be blown off stage! The music for the stage also changes while Plorf is using this attack...you may find it familar...
Forced Photoshoop
Plorf's deadliest attack and one you should dodge at all costs...or you'll instantly be losing a stock! This move has incredibly short range as it simply consists of Plorf reaching forward a small ways. If you're grabbed by this attack though...you're done for!
Once grabbed, the screen will black out as Plorf roars. A tearing noise is heard followed by the grabbed character's death cry. A moment later, the battle returns to normal except the grabbed character has had their head torn off and placed on a random person or object. This can range from the characters head being shoved onto Batman, a young girl, SkylerOcon's friend, that one guy from Tron or even Richard Simmons at a gay pride parade. Seems like this is Plorf's ultimate revenge for all of those shoops. . .
Once Plorf's HP is reduced to 0%, Plorf will leap from the screen screaming "PLORF IS STRONGEST THERE IS!"
Hello my friends, I'd just like to inform everyone that I do not have any submissions planned for the last few days of the contest. However, I AM working on catching up with comments, and plan to have read everything by Monday. Comments to come soon. Sorry for my lateness
Rita is one of the main playable characters in the 2007 Xbox 360 game Tales of Vesperia, which was later ported to the PS3. She's a skilled mage and researcher from the town of Aspio, the city of scholars. In particular, Rita researches blastia, technological devices that are used for many essential purposes in the universe of Vesperia. Rita herself is eccentric: she is obsessed with her research and isn't too sociable at all. She also has a bit of a temper: it's not unusual for a pissed-off Rita to light up the place with her fire magic! Despite this, she eventually becomes friendly with Estellise and the other members of the main party. While Rita is primarily a magic user, she is skilled with using cloth scrolls or whips for ranged attacks, and is armed with a scroll in Brawl.
Stats
Rita is as tall as Luigi and weighs as much as Toon Link. Her dash speed and traction stats match those of Falco and Zelda respectively. Spending all her time conducting research doesn't really help with her jumping ability, which is comparable to Zelda's. Her aerial movement is also similar to Zelda's, while her fall speed is close to that of Marth. Again a result of a lack of exercise, Rita can't crawl or wall jump or anything.
Making the Most of Magic: Casting and Spell Canceling
Rita has access to a wide array of spells that are divided into 4 different sets: Basic, Intermediate, Altered and Advanced Spells. While these are assigned to Neutral B, Side B, Down B and Up B respectively, Rita doesn't have to change between sets of spells: she can use any spell at any time. As a result, most of her spells require her to hit a second direction on the control stick after the input for the desired set of spells to choose which one to use. The first few times you pick Rita in a session, small thought bubbles will appear over her head whenever she starts using a spell, prompting the player to possibly hit another direction to use a different spell. Otherwise Rita will be limited to the one spell in that set assigned to the neutral input. Each set also has one spell that is activated with a double tap of B. While casting a spell, an elemental glyph appears below Rita, and she can't move until the spell is cast. She can only cast spells while on the ground, by the way. Finally, once Rita casts a certain spell, she can't use that spell again until all effects of its previous usage have disappeared or until 5 seconds have passed, whichever happens first.
Rita doesn't have to see each spell through to the end though. She can stop casting by hitting shield. By doing this, Rita makes use of the Spell Cancel ability. She will periodically flash white after stopping a spell in this manner, and if you start casting that same spell again, Rita will pick up at the exact time she stopped the spell previously. When used correctly, this can allow her to cast a high-level spell with next to no cast time. However, she can only save one spell at a time in this manner: canceling another spell will overwrite the old one. This can not only lead to impressive combos of spells and normal attacks, but it also allows for some mindgames if you follow through on a spell that you normally save or vice-versa.
Winning with Magic: Over Limit
But this isn't enough for Rita to make it through a brawl! She can't float out of foes' reach while casting like Arche, so how is Rita supposed to get her spells off? By activating Over Limit, of course. Over Limit is a common feature of Tales series games, being present since 2003's Tales of Symphonia. A meter referred to as the Over Limit gauge fills up gradually during battle, and Over Limit can be activated by any character when it's full. In Tales of Vesperia, you can fill up four bars of Over Limit, and you can choose to use one, two, three or all four of those bars when you activate Over Limit (assuming you have all four filled up). Depending on how many bars you use, a different level of Over Limit is activated, each level giving a unique set of benefits to the character that uses it.
In Brawl, Rita uses Over Limit in the same way. She has an Over Limit gauge under her character portrait that can be filled up up to four times. Once at least one bar is full, Rita can activate her Over Limit by hitting A and B at the same time. When you activate it, Rita spins once with a whip of her scroll and gains a white glow around her body, saying either "I am SO gonna make you hurt!" or "Here comes some magic!" as she does so. With more than one bar, Rita will automatically use all of them. Though you can also chose how many bars to use by hitting a direction along with A and B. Hitting Up uses one bar, Side uses two and Down uses three. As for the benefits of each level, they increase with each additional bar used:
Level One: This slightly decreases the cast time of all of Rita's Basic Spells (save for Blade Roll), and cuts the cast time of Rita's other spells plus Blade Roll by 25%. This level lasts for 12 seconds.
Level Two: Retains the buffs to Rita's Basic Spells. This also cuts the cast time of Rita's other spells and Blade Roll by half. This lasts for 15 seconds.
Level Three: In addition to Level Two's buffs, Rita receives 25% worth of super armor. Her super armor will always absorb at least one hit, so an opponent can't just run up and knock her away with a single smash. This lasts for 17 seconds.
Level Four: Can you say broken? This level is essentially the same as Level Three, but with 2 differences. First of all Rita now gets 40% damage worth of super armor. Secondly, Rita can do something special regarding her Advanced Spells. If you cast an Advanced Spell while holding B the whole time, Rita will not cast the spell. Instead, she will take on a familiar glow. Yep: Rita now has access to her final smash as well as the benefits of Level Four Over Limit. However, she only retains the final smash glow for the rest of Over Limit's duration. Level Four lasts 20 seconds.
And there's one last vital question left: how does Rita fill up her Over Limit Gauge? She will primarily do this by attacking: she can fill up one bar by landing 12 hits on her foe, though multi-hit spells only count as 1 hit. The amount of hits required to fill a bar slightly increases with the amount currently filled: it takes 17 hits to fill that fourth Over Limit bar. Using two taunts counts as one hit as well.
...You're still with me aren't you? Because we're finally getting to the meat of the set!
Specials
Neutral Special: Basic Spells
Basic spells are the lowest level spells Rita can use, and as such have the shortest cast time. With one exception, all these spells have the potential to be altered in some way by holding B while casting.
Neutral: Fire Ball
"O' flickering blaze burn, Fireball!"
Rita takes a basic charging stance as an elemental glyph appears under her (Rita starts all of her spells like this). This doesn't last for long though. After .3 seconds, Rita thrusts her hand forward, firing a fireball that's just a little bigger than an uncharged Samus charge shot. This can be angled up to 45 degrees upwards or downwards by tilting the control stick at the moment Rita fires it. The projectile travels the length of Battlefield before dissipating, at the speed of a Wolf blaster shot. It deals 8% fire damage and flinching knockback upon hitting. This isn't hugely spammable though, as Rita suffers a bit of end lag. Still it can be used pretty well for camping.
Like most of Rita's basic spells, this can be charged by holding B, up to one second. Rita will actually say the move's incantation if it's charged. When the move activates with a cry of "Fireball!", Rita will shoot out up to 5 fireballs depending on charge. She fires them all separately over the course of .5 seconds, and suffers a bit more end lag. Rita is free to aim them up or down during those .5 seconds, so she can cover the ground in front of her and the air with one move. Terrific for deterring approaches, which is something Rita will often need to do.
Side: Stone Blast
"O' din of this modest land, Stone Blast!"
After .4 seconds of cast time, Rita points forward, causing a Bowser-size spot of ground half a Battlefield platform in front of her to erupt into a burst of earth, shooting rocks Mario's height upwards for half a second (this affects the ground nearest to the ledge if Rita is too close). This deals up to 14% to foes in multiple hits and traps them for the duration of the move, giving Rita ample time to cast Fireball or use another spell. This can also be a decent move to use if a foe jumps over one of her projectile moves. Rita can also change the range of Stone Blast by holding B while she casts. This makes it so the move affects the ground a full BF platform in front of her, giving it potential as a pseudo projectile. Rita suffers average end lag from this move. As a final note, this can deal up to 19% to foes that are lying prone while hit, and leave them immobile for a bit. This fact will become more important later on.
Down: Spread Zero
"Smile of wavering darkness, Spread Zero!"
It takes Rita half a second to cast this dark element spell. This causes a Kirby-sized ball of dark energy to appear one Mario length in front of the foe, floating slightly off the ground (if the targeted foe is airborne, the move will act as if they are at the same position on the ground). Rita will target the nearest foe if there are multiple enemies. It remains in the spot it appeared for half a second before fading. Touching the ball of darkness causes it to explode, dealing 10% damage and horizontal knockback that KOs at 190%. This has slightly above average end lag.
The curious thing about this move is that it ignores dodges and rolls: if a foe tries to airdodge or roll past the darkness ball, it will explode and hit them just as if they hit it normally. This makes Spread Zero a great way to stop ground approaches, forcing foes to take to the air. This can also be used to irritate foes who are fleeing from her other spells, potentially even knocking them right back into the spell they're trying to escape. If this move wasn't annoying enough, holding B while casting will cause the shadow ball to appear behind the target instead of in front of them. It's possible that the foe will roll backwards in anticipation of a frontal attack, only to get hit anyway.
Up: Champagne
"O' caprice of innocent waters, Champagne!"
This takes half a second to cast. Rita extends her hand towards the nearest foe, as a Bowser-sized amount of clear water starts to erupt at their feet (or on the ground under them if they're in the air). A multitude of clear bubbles, resembling the beverage this move is named for, then erupt from the water .3 seconds later, reaching up Squirtle's height. This deals up to 13% damage with multiple hits, and traps foes similarly to Stone Blast for its half-second duration. While faster enemies can escape this move simply by dashing, slower foes are forced to roll out of the way. Think that a spell-saved Spread Zero might be a good follow-up? Rita suffers average end lag from this move. As a more general note, Champagne, along with all of Rita's water-type spells, have the ability to clean the stage of various substances. Oil, sludge, fire, blood... anything like that can be removed by Rita's water magic. Also, this leaves behind a Bowser-sized puddle that sticks around until Rita loses a stock. The importance of such puddles will be touched on later.
Double Tap B: Blade Roll
"O' blade of noble light, overpower even indestructible evil! Blade Roll!"
Blade Roll takes much longer to cast than Rita's other basic spells, taking nearly 2 seconds. Upon casting, Rita folds her arms as a shining laser of light 2/3rds of a BF platform long appears in front of her, being suspended Pikachu's height above the ground. This "blade" of light then proceeds to rotate around her 4 times clockwise, as if Rita were the center of a large clock. These 4 rotations take a total of 4 seconds to complete. The blade of light deals 14% damage and nice hitstun, and pushes foes back half a platform, setting them for more hits. The blade also can reflect energy-based projectiles, and destroy others. Obviously very useful for defense, Rita can charge this move for an extra half second by holding B, which results in the blade rotating around her 5 times instead of 4. While this can give Rita much needed time to cast or save a laggy spell, foes that can crawl or are shorter than Pikachu can approach her during the move. Rita also suffers bad end lag from using this, so she can't act right after using this.
Side Special: Intermediate Spells
Neutral: Splash
"Grant them thy undefiled purity, Splash!"
it takes Rita 1.25 seconds to cast Splash. Rita points slightly upwards, causing two blue pitchers, each the size of Pikachu, to appear one BF platform in from of her (and twice Ganondorf's height above the ground). These pitchers are not solid: they are made of water, and foes can pass right through them initially. Alternatively, they will appear one Ganondorf length above any foe who is within a platform of Rita, and right above the heads of any aerial foes in that range.
Regardless, after half a second, both of these pitchers will tip over, pouring a large stream of water down onto the stage that is essentially the same weight as Marth. It does splash down on the stage when it hits the ground, expanding the range a bit in that area. This lasts for 3 seconds, and any foe who touches the water is pulled in for the whole duration, and dealt up to 20% damage in multiple hits. Additionally, the point where the pitchers tip over creates a brief hitbox that deals 3% and small spiking knockback, ensuring that the foe gets stuck in the full duration of the move. Rita can potentially use this attack to stall or hold foes in place for a while, and there's another move that Rita can use on trapped opponents that can really screw them, which I'll touch on later. Rita suffers somewhat high end lag from this. As a final note, this does leave behind a puddle 2/3rds of a BF platform wide. Foes are also left in prone at the end of this move.
Side: Spiral Flare
"O' incandescent locus, annihilate the vulgar before me! Spiral Flare!"
One of Rita's most straight-forward spells, Spiral Flare has a cast time of 1 second. Rita thrusts her palm outwards as a vertical elemental glyph appears in front of her (an orange one, of course). A large ball of fire forms inside of the glyph over .6 seconds, growing to the size of a fully charged Samus charge shot over that period. Once it reaches its max size, it shoots forward at the speed of a Falco laser, with infinite range. This large projectile deals 18% damage and great knockback upon a hit, KOing at 90%. A "tail" of flames almost a full platform long trail behind the fireball, essentially preventing foes from spotdodging this. Additionally, any foe who tries to shield it will have their shield broken instantly. In order to avoid this giant projectile of death, foes will have to either roll towards Rita or get out of its way by jumping or running away. This is a great way to KO foes who get stuck in another one of her spells, or simply to pressure them while you cast another one. Rita is free to move once the projectile fires.
Down: Ivy Rush
"Awake o' unmerciful and unnamed queen of thorns! Ivy Rush!"
This move takes 1.5 seconds to cast. Upon casting, a multitude of green vines erupt from the ground below the nearest foe within .4 seconds, reaching 1 and a half Ganondorfs upward. These don't deal damage or anything: they instead grab foes who touch them, forcing them to escape at 1.25 grab difficulty. If the vines fail to grab someone initially, they stick around for 2 seconds before receding. Dashing foes can easily avoid the spell, as can opponents with a good roll dodge. This move has above average end lag. While good at holding foes in place, Ivy Rush is best when saved because of its long cast time.
If Rita hits the vines with a fire move after summoning them, they immediately burst into flames, dissipating after half a second. Any foes who are caught in the vines at the time are released, but not before they take damage equal to what the move would've done normally. This doesn't make the fire attack itself disappear either, so it's possible to double the damage by hitting them directly in addition to lighting the vines that hold them ablaze.
Up: Tractor Beam
"Spread thy alluring snare and deliver my enemies unto me! Tractor Beam!"
This move takes one and a half seconds to cast. Rita folds her arms as a golden elemental glyph 1/3 of a BF platform wide appears under the the foe's feet. After .3 seconds, the glyph surges with energy, and forms a vertical beam of light that shoots 2 and a half Ganondorfs upwards, spanning the full width of the glyph horizontally. This lasts for 4 seconds before disappearing. This doesn't deal damage or knockback to foes: it instead holds them in place for the duration of the move, forcing them to progressively float upwards at Lucario's fall speed.
Foes can attack while stuck in the Tractor Beam: a stall-and-fall aerial can put a stop to the forced upward movement, and a speedy movement attack can allow them to escape it altogether. This move has above average end lag. While dashing foes can usually avoid the beam easily, it becomes harder if they're standing still or in the air. They can dodge it by rolling, but what if you have a Spread Zero waiting for them? It should be noted that foes don't take any knockback from attacks while caught in the beam, only damage. Thus Rita can use the time her victim is out of commission to save a spell or to rack some damage on them: though keep in mind that some foes can escape it altogether.
Double Tap Side B: Stalagmite
"O' sharpened rage, run through that which blocks our future! Stalagmite!"
This move takes 1.75 seconds to cast. Rita thrusts her palm forward as a Bowser-sized patch of ground one BF platform in front of her begins to crack apart. After .3 seconds, 4 pointed spikes of rock erupt from the ground over the span of .65 seconds, the tallest of which reaches Ganondorf's height vertically. These rocks cover 3/4ths of a platform horizontally, expanding from the ground that cracks originally. Foes who get hit directly will generally be hit up to 3 times for 22% damage and suffer high upwards knockback on the final hit that KOs at 105%. In addition, these rocks stay on the stage indefinitely, acting as a solid barrier. This makes it useful for defense in addition to its offensive prowess: the rock can take a good 30% damage before it breaks. Rita suffers somewhat high end lag from this move. It should also be noted that if this moves' range extends to a platform's edge, it will spike foes holding onto it to their death.
Down Special: Altered Spells
Neutral: Aqua Laser
"O' mother praised while her indigo life breaks and raise thy clear voice! Aqua Laser!"
This spell takes 1.5 seconds to cast. Rita raises her hand to the sky as a large amount of water instantly covers the ground stretching half of Battlefield in front of Rita. After .3 seconds, powerful bursts of water erupt upwards from the blue puddle, starting from the end closest to Rita and very quickly spanning to the other end. Contact with this "laser", which reaches Mario's height vertically, deals 18% damage and high diagonal-upwards knockback that KOs at 115%. While less powerful, this is often preferable to Spiral Flare as a KO move due to having little lag after casting. Though it lacks the long range and capability for pressure that Spiral Flare has. This move also leaves behind a puddle half of battlefield long, and has average end lag.
Side: Freeze Lancer
"O' frozen blade, fly sharply across the heavens! Freeze Lancer!"
This spell takes 1.5 seconds to cast. Rita folds her arms as a mass of light blue energy appears in front of her, being small horizontally but reaching from the ground to above Rita's head vertically. The mass of energy expands slightly over .3 seconds. After that brief moment, the energy mass fires 10 large icicles forward, spaced out .1 seconds from each other. The icicles are comparable to Link's arrows in length and travel forward at the speed of a Falco laser, disappearing after traveling two battlefield platforms forward. Contact with an icicle deals 2-3% damage and very low knockback, making it easy for this move to rack up 25% or more. Foes are generally held in the same place the whole time, making them an easy target for something like Ivy Rush. This move lasts for 3 seconds, and Rita suffers somewhat high end lag from using it.
Freeze Lancer also has an alternate function. If at any point a water-based spell touches either the mass of blue energy or an icicle, the entirety of the water spell freezes solid right then over half a second. Basically the water spell ceases to be an attack and becomes a solid obstacle, which eventually disappears after 30 seconds. Dealing 20% damage to the ice or hitting it with a fire move (including Rita's own fire spells) can destroy it though. This can obviously be very useful when combined with a move like Splash: making it literally impossible for foes to approach until they destroy the icy barrier. In addition, if a water spell is frozen while a foe is being actively hit by it, they will find themselves frozen solid along with it. They'll have to escape at 1.5 grab difficulty, and take 4% damage every half second they're frozen. A small chuck of the ice breaks off when they do escape, but the overall structure stays intact.
While giving Rita yet another option to hold opponents in place, some spells take on rather unique properties when frozen. Freezing Champagne also freezes the fizzy bubbles solid, which instantly fall to the ground and shatter, dealing 5% damage per hit on contact. Freezing the actual "laser" of Aqua Laser creates a rather awkwardly-shaped structure, while freezing any puddles left on the ground by various water spells turns them into ice that sticks around for 30 seconds. This makes it far more difficult for foes to approach Rita from the ground. The ability to create all this frozen art allows for a wide variety of defensive options, and some opportunities for offense as well.
Down: Riot Horn
"O' demon who crawls the depths of the earth, gore my enemies and crush them to dust! Riot Horn!"
This spell takes 1.5 seconds to cast. Rita points forward, as a Kirby-sized chunk of earth erupts out of the ground half a BF platform in front of Rita. Immediately following this, 7 more chucks of earth burst out of the ground, each being directly in front of the last. This extends Riot Horn's range to a full platform horizontally over the course of a second. Foes who get caught in the attack are dragged along to the end of the move's range by multiple flinching hits, dealing anywhere from 4% damage with a single hit to 32% if they get caught in the whole attack. The last hit deals a nice amount of hitstun, but low knockback, being more of a damage racking move than anything else. Rita suffers above average end lag from this, and this can also spike foes who are hanging on an edge just like Stalagmite.
If the foe happens to be lying prone when hit with Riot Horn (remember that Rita has several moves that force foes into prone), they get dragged along to the end more violently than usual, being tossed around like a rag doll. The last hit is the only thing that really changes though: it now deals horizontal knockback that KOs at 120% and great hitstun. This can possibly KO the prone foe, or at least knock them off stage, giving Rita a chance to gimp them for the KO. On one final note, the now-raised ground stays like that for 10 seconds, acting as a solid obstruction during that time.
Up: Negative Gate
"Come forth o' avaricious netherworld and crush the evil before me! Negative Gate!"
This spell takes 1.5 seconds to cast. Rita thrusts her palm forward as a black hole nearly twice the size of a party ball appears one BF platform in front of her. The hole creates a suction force slightly less powerful than Kirby's Inhale that pulls everything besides Rita within the length of Battlefield towards it. Foes who actually contact the black hole are trapped inside it, and take anywhere from 5-17% damage depending on how long they are trapped for. In addition, this move absorbs energy-based projectiles. The black hole lasts for 3 seconds, while Rita suffers high end lag after casting. Negative Gate can really mess with enemies at times, possibly pulling them into other spells they were trying to avoid. Combine this with Spread Zero for even more irritating results for your opponent. Additionally, holding B during casting causes the black hole to appear one Mario length in front of her instead of a platform away. This can be useful for pulling foes into the range of a normal attack or a shorter-ranged spell.
Double Tap Down B: Thunder Blade
"O' righteous will, let fall thy sword of lighting upon those who bear fault! Thunder Blade!"
This spell takes 1.75 seconds to cast. Rita raises her arm skyward as a giant blade surging with purple electricity appears Ganondorf's height above the foe. Measuring one and a half Ganondorfs tall and Mario's width across, the blade plummets down onto the foe, generally hitting them in less than half a second (assuming they don't get out of the way). Contact with the sword deals 14% damage and good hitstun, setting enemies up nicely for the second part of the move.
Once the great sword hits the ground, it releases a surge of electric energy that spreads across the ground 1/3 of a BF platform on either side of where it hit. This deals another 9-10% damage and knockback that KOs at 120% to anyone on the ground near it. This surge of electricity lasts nearly half a second before disappearing along with the sword: too long for a spotdodge to do any good. Going back to the blade itself, foes who touch it while airborne take 14% damage along with some hitstun and good spiking knockback that knocks them to the ground, where the surge of energy will hit them. Obviously, this gives it usefulness as a gimping move: the spiking knockback will KO at 105%. On the ground this functions decently as an anti-air move when saved, as well as a possible KO move. This has high end lag as well.
Up Special: Advanced Spells
Neutral: Violent Pain
"O' disturbing power now unleashed, bring thy judgment upon the evil before me! Violent Pain!"
This spell takes a lengthy 2.25 seconds to cast. Rita raises her arm into the air as a circle of black and purple energy starts to form at the foe's feet. Unlike other spells that form under foes, the purple energy follows them around until right before the actual attack activates .65 seconds later. Thus this move can only be evaded by a precise roll or dash(assuming you're a faster character) or by jumping off the stage. After .65 seconds are up, a multitude of black and purple "vectors" of energy rise up out of edges of the circle, 12 in all. If you were to imagine the dark circle as a clock, a vector would form at each hour marker. These vectors have a high vertical reach, stretching one and a half Ganondorfs upwards. The vectors reach into the background as well as the foreground, so even characters in the background can't dodge this.
Almost immediately after appearing, the vectors slam into the center of the circle in a curved arc, dragging any foe they contact into the center of the circle to take the full force of the attack. An opponent who gets caught in the entire move takes 35% damage in multiple hits, ouch. In return this move does no knockback, but it does leave foes in prone for half a second, set perfectly for a follow-up of Riot Horn. Though it will be very hard to pull off that combo outside of Over Limit. While foes can usually avoid this move easily, Spread Zero can be used to complicate things. If you use it right before they have to dodge away, there's a pretty good chance they'll end up dodging right into Spread Zero, and possibly get knocked right back into Violent Pain. Rita suffers high end lag from this move.
Side: Tidal Wave
"O' mad and greedy waters, rise up and storm the very heavens! Tidal Wave!"
This takes a whopping 3 seconds to cast, but it's well worth it. Rita folds her arms after casting, as a huge whirlpool nearly 2/3rds of Battlefield surrounds her on all sides. The whirlpool doesn't just cover the ground: walls of water two Ganondorfs tall also form all around the whirlpool, making it a pretty hellish task to approach Rita. Foes who touch the walls end up taking rapid hits of 1% and flinching, being moderately hard to DI out of. If by some chance a foe ends up inside the walls along with Rita, they take 1% damage and flinching every half second from the whirlpool on the ground. So if they manage to get beyond the walls, it probably won't be long until Rita knocks them back into those same walls. The whirlpool lasts for 7 seconds, and Rita suffers high end lag from using it.
Tidal Wave offers Rita a giant degree of protection, but those walls also give her a way to mask her attacks. The walls of water obscure Rita and everything else within them quite nicely, with only their outlines being visible. This makes it very hard to foes to tell what spell Rita is casting at the time (the noise of the whirlpool drowns out her incantations too, btw). Like all of Rita's water spells, this can also be frozen by Freeze Lancer. This freezes both the whirlpool and walls of water solid. While the walls can be broken down like any ice structure, the whirlpool remains on the stage for 30 seconds, having the same properties as any icy platform. Try freezing it right before it disappears to give yourself a little more time alone.
Down: Ground Dasher
"O' beating of the earth, sacrifice thy body to crush my enemies! Ground Dasher!"
This takes 2.5 seconds to cast. Rita thrusts her palm forward as a large portion of ground half a Battlefield Platform immediately starts to crack up and glow with earth elemental energy. This portion of ground takes up nearly half of Battlefield. Half a second after casting, four large spikes of earth erupt out of the cracks. These spikes quickly drop back into the ground after the come out, then pop back out twice more in the same manner before they disappear beneath the ground for good. The height of the spikes differ: the two on the ends are one Ganondorf tall, while the two in the middle are 1.5 Ganons tall. Moving on, anyone who gets hit by one of the spikes takes 10% damage and very low set knockback upwards, which ensures that they will be hit again when the spikes pop back out. The third hit is different though: it deals high vertical knockback that KOs at 100%. However, foes who get caught at the very edge of Ground Dasher can potentially DI out of the move before being hit by the last part. This move has high end lag. This is a pretty reliable kill move if the foe is stuck in another spell or something, and can ruin an approaching foe if Rita saves it.
It's also worth mentioning that the effects of this spell can't form on top of drop-through platforms: it will form on the nearest solid platform assuming said platform is with one BF platform of Rita. Ground Dasher can also break apart character-made walls (including Rita's) and detonate explosives like Snake's mines. Though considering who you're playing as, you might be better leaving those as is.
Up: Crimson Flare
"O' merciless conflagration, burn the very souls of my enemies! Crimson Flare!"
A very powerful spell, Crimson Flare takes 3 seconds to cast. Rita thrusts her palm forward as a huge ball of fire twice as big as Bowser appears over the foe's head (it literally touches their shoulders), and slightly in front of them. If you look closely you can see that the fireball is actually made out of multiple fire elemental glyphs. After .5 seconds, a burst of fire erupts straight downwards from the fireball in a powerful explosion. This burst of fire hits anything touching or directly below the fireball, trapping them in multiple hits over 2.5 seconds that can deal up to 35% damage. The last hit blows the foe away with knockback that KOs at 100%. This move has high end lag.
While foes can typically avoid this move easily by just dashing, it does have the advantage of being able to appear right on them no matter where they are. If you use this on a foe that's trying to recover or is trying to dodge another spell, Crimson Flare can become far more threatening. As far as KO moves go, this is probably Rita's most versatile one, though far from the easiest to land. And there's also the possibility that Rita's foe is stuck in Ivy Rush when this move hits them. Let's just say that 50% damage wouldn't be out of the question in this case.
Double Tap Up B: Meteor Storm
"O' countless particles that wander the heavens, rain down and glorify the land! Meteor Storm!"
Rita's most powerful spell in terms of damage potential, Meteor Storm takes 3.25 seconds to cast. Rita raises her hand to the sky as orange meteors the size of crates begin to fall from the sky in a manner similar to PK Starstorm. The only difference is that meteors fall a bit faster and are more random in their locations. Each meteor deals 8-10% damage and medium upwards knockback, as well as very high shield damage. This may not sound like much, but it certainly can add up. Around 20 meteors in total fall to earth over a 6 second period, making it very possible for foes to be stuck by several meteors within a short timespan and eventually juggled off the top blast zone. You'll probably want to try and knock them into the air to make it more difficult for them to dodge, or use weaker spells like Spread Zero or Champagne to trip them up. Obviously this spell is useful against recovering foes as well. Rita suffers very high end lag from this move.
Final Smash: Ancient Catastrophe
"O' power that lies in the root of all creation, o' memory inscribed in ancient's past, hear my call and arise before me...! Ancient Catastrophe!!!"
Rita's got the smash ball! Upon hitting B, Rita performs a quick spin while whipping her cloth scroll half a BF platform out in front of her. Any foe she hits with this gets dragged into this cinematic final smash. Rita performs the elaborate animation in this video that starts at 0:18. When its over, Rita's victims are launched away with 35% damage and high knockback that KOs at 80%.
Standards
Neutral A Combo: Punchy Mage
Rita may not look very strong, but she certainly can throw a punch, a fact that a certain character from her game can vouch for. The small mage attacks with an average-ranged straight punch that deals 3% damage and a bit of hitstun. Another press of A has Rita follow up by thrusting her opposite palm forward into her foes' stomach, which deals 5% damage and medium-low knockback. This can be useful for pushing foes into spells or just knocking them away in a pinch if they unexpectedly get into Rita's face. The punch has almost no lag to speak of, while the palm thrust has average end lag.
Dash Attack: Blaze Kick
In a rather sudden burst of agility, Rita jumps slightly forward from her dash and performs a midair roundhouse kick. This deals 8-9% damage and medium knockback that can't KO until extremely high percents. Rita turns 180 degrees around during the kick, so she will be facing the opposite direction when the move ends. However if A is held during the attack, Rita will use her momentum to do a full 360 in the air, and thus will stay facing the same direction. Switching between directions can be a good way to keep foes guessing as whether Rita will make a hasty retreat or use the opportunity to chase them down to score more hits and built up Over Limit. When Rita finds herself on an unavoidable collision course with a foe, this is the move to use to knock them away and either retreat or follow-up. This move has a bit of start lag and average end lag.
Smashes
Down Smash: ζ×ψ＝φ (Phi)
Rita first crouches down, a pose she maintains while charging the move. She then performs several clockwise 360 degree spins, whipping her scroll in front of her for the attack hitbox. Starting from her crouched position, Rita stands back up while she spins, raising the hitbox of her scroll from nearly touching the ground to waist-level. Foes hit by the scroll take 1-3% damage per hit and get sucked towards Rita, trapping them in the full duration of the move. The speed and damage of this move, and the number of times Rita spins depends on charge. Rita spins 3 times with no charge and 4 times with a little charging: this number can be increased to 6 with maximum charge. The speed essentially doubles at full charge, and the damage can be boosted to 2-3% per hit as well. It should be noted that Rita spins with her leg extended along the ground for the first 2 spins (3 at full charge), tripping foes and dealing 2% damage. This makes this move even better at racking up hits to charge Rita's Overlimit bar. Keep in mind that this can hit prone foes with this as well, a state Rita can readily force opponents into.
Another use of this move is reflecting energy-based projectiles: Rita can reflect all but fully charged Charge Shots and Aura Spheres right back at their user. Also notable is the way the move interacts with icy ground. Whether the ice is part of the stage or if Rita created it herself, Rita can use this move following a dash onto ice, using her momentum to slide across the stage while attacking. This can make an effective approach (or retreat potentially) if done properly, and is made actually viable due to Rita being able to create the ice herself. This move has average start lag and moderate end lag. It should be noted that since Rita's scroll remains out during the end lag, she can use another one of her scroll-based moves with less start lag than normal.
More still? Well, Quite. Rita has yet another trick up her sleeve with this move. If you hit A as Rita is spinning, she'll whip her scroll out a bit farther and slower than normal. If this manages to hit someone with this, the scroll will magically wrap itself around the victim and pull them towards Rita, and into her normal grab. Use this on foes who think they can predict the timing of your spinning and get in to punish you.
Up Smash: Phi Negative
Yes, this move name doesn't make any mathematical sense at all. Though I dare you to try and decipher the other ones . This is essentially the opposite of the down smash: Rita gets up on her toes and begins to spin around in the same manner with her scroll extended out as a hitbox. The damage, speed and all other effects remain the same as down smash, including the amount that charging the move boosts those effects. The hitbox of course is different, moving from a bit above Rita's normal height to just above her waistline. Rita also extends her leg during the move, but it ends up off the ground, making Rita look like a ballerina while she spins. Contact with her leg deals 3% damage and flinching knockback, though it's hardly a guarantee that they'll be hit by her leg again or by the scroll.
This move reflects projectiles and interacts with icy ground in the same manner as the down smash. Since Rita doesn't have to stop dashing to use the up smash though, this move can be even more effective as an approach. This attack has average start lag and moderate end lag: the end lag can be canceled into another scroll-based move just like the down smash. Hitting A while Rita spins will result in a psedo-grab attack, also like the down smash.
Forward Smash: Ａ＝Iк{λ∈Λ} (Artin)
Rita horizontally whips her scroll out directly in front of her, the scroll becoming rigid via magic as she does so. This has rather good range, reaching half a Battlefield Platform in front of Rita. Foes who get hit by the scroll are caught in a grab hitbox, which they must escape at normal grab difficulty. Instead of reeling them into a grab though, Rita channels red energy through the scroll over half a second, which is clearly visible as it makes its way towards the victim. Once the energy hits them, it erupts into a Bowser-sized explosion that deals 15-23% damage depending on charge, along with knockback that KOs at 115%. This can serve as a nice KO move for Rita outside of her spells: she can potentially use a spell to set it up, use it on an unsuspecting foe out of down/up smash or slide across ice to increase its range.
However there is a bit of risk that comes with this move. If Rita catches a foe too close to herself, she can be caught in the explosion as well, and take the same damage and knockback as the foe. With her low weight, she can very easily kill herself like this. And that's just a reeeeeally embarrassing way to go. There's also the lag: this move has above average start lag and pretty bad end lag as she brings her scroll back in. So just be careful when using this one.
Tilts
Forward Tilt: Wrap-Around
Rita quickly whips her scroll in front of her, attempting to catch a foe in it. If she hits someone, the scroll will magically wrap around them. Rita then spins around 180 degrees and releases her foe on the opposite side, with them facing away from her. This deals no damage or knockback, but does leave Rita with a very slight lag advantage (though they're far enough away that Rita can't grab them). This move also counts as a hit for Rita's Overlimit bar. This can be a prime way to confuse foes and force them to slip up: Rita can grab them in the middle of a move and force them to finish it in a different location, possibly leaving them wide open for attack. If you really want to annoy them, try throwing out a Spread Zero after this move to force them to move towards or away from you. This move starts quickly and has average end lag.
Up Tilt: β×ψ＝√ (Rudolf)
Rita crouches down briefly, looking very similar to the start of her down smash. Instead of spinning around though, Rita suddenly jumps up into the air, attacking with her scroll in a vertical Shoryuken motion. This move has very good upwards range, and deals 8% damage and medium knockback that won't kill until well beyond 200% damage. This provides Rita with a nice anti-air move as well as projectile defense: she can reflect any energy-based projectile with this move, even fully charged Charge Shots. However, she will always reflect it at an angle, so the projectile will rarely shoot straight back at its user. The downfall of this move is in its above average end lag, as Rita lands on the ground after attacking and takes a moment to reset herself.
Down Tilt: ∠＝∞ (Wallis)
Rita crouches down slightly, with one of her hands nearly touching the ground directly under her. Instead her scroll magically shoots along the ground from under her hand, reaching a Ganondorf length in front of her. This traps foes in multiple hits, dealing 10-13% total. This also has a 50% chance to trip foes, dealing flinching knockback if it fails to.
This does a pretty good job of messing with opponents who roll towards you to avoid a targeting or wide-range spell, potentially tripping them and robbing them of the option to roll away from Rita to get up. With the disadvantageous situations this can leave foes in, it becomes very useful for Rita to have a spell or even a wall from Riot Horn or Stalagmite to cut off an escape route for the foe, making them easier to predict. She can even catch the foe with her forward smash if she manages to predict them correctly. This move has average start lag and moderate end lag.
Aerials
Neutral Aerial: ∫∇＝Σ(ωπ) (Stokes)
Rita isn't too effective at aerial combat, but she still has some impressive range on her aerial attacks nonetheless. Rita whips her scroll downwards from above her head and then back upwards, creating a crescent-shaped hitbox in front of her body, which also hits above her head, directly below her and slightly behind her. The only place this move doesn't hit is directly behind Rita. The first hit deals 4% damage along with decent hitstun, while the second deals 5% and medium knockback that won't KO until past 200% damage. This move has average start lag and executes surprisingly fast, with little end lag. This makes it useful for defending against gimp attempts or almost any attempt to attack an airborne Rita. This also leaves foes in prone for nearly half a second if they hit the ground, allowing Rita to take advantage of their vulnerable state with a powerful Riot Horn or Stalagmite.
Forward Aerial: ζ＝δτ（ωρ）(Laplace)
Rita holds one hand behind her, forming a light blue orb of energy in her palm. This orb grows near Kirby's size as Rita slowly raises her arm above her head. She then slams the orb down in front of her for an effective spike, dealing 12% damage and KOing at 135% damage. This does spike foes at a 45 degree angle away from Rita, so this can provide for a nice way to force foes into various spells, or even knocking foes back down to earth who've been launched up by an earth-based spell. This move does have moderate start and end lag, so don't think you can throw this out whenever you want.
Back Aerial: ∠＝(ωπ) (Descartes)
While it's impossible to tell from the front, Rita has a seldom-used spellbook attached to the back of her belt, which she uses for this move and this move only. Rita removes the book from her belt and holds it out directly behind her. This deceivingly durable book can be used for protection: it can shield Rita from up to two attacks (each individual hit counting as an attack) that deal 10% damage or less. Rita will put the book away after absorbing two hits to save it from destruction, and she'll store it away after 1.25 seconds otherwise. Rita suffers average lag when taking out or putting away the book. She will also put it away upon hitting the ground.
While the book is out, pressing A again will cause the book's pages to shoot outwards in a form similar to Rita's scroll, while remaining attached to the book itself. The paper reaches nearly half a Battlefield platform behind Rita, dealing 9% damage and knockback that KOs at 180%. A pretty quick and effective attack in its own right, this also serves to further solidify the protection this aerial as a whole provides. If a foe tries to use a multi-hit attack to get rid of Rita's makeshift shield, she can potentially use this part of the move to hit them between the first and second hits of their attack. Unless foes are confident in their ability to quickly close in and hit Rita with an attack that deals more than 10%, Rita can cover her back quite well with this move. As a side note, this can be used as a (mediocre) tether recovery.
Up Aerial: Scroll Up
In one slightly telegraphed motion, Rita hurls her scroll above her head, reaching one Battlefield platform upwards over half a second. After the scroll reaches its maximum range, Rita performs the random flipkick that has come to be associated with up aerials in general. She jumps upwards as she performs the kick, the distance of which is comparable to Sheik's second jump. Rita also keeps her scroll extended upwards during her kick, increasing the move's range by a bit.
Rita's scroll is a grab hitbox for this move: foes are dragged down and thrown under Rita for low knockback and 5% damage. Rita will only perform the flipkick upon another tap of A if she snatches a foe, which deals 7% damage and average knockback with good hitstun. And yes, she can hit foes she already caught in the scroll with this before they get thrown under her: this does release them though. Alternatively, this can be used as a tether recovery to get Rita back to the stage, though it's not much better than Ivysaur's pitiful tether. This move has somewhat high start lag and low end lag, and also leaves foes in prone if they hit the ground. Rita can only use this move once per air trip, though it refreshes itself if she actually hits someone with it.
Down Aerial: Scroll Down
Rita quickly tosses her scroll downwards, forming a hitbox in front of her that curves under her feet as well. Foes hit by the part of the scroll in front of her take 4% damage and low knockback, not really anything to get excited about. The hitbox near and under her feet though, is more powerful. It deals 7% damage and spiking knockback that KOs at 170%.
In addition to knocking foes into spells and gimping possiblities, this leaves foes in prone, setting them up to be hit by a saved Riot Horn or Stalagmite. And due to this move's low start-up lag, it can be short-hopped to give Rita a quick way to put her foes in prone. However, Rita can be screwed over by landing lag if she misses. Though there is a way around the end lag: Rita can cancel the lag right into a down smash. Foes who want to punish Rita would be best to attack her with an aerial seeing as how her bottom half can be covered this way.
Grabs & Throws
Grab and Pummel
There's nothing really special about Rita's grab. She grabs in front of her with both hands, having below average reach due to her shorter arms. For her pummel she elbows the foe in the gut, dealing 1% per hit every half second. And just as a note, it takes 3 pummels to equate to one hit for OverLimit, so spamming pummels will only get you so far.
Forward Throw: (δ/χ) λ＝ι (Ideal)
Rita pushes her foe 1/3rd of a Battlefield platform in front of her, and then immediately performs what looks very much like her forward smash. Rita whips her scroll out in front of her horizontally, the scroll becoming rigid via magic as she does so. This essentially has the same effects as the forward smash as well. The foe gets trapped in the scroll's grab hitbox, and Rita channels energy through the scroll. The energy is purple in this case, and the explosion it causes upon reaching the foe is only half as large as the one caused by the forward smash. It deals 10% damage and medium knockback that won't KO until 155%. And this explosion only damages Rita's victim, it can't hit Rita herself or other foes. Rita will cancel the actual attack if she forces her victim into a spell with the initial push, leaving her free to use or save another spell if need be.
Back Throw: Rita PAWNCH
I think you can already guess what this move will consist of. Rita quickly moves her opponent behind her and rears her fist back before delivering the pawnch to their gut. This deals 9% damage and medium knockback, pretty much being a straight-forward way of getting the foe the hell away from Rita or forcing them into spells.
Up Throw: Into Blue Wind
Rita quickly KNEE OF JUSTICEs her foe in the face, dealing 7% damage and low upwards knockback. This can be chained right into another grab at low percents, though don't expect to get more than 2 more grabs in. Rita can also chain this into her up tilt, or if you're lucky, an up or down smash. Whatever the case, you can pretty effectively build up Rita's Overlimit with correctly timed follow up attacks.
Down Throw: Non-Warlordian Stomp
Rita lets her foe go and immediately stomps down hard on their foot. This deals 4% damage and stuns them for about half a second, leaving them vulnerable to a spell or another attack. You can blast them away with a Fireball, use Spread Zero and try to predict their roll, or even use forward smash if you want (though the foe will be close enough that Rita will hit herself with the explosion). They'd better hope that Rita doesn't have a powerful spell saved and ready for them when she grabs them.
Playing as Rita: Unlimited Mordio
While Rita can certainly hold her own in a close range fight, she's a mage by title. She really does depend on spells to deal the majority of her damage and to get KOs. Thus she should primarily be played as a camper. Foes will generally want to approach her as quickly as possible, and not give her any time to use her powerful spells. Rita has plenty of ways to make this difficult for them though. First of course, there are her spells. Her basic spells are vital: constant use of Fire Ball, Champagne and Stone Blast can get foes on their toes by themselves. Some other spells can be used to reshape the field to give Rita an advantage, such as Stalagmite or Riot Horn. Still other spells like Blade Roll or Splash can give Rita some direct protection: Tidal Wave is extremely effective at this, but it'll take a lot of work to get that one off without being in OverLimit. Freeze Lancer's ability to freeze water moves also proves helpful here: creating some awkwardly-shaped ice structures or icy ground can make it a real pain for opponents to approach. However, there are those types of enemies who think they can out-camp Rita. Especially for them, Rita has moves like her up tilt or down/up smashes to reflect projectiles back at them, and her back aerial for more general defense. If Rita does start getting beaten at long range, she can try to mount an approach of her own using shorthopped aerials (particularly back air) or a dash attack. If there's a good amount of ice on the stage, Rita can slide across it while using her up or down smash to get to her foe.
Now what does Rita down once her foe gets close to her? She can simply force them away with moves like her jab, throws or an aerial, but why would you want to? It's extremely hard for Rita to rack significant damage or KO without having the benefit of OverLimit. So she's got to rack up some hits on her foe to build up her meter. Rita's up and down smashes are a good place to start: they can get 3 to 5 hits depending on charge and set foes up to be hit with other moves. If your foe likes take to the air to attack, use up smash, and use down smash if they like to stick to the ground. Mix in some uses of forward tilt and down tilt to keep foes guessing and throw them off-balance, especially ftilt. You can even throw a Spread Zero in there after a forward tilt and try to predict a roll. Spread Zero is pretty useful here, often being able to force foes to run right into Rita's arms (I meant nothing suggestive by that ). Aside from already mentioned moves, up tilt or Rita's jab can be good follow-ups from a down or up smash. You can even go from an up smash to a down smash if Rita's foe is particularly careless. Aerials are also nice options: a well-timed dair can even set them up perfectly for a down smash. Try using the grab hitbox of the up/down smash too if the foe thinks they've got the timing of those moves figured out. Rita's got some good options from her grab too. She can knock them away to camp some more, or she can set them up for another attack with her up or down throw. It would also be very helpful to have an ice structure or stage alternation nearby to force foes up against to give them less escape options.
Once you've (hopefully) gotten a few levels of OverLimit filled, it's time to really go on the offensive. You can certainly really get going with some basic spells with decreased cast time: combining Fire Ball, Spread Zero and Stone Blast can really put some quick damage or pressure on foes. You'll need a bit of pressure to pull off more powerful spells. Spiral Flare doubles as a pressure device and a strong KO move, it'll really scare foes off from getting close to you. Freeze Lancer and Riot Horn can deal a lot of damage, and Tractor Beam can hold foes in place to be heavily damaged, as can Ivy Rush. Negative Gate can be used to drag foes into certain spells, or bring them towards Rita to be attacked at close range. Violent Pain can deal a lot of damage, and be a serious distraction for foes. And if Rita needs a bit of protection, she can use Blade Roll or Tidal Wave to cover her back. Try to freeze Tidal Wave right before it expires to get maximum protection out of the move.
When it comes to actually KOing, Rita's got no shortage of options. Spiral Flare, Aqua Laser, Ground Dasher and Crimson Flare are only a few of those options. It's far easier though, to trap them with something like Ivy Rush before hitting with one of her big KO moves. Another thing Rita can turn to is her forward smash, which needs proper spacing to work. With moves like Spread Zero and Negative Gate, Rita can certainly get foes within that half-platform range to hit them without catching herself in the blast. Of course there's always the possibility that the foe will try to wait out Rita's OverLimit offstage by regrabbing the ledge or just using some awesome floating ability or something. For situations like that, Thunder Blade and Crimson Flare can easily force foes back to the stage with the threat of being spiked to their death. Stalagmite can destroy foes who are hanging on the ledge too, so they wont be safe there either. Rita can always attempt to actively gimp foes too with one of her spiking aerials or an up aerial, though that's not too advisable. Finally there's Meteor Storm, which is really more effective against airborne foes to begin with. Rita's opponent simply does not want to be offstage when Meteor Storm is in effect: they can easily be carried up off the screen to their doom.
This is all without mentioning the possibilities for spell combos. To start, Spread Zero is a spell that can be used in almost any situation. If a foe has to roll or run away from another spell, Spread Zero essentially has a 50% chance of hitting them if they don't jump. This can often hit them right back into the spell they were trying to avoid. If you can force a foe to roll back at close range to dodge a Spread Zero, you can even catch them in her forward smash if you're lucky. You might be best saving a spell to go along with Spread Zero when you don't have OverLimit active: even outside of OL, Rita can find time to save any spell with a bit of time. I've already mentioned Freeze Lancer, with its nice ability to freeze water-based spells solid. Using it on a foe trapped in Champagne turns the bubbles into solid damaging objects, which adds on to the damage that Freeze Lancer itself causes. And if you freeze a spell like Splash when a foe is caught in it, they'll be stuck in the ice, and perfectly vulnerable to follow-ups. There's also Ivy Rush, which if you remember, damages foes caught in its vines if the vines are hit with a fire-based spell. You can really put the hurt on foes if you hit them with a fire spell while they're caught, adding the damage caused by the burning vines to the base damage of the spell.
Aside from direct interactions, the spells do certainly interact indirectly. Moves like Spiral Flare, Aqua Laser or Ground Dasher can strongly encourage foes to take to the air, where spells like Crimson Flare, Thunder Blade and especially Meteor Storm are at their strongest. Putting some ice or some stage altercations between Rita and the foe can also force them to take to the skies as well. This works in reverse as well: foes who are scared out of the air by Meteor Storm will obviously be more vulnerable to ground-based spells. Violent Pain can also make foes more predictable. The fact that it follows the foe around as it targets them can make them react in certain ways. If they have strong jumps for example, you could expect them to take to the skies to dodge it. Fast foes might try to run or roll past it: a Spread Zero at that moment could knock them back into Violent Pain if you predict which direction they'll flee.
While Rita bombards her opponents with spells, she certainly has many options to run up and try to knock them into the spells herself. Aside from obvious ones like her forward aerial, moves like her down aerial and the Splash spell can leave foes in prone. And if you've forgotten, Riot Horn gains a bunch of power against prone foes. There's really endless possibilities for Rita to combo spells into each other: basic spells like Stone Blast can be paired with powerful ones like Ground Dasher, with the basic spell playing the role of a zoner to force them into the other one. Stuff like this can be done even without OverLimit if you're persistent with saving one spell gradually whenever you have space. Which spell you decide to save really depends on how aggressive you want to be, and what style of play your foe prefers.
There's essentially very little that makes this Final Smash worth using over Ancient Catastrophe, though this spell is one of epicness and win. This essentially replaces Thunder Blade in Rita's movelist when she has the Final Smash glow: if she hits someone with the actual 'blade' hitbox of Thunder Blade, the game will freeze as the camera zooms in on Rita. The camera will then zoom out as Rita performs this animation. The spell itself, of course, forms around the foe who got hit by Thunder Blade. Once all is said and done, the foe takes 40% damage and knockback that KOs at 85%. And she does say all her dialogue in english rather than japanese (why won't they bring the PS3 version of the damn game out of Japan? (crs)).
Taunts and Victory Poses
Up Taunt: The More You Know
Rita takes out her spellbook and quickly flips through it, though barely focusing on its content. She takes a jab at her foe during this, saying "Flattery will get you nowhere!" Yeah... thanks for warning us about that -_-
Side Taunt: What am I, a walking Matchbox?
Rita is known for her constant usage of her Fireball spell in in-game cutscenes in Tales of Vesperia, and this taunt reflects that. An orange elemental glyph appears under Rita as if she's casting Fireball, but she doesn't take a charging stance. Instead she holds out her hand with her palm facing up, as a small ball of fire appears in it. After about a second Rita's expression changes to one of boredom, at which point the fireball leaves her hand and floats a short distance above it. She finishes by snapping her fingers, which causes the fireball to erupt in a small explosion of fire (this doesn't cause any damage or anything). Back in MYM5, Roy Mustang is giving me a death glare.
Down Taunt: Rolleyes
The name says pretty much all there is to this taunt. Rita rolls her eyes and says "Idiot..." in an annoyed tone. Rita gets right to the point on this one.
Victory Pose 1: Rita's Calculations
I can't vouch for the accuracy of these calculations, but her opponents obviously didn't do much to disprove them. Rita raises her hand up in a dismissive wave motion to her defeated foes, while barely looking at them at all. She then says "You guys never had a chance, not even one percent!" It's no secret that Rita can be extremely cocky both during and after fights.
2: I am Disappoint
Rita takes out her spellbook and begins flipping through its pages, actually looking at them this time. While she does this she says "Hah! You're done already?" If you can tell from her slightly bored expression after saying this, Rita is quite disappoint.
3: Serious Rita
Yes, Rita can be completely serious too. The mage folds her arms and slowly turns around to face away from the screen. While doing that she says "We don't just change. We continue on from that point."
Rita! That set of yours was amazing! Wh...what do you mean... That wasn't really anything special! No it was special! It was really, really cool! Enough already...! It wasn't that special... Well... I was just thinking how lucky I am to have a friend who's so good at magic! Really...? Th-thanks...
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