So after a few hours of tinkering, I figured I'd give a breakdown of Banjo-Kazooie's moveset for anyone that's interested:
-Jab: Standard multi-hit, cool animation but damage is meh and the finisher has virtually no kill potential
-Ftilt: Banjo stabs forward with Kazooie's beak. Great horizontal range and speed. Knockback is reasonable but doesn't have much kill potential even at the sweet spot or at relatively high percents.
-Dtilt: Low stab with Kazooie's beak. Great reach with reasonably low startup. Banjo slinks back a little at the end making it a fairly safe poking tool, however the damage is pretty sad (only 6%), there's a relatively large amount of lag at the end, and the knockback doesn't lend itself to any combo starters. Could be used as a followup to FF Fair but otherwise I'm still trying to decide when and where best to use this.
-Uptilt: Banjo does a sharp upward kick. Great vertical range to offset a poor horizontal range. Combos into up air at low to mid percents. Can kill at extremely high percents.
-Fsmash: Breegull bash I think they called it. Has amazing power along with both vertical and horizontal range. A little on the slow side though.
-Dsmash: Kazooie pounds the ground with both wings. Reasonably fast for a smash attack and the launch angle is pretty awesome (about 30 degrees from the horizontal) making it an excellent 2 frame/edge guard tool.
-UpSmash: Banjo spins around with Kazooie's wings. Very similar to Wolf's up smash with a deceptively large horizontal hitbox that pulls opponents into a strong vertical launch. Be careful though, the end lag on it is pretty bad.
-Up air: Kazooie does a scissor cut with her wings. This move is stupidly fast and has insane priority, makes for multiple combos into itself, but trades these advantages for really low damage and knockback.
-Nair: Kazooie spin attack similar to Ivysaur's Nair. Speed is decent but range and damage are relatively low and the hitbox doesn't seem consistent if you fast fall. Given the knockback and startup lag, I'm not exactly sure yet what its combo potential is.
-Fair: Banjo does a hard downward punch. Very slow but very powerful. Great kill potential and super short endlag when autocanceled. Can combo into Ftilt or Dtilt at low percents.
-Bair: Multi-jab with Kazooie's beak. Decent damage and great speed but the hitbox is kinda wonky making it somewhat difficult to land all three hits. It's also similar to Nair in that the opponent just kind of falls out of it if you fast fall. Haven't found much use for it yet outside of the obvious. I think people that are good at fast turn-around RAR Bair will break this move but I'm not too great at it so I can't say for sure.
-Dair: Kazooie stabs into the ground with her beak. Standard stall and fall. Nothing really special here.
-Neutral Special: Egg shot. The first shot of this (the lobbed egg) is as powerful and pesky as Yoshi's egg toss. Great for poking and pestering at a distance. The "shotgun mode" with the multishot is actually pretty great for counter-zoning a spammer but the eggs do laughable damage and don't have much range so I'm not sure how useful that mode is going to be. Maybe use for edge guarding?
-Forward special: I forget the official name. Wing Dash? This move is freaking ridiculous. Nuff said. The knockback makes it an absolutely BROKEN kill move and the invincibility frames make for the most hilarious counter to zoners. "Oh, you want to shoot an arrow? You're dead." It's also a free recovery move, so it's no wonder you're limited to only 5 uses per life. Beware though, the startup frames are NOT invincible and it can be punished on shield so don't get spammy with it.
-Up Special: spring board. Basically sonic's recovery but not quite as high. Decent recovery move with freedom of movement after.
-Down special: Grenade poop. Kazooie poops out...well, a grenade. I can see this being almost as annoying as Snake's grenades, however, due to the method and distance they bounce, combined with the really short fuse, I found it somewhat difficult to throw them at the opponent without them blocking or interrupting me. The best way to grab the grenade is to immediately roll backwards and pick it up, then throw it immediately after that. You need space and time to do that, though, so I imagine that the grenade will be best used as an edge guard tool (though it doesn't seem to kill and the knockback angle doesn't really hurt your opponent trying to recover) or as a stage control tool similar to ROB's Gyro or Diddy's banana. You can also poop it out midair to screw your opponent's attempts to punish your landing. Basically, this move is gonna need some labbing before we discover its true potential.
Bottom line: B-K isn't quite as fast as Joker or as strong as Hero, but they are a super fun character and much more straight-forward. I feel that they will be much more accessible to the general body of players and I also feel that they have some competitive potential, though of course, only time will tell.
Fatmanonice had a great post yesterday going over why it made sense for those costumes to get revealed with pack 3 and how that may actually be a good thing for Geno’s chances. I could see them including Beware the Mushroom Forest and Battle against an Armed Boss with a costume but I also think with Cloud only getting two songs and each DQ Hero receiving 2 songs per game that may just be exactly what SE would be willing to provide to another character as annoying as that may be. The next costume pack announcements are going to be incredibly suspenseful though that’s for sure.
