This matchup is currently one of the few I switch to my secondaries on (along with Villager and Rosalina) when I'm serious about winning. I don't believe it's unwinnable by any stretch of the imagination, but Cloud has tools which put the matchup heavily in his favor.
He has:
- A hard-hitting, rushdown playstyle combination.
- Limit Charge.
- Blade Beam.
- Long range.
Allow me to touch upon each point individually.
Cloud's build as a character is similar to Roy's, Little Mac's, Bowser's, or Captain Falcon's; he gets in, he does damage, and generally applies a ton of pressure. These types of characters have always been a little bit uncomfortable to deal with head-to-head, and
Pac-Man tends to use his camping tools (hydrant and trampoline) and his projectiles (hydrant and bonus fruit) to keep them out of his personal bubble of space. When our opponent tends to be more hard-hitting than rushdown, we're better off using the hydrant sparingly, as it can be knocked away by our opponent easier than by us, and we might better be called
slippery than campy. (That said, if our opponent goes for the hydrant every time we put it down, we can use that to bait them out.)
Cloud, however, throws a monkey wrench into this formula. He isn't the cookie-cutter hard-hitting, rushdown character because
he has tools that actively prevent us from camping him or fighting him with projectiles.
Cloud's Limit Charge is an extremely powerful anti-camping tool that Cloud can use which completely messes with our game plan. He gains an advantage from a situation that we traditionally do. If we're camping when Cloud begins using Limit Charge, we have two options: allow him to get to full charge or go in and attack. Both of these scenarios put us in unfavorable positions because he beats us face-to-face.
Cloud's Blade Beam is a solid projectile which gives us more problems still, because it messes with our bonus fruit (should we try to attack him with projectiles instead of outright camping him, which we should be doing). His blade beam clashes with and stops cherry, strawberry, orange, apple, melon, bell (if it hits), and key (I may be wrong on the key). However, Galaxian is amazing in this matchup since it goes through all projectiles no problem. Further, the key moves so fast that it often gets through to do damage if timed well enough, and the bell moves strangely enough that it can often be used well also. Just charge carefully and avoid Cloud at all costs.
The tricky part about this matchup is that we're limited to playing a slippery playstyle with three projectiles (if the Cloud player is using all of his tools). And staying away from Cloud is much, much easier said than done. His reach is
ridiculous. Use fast moves and dance just outside of Cloud's range, punishing him for any whiffed attacks. If you have to, play around with Cloud a little in training mode and see how far his moves reach just so you can make sure you're out of range against your opponents.
And, finally, something I cannot stress enough.
CHASE CLOUD OFFSTAGE
Our gimping game is fantastic against Cloud...mainly because Cloud's offstage game is awful. Don't just rely on sniping with oranges or other fruit. You need to actually go out and nair, bair, or fair to get him just far enough away from the ledge that he cannot recover. It's not too difficult, really. The hard part is getting him offstage, which I'll leave you to figure out. Seriously, though, be so aggressive offstage that your opponents have nightmares about yellow spheres devouring them.
