Make Your Move 26: Top 50 Is In! MYM27 starts on January 31st

[Rychu]

"Shadow, what do you think it's like on earth?"



​

 

[FrozenRoy]

Got It Memorized? (Axel Stone Perkilator )

Hey there Perkilator! I remember you coming by a long time ago, since you made an Arvis set, so it's cool to see you back. Maybe you'll stick around for longer this time?

Leaving aside standard newcomer advice, I think the biggest issue with Axel Stone is that he's really undertuned. He has takes massive recoil on Specials if he doesn't wait for a universal 5 second meter, but his Specials are generally weak or average strength despite that restriction. Consider, for example, Down Special being a "just fine" get off me tool that deals over DOUBLE the recoil of Thunder which is a powerful move with lots of versatility. Side Special is like a Raptor Boost without armor and with less distance, but potentially slightly higher damage potential. He comes across feeling like a poor man's Captain Falcon or Terry to me. I would personally amp up how strong his Specials are, while keeping the high recoil that limits them to either higher risk or a 5 second timer.

Outside of that, the biggest issue is probably a lack of detail like Katapultar mentioned. This moveset is not bereft of ideas, Down Throw feels like it could be cool for example, but the moveset is usually missing key details that allow it to be visualized and come to life in the reader's head. What kind of combos does he get, rather than just nebulous "he can combo"? What's the max damage on Neutral Special? What does he get off hitting Side Special? Does he have an aerial weakness since moves like Up Tilt are bad anti-airs? Basically since Axel Stone isn't in the game, we gotta get enough detail we can really imagine him in the game. This set sure isn't the worst newcomer set I've seen in that regard, for example it has damage percents on every move and usually has lag listed (although moves that don't really should), but if you want to improve it is what I would suggest.

I like that you included the music you'd imagine was added to Smash if Axel got in, that's a nice touch in my opinion.

Overall it is not an awful first effort, just underpowered and could use some fleshing out. The core idea has a nice hook with the meter / recoil, which is a good sign. Hope to see you around more!

 

[FazDude]

Expecting a joke set?

Too bad. Waluigi time.
​

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I hope you all enjoy my first MYM set! I'm open to feedback, as this is my first time doing a moveset on the same scale as your common MYM kit.

 

[Perkilator]

Quick question: are overhauls of characters already in Smash allowed?

 

[n88]

Quick question: are overhauls of characters already in Smash allowed?

Yeah, go for it.

 

[UnknownFate]

The Human

docs.google.com

The Human is probably one of my oldest movesets so It may be a little bit rough around the edges.
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Heavyweight Big Band

docs.google.com

Big Band is on the same level of aging as the previous moveset. However, it may not be as rough as Human
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Spire [V2]

docs.google.com

The Defect is one of my latest works that was submitted in same tournament that the MYM leaders participated in
(This may be edited in the future or during the process of submissions process due to multiple factors)

 

[GolisoPower]

O Chan E, Is E A’ Ghalla Seo A Th’ Ann
Nui Harime by Arctic Tern
Kill La Kill is an anime I know has quite the reputation as one of Studio Trigger's more famous works, and the fact that I know that Little Jill Horner over here is one of the top bananas of "most spiteful asshats in anime" really says something about her reputation as a character. Might not've taken so long to point out, but she is an irredeemable monster. Set's pretty fun, tho.

I feel like our time working on Flandre together hit some inspiration with you because that Neutral Spec seems really close to identical. Not a complaint, just an unbiased observation...well, not entirely unbiased because I think it's a unique and fun spin on it. It took me a bit to piece together how her NSpec worked, but then I pieced together that it's like Isabelle's Side Special in a sense. Come to think of it, I should probably add a "closest move equivalents" section to some of my sets for ease of reading. Her Down Special being a cross between Meta Knight's DSpec and Corrin's SSpec is an interesting way to represent her quick speed from what little I've seen of the anime and paired with the clones seems to be like some amazing pressure, to boot. Lastly, Nui steals Peach's Up Special for her own by going all Mary Poppins up in this ho, but the fact that she can bait foes by wilfully entering a helpless state before reentering the floating state sounds absolutely devious and can really make for some mean whiff-punishes. Her Specials really fit this female dog (Smashboards won't let me use that word so I'm sticking with this alternative) and I love it in the most hateful way imaginable. ...you know, I kinda understand her philosophy of love and hate being the same coin now, loathe as I am to admit.

Her chipper Scarfy-like demeanor of her being cutesy but extremely dangerous seems to shine in her animations at normal percentages, but then the set shows her going full-on frothing-at-the-mouth psycho at higher damages. Down Smash being a Life Fiber Spirit Bomb is just scary because that implies that she can tap into the Life Fibers' energy to create it, which is absolutely scary. Considering it's Nui, though, wouldn't that just be the Revenge Death Ball or something? The dainty and floaty nature of Nui makes for some fun attack animations too, such as when she uses Luigi's Green Missile as a Dash attack or her Down Aerial just her floating down like she was exiting a UFO. Just...everything about Nui has this off-putting, eerie thing about her that shows up in various parts of the set, and honestly, that love-hate coin is kinda spinning pretty fast right now for me. This seems like the strongest contender for my JamCon vote so far...though that might be usurped by Dozle, but who knows? Either way, this is like an excellently-crafted suit/dress to present yourself in this JamCon.

 

[FrozenRoy]

The Reflect (The Defect UnknownFate )

I already read The Defect for the FF5 Tournament, although I gave it a quick once over to see if there were any edits, and I thought I'd give it a proper Make Your Move comment since you posted it over here. Welcome to Make Your Move 26, by the way! Hope you'll make more new sets to post throughout the contest, haha.

The biggest issue I find with The Defect is one I mentioned in the tournament, which is that a lot of the Orbs are too weak, or at least too weak compared to the Lightning Orb. The Frost Orb and Darkness Orb are the particular weaknesses here, as the Frost Orb's movement speed debuff is extremely weak right now (5% slow or, essentially, losing 1/20th of their speed) given it is a centerpiece Special. Now if this was something like a debuff on a throw, it might make sense as just a little "extra boost", but it is very weak (and kinda lame) when it requires spending an Orb which takes resources to build up to. This is especially true since the Electric Orbs do more damage, kill earlier and also have "high hitstun" when Evoked that makes me think they can be combo'd off of. I would make the 10% slow the default level. The Darkness Orb simply does too little killing for what you have to do with it. The damage is fine, in line with Wario Waft which is a very comparable move, but killing at 110% is...quite late for an attack that by default takes at least a minute and a half to get there. Especially since it lacks the easy bake combos and armor of Waft and by design will lock you out of your powerful Electric Orb Neutral Special, not sure if it affects Side Special in any way though.

I would also say the lack of any different Orb effects on the Smashes, even leaving aside more "special" things and just tacking into normal damage / knockback, is a bit lame. Olimar for comparison has unique damage and whatnot for every Pikmin (of which he has 5) and for every move, so given The Defect has a much harder time getting Orbs compared to Olimar's Pikmin that it would be very valid to do so. What if Darkness Orb, for example, started with less damage but also less lag on the Smashes to turn them into kinda combo tools, but later on as it "powered up" (ignoring that rn it needs to be out to power up, although you could Down Special it back into your fold if you wanted) it becomes your slowest Smashes but also a kill move? Some stuff like that.

The melee in this set actually isn't awful, maybe a bit underbaked, but I do think that given The Defect has entire deck playstyles based around his non-Orb melee that more inspiration could have been used from the cards if wanted even if just for animations but also in effects. Would have loved Go For the Eyes and Beam Cell as a throw / throws with the ability to debuff the foe, maybe Claw as an attack that gets STRONGER the more it is in your stale move queue? Encourages using it a lot, but that in turn encourages The Defect to go into some mindgames with if it'll use Claw or go for Orb attacks. Alternately, you could go a totally different direction and include attacks like Ball Lightning, Doom and Gloom or Cold Snap that provide specific bonuses towards getting an Orb. Something like The Defect shooting out a spike of ice out in front of him with Down Tilt, it melts quickly but can absorb a weak hit, and if it absorbs that hit it counts towards blocking damage for making a Frost Orb? Ooooor you could include stuff like Blizzard and Lightning Strike that highly reward getting orbs. Finally, I do wish this set had some more detail to it in general but one that particularly stuck out to me is how much faster does Darkness Orb charge when you gain another orb? The set doesn't say and that could massively change the balance of Darkness Orbs depending. Same with how the Electric Orb says to deal 25% but nebulously "combos speed up progress".

Enough negatives, I do have positives to bring up here. The actual Orb system feels like a good translation of The Defect's Orb system in Slay the Spire and seperating them into essentially Offense / Defense / Time is a nice division here. Neutral Special also feels like a good way to implement the feeling of Casting and Evoking in a way that actually reminds me of Rivals of Aether, and Up Special is a fun recovery particularly Echo Form (although I must say including Echo Form solely as a recovery and not something...More is a bit odd to me). I'd consider replacing the other Specials or modifying them in some way to be a bit More though, Barrage in particular feels like it could instead be a Smash Attack or something when The Defect has a LOT of fun Special options. The normals in this set are a bit underbaked but not actually bad, giving The Defect a clear enough playstyle as a bit of a middleweight-feeling combo character who can do some light zoning but does struggle if he himself is getting combo'd. The playstyle section at the start does suggest a VERY different melee vibe though, noooot really sure it hit that since this guy probably mostly wants to be going for Up Tilt combos and stuff.

Overall, The Defect feels more like a set of missed opportunities than anything "bad". The actual base, the Orb System along with Cast and Evoke, is solid and it has an understanding of where it wants to go. But the balance is dodgy, it doesn't really take full advantage of the character, and the melee is more just Fine than anything else to me. Definitely does feel like a set that could go places if you wanted to put some elbow grease into editing it though, and if not you can always take the lessons into your next entry (maybe also an FFC one?). Glad to see The Defect get a set at minimum, so!

 

[Katapultar]

"Making traps is just soooo calming that I can't help it..."

2-ish day set, including a chunk of time spent at work, intended to adhere to the Jamcon 1 theme. Don't expect too much from this one. The point of that Jamcon was to build up more franchises, so better late than never, right?

 

[dilliam]

NUI 1 (Arctic Tern)

There’s a lot to love here. I really enjoyed the animations in this set, they really helped sell how cheaply animated as well as how much of a little ******* Nui is. The clones are also a very fun asset to the moveset, lots of uses to really sell how much of a tricky **** she is. I’m particularly fond of down smash, really fun kill move that can be used with clones to get even sillier. Forward throw’s effect is also fun, although the rest of the grab game is fairly standard, although with Grimace I suppose I haven’t much room to talk.

NUI 2: THE SQUEAKUEL (TortoiseNotTurtle)

In comparison to Tern’s take on the character, I have a lot less to say here. I like the general idea of Nui being very annoying to fight and while there’s a little bit of that here, it just feels like it doesn't go as deep as it could as far as mechanics and detail go. I’m also not the biggest fan of the presentation here, tables can be helpful but everything being in tables feels excessive and makes reading a little difficult in my opinion.

SKELETONS WITH GUNS (Majora)

A fun, breezy minion-heavy set. I definitely enjoyed the minion behavior mechanics at play here, especially with how Ne-Gok-Sa needs to consider positioning with certain minions. The hard minion cap is also simple but it works, keeps players from spamming too much while still giving a lot of freedom. It definitely feels like a bite-size version of Magnus from back in MYM24, which isn’t a bad thing at all.

THE JOE SHOW (Brazilian Guy)

This is another perfectly serviceable set, but I do find myself a little disappointed in what little the set does beyond the novelty of the character pick. I do think the baton mechanic is fun, but overall the melee feels very standard when you consider the character’s source material. Family Guy is a really goofy show where the characters get into all kinds of shenanigans! Lean into that!

MASTER OF PUPPETS (OldManHan)

There’s a lot I really enjoyed in this set. First off, the potions and amulets both have a ton of really creative effects and the resource management behind them is just as creative and clever. The dolls themselves are also really fun with their different attributes and attacks, they really make this character feel like Steve in how there’s a ton of stuff you can do with them, a type of design philosophy I’m very fond of. The seal of exploration in particular is very fun in how you can attach it to basically anything for free resources or restricting movement so opponents don’t give you exactly what you want.

ICKY EW (Slavic)

Big fan of the Mindgamestm on display here. Ikkyu is a character that lives and dies on mixups, something that gets a lot of mileage in this set. The tiger is a really good centerpiece for this, letting Ikkyu get really crazy with his setups and conceal a huge portion of his moveset. The minions here get some good time to shine too, getting featured in a lot of different moves and interactions. Definitely up there for me in terms of your jamcon entries. (the dinosaur whose name I cannot spell still solos though)

THE MEAN GREEN ZAKU MACHINE (Smady)

Like I said in the discord chat, this is very much comfort food in moveset form for me. It may not have many huge-brained gimmicks or mechanics going on but you just can’t go wrong with the classic Smash Daddy Heavyweight Male Antagonist. The set has a really well-written melee game as well that sells the size and impact of the mech, as well as the unhinged rage of the pilot within. While I’m not too familiar with Gundam as a franchise, I really do get a sense of how this character behaves just through how he fights and I think that’s a huge achievement.

 

[Slavic]

Tee-hee! It's just like looking in a funhouse mirror! I didn't know I sent my clones here first!



Maybe I should join the fun too!​

 

[n88]

presented without explanation or context

 

[Kholdstare]

is this anything

 

[GolisoPower]

Arknight's Mane Franchise List Crowner
Goldenglow by FrozenRoy & bubbyboytoo

And here goes FrozenRoy with the collabs again! Finally bringing Arknights to the franchise list is Goldenglow, this absolute cinnamon roll of a catgirl. I like how the gimmick is a rechargeable counter that only triggers when a certain power-level attack hits her, making it especially useful if Goldenglow gets hit with the start of what might've been a kill combo to turn the neutral in her favor. And the fact that it interrupts grabs too? I could only imagine something like, I dunno, "Static Shock Grab Release Canceling" or some tech from this. Having to think about different techs for MYM characters is pretty fun, come to think of it.

Goldenglow's Specials seem to make her out to be a stage control character all about disrupting your foe's flow and ensuring they don't get a chance to strike, and her drones seem to prove that this is the case. Her Neutral Special of summoning them seems pretty effective by itself, but then there are the other Specials that: prime your closest drone to stab itself into the first foe that goes into range like Goldenglow was using a backstab hack in TF2, grapple onto the nearest drone for a quick getaway, or command them to fire either instantly or after a delay. The amount of mind games to be had with these Specials is just ridiculous, though the fact that each drone has low HP ensures it doesn't get too ridiculous, which is a good thing. Don't want Goldenglow to become the next Steve or something.

The normals both play into her own gimmick by having some moves charge electricity for the counter and strike a good balance between electric powers and staff attacks to ensure her animations aren't too monotonous flavor-wise. But above all else they really play into her character like with F-throw: just a playful gesture being deadly is both unassuming and cool like the Spider-Man shoulder touch, but it's honestly kind of adorable, too. Other highlights include using the staff as a club for Side Smash, using her tethered drone as a makeshift dagger for Dash attack, and the absolutely splendid Final Smash you gave her. I will aid both of you in protecc'ing this kitty's happiness with my goddamn life thanks to this set you two have made! Splendid work, you two!

A' Ghalla Seo a-Rithist?!
Nui Harime by T TortoiseNotTurtle

The second of two serious sets for the character and one of five interpretations overall, Tortoise's interpretation of Little Jill Horner is a pretty decent effort at a set. I will say that I agree with a lot of the people that read it in the sense that there's very little in terms of detail, but there are some ideas in there that sets it apart from Tern's Nui, like the float-to-airdash stuff, some identical attacks repurposed into different inputs (What's Tern!Nui's Down Smash is Tortoise!Nui's Down Special, for example), and even some animations that Tern didn't use in his set (the Life Fiber arms she gets later in the series). Not exactly my cup of tea all things considered, but it's still got some good bits about it.

 

[Arctic Tern]

EMIDIUS ALVISIO (Majora)

Emidius has a lot of cool things about him that I like. For one, his ability to change his stats/properties depending on his foe’s most recent moves, which sets up for him to snowball into their counter pick depending on what he chooses. I also thought that Emidius’ ability to have a construct perform his Smashes was quite neat, and put to fairly neat use at that. The constructs created from his throws are a decent idea at base, and the payoff he can get from using FAir on them especially. Finally, a few individual moves had some cool tricks, like canceling Blade FTilt into his NSpec to set up for his stat changing.

While all of those ideas are neat on their own, where the set falls off is that they don’t really connect together the way I’d like. As the most striking example, some of Emidius’ moves inflict slowdown on hit - but they’re all the blade moves and not the scythe moves, with the latter benefiting most due to having tipper mechanics. In addition, the constructs/terrain aren’t really connected with the rest of his kit. A large part of this is that most of them are located at the end of the set - they should probably be placed after the Specials - but the USpec pillar has no mention of its obvious combo/edgeguarding/tech chase applications. Lastly, the actual buffs Emidius can get from his NSpec generally don’t have their specific uses listed; while a good portion of them are self-explanatory, I’d still like to see elaboration on how the range buff helps his scythe moves or how his passive fall speed increase helps his combos.

Ultimately, while I don’t think Emidius is truly a great set, he definitely has a lot of the ingredients of one - and as he is right now, I’d still call him good.

WALUIGI (FazDude)

I’ve always had a fondness for Waluigi, and have considered him as a character multiple times. While I’m already somewhat familiar with your Fantendo work, this is to my knowledge the first time you’ve come up with a full moveset rather than just Specials, and this does a fairly good job at capturing his personality. The moves that feel “weird”, the chaos he brings, and the potential to bring about his own downfall are all in character for Waluigi, and I also like the deliberate attempts to one-up Luigi. Him using an Item Box to give him items that can potentially benefit him via RNG also fits the theme, and the random nature of Mario Party (a series he’s quite associated with).

As with many other newcomer sets, the main issue is lack of elaboration. One of the goals of the set is to make him a mix-up character, which does fit Waluigi, but aside from randomness there’s very few actual mix ups. How does his kit lead into 50/50s (scenarios where there are only two options, and use of them will either avoid a move that can be used in that scenario or lead right into it) or shield pressure scenarios? In addition, I’m fairly sure that his grounded FTilt causes an infinite as it is now since there’s nothing stopping Waluigi from using it again on an opponent caught in the high hitstun - though that can be fixed by just making it deal normal knockback in that state. While definitely on the rough side, this is your first proper set, and there’s enough neat ideas in play that it’s rethinking how I want to tackle the character.

Comment block link here!

 

[ForwardArrow]

Patchouli Knowledge
The core idea here of allowing her to cross combine her elements into 30 different projectiles, each unique and with their own applications for her set, is a pretty wildly ambitious concept to throw out for a set. And for what its worth, Patchy has a system that makes it all work quite well, by cycling through her elements to give her access to only 5 different projectiles at any given time, a basic one that can be upgraded or combined with any of the other 4 elements. This means she can't spam any individual projectile too heavily, so "there's a huge number but there's an obvious best 2 or 3" never becomes an issue. Nor do opponents have to look at Patchouli and fear literally any projectile in her massive arsenal, even though the amount they will have to keep in mind is still a lot. Its a very strong system that makes the sheer density of options this set has work practically for all parties involved, and conveys Patchouli's raw versatility as a mage without making her flawless.

What's nice, too, is that the projectiles are individually well made. There's attention paid to how they'd flow off each other into the next projectile selection in sequence, how they'll cover various ranges and approaching options to Patchouli with each other, and in the midst of such a wide range of selections you do make sure to throw in some wacky, unconventional ones that are fun to play around with. And considering its a lot to handle off just one move, more than an entire set's worth of inputs condensed down into one, the set makes the fairly smart move to not go too crazy in the later sections. This set has a pretty impressive core and even if the latter parts aren't as exciting, they're at least filling the roles they need to in her zoning playstyle, usually with necessary weaknesses and with Up Special/Down Special still sticking out as pretty fun things to mix into all the projectile chaos.

So, I say all that, but I came away from this set not really all that thrilled with it. Like. I want to clarify, I think the set is good, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't at least a Weak Vote. But why didn't I enjoy it that much? Honestly, I think it comes down to the fact that I feel the approach ends up feeling a bit too quantity over quality. The set has a very large number of inputs to play around with that mostly flow off each other well/have a few interesting applications, but the set never really pulled out one particular tool that really grabbed my attention, more focused on breadth of tools than depth. I've expressed distaste for weapon switch in the past a lot, and this set avoids a lot of what I dislike about that genre, but unfortunately not all of it, where it hinges her playstyle moreso on how many options she has than the individual options feeling all that deep or entertaining to use. After a certain point in the projectiles it just becomes variations on the same theme of "how to cover foe's approaches to Patchouli to keep her zoning up", and after 30 sub-inputs it ends up feeling redundant even if in the nitty gritty details it isn't.

I'm not sure if this is actually something that plays bad, honestly, which is why I've struggled a bit on commenting this set, but it isn't very fun to read or think about compared to a smaller amount of options you can click together in more interesting, in-depth, or unique ways. This kind of style has certainly had its success stories(DoTA2's Invoker is a very popular character in that game, though an immediate fighting game example doesn't come to mind), but for me, it doesn't measure up to a more focused toolkit, and I'd rather read about and play with a character that's got 5 really distinct ways to zone than 30 ways that all kinda overlap but not enough that they have no reason to co-exist. I feel the latter parts of the set suffer for it to, I've failed to retain them but I kept feeling while I was reading that a number of the later inputs were just running out of things to do or wound up kind of weirdly balanced. I suspect there are ways to handle this kind of set in a way that would appeal more to me, but the end approach just feels like swamping the opponent in a sea of a billion different projectiles to cover ever angle they could come at you and not really much beyond that. Which, for the amount of effort that seems to have gone in, feels a bit disappointing to me.

I don't want to totally dismiss this set when I say this stuff. I mentioned the stuff about the systems you built being impressive for a reason, you at least make the whole thing work about as well as I could ask you to. I'm just not that fond of the core system this set works on in the first place, so it can only perform so well for me.

Dizzy
I'll admit I think this set ran into some of the same problems Patchouli did for me, where its a zoner with a truly ridiculous number of projectiles to zone with. Not as many, however, and each option feels a bit more individually fleshed out and integrated into the later inputs, so the I wouldn't say the set runs into as drastic of a quantity over quality problem. Its still there, and I don't find the set as wildly conceptually enjoyable as I did Verre, Remilia, or Crewmate, which is probably the reason I didn't come out of this set as excited as I could be over what's definitely an impressive project.

That said, Dizzy's Roman Cancels and tension are quite a fun mechanic to juggle. The process of actually getting it via tension isn't the most interesting, but at least forces Dizzy not to camp too hard, and it really is more about the payouts here. She's got some truly exceptional defensive tools that can shore up her weaknesses as a glass cannon, a death laser with enormous power and some decently potent scenarios for it to follow up out of an individual move, and Roman Cancels, which work particularly well with those core projectiles due to having a somewhat unique interaction between them and Yellow Roman Cancels(the cheaper kind). You get a choice between saving up to go all in on the death laser, shoring up your weaknesses, or having access to very powerful mixups and combo extensions that make Dizzy's projectile combination attacks and projectile supplemented approaches so potent. And its a very interesting one because even if the death laser is probably the least viable one, its still valid, and the other two are extremely important options Dizzy needs to commit to one of to actually play all that effectively.

Once the set is done with the huge number of projectiles it opens with(which, by the way, do have some pretty cool options among them, I'm a big fan of the bubbles that Dizzy can pop to extend her reach and the fish have some varied, in-depth uses both offensively and defensively that I appreciate), the melee here is quite strong. Smashes that each feel distinct in purpose, from the less powerful FSmash that none-the-less flows well into a lot of her ranged and edgeguarding tools, to Up Smash which is a great combo starter, to the vicious killing DSmash, all of them are moves that feel like they supplement the projectile game Dizzy has quite well. The air game flows quite well off the air dash, never doing anything particularly drastic with that mechanic but none-the-less integrating another Guilty Gear mechanic to some interesting extra pressure alongside her projectiles and roman cancels. While most of your sets spend a good bit of time talking about prone and tech-chasing, Dizzy goes quite a bit more in-depth on it than most, giving a detailed list similar to Hol Horse's equivalent one at one point that I quite appreciated. Its certainly not necessary in every set, but it made that part of Dizzy's game feel more like it wasn't just checking a box to make a move flow.

All in all, I did think Dizzy was quite a good set, it just didn't hit the conceptual highs of your best works last contest. And that's fine, because for what it is this is a very well done transition of a particularly MYM-y fighting game character, feeling quite true to her source material and integrating nicely into Smash at the same time.

Kagetsumugi
Pretty cool to see some of the FFC people pitching in to JamCons, its part of why this ended up the biggest JamCon we've ever had. Kagetsumugi comes out juggling quite a bold list of mechanics too. An attacking supplementing minion in Tengu is one thing, but the set also creates a whole three pronged resource economy to create minions, talismans, and dolls, with some extra ways to spend string such as your grab and Side Special. One of the potions even gives Kagetsumugi a transformation that boosts her incredibly mediocre melee game into a surprisingly potent one for a bit if she's willing to spend the resources and reduce her potion/talisman options. And I do find myself enjoying the potions and talismans, between modifying the minions to be more effective, having Tengu carry around dangerous potions on her flight trips to make her flight much scarier, or just blowing weak minions up in a devastating blast. I kind of enjoy the cost you put on the broken doll monstrosity of requiring a bunch of the previous dolls to be destroyed to make it, I think that's neat especially when her set does abuse and destroy her minions quite a bit.

Where I think it falls short for me is that the minion component, arguably the big payoff of the whole set, feels a bit poorly executed. Both of the weaker types of minion just feel like they're here to disable the foe, the broken doll monstrosity is more or less just a big wall(although its a fun bomb to use with the Chaos Talisman, for what its worth), and while Alipheese is a pretty grand reward, it mostly feels like her functions come down to "kill you really early" or "make Side Special combos into pretty much a straight up infinite until you run out of Doll Potion". I don't mind the minions being simple, necessarily, but a lot of the time it feels like it plays up the more obnoxious elements of minions, like them walling off projectiles or trapping the opponent in softlocks of stun, without really doing much that actually feels like it supplements Kagetsumugi's fighting style directly. And this set has too much stun in general, I feel, there's quite a few ways to lock your opponent down for multiple seconds at a time, self-link in a ludicrously long combo with the only setup requirement being drinking a potion, or just throw out tons of instances of little stuns between Tengu and minions that stun on contact that add up. It overall feels like it wouldn't be a very fun set to play against if she ever gets going, and that's really my biggest issue here.

Its not like there aren't interesting moves for what its worth, I like that talismans come back later for a throw, I think Up Smash is a pretty cool idea for a customizable, delaying hitbox, and I feel Forward Tilt is neat as a core melee tool that can do some double duty at recouperating or even amplifying resource generation when used on minions. But I think the set has some big issues with how it plays in that like. I like my snowball-y setup characters when it feels like they do something a bit more interesting than just trapping you in stun between their constructs forever, which is what it feels like Kagetsumugi would play like. With all that said, this set absolutely feels like you're picking up on what MYM wants out of a set at an impressive rate and having some fun with it, and I do think for what its worth, Tengu is a very fun mechanic to play around with when I just look at her in isolation. I just think it comes across as more similar to a bit of a flunked veteran effort than a big breakthrough for a newcomer, which is a fine place to be when you're still pretty new to MYM's environment and made the set in 4 days. I just think you're capable of going well beyond this.

(Also if you are going and editting up the set later, I'd recommend throwing out FSmash entirely. It basically doesn't work in its current form, nobody's going to fall for a counter with that much start lag.)

The Grimace
I'm glad you found time to put out another JamCon set after some struggles getting into a new project, and The Grimace definitely feels better than Nostalgia Critic last contest. The core projectile of him chucking around McDonalds menu items is impressively versatile, with buffs, debuffs, weight increases, and healing all serving as potential alternate functions you can get out of his big ol' menu of options. It kinda operates on the same principle as Patchouli up there did, but Grimace only really has one projectile at a time, and switches between two different menus of 4 every minute, which is an... interesting system. Its not something I think the set explores in a ton of depth necessarily, but I do like the ability to store a single breakfast/lunch menu item for later when the menu changes, or just hold onto an extra piece of food for when it'd be most convenient. I feel the set honestly stays reasonably strong through the Specials/Smashes in general, the Smash buffs via Big Mac Sauce or just being fat are fun and the Nugs even serve as an extra way to make yourself really, really fat to body slam enemies with. The fries as a way to beef up attacks even more and the goofy but enjoyable way the Up Special can be turned into a potent kill move and decent recovery is also solid.

I do think the set runs out of steam after that. I don't mind the set taking a bunch of animations from K. Rool/Patrick but its not doing much with those moves that their original users didn't already do. The big thing is that Grimace gets some armor/power from all the food he eats, which does all him to become pretty potent when he's done flinging food and binge eating to actually come out swinging, with the extra armor making his bad heavyweight neutral a little more viable and the extra power letting him score some seriously early kills. And that's neat, but I think the attacks don't end up having much more to them than that, and its particularly noticeable on the attacks that don't use Grimace's fat that they wind up with very little to talk about. I do feel like this set was more meant to be funny(which it was) and like a testing ground for some basic but fun heavyweight concepts than it was a particularly serious competitive effort, and I think it at least succeeded at that.

Though I will say, for some quick notes, I think Grimace isn't getting enough weight out of his food items, given he loses 4 units of weight per second. I think the set asks you to spam NSpecial a bit too much to get max mileage out of the melee, and it could probably afford to either have Grimace lose less weight over time or gain more from what he eats. By contrast I wonder if he heals a bit too much or his KO potential is too potent, but he's a big body heavyweight with an absolutely awful baseline recovery and worse movement than Incineroar. Its probably fine for him to have some stuff that'd be dumb on a more normal character.

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Koitsu

I thought this might be your Jamcon choice this time around - notably longer than your other Jamcon sets. Koitsu is immediately unique for being a tiny character, something that’s uncommon in MYM compared to giant characters! Beyond that, he’s definitely a Hikaru 0.2, with what I presume are adjustments to the main mechanics based on feedback from last contest. I don’t remember the specific effects of Hikaru’s upgrades from last contest, as in how many of them have been re-use for Koitsu, so I’ll assume that most of them are unique for Koitsu.

• Attacks that put up passive shields around you are normally very questionable to me, but Koitsu’s is implemented in a way that doesn’t feel obnoxious, thanks to its limited timer, only being frontal, you still take stun and it’s not super casual to obtain.
• The multi-hits of “Alex” that you can interrupt with your attacks to get some nice chains going is fun. Also implemented in a very fair way.
• You seem to have enjoyed writing this set quite a bit: the writing here has more comedy and flavour than most of your non-FF! sets. I like it! The sheer references and quirky attack animations and props all make Koitsu one of your more fun sets to read.
• I wonder if the giant state’s armour should be negated during the end lag of Koitsu’s attacks, as it almost feels like he has full invincibility. Giant state only lasts for 3 seconds and isn’t casual to obtain, though.

• F-Smash is a simple enough move, but the way D-Smash works with Koitsu’s game and his Side Special bell is neat. U-Smash being based on your Down Special power-up and playing off of them is quite nice! I think this set makes better use of the Specials base than Hikaru did.
• The Smashes all have hilarious animations, especially the U-Smash referencing existing Konami characters in Smash!

• F-tilt has nice angle variety and tech-chase mix-ups. I like the twist on Koitsu’s tech-chasing game where he has a few tools to start techs, but he doesn’t have good responses to rolling out until he gets his upgrades.
• The comedic writing really goes hard on the Aerials. I absolutely love Back Air’s opening paragraph - might be one of my favourite lines in a moveset this contest.
• I like B-air’s “downside” being that it hits in the wrong direction for your Neutral Special, and how the Koitsu Shield doesn’t cover Koitsu from behind. That being said, fighters can just B-reverse their Neutral Specials to turn around in midair anyway. Kind of easy to forget, though.
• “The most normal weapon yet, Koitsu pulls out a bubble wand that's about as tall as he is! Huh, so that's where the shield came from.” Pfft, referencing your own OCs with a non-OC.

• Grab’s animation gets a lot of fun mileage out of Koitsu’s unique character traits.

While Koitsu is similar to Hikaru conceptually, he is a bit of an improvement over her in my opinion: more of an interesting melee/tech game aided by props. This MYM has had its share of entertaining reads so far, where Koitsu absolutely stands alongside the Chicken Tenders and Irene Landry. I think the initial concept of “small character” wasn’t delivered on that much, but that’s only fair when the set has to focus on the power-ups and fun, wacky props. To be fair though, small concept would be tricky to sell compellingly in a moveset. While Enya and Miracle Matter are still my favourite Jamcon sets of yours conceptually, Koitsu is a runner-up, one that I could see being one of your most memorable Jamcons for his long length, great comedy and being a sequel to one of your previous sets. Nice job here!

 

[FrozenRoy]

"You have braved the bowels of Hell to reach me.

But the hand of man, which deals in false justice and forsaken love, can never hope to defeat the lord master of Hell!

This world can have but one Emperor, and I am he!"
Emperor Mateus​

The main villain of Final Fantasy II, The Emperor (named Emperor Mateus in the novelization: The novelization is non-canon, but the name stuck despite that and Dissidia essentially canonized it) is the, well, emperor of the Palamecia Empire. He BEGINS the game by opening up the gates to Hell and the legions within to serve him and take over the world, having already been taking over the world via normal means but feeling he needed a bit extra kick, sends them out, starting with occupying (but NOT destroying) the hero Firion's home town of Fynn. Naturally, the game revolves around getting him to NOT take over the world.

This being an early generation RPG, especially for Final Fantasy, The Emperor is not an especially deep character and does not have much in the backstory. However, he basically has two notable traits that define him and the combination makes him kind of hilarious and cool: The fact he is extremely evil...and the fact he is extremely competent. How competent and evil are we talking?

He begins the game by effortlessly conquering multiple kingdoms. When the Dragoons of Deist manage to put up a fight, he poisons their water supply four games before Kefka does and wrecks them. He designed the airship Dreadnought after capturing Fynn to crush out the resistance, soon after which he captures the main airship of the Rebellion, and unwittingly Princess Hilda, one of the leaders. Noting the good fortune, he then specifically allows the heroes to destroy the Dreadnought (with him not on it, of course) and take what appears to be Hilda back...but, no, it is actually a Lamia Queen disguised as her! It kills the King, who was THE leader of the rebellion at the time (Hilda takes over), before the party puts it down. The heroes then travel to the great prison Coliseum, meeting him for the first time, and offers up Hilda as a prize for them fighting in it. After defeating all the monsters, the heroes try to take Hilda back and attack him, but he very casually traps the heroes and locks them away, although they get out and DO manage to rescue Hilda thanks to a large operation to liberate Fynn...

After which the Wild Rose Rebellion acquires the Ultima Tome...and the Emperor summons a giant Cyclone to rain destruction on any who oppose him and make his fortress a nearly unassailable sky fortress. He then destroys four towns who resisted him to show it off, although hilariously he manages to NOT hit Fynn and is stopped before that (Fynn is a hometown and yet somehow is one of the only cities not to be destroyed), with the Emperor inside it. The heroes manage to make their way inside to kill the Emperor...during which the Emperor decides to weaken them by throwing wave after wave of Mooks after them, before the heroes FINALLY confront the Emperor and kill him in a disappointingly easy fight. After which the Dark Knight Leon goes to take over Palamecia...

And then the Emperor reappears, having very casually taken over hell. It is a very common fan theory that the Emperor boss fight is easy because he is, in fact, intentionally throwing it so he can die and take over hell, given how easily he does it. The Emperor promptly decides that given he rules Hell now, he has no need to rule the human world, so he'll destroy it to end any resistance to his rule. Ricard shows up with his mighty wyvern to hold the Emperor off for the party to escape and the Emperor shows his newfound power by casually blowing up the ENTIRE castle to kill Ricard extremely easily. He was raising Pandaemonium in the castle's place anyway, so he had no need for it. The heroes then need to defeat all of The Emperor's hell generals and lackeys and travel through the dangerous Jade Passage to travel into Castle Pandemonium to FINALLY slay the Emperor...

Except, as the remake's extra campaign Soul of Rebirth shows, The Emperor's evil half was the one that went to Hell. His light half instead went to Heaven. After the four members who died in the main story travel through it, they meet the Emperor's light half, which is Heaven's ruler mysteriously. He begs for their forgiveness...and then when they hesitate, demands it, offering them life eternal. The party rejects this after seeing visions of their living friends fighting the Emperor of Hell, where it is revealed that the Emperor is SO evil that EVEN HIS GOOD HALF IS EVIL, having taken over Heaven too. That's right, this guy ruled most of Earth, and then rules both Hell AND Heaven, and he doesn't even have any special backstory! He is just a dude who learned magic and wanted to take over the world!

The ending implies that the Emperor's exploits have caused over half of the world's population to die, not to mention messing up both Heaven AND Hell in the process, putting him as possibly having caused more destruction than people like Kefka, Sin and Exdeath! That's not even mentioning how he destroyed most of the civilized world's structures...

The Emperor would end up being the blueprint of many future Final Fantasy villains, such as his prettyboy aesthetic (too many to count), his desire to rule over and then destroy the world (also too many to count), things such as the water poisoning that Kefka would later ape and more. Not bad for a villain most people probably haven't heard of, huh? His death cry, "UBOAR!"/"UBOA!"/"UNGAH!" has become a common meme in Final Fantasy (He has a popular fan club in Japan named Uboar). Naturally, in Dissidia he takes the place of the strategic fighter who lays down traps, long range projectiles and his signature spell, the giant chargable "Starfall". And just as naturally, he schemes to both destroy Cosmos and Chaos and rule all of creation in their place, and he actually drives most of both game's plots despite being a FF2 villain. He's not the type to play second fiddle, after all.

Looks suspiciously like David Bowie, who character designer Amano is a big fan of. Dissidia's english voice actor even plays him as sounding similiar to Jareth from Labyrinth!

Statistics​

The Emperor is a rather tall but not especially wide figure who can be compared in many ways to Palutena in general build. His weight is also only a single unit (92 vs 91) above Palutena's, meaning he is rather squishy all things considered. His dash speed is rather slow as he effortlessly glides across the ground, being around the same as Peach's Ground Speed. His walk is an also-slow, confident stride across the stage. He has low traction that causes him to glide around the stage a fair deal.

Aerially, The Emperor is naturally very floaty with a falling speed roughly equal to Peach, but he also moves through the air slowly with an air speed right between Palutena and Pit. His high air friction (0.019), above Mewtwo (0.016) but below Ness (0.0225) gives him excellent ability to turn around and he has low gravity. His first jump is above average, but his second jump is quite spectacular, specifically being very similiar to Ness'. It goes slightly less distance, but it has all the funky air movement and such that the Ness double jump does and still goes quite a distance. The Emperor also has a float which lasts slightly less time (2 seconds to Peach's 2.5 seconds), but goes slightly faster: They go the same distance if held in the same direction due to the speed difference.

Specials​

Neutral Special: Starfall X​

The Emperor lets out an extremely evil laugh as he begins to draw a variety of magic runes in the air in front of him...this isn't a quick Cross Slash style of drawing, this magic rune takes a long time to draw. A long time. A REALLY LONG TIME. By that I mean that it takes longer than Ganondorf's Warlock Punch to execute! It takes precisely a whole ONE HUNDRED THIRTY FRAMES to bring out Starfall! To give you an idea, Ganondorf's Up Tilt starts on Frame 70 and he can MOVE after Frame 117. Another pertinent example: Byleth's fully charged Failnaught takes 114 frames to come out. On the other hand, this move has a few things to help it out, the first of which is that the benefit is even stronger than Failnaught! When The Emperor finishes Starfall, he will call a HUGE meteor from the sky. I'm talking "half a Battlefield wide" huge. Not Battlefield Platform, BATTLEFIELD. It is probably as tall as the bottom platform of Battlefield to the topmost Battlefield Platform. The meteor will do huge damage if it hits a foe, 30%, and it KOs at a stupidly early 60% with largely vertical knockback, making it absolutely devastating to be hit by. The meteor drops very slowly after appearing from the top blast zone, taking a full 15 seconds to drop down from the sky...during which time it will follow the foe horizontally. The meteor tracks the foe who was closest to The Emperor when he finished casting Starfall if there are multiple opponents. Yes, that's right, it is like one of the world's most twisted claw machine! The meteor does not move very fast tracking them, mind, but it does so pretty much perfectly, and it is so wide that it is difficult for people to get out from under anyway.

The meteor will go through any object in its path, breaking through any solid objects such as ceilings, until it reaches the "main stage". If it is on a stage with too many elevations to call any a "main stage", then it will stop when hitting any platform that was at The Emperor's elevation or lower. The meteor will also stop when hitting any non-shielding opponent at any elevation, but it will not count if it hits minions, stage bosses (excepting in Single Player mode/vs Single Player bosses like Master Hand) or anything not a character. The meteor deals massive shield damage (it basically is a shield destruction), the hitbox lasts the entire time it is out, and when it hits the ground the hitbox lasts for quite a while as it digs into the ground before vanishing, making it impossible to spot dodge. It cannot be reflected, absorbed, Pocketed, perfect shield-reflected or any other of that hullabaloo. In other words, once the Starfall begins, it is VERY HARD to avoid it. The downside, naturally, is that it is an attack with 130 frames of starting lag to use!

Okay, there is one other downside, which can be seen by the fact that Mateus' staff continues to glow as the Meteor falls. Put simply, he still has to maintain the Meteor, a natural downside given otherwise he could summon this while the foe is far offstage and the foe can't do too much about it. The Meteor spell can be canceled by shattering The Emperor's concentration, although this is not easy. There are three ways to do so. The first is to KO The Emperor, which will cause the Meteor to break apart harmlessly over 20 frames. The second is to shield break him, which does the same thing. Finally, the foe can deal 40% damage to The Emperor to break his concentration for the same effect. None of these are easy, 40% is not a casual number while a shield break is niche and a KO is well a KO, but given what The Emperor had to go through it shouldn't be! In general this means opponents have to try and blitz The Emperor down in order to try and deal 40% to stop him, which is a perfect chance for the foe to go running right into The Emperor's well prepared hands...

Unlike Ganondorf, The Emperor can cancel out of this move semi-freely. It is not lagless like Cloud, but rather he can cancel it out of any action at the cost of adding 10 frames to the start of what ever action he performs. The Emperor does NOT retain ANY "charge" when cancelling out of it. This means that The Emperor is not COMPLETELY helpless, but he also has to cancel out of it quite early to try and counter what opponents will do. The attack actually has almost no ending lag to it, your reward for getting off a 130 frame starting lag attack. The opponent can be at any distance from The Emperor as well, meaning that unlike a Warlock Punch or Volcano Kick, he doesn't have to get right in the foe's face to use his indescribably laggy attack. It also means that simply starting this attack tends to force an approach, for obvious reasons. When The Emperor finishes casting this spell, he will shout "Heavens, fall!".

Side Special: Flare XVI​

"Run amok."​

What happens when The Emperor uses his Side Special depends on if he taps or tilts the stick. If he tilts the control stick, then he will release quite a large, blue fire projectile that appears like a miniature sun. It is very large, about the size of a fully charged Samus Charge Shot, and it moves veeeery slowly, making it really good at controlling space. Touching the Flare causes it to explode, dealing 15% damage and knockback that KOs at around 140% or so. It homes towards the nearest foe with decent homing, making it a real pain to get rid of, but it takes The Emperor quite a while to fire off, having a great deal of starting lag, and only about average ending lag. This Flare lasts 8 seconds or until it hits someone. Fun fact: Flare is normally red in most Final Fantasy games, but in FFII it was blue for whatever reason, so The Emperor has been depicted in some media as being able to use both.

Naturally, smashing the control stick produces a red Flare. The red flare has the same properties as the blue flare, including the damage numbers, except that it only goes a Battlefield Platform forward while not homing, after which it stops. The Flare will then sit there for 10 seconds as quite a long term and fairly potent and large trap. It is especially deadly when placed close to ledges or even right below the ledge to prevent recovering low. Both Flares disappear after hitting people once and The Emperor can only have one of each Flare out at once. Because both of the Flares last a very long time usually and do not move fast/at all, it means that The Emperor needs to be very careful with how he places his Flares. Placing a Flare in place for an edgeguard and then messing it up means he is deprived of one of his stronger traps for 10 seconds essentially.

They are two of your better moves for setting up potential Starfalls, being large hitboxes that can either track the foe down or just sit close to The Emperor and force foes to take it. They also are great if the opponent is trying to approach to break a Starfall's imminent approach, given they're chunky to get around, high damaging to be hit into and long lasting to make the battlefield difficult to navigate. Flares will absorb weak projectiles (<10% damage or low knockback) as they fly, stopping them from connecting, and so a red Flare is one of The Emperor's best defenses against someone like Falco just casually shooting off a laser to stop him. He will tell his foes to "Run amok" every time he casts this, which can be annoying if he's camping you.

Down Special: Cyclone​

The Emperor pulls his arms back, before beginning to spin in place, casting Cyclone around himself as he does so and causing a tornado to form around him, giving him an appearance similiar to Cyclone from the game (except with The Emperor over a castle). This works quite similiar to Dr. Mario's Dr. Tornado, dealing multiple hits that deal between 1% and 2% damage with a rehit rate of 5. The total number of hits comes to 11% damage, before a final hit that deals 3% and knocks foes into the air. Like Dr. Mario, The Emperor can rapidly mash B to rise into the air. The Emperor does not need to button mash as fast to get the distance he can, but his maximum distance is capped at lower than the Dr. Tornado, although it can still be rather effective as it does not put The Emperor into helpless. Because The Emperor has low traction, he can use it to slide around the stage to a fair degree, giving him an odd mobility option. Cyclone has a low starting lag, but a fairly laggy ending lag: However, it also has a few autocancel frames at the end of it, which The Emperor can potentially use to cancel a large chunk of lag if shorthopped. If The Emperor uses it on the ground, he can hop a specific amount at the end of the move to land back on the ground during the autocancel frames, making this a more viable mobility option. The last hit sends the opponent up weakly for most of it, making it decent for a combo starter if autocancelled, while the very bottom parts of the hitbox are a decently (but not amazingly) strong spike which can make a decent edgeguard/edgeguard reversal off stage.

In addition, if the foe is hit with one of the last three hitboxes of this move, then they will be turned around like they got hit by Mario's cape when they exit the hitbox. This will usually happen with the last hitbox, but if the foe escape early then it can lead to some different play results. The Emperor can, with proper hitbox movement, sometimes get the foe to intentionally escape early if he desires. This is generally a niche tool for edgeguards, but the fact that The Emperor moves through the air can make it useful, and it makes it a bizarre reversal option when recovering.

The Emperor will pull projectiles along with him as he goes, which will spin around and around him as he spins, although he cannot catch his Starfall naturally, he CAN use it on Flares though. If he catches them at the very start of the move, it will exit at the opposite side of him: Catching him at different points of the attack allows him to send them in the same direction as well. Using it on enemy projectiles is ineffective due to the fact they do not actually change control, so they will usually clobber him in the face. Combined with the decent ground mobility, this allows him to use his projectiles as more offensive weapons, at the cost of having to either specifically autocancel or face lag and the fact that the move is punishable during it if you don't snag up the foe. It is also rather indescriminate and you may end up picking projectiles you do not wish to move during it if you are not careful.

Up Special: Thunder X​

Thunder X is seen as another somewhat signature spell for The Emperor, as it is the only offensive spell he casts during the first fight with him before he becomes the Emperor of Hell, the rest being buff or debuff spells. For this move, The Emperor raises his staff up and releases a controllable bolt of lightning from its tip, which is controlled in a manner much like Ness' PK Thunder. The projectile is slightly longer than Ness' and has slightly tighter turning controls, but it also does not have the ball head to it and instead is just a bolt, which deals 10% damage when hitting any part of it and knockback in the direction of the bolt (just like the ball part of PK Thunder), with slightly stronger knockback than PK Thunder. Comes out slightly later than PK Thunder, but it has slightly less ending lag. Unlike Ness, The Emperor can cancel out of his PK Thunder early with shield or B which will leave the PK Thunder flying in whatever direction it was going until it hits something that would make it disappear. The Emperor takes the same ending lag as normal when cancelling this move.

If The Emperor hits himself with Thunder X then, as expected, The Emperor will be launched with basically the same mechanics as Ness' PK Thunder 2, serving as The Emperor's primary recovery, and just like Ness it is extremely unreliable, although The Emperor's float and Cyclone give him other recovery options that make it not as bad as Ness (Although it should be noted that The Emperor actually weighs LESS than Ness!). In return, while strong, The Emperor's Thunder X-2 is not as strong, dealing 20% damage at a base and only KOing at 65% while still being quite difficult to land in any meaningful context. The Emperor also goes slightly less distance than Ness' PK Thunder 2.

The Emperor can only have one Thunder X out at once, but getting hit by a Thunder X while it is out WILL cause him to go into his Thunder X-2 attack! This is not easy to accomplish, given the lag associated with the move and the fact the foe will be able to see it coming the whole time, but it does allow The Emperor to theoretically combo into the Thunder X-2 hitbox which is terrifying. Cyclone will be your best option in that regard, dragging the foe with The Emperor and into a Thunder X to cancel out of it and trigger it, but it is pretty predictable to fly up with that when a Thunder X is nearby. Note that while the single Thunder X that The Emperor can have is on screen, he CAN use Up Special to control the Thunder X that is on screen. This takes the same lag to start up as normal which means using it to "quickly" trick a foe into Thunder X-2 is right out of the water, but it does give The Emperor a bit of finer control and setup ability.

Do be careful with this move, though: The Thunder X-2 ability can be a double-edged sword! The Emperor can be hit into his Thunder X-2 state through hitstun which means, for example, a Thunder X that is moving to the right to try and catch the foe with later can turn into the foe hitting you into it and forcing you to Thunder X-2 right off stage and to your helpless doom. You have to play intelligently with this ability or you'll be seeing your own demise, really.

If The Emperor hits a projectile with Thunder X, then the Thunder X will circle the projectile a small distance around it, dealing 4% and light hitstun with no knockback to anyone it hits during this time. This makes it a great way to set opponents up for a projectile to hit them and is especially great when put on a blue Flare, creating an even wider trap. The Emperor can put any number of Thunder X around any one projectile, but this of course takes plenty of time and projectile disappear with said time. Thunder X that circle projectiles do not count towards his Thunder X he can have on screen and he does not enter helpless if he hits Thunder X onto a projectile, although he will enter helpless aside from that just like Ness and so on. Thunder X will continue to circle projectiles as they circle you in Cyclone, which can create a practical solar system of projectiles! If the projectile is reflected, the Thunder X circling it will also change ownership, so beware of traitors. Thunder X that circle a projectile can never trigger Thunder X-2.

Smashes​

Forward Smash: Ultima XVI​

The ultimate spell in Final Fantasy II, although The Emperor does not use it himself, it is a major plot point and he rather easily could have if he just had the Ultima Tome on hand. The Emperor opens his palm in front of him, releasing a red thin red beam of energy forward one to two Battlefield Platforms in length, expanding with time. This beam deals 1% during charge similiar to Corrin's Forward Smash, except it is only hits once and only combos into the hit at close range due to low hitstun. No knockback. When the input is released, The Emperor closes his palm into a fist and the beam to explode in a series of, well, explosions, with the closer parts of the beam exploding first in the trail of explosions. The explosions deal a solid 16%-22.4% damage and will end up KOing at 110%-85%: This is fairly impressive when considering the range of the move. Starting lag is about average, but The Emperor has somewhat long ending lag on it, making it punishable on whiff. This move can be angled up and down like many Forward Tilt/Smashes, which shallowly angles the beam in that direction. The further away it is, the less shallow it is. The beam and explosions are disjointed attacks, not projectiles.

If The Emperor hits one of his projectiles with the laser beam, then the projectile will be stuck in place until the move is performed (being released if The Emperor is hit out of it), after which the projectile will explode when the beam exploding reaches it. While caught in Forward Smash's beam, they will not time out: If The Emperor is hit out of it when the projectile would time out, then it times out. The behavoir can change based on the projectile, but if I do not mention it, assume that the explosion is 1.4x the projectile's size but 0.6x the damage. Flares explode for 1.5x the size of the Flare, but the same damage, making them particularly deadly when considering their slow speed. Thunder X's that are hit explode for 1.4x the size, but only 0.3x the damage: However, they have very large hitstun, allowing the explosion to more likely hit or for The Emperor to follow-up. If the Thunder X is circling a projectile, then hitting both of them with an Ultima can create a tough 1-2 punch for the foe to deal with.

If The Emperor impacts the side of a Starfall with this, then it will blow a crater in the Starfall, creating a meteor chunk that crashes to the ground in the direction the Ultima hit it that causes 10% damage to anyone it hits and KOs at 180%, at the cost of the meteor doing 4% less damage and KOing 10% later. The meteor will be nudged slightly in the direction that the Ultima was travelling before tracking the opponent again, so you can rarely nudge it at foes to hit. The meteor chunk follows the same rules as the meteor, except that it will not track the foe, and the hitbox lasts for a lot less time when hitting a shield/the ground/and so on. and it is as weak as aforementioned, of course.

Down Smash: Slow IX​

The Emperor swipes his staff on the ground, forming a magic rune in the shape of a brilliant golden clock. The staff is a hitbox during this move, but the damage it deals is pathetic, 3%-4.2% damage and weak knockback and hitstun, making it unsafe on shield. The hitbox isn't the point of this move, though, it is the trap rune that The Emperor leaves behind for 5-8 seconds that is! If an opponent steps over it, then the rune will wrap around the foe for 5% damage and light hitstun/knockback, afflicting them with Slow. Slowed foes can, in fact, move around perfectly fine, but if they attempt to perform an attack, they will find that they have been drastically...well...slowed! The attack will behave as if the foe was under the effect of the Timer item, which anyone who has played against Bayonetta will know is pretty drastic! It isn't QUITE a full timer effect, though, it only has half the strength of one. Now, given movement, dodges and so on are just fine, one would think they could just wait it out pretty easily...aaaand then you remember that The Emperor has Starfall. This is probably The Emperor's best way of "approaching" or, rather, forcing the foe to approach: Hit them with a Slow IX and then start to charge Starfall. They are then forced to either go up to The Emperor and use a slow attack which he can cancel and punish or to wait out the effects of it close to him to prevent him from finishing the Starfall charge. The Slow status effect lasts for half a second to a full second based on the Smash's charge: Note that this means that The Emperor can never just fully charge Starfall during the effect.

The starting lag and ending lag of this move are a touch on the long side, which combined with the bad hitbox with little range means that this move is really not very safe. You usually need to gain distance or whatnot first, which can then potentially lead to greater rewards like Starfall. The Emperor can only have one of these traps out at once, like a Snake mine: Making another destroys the first. When one of The Emperor's projectiles travels over his Slow IX rune, they will be slowed to 1/3rd their normal speed as they pass over it, with a golden clock symbol appearing over them as they do with the clock hand spinning. This lets opponents know the location of the Slow rune, but it also allows him to greatly delay his projectiles, with his blue Flare slowing to an absolute crawl noticably. The meteor, naturally, is not affected by this, just like most of his other projectile manipulating moves. If The Emperor places a trap that overlaps with a Slow IX rune, then the trap will disappear at 1/3rd its normal duration, allowing The Emperor to increase the time of his traps existing in exchange for overlapping them. The Emperor cannot be hurt by his own Slow rune.

Up Smash: Dynamite​

The Emperor creates a glowing ball of orange energy at the tip of his staff, which grows in size as he charges the move from minimum charge Charge Shot to half charge Charge Shot, and then raises his staff upwards and shoots it out upwards, a little wispy trail like a fuse coming from the staff and disappearing with sparkles of magic as the projectile goes up. The projectile deals 15%-21% damage and KOs at 150%-115% when it is first released and then calms down to a static 12% damage with knockback that KOs at 200% for the rest of it regardless of charge, although do note that it can naturally KO sooner if they are higher. The dynaball goes up 3-5 Ganondorfs into the air, with the fuse burning all the while...before it EXPLODES at the apex! The explosion is 1.33x the size of the dynaball and deals 20%-28% damage that KOs at 95%-75% (including the height in this case, since it won't explode early...usually), making it a significantly powerful hitbox...but one that is extremely specific to hit with as well. This move has longer than average starting lag, but the ending lag is actually quite short, so it is difficult to punish when he gets it off.

If the Dynaball would touch a ceiling, wall or other object as such, it will stick to said object and remain as a hitbox the entire time, eventually exploding as per normal when a longer duration than normal, six seconds, passes. The explosion is large enough to go through thin platforms like Battlefield's on-stage platforms and on stages like Smashville he can, for example, use the moving platform to create a moving trap. He can also stick the Dynaball on his meteors and meteor chunks, using them to carry it around, although he cannot put them on non-solid projectiles such as Flare. If The Emperor hits a Dynaball with Ultima, it will explode for 2x the size of the Dynaball, but it will actually use the normal "exploding" hitbox of it, which means that The Emperor can potentially create quite a large and deadly hitbox if he lines it all up correctly. An up angled Ultima is specifically extremely useful for hitting Dynaballs that have trapped themselves on the underside of platforms and whatnot, making platforms rather dangerous for rebel scum to hide on.

Standards​

Jab: Bombard​

The Emperor swings his staff in front of him for this modal jab, with the result depending on if he simply pressed A or held A. By merely pressing A, an explosion goes off at the end of his staff after the swing which serves as the sweetspot of a one-hit Jab. Holding down A has Mateus transition into a multihit jab of sparkling fire and darkness, Palutena-style, before ending with a slightly weaker version of the single-hit Jab's sweetspot. The part of the staff outside of multihits or the explosion deals only 3% damage and really low knockback, being unsafe on hit very early into stocks and otherwise mostly just a mediocre spacer, although it can translate into the multi-hits if you held it at early percents safely.

The sweetspot deals 8% damage and good damage for knocking people off of you, largely due to fairly high base knockback for a jab, but poor knockback growth keeps it from KOing until 240% or so. This is reduced to 6% damage and knockback that won't kill until 299% when finishing the multihits, but at 0.7% per hell sparkle it'll do more damage at low percents at exchange for less space. The starting lag on this is a bit long for a jab, but the ending lag is fairly short on the flipside of the one hit. The multiht's ending lag is not good and will leave The Emperor punished, as per usual with those style of jabs. This attack's multihit properties make it good for catching out spot dodges and the like, which given that The Emperor's trap-filled labyrinth will make foes squirm to avoid it is a useful technique all its own. Finally, the sweetspot IS pretty easy to hit and gives The Emperor plenty of space even at low percent so it is good to just give The Emperor room to even start his gameplan and the multihit is just easy damage early if desired.

If The Emperor hits one of his projectiles with the jab's sweetspot, then it will stall the projectile for about half a second, which can be fairly useful for obvious delay tactics, and can specifically be great against spot dodges if predicted. Starfall cannot be stalled. Moves like the Up Smash Dynaball that have a timer will not have the timer stalled, so The Emperor can mess around a little with the foe's normal sense of dodging those. Most of all, though, it is for getting foes off your back and general spacing.

Forward Tilt: Blood Backstab​

The Emperor turns his staff around and stabs forward with the three spiked claw-trident end of it, the tips glowing a blood red. He uses levitation to do so, not sullying himself with the blood of his enemies personally. The attack is about average to start-up, perhaps a touch on the fast side, and has pretty solid reach to it, with the ending lag being a touch longer than average. The move deals 9% damage on hit and has pretty good knockback to it, although it KOs at 175%. This is most obviously good for getting foes away from you, with it launching opponents at a good level for low and low-mid percentages to potentially force a tech chase, moreso on enemies with fast falling speeds. It can be angled up and down, like most F-Tilts, for similiar coverage, making it able to poke near the edge effectively when aimed down.

If The Emperor backstabs a foe with this move, he will let out a confident chuckle, as if the foe had followed his designs all along. Blood red energy will be sucked from the foe as The Emperor twists the strike into the foe when this happens, dealing an extra 3% damage and a fair deal of extra hitstun, although the knockback is actually reduced to only kill at about 210%, but this actually allows The Emperor to force follow-ups easier and at higher percentages and to force tech chases to more mid percentages. The Emperor heals for half of the damage dealt by this move via blood magic, similiar to how his EX Mode makes his attacks work and how in his boss battles his physical attacks would heal him, and he will wound foes in the back for 6.66 seconds afterwards. Attacks against the foe's back during this time heal The Emperor for 1/3rd of the damage dealt when hitting it, which gives The Emperor some more survivability for his long term game plan.

This is your most direct follow-up out of your Cyclone, as the Cyclone will turn around foes it hits and thus set enemies you scoop up can be turned around to backstab. Now, normally, the last hit will hit foes too high up to do this past low percentages + up angles on fastfallers, but if The Emperor can actually get the foe out of his hitbox, he can use the autocancel frames to combo this quite reliably.

Down Tilt: Storm X​

The Emperor confidently taps his staff against the ground as the tip of it glows yellow-and-green, a wave of electricity flowing over the floor in front of him. His cape blows dramatically as wind also blows in front of him, above the electrical wave, giving this attack a dramatic flair and some additional hitboxes. As you might expect, this isn't a fast attack. The starting lag is on the high end, although perhaps not as high as you'd think since a good part of the punishability comes rather from the long duration. The ending lag is on the short side, so punishment from the foe best arrive before the attack's actually finished. As for the attack itself, it has two main points.

The electrical hitbox that scoots across the ground is the only part of the hitbox with actual damage attached to it, dealing 6% and light pushing knockback along with hefty hitstun. This serves as a bit of a combo tool for The Emperor, although it isn't really the best at that by itself. Perhaps the most important part of this is simple synergy with Forward Tilt, primarily due to the second part of the attack. A small windbox, slightly shorter than The Emperor himself with the width of the electrical wave, follows the wave as it goes forward its half-a-Battlefield-Platform distance. This is a very weak windbox and not really able to push the foe much beyond the edge of the wave, and exists only above ground level and thus cannot push away opponents going for a ledge. Point is that this is a flawed edgeguard tool which only hits opponents who go mid recovery (or The Emperor predicting a high recovery and using this on a platform), although the second ability of this attack makes it stronger if they do. Specifically, it turns opponents around like a cape!

The electrical wave of the attack is strictly grounded and cannot hit airborne foes barring weird circumstances, such as a Peach using float off ledge to the point she's clipping against the ground with her hurtbox. An opponent hit by the way will usually also be hit by the wind on the ground, which means the true combo of this move until mid percents into Forward Tilt will get the back-hitting bonus! Something like Down Tilt -> Forward Tilt -> Flare is a simple way to get some combo damage, heal The Emperor's frail form and set up a projectile or trap for his use at mid percents. The Emperor can also go for a Neutral Aerial, Back Aerial or Grab, but none of these options are true.

After using Down Tilt, the area the electric wave passed over will remain electrified for 4 seconds with stormy winds blowing around the very surface of it. This serves as an extremely basic trap for The Emperor to play around with his bigger hitters, dealing 3% damage with marginal hitstun and no knockback to anyone who directly steps on it. In addition, the wind effect will turn the opponent around! This doesn't do a ton on its own, but opponents still don't want to get hit by it with The Emperor nearby, and it can lead into dangerous attacks like Forward Tilt, Dash Attack and Back Aerial. The Emperor needs to be right there to reasonably go for any of these, though.

Given the trap's short duration, it largely serves as an extra annoyance for foes to get past rather than any major centerpiece. The Emperor can only have one out at a time, subsequent uses of Down Tilt while one is out causes the attack to continue as normal but fizzle out rather than leave a trap, and the trap takes 25 frames before it arms itself and begins counting down its duration. This also keeps the trap from usually triggering against foes who got hit by Down Tilt itself, although opponents who held shield could potentially get shield poked if they stay in shield that long. Down Tilt itself also hits low enough to shield poke fairly easily, so keep that in mind.

Up Tilt: Emperor's Pride​

Levitating his staff with one finger, The Emperor smirks as he takes a classy bow, making small movements with his fingers to comment the staff to swirl just above his bowed self. The move then ends with The Emperor returning to neutral, keeping the smirk on briefly if he hit the foe, as the staff floats back into position. This is similar to Palutena's Up Tilt, being a multihit staff move that deals four hits of 2% followed by a launching hit of 4%. The launching hit is surprisingly powerful and works as a late, secondary kill move at 195%. This usually saves it as a late kill move on platforms, but if you've been chipping away with traps or projectiles it could become relevant. The starting lag is very long for an Up Tilt at 12 frames (for comparison, Palutena's Up Tilt is 8), but the ending lag at least is just modest. It does generally hurt it as a quick creation or pure anti-air, but it is pretty great at catching landings due to a long duration. It also does 12% on a tilt, which is just a lot of damage even if it can't combo.

One other awkward thing about the attack is the range. While The Emperor's bow does help give the attack a bit more room to spin above him, it will still miss small and modest sized targets on the stage or various larger ones when crouching. This tends to make the move more purely against aerial opponents, although it does also mean this is an excellent move to shark platforms with given the long duration, the staff width and the multiple hits. It can easily deal damage to a shield with a little pre-damage with the early hits and then shield poke at the end for example. You could also throw it out for pre-emptive coverage if people keep going to platforms to try and avoid your projectiles or traps.

Dash Attack: Blink VIII​

The Emperor flips his staff so the pointed ends is forwards, snapping his fingers as he teleports away! This part of the attack has no associated hitbox with it, but it does only take 5 frames to occur, and The Emperor is intangible while he has teleported. He reappears 7 frames later, stabbing his staff forward while moving that way! The non-stabby part of his staff glows red as he does so. The teleport goes 0.5 Battlefield Platforms forward, while the rushing stab goes another 0.5 Battlefield Platforms. By default, The Emperor stabs forward when he comes out of the teleport, but if he flicks the control stick backwards then he can stab back instead. This means The Emperor can end either back where he started or 1 Battlefield Platform ahead, with him taking moderate ending lag no matter which way he goes.

This makes Dash Attack a bit of a tricky beast, requiring somewhat bizarre spacing from The Emperor to fully utilize but allowing him to dodge pretty quickly before striking back. The attack itself deals a mere 9% damage, with the knockback being more ideal for spacing than killing. Though since it kills at 260%, you can dodge an attack AND kill in Sudden Death! This attack, perhaps unsurprisingly, has a backstab bonus to it. That one deals 14% damage and kills at 150%, basically just serving as a more powerful punishment tool. Teleporting past a foe and then going backwards while dodging their attack is the most common way to deal with this, but an opponent who is dashing away for spacing or to avoid a hit back can be struck by the forward variant as an example as well. Note that since you need to do this before The Emperor reappears, you won't have time to do this on reaction. Gotta be pure prediction!

Grab Game​

Grab: Hell's Grasp​

The Emperor smirks confidently, swiping one hand forward as dark energy emanates from it. This is the worst combination for a grab: Slow AND short ranged, making it pretty bad overall. Fortunately, The Emperor's many traps, projectiles and disjoints leave him plenty of opportunity to get this grab through the poor frame data and reach. The Emperor's Dash Grab actually has some good range, sliding forward almost like a Sephiroth Dash Attack, but the ending lag is particularly bad even for a Dash Grab.

Pummel: Hell's Torment​

The Emperor zaps the opponent for 1.4% damage with hellfire that, bizarrely, has electrical visual effects on it. In rare cases, he'll let out a little evil laugh while doing this.

Forward Throw: Curse XVI​

Placing a palm to the body of the unworthy insect in his grasp, The Emperor shoots them away from him with a blast of hellfire darkness. This only does 4%, but leaves fiery darkness surrounding the foe. The knockback has a decent base, but a low knockback growth that keeps it from killing until 400%+. The ending lag is also much higher than you would like, as The Emperor shakes his hand like he was shaking grime from it. Wouldn't want the foes filth sticking to him, after all. This makes the base of the throw a neutral reset where the opponent gets first crack at doing something, which is not ideal. Good thing there's more to this throw!

That energy isn't just for show, as Emperor Mateus (unfortunately for Dae) has taken a page out of his fellow Final Fantasy antagonist Sephiroth's book with a Shadow Flare-esque curse! The hellfire energy around the foe remains for 7.5 seconds, with it flaring to life visually as an indicator the last 1.5 seconds of life, before exploding outwards from the foe as a potent time bomb hitbox! This is a particularly powerful one, dealing 20% and killing at 90%. Yowza! Especially coming out of a throw, that is immensely powerful. Easily the best KO throw The Emperor has!

Of course there's a way around it outside of the usual shielding or dodging. The Emperor has placed a curse on the foe, but there IS a way to lift it: Damaging him. Every time The Emperor is hit, even by something like a Fox laser, the 4% damage of the curse wears off. So a single hit reduces the damage to 16% and not killing until 130%. It stops having any kill power when it is down to 8% damage and hitting Mateus six times will completely dispel the effect. Multihit attacks DO count each hit as one against him, so something like a Yoshi Down Aerial will clear it out in one go, encouraging the foe to go for those in a more predictable pattern. In general, this serves as an alternative way than Starfall to force foes to approach The Emperor, having much less payoff in exchange for being much less difficult to actually get off (although it is worth noting The Emperor DOES have a horrible grab!). The Emperor can also combo into the blast for even earlier kills, but do remember that completely avoiding being hit for 7.5 seconds after the throw is...rather ambitious, really, especially since it can still be shielded.

The knockback is of note here, being more vertical than horizontal and with the horizontal knockback always being towards The Emperor's current position! This doesn't matter as much with a max strength curse, but with more moderate or low strength curses he can go into a combo on the opponent off of it! I'll give you a hint right now: The Emperor has no true combo throw and essentially no combos out of his throws period, so his damage potential out of grabs is quite low compared to a normal character. This is basically the only combo potential he has and it is difficult to use. The inwards knockback does help, though, and in particular a Back Aerial aimed at the foe's back can be a kill option while a drag down Neutral Aerial is your option at low percents to do more. It does also mean The Emperor can manipulate their horizontal knockback by side swapping with the foe, which could be relevant if one or both of them are off stage. For example, an offstage foe going below the ledge has to be careful not to be stage spiked if they have the curse on them while The Emperor stands near ledge. A bit niche, but worth considering.

Back Throw: Bloody Retribution​

The Emperor's magic floats the opponent behind him with their back turned to him, the top of his staff glowing blood red as he flashes a wicked grin before stabbing him with the sharp end of it! This deals 6.6% damage to the foe, while blood red energy flows out of the foe and into The Emperor's staff to heal him for the same amount of damage as he dealt. This is The Emperor's most basic spacer, getting good distance from the foe and unlike the others leaving him slightly frame positive. This also provides some sustanence for The Emperor, good if his plans have gone awry when it comes to baiting foes towards him. It does mean you only get the most effective amount of percent change when The Emperor is damaged, though. There isn't really much else to say here given how straightforward the throw is.

Up Throw: Emperor's Dismissal​

Lifting the opponent upwards with a single command from his finger, The Emperor twirls the foe in place above his head before flicking them upwards for a total of 7% damage. This is The Emperor's kill throw, sending them flying off the top at 165% for a decent enough but none too strong in the end. Good on high platforms, but that's about it. At very low percents, Up Throw to Up Aerial is a combo, which serves as basically The Emperor's only baked in throw combo. Like Back Throw, this is a very direct throw, so let's just move on.

Down Throw: Blaze XVI​

The Emperor dismissively tosses the foe against the ground with magical levitation as he creates a ball of fire with his other hand, tossing it straight forward after the foe has been launched. Dealing 7.5% damage, this move is similar to Forward Throw in that it is a neutral reset that puts The Emperor in disadvantage after. The disadvantage is slightly less bad, due to this move's generally higher knockback, but it still means the opponent gets first crack at an approach. The upside comes from the projectile that The Emperor creates!

This projectile is roughly the size of a half-charged Charge Shot and goes 1.3x the distance the opponent was thrown, giving it a variable distance and duration that generally becomes more valuable the more damaged the foe is. It will also dissipate if it hits any opponent once. The most important aspect probably comes from the projectile's duration, which is VERY slow. It is practically a moving trap! While the opponent gets the first chance to actually make a move, Blaze's projectile gives The Emperor frontal protection and some strong coverage for his approach. Given the molasses speed and the fact it is only thrown after the foe is launched it'll obviously never combo from the throw.

The damage of the projectile itself is high, 14.5%, but the knockback peters out to kill at 210%. While the damage is obviously very high for a throw if everything works out (22%!), it is still less than most combo throws or most anything with a follow-up will get and so the reward truly comes from the spatial control. Conditioning a foe's approach if they get skittish after it by going into (and likely almost instantly canceling out of) Starfall, firing off a Flare, floating over the Blaze orb with your float, you get the idea. Generally sees a mixup of play between it and Forward Throw, with Forward Throw being stronger at kill percents or against foes bad at approaching while Down Throw has some more consistency at low percents and is more safe if a foe is an aggressive approaching type.

Aerials​

Back Aerial: Bloody Revenge​

The worms that The Emperor are fighting seem to be frustrating him, as he deigns to grace them with actually grabbing his staff for this Back Aerial! At least compared to Forward Tilt. Gripping his staff with a strong grip, The Emperor takes its pointed end and thrusts it with surprising force behind him! Dealing 10% damage but not killing until 150%, this attack seems a bit underwhelming given the high ending lag attached to it. Physical combat is not The Emperor's forte, after all. Modest starting lag still makes it valuable enough, however, and the staff gives this move some fairly strong and disjointed range compared to most attacks due to The Emperor holding the staff at the base rather than the middle as both moves. Think holding a sword by the handle vs. holding a staff the way Palutena does. While the ending lag is too high to make this an evergreen tool, it can still be mixed into neutral sometimes.

One reason to mix this into neutral is the powerful backstab it possesses! Opponents struck in the back, via the same rules as Forward Tilt, take a highly increased 16% damage and massive knockback that KOs at 90% as the staff's head glows blood red with magical powers. This is a bit tricky to land, one reason being that most of the time you would use a Back Aerial like this is when the foe is recovering in which case they will almost certainly be facing the stage rather than have their back turned. One reason to fish for this in neutral is precisely because foes are more likely to have their back turned in those scenarios, such as if they are dash dancing or trying to precisely space. This is actually one of The Emperor's strongest kill moves outside of Starfall, so trying to find scenarios where it can end stocks early is definitely a key point of playing The Emperor well.

One way to do that is to try and land this move out of a Cyclone! It won't true combo out of one, but if you're willing to rise with The Emperor's second jump then you can 50/50 foes reliably until higher percents when the foe is launched too far away. This does usually mean the window that this is actually a kill confirm is pretty low, but even if it doesn't kill the opponent is in a bad spot, not to mention stuff like bad DI when it is a mixup or the simple fact that a foe far off stage is an excellent time to go for a Starfall. Down Tilt's trap and Forward Throw's time bomb provide other chances to go for this, especially with the time bomb's inward hit.

Up Aerial: Mateus's Malice​

Mateus thrusts his staff above his head, allowing it to release a burst of malicious dark energy from the sphere once it reaches the apex. This takes 11 frames to start up, with the burst coming out on the 3rd frame of hitbox activity after which it enters somewhat low ending lag. Unsurprisingly given the animation, this attack has a sweetspot and a sourspot. The sourspot is actually not too bad, dealing 7% damage and popping foes up a little. The knockback is too high for Mateus to actually combo off of it, but he can juggle opponents well and keep them from the ground thanks to his floaty fall speed, excellent double jump and actual float, all of which can combine to make the Donkey Kongs of the world cry out.

The sphere top of the staff is of course the sweetspot when the energy bursts out, although it isn't as strong as some of his other sweetspots. It deals 12% and can be a niche finisher, killing at 165% from ground level. Obviously the key is to land it higher in the air, which can generally lead to kills in the 100% range. Not terribly exciting, but certainly viable if Mateus launches them skywards with attacks like Up Tilt or Up Throw. It can also be a later finisher off a Curse than Back Aerial in exchange for being more reliable due to not needing to get the backstab. The biggest weakness is the hitbox's size, a straight up thrust with a thin hitbox for most of it that can be a bit easy for foes to weave around. The energy burst has a slight bit of range, but comes out later and is small. This wouldn't be so bad were it not for his other upwards options being Up Tilt (quite slow for a tilt) and Up Smash (a bit awkward to use and still slow), so Mateus can be a bit slow or have spacing difficulty despite the high power of his juggling game. It also simply means Up Aerial is bad against jump-ins or opponents with good aerial mobility options, so a bit of a weakness there too.

Down Aerial: Explosion​

Forcefully thrusting one of his hands downwards, The Emperor casts a spell from it and ignites the air below him in a fiery explosion! The arm is thrust at more of a downward-forwards angled, for better or worse, and the blast has good range but is not all that powerful. In total, the explosion does 10% damage and knocks opponents away at a horizontal-upwards angle that won't kill until 170%. If used low to the ground, which usually involves delaying the attack, it can cover the ledge while keeping The Emperor on the stage which can serve as a neat ledge coverage trick. This attack also has fairly average starting lag and low landing lag with slightly lower-than-average ending lag, which in general makes it the safest of The Emperor's aerials.

This gives The Emperor a lot of safety when he's landing given his ability to delay it with a float, Down Aerial while landing, land with a Neutral Aerial (as you'll see in a moment), use a Cyclone to either delay or land with a hitbox and you get the idea. While The Emperor can sometimes struggle with the foe in the air, foes will equally likely struggle with trying to keep him in it. One thing worth keeping in mind, though, is that a lot of The Emperor's aerials ARE laggy, so very quick enemies might be able to out-speed him and give him some trouble. Gotta use the range and play smart in those spots.

Neutral Aerial: Imperial Circle​

The Emperor holds his staff by the middle and spins it (vertically) in front of him, an animation most comparable to Palutena's infamous Neutral Aerial. It even deals some extra damage by comparison, albeit over less hits! Specifically, it deals five hits of 1.8% each followed by a finishing hit of 5%, for a total of 14% (Palutena's does 13.5%), with the last hit having knockback that combos early and mid but scales to kill at 155% late! Although the fact it'll probably be staled from using it means it'll rarely truly kill that early. The biggest area this attack suffers? Lag. It takes a whole 12 frames to start up, more than double Palutena's 5 frames of starting lag, and the ending lag in the air is actually pretty modest as well in a way that hinders the combo potential. This leaves the move to primarily be used as an air dodging covering aerial due to the duration or omnidirectional-but-slow "get off me" tool in the air itself.

This move does, however, still have very low landing lag! The combo potential from this move usually comes from landing it, it even can autocancel out of a shorthop, which leads into attacks like Forward Tilt, Jab, Up Tilt (good for doing more aerial shenanigans) or Down Tilt (which is a combo extender and at very low percents loops into another Neutral Aerial). Back Aerial and Dash Attack serve as slower mixup options, while a retreating Down Aerial can serve as a safe spacing option if the foe dodges. Cross-ups are particularly effective out of Neutral Aerial! Not only can this hinder the foe's defensive options by taking away faster forward-facing choices, but it can lead into combos into Forward Tilt's back hit, a slower mixup with Back Aerial's back hit or a side-switching mixup against opponents with fast options via Dash Attack for the back hit! This is one of your more consistent options for trying to land backstabbing blows, so always keep that in mind.

Finally, it is worth noting that the multiple hits of the attack allow The Emperor to drag the opponent around. This makes it an attack that can drag opponents into projectiles like your Flares, but importantly means you can drag you and the foe right into a Thunder X! This is a rare way to combo into the Thunder X attack directly, but it is a bit predictable (you have to NAir in some pretty specific spots given it isn't like the multihits stick around all too long) and thus still more of a niche option. It does still give the move some interesting options to the attack that help with the fact that the base blows are definitively worse than Palutena's, making up for it with other parts of the kit.

Forward Aerial: Thunder V​

The Emperor sweeps his staff forward horizontally as electricity crackles down the entire thing, leaving behind a thin blade of electricity in front of him. Visually, imagine an Elwind projectile if it was horizontally oriented rather than vertically oriented. The electric "blade" then sits in place for a rather long period of time, before shooting forward 1.2 Battlefield Platforms as super fast speeds! This attack has a few things going on here, so let's break it down here. We'll start with the three hitboxes on the attack.

The swing itself deals a mere 5% damage and lightly nudges opponents forward, being completely useless if it doesn't connect into at least one other part of the attack. While the blade is sitting still, it deals 5% damage and light knockback as well, predominately horizontally oriented and with some electric hitstun to it. Finally, the blade traveling forwards deals 10% damage and not-too-high knockback (kills at 210%!) in the direction the blade was traveling. In theory, all of these hits can combo into each other and deal quite a large 20% damage! In practice, it is more common to only hit the blade's projectile due to the ease of falling out early. The first hit can combo into the stationary blade often, but if an opponent is above/below and DIs that direction they can often avoid it. And while the second hit CAN combo into the third hit, the blade taking a while to actually fire means the foe can fall out or DI out in a variety of situations. Not uncommon to either hit the first two hits or the last hit only, basically.

How about the lag? Well, it is pretty laggy to start off (14 frames) and the ending lag is pretty bad, although the landing lag is more moderately bad. The blade is actually designed so that it will go off at the same frame the ending lag naturally ends. Not keyed to the ending lag, mind, just the same frame data. This does mean The Emperor could try going for an attack while it is fired off, particularly if he lands and thus gets to act sooner, and aside from that it is a reasonable neutral tool that The Emperor can mix in with stuff like Forward Tilt or Neutral Aerial if he's jumping in neutral, especially retreating. It also provides a bit of a unique projectile to toss into the mix against stuff like the slow moving Flare. Do remember that the hitbox is quite thin, so the actual SPACE it controls is minimal by comparison!

Final Smash: Emperor of Heaven and Hell​

"The world can have but one Emperor..." Mateus claims as he plants his staff pointed-end first into the ground, dark and light energy surrounding him for an activation hitbox as he says this. "And I am He!" He finishes upon hit, entering a cinematic where The Emperor's Hell Emperor form appears alongside his Heaven Emperor form, with the Hell Emperor Form pelting the foe from below with a dark variant of Flare XVI, while the Heaven Emperor stands above and utilizes Holy XVI instead! The light and dark aspects merge together for a final hit that explodes outwards from the screen, dealing 46.6% damage that kills at 70%.

If The Emperor misses the activation hit, then he will turn away from the screen and cover himself with his cape while making a "Feh." noise. He then returns to his normal idle stance.

 

[Arctic Tern]

THE HUMAN (UnknownFate)

I do like the basic idea of the Pacifist/Genocide meters, giving the Human a choice between a better combo game or better kill potential. Changing the Specials, Smashes, and throws of the two sides but not the standards and aerials is also a fairly good move for keeping the core moves intact. Aside from standard lack of elaboration, my biggest complaint is that the actual changes Pacifist/Genocide give to the Human’s kit aren’t actually elaborated upon that much. I still ultimately wouldn’t call it outright bad, but it’s not particularly good aside from a few scattered concepts.

BIG BAND (UnknownFate)

Putting the lack of detail aside, I do like a lot of Big Band’s ideas! Canceling is always a cool mechanic in my book, and the restrictions on how they work do seem relatively balanced to me. It also, at a surface level, makes for a unique way to do a heavyweight combo character, where the attacks are slow but can be canceled on hit. The final thing of note is the DSpec, which makes a bell that creates a stunning effect based on how strong the hit was, which I could definitely see explored in another set. I do believe that the differences in the radius of the stunning effect aren’t strong enough, at least looking at the graph, and don’t know why Big Band has another character grab for him when there’s nothing in the set that explains why he can’t grab himself. Nevertheless, it at least seems like I’d have fun playing him and there’s nothing that screams to be fixed, so it ultimately earns a positive ranking.

THE DEFECT (UnknownFate)

For the Defect, I largely have to agree with Froy’s comment that it’s a bit too underpowered in its current state. The specific thing that stuck with me is that the KO percentages on the orbs are generally too low for the amount of time that has to be invested in them. This is made more of an issue when the Defect doesn't have that many KO moves on its own, relying on its aerials to do so. Aside from that, I do like the base idea of the orbs as stage control tools, and the melee is functional for the most part. Again, I would probably have fun with this character, so ultimately I do like the set.

Comment block link here!

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Mikazuki Augus & Gundam Barbatos Lupus Rex

• Given which set won MYM25, this set felt hype given who its authors were and its obviously long wordcount.
• Wasn’t expecting to see non-unit-based stats.
• Very unique super heavyweight here. The writing is a tease where it hypes up a move or mechanic to appear very overpowered, only to throw in a caveat that balances it out, like how the solid mace is positioned behind Mika and not in front of him. Likewise, Neutral Special appears to be an amazing move until it says that the skewer gets canceled if you attack, shield or get attacked or so before it comes out, plus the tail stays out after you use it. This move and the mechanics themselves are super unique heavyweight tools, with none of them feeling particularly unbalanced.
• Down Special has nice presentation.

• Pretty clear that Froy is in command starting from the Aerials. N-air has similar vibes to Whitebeard’s Dash Attack as a neat “follow-up this regular attack in many different ways” vibes. The options here are really fun, with the forward one being a dragging version of Quick Attack and the back one being a reversal hard read that feels funs to visualise - while also making use of Mika’s passive armour during that state so his attack can’t be interrupted too easily.
• U-air is great as a simple but strong juggling tool that’s balanced out by the Barbatos being such a massive target.
• Jab is actually a cool mix-up and unorthodox Jab combo with the AV-Dashing mechanics.
• D-throw has a fun little “auto knockback storage” effect with your tail skewer under the right conditions.
• The Smashes go hard for the set’s final section - both moveset and thematic/animation-wise, showing off Mika’s violent and apparently sadistic side. Fitting for such a heavyweight. The DI mix-ups from Jab make a return for F-Smash’s limiter-off variant, plus the ability to go “screw it” and spin offstage if you’re using your Up Special.
• D-Smash makes actual use of the mace’s solid mechanics - wasn’t expecting a variant where you can plunge your mace into the ground to wall opponents off.
• U-Smash has its angle-able tail hitbox and going back to Neutral Special where its hitbox is wider the longer your tail was, and how U-Smash works in tandem with Neutral Special. I don’t need to tell you two that all these Smashes were great, perhaps the best part of the set.

I’d say that Mika’s Standards and Throws were mostly good but not great, a little less convincing than some of the melee from you two, and his Side Special didn’t feel particularly strong for a Special, but moves like N-air, Jab and the Smashes that made fun use of Mika’s mechanics really brought him up. Given all that, I would say that Mika is a top 8 in my rankings, around the same tier as Cranky Kong and Timekeeper Cookie. Suffice to say, he was absolutely a wholesome Jamcon set, and very interesting that another joint set with Froy’s name on it might win the first Jamcon of a contest two contests in a row. Great job you two!

Spoiler: Waluigi

I’ve seen you throwing comments in the thread, but I believe this is your first moveset for MYM? Nice.

• Even if it’s not necessary for the moveset, I like hearing about your thoughts on the moveset’s design philosophy from the get-go. Really shows that you put some good thought into how Waluigi should work. The “I want to one-up Luigi” touch starting from the Jab is nice, what you’d expect from Waluigi and similar to K. Rool attempting to one-up DK in his moveset.
• UserShadow will love you for F-tilt’s Three Stooges reference. The animation for hitting vs whiffing is a nice touch.
• “This sweetspot activates once his legs and upper body create the perfect 90 degree angle to create his iconic Γ symbol!” This is a fun little animation! It feels like something that Sakurai would implement.
• “However, as always, Waluigi twists his fellow plumbers’ attacks for sinister, nefarious purposes.” Perfect way to sum up Waluigi. Spiking U-airs are unique in Smash, Waluigi having the first one would fit, but U-airs that can deal downwards knockback are hilariously common in MYM. We’ve been desensitized to them to some degree.
• F-throw is a little strong - the strongest throws in Smash KO from the ledge at around 130%. Easy mistake to make there, and to fix.
• I actually like how Neutral Special works, giving Waluigi a nice reward if he avoids taking a hit for 5 seconds. That timer could probably be brought down to 3 seconds to make the move easier to use, especially when Waluigi’s non-Specials don’t have an emphasis on evasion or keep-away. Still, the items Waluigi can get are pretty rewarding (minus the Twisted Rose, which seems a bit weak by comparison). I don’t think the 10 second cooldown after using an item is necessary, since Waluigi has to not be attacked for 5 seconds to even get an item from his Neutral Special.
• Side Special feels like the first proper “mix-up” move in Waluigi’s moveset that was promised in his design philosophy write-up, alongside F-Smash to some degree.
• Down Special summoning an existing character to fight for you is not something we see often! Those very rare types of moves feel a bit… weird, if you know what I mean, but they have potential if you acknowledge what the assist character can do in tandem with Waluigi’s moveset. I believe the most prominent example of a character summoning and manipulating an existing character from Smash was a Linbeck moveset in MYM11, who summoned Toon Link to fight for him. That was during the Brawl era of Smash’s lifetime.

Most people will tell you this, but we generally put Specials at the start of our movesets, as they often provide the base and raw concepts for the rest of the moveset to play off. Introducing the Specials first could let you do things like say when a move is good for spacing to stall for your Neutral Special block’s activation, combo into your Up Special, combo into or from a Piranha Plant move, or confirm into one of your Neutral Special options.

While Waluigi has some mean tricks in his non-Specials like his Up Air for dealing downwards knockback, the set doesn’t give much of a sense for how his moves work together with one another. It could be fun if say, Up Tilt went into Up Air or something really basic. You’ve been commenting on sets, so you probably have a general idea of what I mean, though to be fair this stuff is tricky to get a good grasp on, even for people who have been around for a few years. Keep up the work, anyway!

Spoiler: Big Band

• Good to see you back in MYM26!
• I agree with Tern in liking how this set’s canceling works, especially where you can only cancel Specials into a different Special. Much as I like the short description, me being used to longer sets is hungry for more details and applications on how this cancel works with his moveset. For instance, the implications of canceling one Special into another.
• Guessing you can only cancel attacks that connect, just like Ryu and Ken.
• What exactly does “Charging” entail with the Neutral Special? Is it like charging a Smash attack?
• I could see Neutral Special being a great move to cancel into other Specials (particularly Side Special), due to being a multi-hit that can lock them into those moves instead of going for the final hit. It’s the type of thing that would be very fun to mention, would spice up the moveset more.
• Is Big Bell an actual part of Big Band’s Skull Girls moveset? It feels pretty out-of-place among the Specials: a more orthodox attack would make sense to capitalize on Big Band’s cancel mechanic. I can’t see the bell working with that.
• The non-Specials have a decent amount of detail for a short set, like F-tilt talking about aerial and cancel-based set-ups.
• One thing you could talk about with the Smashes in general is how they could force an opponent to react to you potentially canceling a Standard attack into a Smash. For instance, you land F-tilt and cancel it into an F-Smash. I’m guessing the F-Smash isn’t guaranteed, but foes will be forced to do something to avoid it like shield. If they go, you could just grab them instead canceling F-tilt into F-Smash. Likewise, U-tilt into a potential U-Smash could force a reaction from your opponent, like air dodging after getting hit by U-tilt to avoid U-Smash’s multiple hits.
• Throws are short and don’t have any applications described to them, but I assume this is a habit from the FFC community where throws were considered an afterthought. They could talk about what moves Big Band could combo into, for instance.

Note: Barbara is being saved for tomorrow due to time constraints. After that, I'll put in my Jamcon 1 nomination.

 

[Zakawer2]

It was yet another day on the Smash Bros. battlefield for longtime Smash Bros. veteran Fox McCloud. A skilled Arwing pilot who followed in the footsteps of his legendary father James and led Star Fox—a team of space mercenaries from Corneria helping the Cornerian military fend off Andross's forces in the Lylat System—Fox had been an integral and vital part of the Super Smash Bros. series since day one, never skipping a single entry, even in spite of the Star Fox series being largely dormant and barely even alive as of today. At this point in time, hardly anything in Smash Bros. surprised him. He had already fought on every stage, used every item, and matched up against every fighter in the series, and knew their movesets, playstyles, strengths and weaknesses very well.

Fox of course noticed that his opponent this time was Princess Daisy, the tomboyish flower princess from the obscure country of Sarasaland who first appeared in Super Mario Land for Game Boy. Ever since the release of Mario Tennis on Nintendo 64, Princess Daisy had been a popular and recurring character in the Super Mario franchise, though she had mostly been relegated to appearances in Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, Mario Party, Mario Kart and Mario Strikers.

Fox was no stranger to Princess Daisy's likeness (or something closely approximating that) appearing before his eyes in Smash—all the way back in the Melee days, he had seen Princess Peach wear an accurate Princess Daisy cosplay on the battlefield (which included auburn hair dye and brownface, as well as Daisy's crown, dress, earrings, brooch, gloves and shoes), and he had also seen trophies during the Melee, Brawl and Smash 4 eras depicting Daisy (as well as stickers of her likeness back during the Subspace Emissary Adventure Mode). He was also highly accustomed to fighting Princess Peach (having fought her countless times since Melee).

And when Super Smash Bros. Ultimate came into existence, Fox noticed that Daisy had finally made it in for real; this was the first time that he actually saw the real Daisy before his eyes, as opposed to Peach in Daisy's clothes/colors or a simple collectible item depicting Daisy. However, once he first fought her, he soon dismissed her as little more than a simple Peach clone and always treated her as such, because literally every single move she performed was completely identical to Peach's own equivalent.

Today, Fox fought Princess Daisy like usual. He assumed that she would fight in exactly the same way Peach did, because that's how she always did it in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, right up until this very day.

But then he was suddenly caught off-guard, as Daisy was now moving, fighting and acting very differently than before. Fox had never seen her act so hotheaded, rough, unrefined, badass or aggressive. Not only did she seem somewhat harder for him to KO (though his classic up smash and back air could still do the trick for him), she also no longer seemed to slowly float through the air gracefully the way Peach did.

And then she hit him with a punch infused with orange flower petal energy, which did something unexpected to him that he had never anticipated…

 

[BrazilianGuy]

So after some time of having to focus on classes, real-life shenanigans, and, a weekend of feeling sick, I felt good enough to read movesets, I'm mainly gonna read out the Jamcon ones cause yes.

Spoiler: Ne-Gok-Sa

Ne-Gok-Sa does a thing I want to be done in more platform fighters which is a proper summoner character, and he didn't disappoint at all. Being a big alien creature thing with a bladed arm, it seems weird to imagine that he would be kind to stay back and just summon minions, but with the context given and the characterization you get to see why he and his species would do that if anything it really felt like Ne-Gok-Sa is a strategic warlord who together with his troops will kill anyone on their way. I like how not complicated his mechanics are, that also goes for the Down Special mind control, being a nice option to make your opponent panic. I also liked how throws were implemented onto his minions. If anything I'd say I wanted to hear more about the minions, but what we get is pretty neat! And so is Ne-Gok-Sa himself. Also props for doing such a big concept in so little time, are genuinely impressive. However he does kill his own kind for recovery and Down Smash, I can get behind him killing his opponents, but his own Marro brothers? Kinda cringe. Overall a Hivemind/10

 

[Arctic Tern]

​

"She was called 'The Goddess of Death'. With sickle in hand, she would chant her requiem. If you heard it, odds were you'd just drawn your last breath. The mere sound of her voice would put ice in your veins. I know... I heard it myself once, from a hundred yards away. The moment it touched my ear, I passed out for an entire week. If I heard it up close, I could scarcely imagine... forget it. Let's talk about happier things."

 

[Arctic Tern]

MIZUBASHOU (Kat)

Mizubashou takes an interesting route when it comes to trap characters: instead of having them allocated to their Specials, they’re located on the Smashes and Grab! While this is probably going to be somewhat controversial, I like them well enough, and the grab does have a close range hitbox so it works as a standard grab. The actual traps themselves are rather cool as well, most prominently the boulder, which can be used as a pendulum hitbox, a tool to trigger other traps, and as a surface to place Mizubashou’s other traps on. Her throws from the grab were also something I liked, specifically the UThrow/DThrow tech mixup and the FThrow cage that serves as a wall for her to make more traps behind. And the idea of deliberately falling for your own traps to buff them is something I don’t think any trap character has ever done!

Her actual Specials generally don’t disappoint - I did find the SSpec a bit too bland, but it is somewhat necessary on a trap character like Mizubashou. NSpec’s transformations have several neat tricks to them, like dragging the foe towards your traps or using traps to trigger a counter hitbox. The standout is DSpec, which creates a clone that allows Mizubashou to have someone else make her traps with the tradeoff of them being weaker than average, though I found that their applications with standards weren’t particularly noted. Everything else is quite solid, all filling niches in her trap game, with the standout move being the slide kick DTilt that can mindgame opponents into thinking she’s going to trigger a trap. While not exactly the most orthodox set, I still quite liked Mizubashou, and her ideas are giving me thoughts on interesting gimmicks for other trap characters.

EMPEROR MATEUS (Froy)

The Emperor’s playstyle, naturally, takes significant cues from his Dissidia interpretation, where he’s a cunning trap master who manipulates his enemies into doing his dirty work for them. Here, this is done through the use of Starfall, an incredibly slow to start attack that, once brought out, summons a powerful, nearly undodgeable meteor that can only be stopped by aggressing him. I actually like the way it’s implemented, where the attack is so slow to actually hit the foe that the real purpose is just to encourage them to approach to get around Mateus’ slow speed. SSpec, while simple, also builds into this gameplan by creating a trap or a slow homing projectile to pressure the opponent when they’re going towards him. As the last notable Special, USpec is a neat play on PK Thunder where the projectile can be kept out to potentially combo into the second hitbox, with the idea of knocking the Emperor into it in such a manner it sends him offstage being particularly intriguing counterplay.

Mateus’ other moves don’t skimp out, replicating his general feel very well. From DSmash slowing the foe’s attacks, the various backstab attacks to exploit opponents navigating his field of traps, to USmash’s ability to stick to platforms and deny them, the Emperor feels like the mastermind he’s characterized as, with lots of potential for cool plays. The projectile play was also generally pretty neat, with FSmash turning his other projectiles into explosive hitboxes being the highlight; it reminded be a lot of MYM 18’s sets (projectile play was everywhere in that contest, it felt like), which makes sense considering the last time it was worked on before it was finished was 2016. The only thing I didn’t really see the point of is FSmash creating a meteor chunk off Starfall - it creates another hitbox, but I don’t really see the point of it when the meteor on its own is practically undodgeable and it decreases the main hitbox’s power. It also doesn’t really elaborate on the Emperor’s prone game, which seems like a notable positive given his focus on traps and long ranged FSmash. To end on a more positive note, though, DThrow is a particularly interesting take on the projectile throw where it’s mainly for stage control and not actually comboing off of it.

Overall, while definitely lacking in some areas, the Emperor is still quite the interesting take on the trap genre - coincidentally being posted right after another. Bow before your lord, peons.

DAISY (Zakawer2)

We’ve had quite a few sets for Daisy over the years, and while I’m fine with her current appearance in Ultimate, I can see why someone would want to see her decloned. This set seeks to make her into an aggressive combo character, with a few tricks up her sleeve. The biggest is the fact that several of her moves deal poison damage, based on Daisy’s association with flowers and the Lip’s Stick effect in canon Smash, which is a fairly neat concept to play with. The SSpec command grab having different properties depending on whether it’s landed grounded or airborne is also pretty neat, and I did like the noting of out of shield options.

The biggest problem with this set, as with so many other newcomer sets, is lack of elaboration. Combo setups are fairly well elaborated, but the other aspects of Daisy’s gameplay, such as how she deals with projectiles or shields, aren’t. Despite the fact that start lag is given for every move, a lot of the moves don’t even have their endlag implied, and with only a few normals being over 10 frames in terms of startup I am concerned that her combo game is too good. In addition, while I like the idea of the DSpec flowerbed trap, it doesn’t really fit into the combo based gameplan, nor is there really a prone game emphasized that that could work in. Regardless, this is still a good effort from a newcomer, and if you have any more characters you want to make sets for we’ll gladly accept them!

GANONDORF (MaSpoofs)

From one rework of a canon Smash character to another, Ganondorf takes a different approach; instead of completely changing their playstyle, the set just adjusts moves to take more cues from actual Zelda games while maintaining his read-based playstyle. And honestly, I do like what this version has going on! Ganon keeps all of his most iconic viable moves in his Smash kit, with some changes, and adds some new ones to make his disadvantage state less awful, like an all-around NAir hitbox. The standout moves to me were the NSpec, a great way of brute forcing his way into close range that still has weaknesses if it whiffs, and DSpec, which is probably the most MYM thing here: a Pikachu Thunder that, if it hits Ganon, grants him the options to either send a slow projectile or buff one of his sword moves. The omnidirectional float was also a neat tool to give him, especially in how it's less a mobility/recovery tool and more just something to aid his edgeguarding/landing trapping game.

Aside from lack of elaboration or damage percents, I don’t really have much to complain about; while the previously described points do ultimately hurt it, from what I understand this wasn’t made for MYM. I do believe that Ganon’s rage gauge mechanic seems a bit too powerful given it essentially gives him a Final Smash for free at the end of a match, but even then I’m not sure if it’s actually in the set proper seeing as how it’s listed as a “potential” mechanic. Even the absence of Dead Man’s Volley I’m OK with, especially since there’s a whole paragraph at the end of the set dedicated to explaining why it’s not in the set (it ultimately makes Ganon feel too much like K. Rool, all of the other Specials have necessary uses, and the move is not so iconic for it to be a requirement in a Ganon set). A fairly fun reimagining of one of Smash’s most notorious movesets (in more ways than one), and a fairly strong first effort.

LANA (AwfulBeast)

Lana is a fairly MYM character from what I’ve seen of her gameplay, and this set does a fairly good job of incorporating her into Smash. The main gimmick of the set is the walls, which are immensely versatile for how simple of a construct they are on the surface. Not only do they behave as projectile blockers, but they can also be used as kill setups, straight up kill tools through FSmash interactions, and ledge trapping tools. I also like how Lana technically can only spawn 2 walls through NSpec but can naturally create them from Jab to get around this limit at the expense of them being out for less time. And finally, it’s especially cool how there’s actual incentive to only have one wall out, as it gives her access to another extension of her SSpec for better mobility.

The rest of Lana’s kit is focused on being a kinetic setup character with a lot of tools for evading opponents and several flashy setups with her walls. All of her moves fit a good function in her gameplan, with standout moves being DSmash for the ability to cancel the callout into a normal aerial and DAir with its interaction with USpec platforms. I highly recommend reading the competitive section for a better understanding of the set, not just in how Lana functions in a typical match but also understanding the possible setups and her weaknesses as a character. I actually like the specific weaknesses, as weird of a thing as that sounds to like: besides the standard light weight, she lacks good damage or kill options without the aid of walls, which are easily destroyed in neutral, and her low jump height means she’s not actually that good at edgeguarding despite her ledgetrapping ability. The former weakness in particular is something we don’t see a lot of in MYM, but it’s executed fairly well with how versatile her walls are for getting damage.

Lana is a set that doesn’t look like it has a lot going on on the surface, but every piece works into a very cohesive whole that seems incredibly fun to mess around with.

Comment block link here!

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Barbara

Great to see another FFC member jump into Jamcons!

• The practice of implementing a retrospective write-up at the start of a moveset might be questionable to some, especially when it’s not necessary to understanding the moveset or the character, but I think it’s kind of neat to have. It’s the kind of thing that readers are free to skip anyway, much like some of Meltryllis’s character-specific Melt Virus interactions.
• I actually agree with you on the “surprisingly unsurprised that a Rayman moveset has never placed” bit.
• I like the trivia behind the Playstyle section behind Rayman Legends being a fast, smooth momentum-based game. Sets the precedence for how Barbara will play.
• Jab goes into a surprising amount of detail against shields, which is kind of fun.
• F-Smash being a command grab sounds like the type of thing you would normally go into a lot of detail and implications about.
• Counter on an U-Smash sounds weird, but it feels a bit justified with the little write-up.
• D-air is neat, but a bit weird that Barbara never swings her axe given the animation makes it sounds like she will at some point in the move.
• Nobody is expecting the world from pummels: just saying “Character hits opponent for X% is completely fine.” The most general use for pummels is that they can be used to refresh your stale moves.
• I’ll just pretend that F-throw has Barbara casually throw her opponent forward an average distance for 7%. I guess you’re not used to fleshing out grab games just yet. No problem!
• B-throw is a nice bit of real characterization, along with hypothetical characterization.
• U-throw is decent. Could be worth mentioning that your counter U-Smash doesn’t have a hitbox to actually exploit opponents who air dodge.

Overall: Barbara has some interesting things going for her, but her set feels incomplete right now. F-throw and D-throw aside, a lot of moves don’t have the same level of detailed applications as the first few moves, making them less compelling than you could make them, which I know you can. The Specials were okay, but they felt like the types of moves that could get spiced up with how they work with your other moves, especially the first 3 Specials since they’re all movement-based options. Still, I get the impression that you were rushed for this Jamcon, and you were rusty with setmaking too. Good to see you pop back in anyway, and whether you’ll go and edit Barbara and start on a new project.

Jamcon nomination goes to Mikazuki Augus & Gundam Barbatos Lupus Rex. Great job Froy and n88 - looking forward to seeing what (double?) Jamcon theme you two pop out for Jamcon 2!

 

[MaSpoofs]

Yet another Ganondorf rework.
(click image for document)​

 

[BrazilianGuy]

Spoiler: Irene Landry

So, when I read the Saul moveset in MYM 25 I mentioned how I had to get around to watch Breaking Bad, good news is I got around to it! Very slowly, but still, I'm making my way through it. Now Irene is a character I didn't even know existed, but this moveset really made me fall in love with her and her silly concepts. You give a great introduction to the character, I felt like I was brought to speed with her place in the Methverse, but even tho I am nowhere near watching Better Call Saul I went ahead and looked at the clips with Irene, as well as going for the Breaking Bad wiki and I got genuinely happy seeing that Jimmy does something nice and fixes her life by making her friends go back to her. And this was perfectly translated to the moveset, I felt bad whenever you described her 'friendless' attacks, Irene deserves her friends and is empowered by them and I love that. Although I haven't read Walter's set, I've heard about the obligatory Methverse money mechanic and I think is also done amazingly, since she is so far from doing anything nearly as bad as the other two it feels right that hers is much simpler while also giving her good and in character buffs. Other things I love include her Up Special chair yoga somehow working for recovery, the Dash Attack, and the chunky soup, the entirety of Down Smash genuinely had me smiling as I read it and there's even a Steven Universe cookie cat reference, that's based. I think my only complaint is that she lacks extra stuff (would have loved a victory screen with her and her friends vibing, or one with her cats), also the stats section could go more in-depth, but with Jamcon limitations in mind, I don't think those are too big of issues. I often struggle to put into words what I enjoy about movesets and moveset making, but this set has it, it has a fun energy, it does original concepts, it brings a very out-of-left-field character into Smash which is an added bonus, and it represents everything that character is, does and stands for. So, yeah, loved this moveset a lot, didn't expect that going into Better Call Saul Grandma, so that's awesome! I give her a BINGO/10

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Margaret Moonlight

Love seeing a modern No More Heroes moveset - its length combined with Jamcon 1’s theme makes it look like a secondary Jamcon set from you, which is great. Margaret is a simple set that revolves primarily around her Neutral Special stance, which is cool and reminds me of my own Ferrijit set’s Neutral Special. One nice difference here is that Margaret gets great mileage out of range that being offstage gives her, thanks to her floatiness.

The rest of the moveset plays off of the Neutral Special and goes into a lot of mix-ups, but Margaret doesn’t have a ton of crazy stuff to play around with in her own boss fight, like a decent chunk of No More Heroes bosses. I kind of like Dash Attack’s “invincible pause” button to make the slow attack more usable, while also making nice use of Margaret’s supernatural powerset. F-tilt’s multi-hits is nice, and is interesting in the context of Neutral Special because you don’t get the second hit while you’re in the sniping stance. Also like D-tilt for being an auto-jump that’s great for air combos and safe on block, but leaves Margaret in a vulnerable position after using it. F-throw is fun for its German Suplex trivia. I quite like the concept of D-throw for being a “built-in tech chase”, where instead of getting your usual tech chase options you get a special stance that gives you some unique follow-up options, while the proning session works in nicely with Margaret’s options. I’d love to see more of these kinds of moves in sets.

Wasn’t expecting an impractical taunt that puts your opponent to sleep. Now that’s a fun set.

Overall, a nice and solid set. Appreciate the shorter read after what was a crazy Jamcon 1.

Spoiler: The Emperor

More sets from the Froy Fantasy vault? Wonderful. Big classic Final Fantasy villain? Even better. Now we just need sets for characters like Exdeath and Ultimecia. I love the full-blown and passionate intro for this set, it was very entertaining to read as someone who isn’t explicitly familiar with this character (outside of Dissidia: Final Fantasy, which I played and remember some of the stuff he does and his win dialogue of “An insect defeat an emperor?”).

Neutral Special starts out fun as a stupidly-over-the-top move for a stupidly-over-the-top villain. The way the meteor’s size is described, “I'm talking "half a Battlefield wide" huge. Not Battlefield Platform, BATTLEFIELD. It is probably as tall as the bottom platform of Battlefield to the topmost Battlefield Platform, ” hilariously brings to mind more of a rectangular projectile than a spherical meteor. The move was surprisingly joyful to read.

A glance through this set when it was first posted, confirmed with Tern’s comment and a look at the brisk Side and Down Specials, showed me that this set was less grand than I thought for the character choice. So a quick set like Onion Knight to post a set you had in your vault for a while. Much like in your Elekid set, PK Thunder style moves are fun and would be great to see executed in unique ways, with this set letting you keep the PK Thunder out and have it orbit around your projectiles, or steer foes into Starfall.

On the other hand, Down Special and Up Special being very similar to Dr. Tornado and PK Thunder does make Emperor’s set feel lacking in originality, or making him less distinctive than he could be for such a big villain. While directing yourself with a PK Thunder wouldn’t be out-of-character for Emperor given his whole “let them kill you to rule over hell,” thing, I always thought of PK Thunder’s self-hitting animation as being comical. Maybe Emperor could let out a sinister laugh while he’s being propelled?

Smashes have some decently interesting hard interactions with your projectiles, like pausing + detonating with Ultima and blowing out a chunk of the meteor to use as a falling hitbox, which is fun. U-Smash as a vertical trap that can stick to the meteor and get a bigger effect from F-Smash goes harder.

I do like the idea of backstabbing moves and Blood Backstab, but… I think the emphasis on landing back attacks is disconnected from with Emperor’s established trap + projectile gameplan. Nor am I sure about it character-wise (does an Emperor really want to lower himself to the level of a backstabbing thief or assassin? You could argue that he’s a schemer, though). It kind of works from Down Special, but not from the other Specials or Smashes, even if later moves place an emphasis on attacking the opponent’s back. Perhaps healing from the Blood Backstab effect could give Emperor a higher “concentration” ceiling for Starfall, or heavy armour while he’s casting Neutral Special? This could even work with his F-throw, which speaking of is probably my favourite move in the set and something I’d expect to see in a bigger set. B-air also works solidly with backstab mechanics and Down Special too. Also like his F-air, as aside from being a wee delayed projectile it reminds me of Yui Hirasawa’s F-air.

Overall, Emperor felt a bit less focused and innovative than your other sets, but he was still a fun read, with the intro and Neutral Special alone being worth it. Nice work with your high set count this contest so far!

 

[AwfulBeast]

Entering the White Sorceress, Lana, from Hyrule Warriors into MYM! My first proper moveset in a very long time, I hope it doesn't disappoint.

Lana, The White Sorceress Moveset

 

[GolisoPower]

Sasori Been Awful Quiet Ever Since Monster Girl Quest Dropped
Kagetsumugi by OldManHan

And here he is, the MGQ franchise master, back at it again! Kagetsumugi arguably seems to equal Kasen earlier in the contest, which is a lot more impressive considering this is a JamCon contest.

Kagetsumugi is quite literally a puppet fighter, and her coordination with her Tengu puppet best exemplifies it. She's absolutely scary when it comes to trapping her foes with various attacks, puppets, and craftable items that can either enhance herself and her puppets or hinder her foes. Honestly, a 2-Kagetsumugi team match would be absolutely frightening. Down Special seems to be the crux of this general gameplan, allowing her to create talismans to either enhance her puppets or debuff her foes, or potions that she can use to buff herself. There seems to be a lot of depth to both sides of this Special and I feel it really enriches the set in a sense. But then we get another layer of depth to this with her Neutral Special, which allows her to create puppets that can help Kagetsumugi and Tengu. The biggest highlights out of them gotta be the one that looks like something Sid from Toy Story would make and the absolute raid boss that is Alipheese IX. If I can't get the latter, I'm certainly gonna gun for the former. What's a puppetmaster without their strings? A bad puppetmaster, that's why she's got Side Special, which can either grant you a really strong multidirectional set-up or direct control over Tengu's actions without a need for a cooldown. The former effect is especially useful for knocking somebody towards your own puppets, but the latter's pretty nifty if you want to start a setup without having to fret. And lastly for the Specials but certainly not least, she either lowers her gravity to give her a better vertical boost in recovery or sacrifices a puppet to warp to their location like she was some poltergeist. All these together make her practically omnipresent, turning the match into an Orwellian dystopia and you're Big Brother...or Big Sister in this context.

I will say, I recall you having negative thoughts on you making purposefully low-damage attacks, something that would've been unheard of in Ilias, Adramelech and of course Kasen, but honestly, not only do I find it good to get out of your comfort zone once in a while, I think you pretty much nailed it here. Not to mention, the flavoring's fun, using a blend of sewing tools and dark magic for a bunch of her attacks. I especially love Dash attack and D-air, the former being a really graceful and tricky input with two follow-ups (Something I plan on doing on crack with a set I have in mind), and the latter having her literally fishing for a combo using the smonk. But the Grab game seems to stand out above all the rest, taking advantage of what she did with her Specials prior to enhance her throws with either Talismans for F-throw or pushing them towards a puppet with a D-throw. It really stands out as a section where a lot of the set is tied to her resources from beginning to end and none of the gimmicks are particularly forgotten at any point of the set.

Again, Kagetsumugi is equal to Kasen from what I've read, which is saying quite a bit because Kasen was jacked the first time I read her. You handled her gimmicks and set in a short timeframe much better than I admittedly did with Sevagoth, and I can only applaud you for it, my man. Nice work.

 

[PeridotGX]

Back when I posted regigigas last contest, I said i might consider coming back into the contest for real. I'm still doing that! It's been four contests since I gave this a serious shot (23 was AI gargle plus a half baked frisk, I was entirely absent for 24, and I only returned to 25 at the tail end), but people who were gone for far longer have made returns so i might as well give it a shot. Between homework and my job I probably won't be able to post anything this month, but I'm going to disclose my plans for the next few movesets I'm making. I'm hoping that I'll get people excited for the ideas and I'll feel pressured to actually work on them (this is one of the only ways i know how to get things done thank you adhd and executive disfunction). I made a graphic awhile back that mostly holds up.
View attachment 369581
The set in the middle is the one that will probably release first. It's an idea i've had for a while, and I've dropped a few hints for it in the discord and such. The character was really big a few years back, but people don't really care about them anymore-probably because the content stopped being produced. But I have fun ideas for the set, and I think people will appriciate the idea and remember the good times. You know what, I'm not going to be vague with it anymore: this is a set for Deep Leffen. Yes, the twitter account.

The ones in the back could release in any order, I'm not sure which I'll get around to first. The one on the left is a very belated Secret Santa gift, and probably a character that's had a fair few MYM variants already. The one on the right isn't quite an OC, but they're a very insignificant character in their game and I'm fleshing them out to the degree they might as well be (There's been a set or two from their series before, but it's very much out of MYM's common wheelhouse).

Aside from these three, there's one really solid idea that i forgot to include in the original picture (very appropriate), and they have the unique position of being a possibility for actual inclusion in another fighting game (a very slim one, seeing as Multiversus is dying and they weren't leaked, but you never know). There are also a few joke ideas I have, and I'd like to remake a few of my older sets to make them better. Frisk leaps out as priority number one for that, I like a few of the ideas but some other things need changed and it was also half done when i submitted it (i had a whole codec thing planned but i only had one ai written one actually included which made it look like i'm just bad at dialog too). Arcade Bunny, Chill Penguin, and Weavile are also things I'd like a second take on. We'll see how things go.

This is why I don't make promises. I haven't started working on any of these sets but I accidentally made an Asgore

Asgore

docs.google.com

Jokes aside, I made this for what's essentially a jamcon on another site. I think it's my best set yet, but that's mostly a testament to how bad everything else is.

 

[Slavic]

Nui Harime by T TortoiseNotTurtle

Kill la Kill finally getting the recognition it deserves after so long! I read this moveset like a week or so ago and just haven't had time to sit down and organize my thoughts on it, mostly because I want to provide commentary more specific to the goals of this moveset than necessarily as a MYM moveset. One of the big differences between the two contests (MYM and FFC) is that MYM has become as much a literary contest as it is a moveset contest, whereas FFC seems to be more geared in on creating strong movesets as a whole (the very structure of the contest is about which set would win as opposed to which set was the coolest / best written). Still, there is a rough consensus in MYM about what we like to read, so know that comments like 'more detail' or 'Specials first' generally will improve reception to sets in this environment.

This Nui is very different from Tern's Nui, which is great because if they were too similar I'd probably lose my mind. I'd say this set plays into her personality and anime abilities more, while Tern's had more focus on inspiration from Kill la Kill IF and her animation style. Neither approach is better and makes for a diverse reading experience (and leaves room to come in with a third Nui set that combines all the elements). I will say I'm overall pretty content with the characterization of Nui in the moveset, I think pulling from her various abilities helps tell a story with the moveset, though I do wish she used her scissor blade a bit more throughout, given how major it is to the series she has it (maybe all the Smashes as scissor blade attacks?).

Putting the Specials last mainly leads to odd situations where clones are mentioned throughout the set without us knowing what that means exactly. By reoarganizing the set you can redistribute the words around, talking about clone ramifications of things in the relevant moves instead of needing to put them all in the Special at the end of the moveset. This automatically makes a handful of moves more detailed by default without any more writing required, just as an example. Reading about mechanics we don't know of yet makes for a jarring moveset experience either way.

There are a few areas of writing I had either difficulty properly envisioning or are a bit contradictory. There's one point, in F-Tilt, it describes a move as having set knockback, but not killing until 200%. Set knockback doesn't scale with damage the foe has (though it does sometimes scale with weight), so if it doesn't kill before 200% it won't kill period. For the same effect you can say it has a good or specific base knockback but terrible scaling, which would keep the foe at a consistent angle and distance without it needing to be set while also allowing it to still kill. Up Smash, the attack with pulling threads, is one of the cooler animations and a move I think I like? But there's a lot of information about what the threads look like, how they're set up, where the vertical range reaches, and where the move has actual hitboxes that make it hard to imagine having not written the moveset.

When it comes to balance, the main area of concern I have are the clones; Nui's allowed to have up to 7 of these lil' guys on the stage at one time. Given they have 12% health that needs to be dropped in one shot, she can make fighting her absolutely hell, either forcing the foe to mow down Nui after Nui and leave themselves vulnerable with their somewhat stronger attacks or try and ignore these clones that can rush towards Nui with Down Taunt and each deal 11% damage. I think with their fast summoning time and high numbers the clones could even be a single hit from any flinching attack and still be quite powerful, but as is they are downright oppressive for the foe to cope with.

Also let's talk about that air dash, because I only just remembered it looking over the Gameplay section at the end. I think removing her directional air dodges for a mobility boost is a pretty worrying trait on her, and means Nui has incredibly limited vertical recovery tools. Her Air Dash only allows her to travel horizontally and with no invulnerability, her float only allows her to travel horizontally, and her Up Special has more horizontal distance than vertical, making it really hard for her to get back up to the stage once knocked off. If you wanted to keep these traits in (I'm not fully sold on including the fighting game air dash since it really doesn't have to do with her character at all but meh), I'd give her a really potent second jump, like Yoshi or the Mother kids have, which would also play into her being annoying.

Hopefully this comment didn't come over as entirely negative as I did have fun reading through the set. I just wanted to provide some specific commentaries that wouldn't just parrot that we generally like more detail here, and at least provide a few examples as to why. Nonetheless, getting a moveset out in a matter of days on a whim is always impressive, and without Nui Twoi we wouldn't have descended into the Nui World Order.

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Emidius Alvisio

I remember this guy from way back, back when he was an overpowered joke set of sorts. I appreciate seeing one of your novel OCs from you like I was hoping for (was admittedly expecting some kind of reference to Knight, who from FA’s set seemed wide-reaching enough in his villainy that he would interact with Emidius or his people).

Between this set and Bowstring, you seem to have something of a fondness for mechanics that give your characters multiple variants of their attacks. Nothing wrong with that! But then Emidius gets cooler than that with his Synthetic Lapis Mana mechanic: being an observation-based mechanic ironically reminds me a lot of FA’s Lizard and Iguana movesets. The Spite, Gravity and Barrier buffs feel most potent here, but they don’t feel overbearing as they’re based on your opponents’ actions. I like how these buffs are based on some of the more potent inputs opponents can make, with Gravity potentially punishing them for using Aerials when they are some of the best combo and neutral-based inputs in Smash.

The mechanic is a little confusing in areas though: it first says that Emidius has to observe 9 actions from his opponent and then use Neutral Special again to get one buff, but then the set says he gets it when he tags an opponent 3 times. I assume the tag count was edited at some point in the set’s production, and it’s intended to be one buff per 9 sections, 3 buffs with 27 actions. It would also be neat if Emidius had some kind of little visual change associated with each tier of his buffs, since the set says he is genetically modifying his body. I do like the coloured presentation on the buffs, though.

• The material-based buffs for your Side Special projectiles is a little confusingly-worded: “Spite Materials will not cause the projectile to give reflect damage,” and saying “X buff doesn’t behave like it normally does,” is unnecessary to say - just mention the actual buff they give out. These descriptions admittedly threw me for a loop when I read them.
• I’m guessing that the thrown scythe doesn’t deal hitstun given it moves so slowly and can’t really be destroyed, though it does mention not dealing knockback.
• I’m not too sure about making the Up Special pillar indestructible, even though it melts over time and doesn’t stay out for too long. Perhaps mention that foes can roll around the pillar like Pac-Man’s Hydrant?

I like how blade F-tilt’s middle attack can be replaced with Neutral Special’s grab, giving Emidius a way to get his grab off since he’ll need that to start observing and get his buffs. Might want to say that it is a hitgrab so it can’t pass through shields and just invalidate them (hitgrabs like Terry’s Buster Wolf are ignored by shields, unlike regular grabs which go through them). Scythe’s B follow-up where he can chase launched foes aerially is good too. Down Tilt is good too: sword opens for quicker attacks, scythe opens for slower attacks via tech chase.

I echo Tern in liking the ability to create a construct that can use your Smashes for you, one that is well-deserved when said construct takes 4 seconds to erect (though I wonder if it should have less HP - maybe 50%? 100HP sounds like it would take forever to destroy). U-Smash sounds like it could have a powerful sweetspot when the spears intersect above Emidius’s head - that could work very well if foes try to jump over your big, lingering F-Smash hitbox. D-Smash is definitely my favourite pillar interaction, for the ability to cancel out Emidius’s first attack, make the pillar perform the second and connect with both attacks if yours knocks the opponent into the pillar! A great take on the “hit in front and then behind you,” style of D-Smashes. F-air is appreciated as a hard interaction to knock your Up Special pillar around.

I enjoy a grab game that leans full on into “each throw creates a different construct.” U-throw’s funnel catching the Up Special pillar back down for a hitbox against the thrown opponent sounds fun and worth expanding upon - is this hit guaranteed? Is it good for KO’ing? Even if it’s not a guaranteed hit, you could still use the falling pillar to make your opponent waste their air dodge. Same questions with B-throw. I like both U-throw and B-throw abilities to trap opponents within the funnels. While such an application is not explicitly mentioned in the set, the breakable constructs actually work well with Emidius’s observation-based mechanics, as foes are incentivized to break his constructs and use attacks without interacting with him.

Overall, Emidius is easily your best moveset with some really potent concepts, but he has the potential to be even better and a rock-solid contender, if not more. The big thing here would be to sell how Emidius’s moves and mechanics work together: I didn’t feel too sold on the Synthetic Lapis Mana buffs and the weapon-switching compared to the constructs, for instance, as the former don’t really into too much detail (the one-time super armour buff sounds very potent for aggressive plays and landing slower hits, for instance). There might be a bit much speed debuffing in this set when Emidius is not that slow, and it might be annoying in tandem with the constructs he can make. I could also see Emidius having more emphasis on getting his Down Special construct out (spacing for the time he needs to erect it, for instance), and his throw-based constructs have a lot of potential to be exploited with his melee game, like using the B-throw funnel’s roof to bounce foes back down like Steve’s blocks, or just kicking foes into your walls and back into you for combos. Finally, the fact that Emidius gets these constructs from his grab game means that he should perhaps have a bigger emphasis on fishing for grabs - with such a big reward from his throws, perhaps his grab should be slower and harder to land?

In all fairness, you did say you were going for something big but realised that modern movesetting is hard, so I can’t blame Emidius for not living up to his full potential as a moveset. He was a good read for his cool ideas though, so good job there!

Finally, this might be the first moveset in the history of MYM to have comments for them edited into the moveset - good incentive to get other people to comment on this set so we can increase his wordcount. Now a little part of me will be a part of Emidius.

Spoiler: Ganondorf (Remix)

This entry feels different from most MYM sets in that it’s patching up an existing Smash character instead of being an entirely original work, so it’s a little strange to judge. Like the Waluigi set, I enjoyed reading about your principles for how a Ganondorf remake should be done, like how Sephiroth got the big heavy feel right and that not all of Ganondorf’s moves should be taken from his game. Your remake vision has the gameplay sensibilities down, being nice and self-aware of balance with traits like the float, and you know what you want from every move while justifying and keeping in some of Ganondorf’s more iconic moves in Smash like his Ultimate Forward Smash and good old Flame Choke. I liked reading little bits like how you think Ganondorf’s Jab in Ultimate looks a bit goofy, changing up his grab game and how you would want most of his animations to be different, but you like his trembling idle animation.

Moveset-wise, Ganondorf’s new Neutral, Up and Down Specials are good, the former with anti-zoning properties Ganondorf needs, and they play into Flame Choke’s tech-chasing capabilities well. Neutral and Up Special have a lot of mix-up potential - I could imagine scenarios where Ganondorf teleports along the ground and throws in his float to mix up whether he’ll attack you using his grounded moves or aerials. I also like Down Special powering up his F-Smash to be slower but even more ridiculously powerful if it does connect.

While the moves’ purposes are all there, I wonder if the set could talk more about how the regular attacks play off of the Specials, which is what most modern movesets do. A basic example could be talking about how Forward Tilt could set-up into Neutral Special’s sword throw or give Ganondorf time to set up his Down Special. The throws aren’t quite as fleshed out as the other moves either - Down Throw could talk about what moves Ganondorf could combo into and at roughly what percents, for instance. This new Ganondorf is mix-up heavy, but he could make for a more engaging read by talking about what follow up options he could mix up from attacks like Flame Choke.

Going into that kind of detail might not be your vision for this set, though. You wanted to remake Ganondorf to feel more right by you - in that sense, I’d say you certainly succeeded. He didn’t feel glaringly unbalanced, either.

 

[BridgesWithTurtles]

Well, I wanted this to be a First Day set for this contest, but life and health problems got in the way of that. I managed to get it finished within the first month, I guess? And at least I'm not...

ten years too early.

​

(Probably too early after that massive JamCon though. Read those sets before you bother with this lousy one, people.)

 

[BrazilianGuy]

Spoiler: Koitsu

Such a silly little creature, I genuinely make no idea of what Parodius is, but a literal stick figure who fights while riding a paper plane and while summoning many of his people to fight. The main aspect I liked on Koitsu was how fun he felt to read, it felt like you definitely enjoy him and his game and the description given on his move's animation is honestly great, I love the idea of having this simple design having all these wacky animations, I particularly really liked D-Tilt (despite the questions it brings up about why Koitsu would have a trap). I also like how you did his upgrades and power-ups, from what I could gather Parodius is an arcadey spaceship shooty game, so I liked how they have luck and skill involved, especially liked him having a nuke. The only thing I didn't get was his echo fighter and some stuff that I believe are references to the source materials. But yeah really nice and fun set on a silly fella, Aeroplane/10

 

[ForwardArrow]

Nui Harime #1 (Tern)
So, I'm going to be honest, this set is a big part of why I've stalled on this comment block, and not because my opinion is like, totally out of sync on opinions of it? I think its a pretty solid moveset, hardly revolutionary in its goals but its got a few notable strong points. The set balances around the clones pretty well, limiting Nui's combos a lot without their use but making it pretty strong if you can utilize them. I think Side Special is a pretty fun move and while Down Special isn't the first time I've seen a Tern set do the "dodge and then follow through" thing, it didn't need to be and I felt it had some fun with the various mixups it offered. The animations really capture Nui's energy perfectly and are the big highlight of the set. Simple as it as, I found Up Tilt a pretty standout move with how it gets such a strong advantage state if you get its sweetspot, and a lot of her tools make good use of sweetspoting as a concept. There's plenty to like here and I think you did a good job on this set.

Where I'm at a bit of a loss is... I just don't like it all that much? Like, its good, and I know its good, but I just didn't feel in the realm of the common MYM duplicates that it felt like it had much to add. Past a couple fancy moves like UTilt/DSmash, the melee really feels like its in a constant state of doing... about what you'd expect it to, covering weaknesses of other moves and displaying solid smash knowledge to combo off duplicates and tech chase. The set just feels really safe on the whole though and I pointed out Up Tilt because, for whatever reason, it was the only time the set really struck a chord with me reading it. I'm sorry I can't give you a better answer as to why I'm not high on it than that, I still think this is a very impressive effort for the 2 days it was written in, and the animation work is exactly as good as it needed to be.

Nui Harime #2 (Tortoise)
So funny thing is this Nui was also haunting my ability to comment for a bit, and its harder because you're a newcomer and I want to be helpful, but like. I just came out of this set without anything particularly constructive to say, I think the easiest thing to say is it really does feel like a one or two moderate length sentences to talk about each of the non-Specials really just doesn't give the reader a lot to think about in terms of what the implications are, what creative ways can she play, how the move fits into the picture, etc. I get the virtues of being concise, I've read sets that definitely keep talking when they run out of things to say, but you can have the opposite problem and this Nui certainly does. I'd also say, to be blunt, while the formatting is interesting to look at, its honestly kind of hard to read with the text lined up the way it is? I think it'd work better just expressing things in full lines rather than slicing the text's left-to-right view into three boxes that have to be read separately. Maybe its just because I'm used to reading other sets, but its not easy for my eyes to track.

For the record, I don't want this to be fully discouraging here, I think the presentation clearly has some high effort put into it and it looks cool, I just think actually reading it shows its a bit misguided. The set's depth isn't shown in the standards but you came up with some pretty fun, chaotic Specials that I think would be enjoyable to toy around with. Its not fun to repeat the same point that you've shown in chat has already gotten you a bit down on this set, but I do have to say my piece on every JamCon set and, while I feel like I have nothing new to say here, I'm being genuine when I say there IS potential here. A bit more energy sunk into the standards would probably go a long way for your sets.

 

[tunz]

Forgive me if I do this wrong, I'm quite rusty. I debuted in MYM25 with Roadhog, so now I'm here to give you another classic Overwatch bigboy. Without further ado, I present: Reinhardt Wilhelm.

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Akira Yuki

Definitely associating you with the Virtua Fighter series now! Feeling like a love letter to the Virtua Fighter series, more so than Jacky, Akira is a great introduction to the series and feels more detailed than your previous works, with some pretty in-depth melee. There's a lot to like in the mechanics and Specials: the anti-shield attack, his Neutral Special being a slower 3-hit Jab that gives you big damage but no KOs, and his delicious Side Special with all kinds of things going for it. The DI mix-up, the smash input thrust that works really well from the anti-shield attack, and the very cool crouch attack that continues combos from neutral, but pushes opponents away farther if they're in hitstun! Attacks dealing different amounts of knockback and/or hitstun depending on whether the foe is in hitstun or what not add some nice spice and uniqueness to this set that we haven't seen a lot of aside from Alex last contest. I also like the quick but frame-tight Down Special counter, which works very well from Akira's close-ranged pressure game. A character with two different Dash Attacks depending on whether they use it from an intiial dash or full dash is something I've always wanted to see too. N-air and F-air having unique landing options that can only be used near the ground is perhaps the most unique of Akira's mechanics - they work very well with Akira's mix-up game and air-to-ground transitions. This set does a very good job of giving the ground-based Akira "weak" air options without making them useless. Akira having grab priority also works well from his pressure game, in the rare cases it would come into play.

Akira impressed me a bit with his strong, clean and detailed melee game, even if his base concepts aren't as strong as other entries, as I was expecting something on par with your sets from last contest. If there's anything holding him back for me, it's that his Smashes and Throws felt a bit weaker input-wise, but I'm not expecting a ton given Akira doesn't have a huge amount to work with and is so heavily invested in combos and close-range (plus his Neutral and Side Specials are melee-based attacks, on top of all his extra melee attacks). I think it mostly came down to D-Smash feeling one extra "combo" move too much when his Specials and Tilts were already so combo-based, whereas the Smashes felt like Akira's power moves for blowing enemies away. Nonetheless, Akira was a great experience, and a set you should definitely be proud of. Nice work here, Turtles!

 

[BrazilianGuy]

Spoiler: Kagetsumugi

I liked Kagey, it genuinely impresses me that this was made in the limited time of a Jamcon due to how many cool ideas it had, from her managing her items, to how Tengu works, to the dolls, with so many different things to manage you'd think some of them would get less focus or feel less developed, but they all fit together and play off each other very nicely. I could definitely see this be a cracked character when played by an expert (you really sold it with Side Special), but you can also do silly stuff and bring Sid's Toy's to life and make them go boom. Two things I'll say rn tho, I think you should mention how you differ her potions and talismans, especially since they are random, just a color for each would be nice, and also 5 seconds in a command grab is criminal, please no. Onto her other moves, the name Talislap made me chuckle. I loooove how up-tilt sounds, perfectly creepy. There is comedy somewhere in the fact the Monster Girl Quest character has a sex-kick n-air. Down Air sounds so cool, even more, if she does it to the dools, love it! Smash attacks (mainly F-Smash) sound wacky but really unique. I wish to one day have as much originality when writing throws as you did here, real cool how she can use the talismans for unique effects, even if 3 seconds of petrified sounds criminal. But yeah man I really liked Kagey, I also feel like you did an awesome job translating this puppeteer, she also has the right amount of creepy unsettling stuff, which from what I've seen is part of the series but also fits her especially well. I give her a Marionette/10

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Lana, the White Sorceress

Oh, now this is a much bigger entry than your previous works! Love the banter between Lana and the author: you barely see that kind of thing in other movesets, and it brings a lot of personality to the table. The writing is genuinely funny and entertaining throughout, and doesn’t feel intrusive as far as the reading experience goes. Those pictures are unique and amazing too. That’s the kind of above and beyond thing that you didn’t have to do, but it’s incredible that you did. I can tell you put a lot of passion into this moveset.

• Neutral Special is a nice and simple wall move, but I’m glad to see balance implementations like letting foes roll around it at the ledge and not let you rebound foes infinitely. I don’t think having the wall block foes in midair would be too much of a problem. I do wonder if a 10 second cooldown after the wall is destroyed is a bit much - perhaps the cooldown should begin from the moment the wall spawns. Encourages foes to do something about Lana’s walls sooner than later so she can’t just casually replace them if enough time passes.
• Side Special is a fun little unique move.
• It sounds like Down Special’s attack and wall-manipulating options are separate attacks despite being on the same input. Is this a tap vs hold the B button for a different attack deal? The wall manipulation’s properties feel undefined in some areas, like not explaining how much damage and knockback the wall collision deals. I’m guessing foes can shatter the moving wall before it pushes them along, but it does feel potentially powerful for edgeguarding if they can’t.
• How long does the Up Special platform stay out for?

• Lana’s Jab is surprisingly very cool! I really like the idea of an advancing Jab that sends you back to where you started it on the final hit! But then the set introduces different Jab follow-ups if you press B out of various hits of Lana’s Jab.
• As flashy and cool-sounding as all of Lana’s Jab combos are, I think they have a lot of missed opportunities. The combos all sound very powerful, especially when some of them deal high shield damage, and barring cases like SDI it sounds like landing Jab at all is guaranteed to have any combo you want out of any of the hits connect. I think it would be a lot cooler if it was a Kazuya Jab case, where the hits on more potent combos aren’t guaranteed to connect (various hits don’t deal enough hitstun to lock foes into the next hit) but they are very powerful if they do. I also don’t get a sense for which combo should be used in which situation, like whether they have different launching applications or different mix-ups. It would be cool if Jab had built-in mix-ups with its different combos, like if Jab 1 just launched your opponent and each of the different combos were used to catch out different responses (jump, dodge, shield, do nothing, etc.).
• It feels like you could have done a lot with the cube being a construct you can stand on, like talking about using your moves from a higher elevation.
• F-Smash is a simple but nice and effective move for using a wall to deal extra damage. D-Smash is interesting for being able to go into an aerial attack instead of using the powerful attack itself.

• 3 seconds feels too long for Neutral Air’s optional drag-down extension. 1 second or 1.5 seconds would be more reasonable.
• Nice, D-air having hard interactions with your platform and cube. B-air feels neat enough too, because it acknowledges U-Smash’s set-up potential.
• B-throw interacting with your walls is the kind of throw interaction I’d want from them.

• The write-up regarding ways to use your walls at the end of the playstyle section is pretty nice. Different from how many of us who detail stuff like this in the moves themselves.
• Awesome, match-ups! These used to be common around MYM6, but we barely see them in movesets anymore. Massive props to you for including these. I’m sure US will be very happy to see one of his movesets represented here.

All and all, Lana is a simple but pretty clean wall and platform user. I mentioned Jab having much more potential, but as far as other aspects go, it would be fun if Lana could play off of her walls and platform more in her melee. Not necessarily hard interactions like her Forward Smash, so much as stuff like the wall-bouncing as you mentioned in her wall write-up. I could see Lana using one of her up-hitting moves to pop foes up on the platform and leave them in prone. You could also say that U-Smash is a good punish against opponents who jump over your wall. Also might be unnecessary, but Lana having lightning attacks makes me wonder if there is potential for her to electrify her walls and platforms with some electric-based attacks? The set could also tie in moves together more, like talking about D-Smash’s cancel (that seems to be an afterthought). Stuff to give the moves extra spice, if you know what I mean.

Nonetheless, a very unique and entertaining read! Great to hear that you’re striving to improve your setmaking, and that Lana is a step towards that. You should be proud of what you’ve got here anyway.

Spoiler: The Human

• What do the different colours of each Pacifist bonus mean? Do you get one or all of them when you use a Shield Special while you’re Pacifist?
• Does Side Special always have a counter hitbox while you hold it? That feels very powerful when counters are normally supposed to be timed well to land.
• What happens if you have Pacifist reflector bonus when you use Side Special? Does your reflector get a bigger multiplier?
• Genocide Down Special is kinda interesting as a way to extend its duration, at the cost of self-damage.
• Exactly how much meter different actions give is not elaborated upon (outside a few of the Specials).

Nice and short, this set is fairly low on detail, which does make its ideas and moves less engaging than they could be. It does peter out a little later on, with shorter descriptions or saying “same as above.” I assume this set was meant to be a quick entry, though.