Sol Badguy Rides the Fire!

[chocolatejr9]

Before anybody asks, yes, she has the same crouch as in Xrd.

 

[LAA9000]

To nobody's surprise, the leak from yesterday was real.

Jack-O' still fights alongside Servants, though summons them individually as opposed to laying down Houses as she did in Xrd. She may have a limit of three Servants on screen at once, which makes sense given that Strive is toned down from previous games as well as that Xrd Jack-O' is notoriously polarising once she has you in the corner. As someone who typically likes okizeme, I may give her a try once I get Strive.

Speaking of which, the Steam version of Strive is on sale until tomorrow at 17:00 UTC - the Standard Edition is 20% off while the Deluxe Edition is 15% off. I did say I'd wait until a sale or price drop to buy Strive, and this may finally be my time.

 

[Mr. Robotto]

Baiken in Samurai Shodown, here she finally is.

 

[Flyboy]

Between Baiken in SamSho and Jack O coming back it's been a good weekend.

 

[Guynamednelson]

Baiken in Samurai Shodown, here she finally is.

Honestly they should've ripped the band-aid off immediately rather than making us wait so long for them to finally admit it would be Baiken.

 

[SNEKeater]

Between Baiken in SamSho and Jack O coming back it's been a good weekend.

Yep.

I wasn't able to get into Jack-O's playstyle in Xrd, and her Strive version seems to be more streamlined, which in this case I think it's for the best. I always liked her design a lot so I think I'll play her quite a bit once I get Strive.

 

[LAA9000]

Alright, I've caved in and bought Strive.

The game is very fun - it does feel a bit limiting in comparison to previous games, but the whole point of Strive was to tone things down, and not every limitation in a video game is a result of poor game design. It even introduces new gameplay mechanics like dash cancelling that I would've expected to be in previous games and get removed from Strive, but it's the other way around.

After going through all the characters in Training mode, I may have already decided upon a main: Ramlethal. That is unless she gets nerfed to oblivion on the 27th, but if developer comments are to be trusted, hopefully that won't happen and balance patches will mostly focus on buffing the low tiers. In any case, knowing me, my main will likely fluctuate over the months - Sol, May, Leo and likely a few future DLC characters are also contenders.

All in all, this is another game I can see myself putting a lot of time into, especially when the game's life cycle began recently and DLC is being released.

 

[GalacticPetey]

I don't know much about Guilty Gear specifically. But fighting games are cool and I've been listening to Smell of the Game a lot recently and now I want it in Smash so I'm all for Sol.

Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Tekken, and Guilty Gear all together? Give it to me.

 

[MasterCheef]

it also looks like Jack-O's move-set in GG Strive is much easier to implement in SSBU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz-VlCHWjfg

 

[ThunderSageNun]

Gotta say, Jack-O losing calvados kinda sucks. Does her air dust also have no way to enhance itself and shoot 3 projectiles like in Xrd?

 

[Mr. Robotto]

Gotta say, Jack-O losing calvados kinda sucks. Does her air dust also have no way to enhance itself and shoot 3 projectiles like in Xrd?

Nope, it's only 1 projectile now. It used to go up to 3 if you had sufficient Tension in Xrd, but that mechanic is gone now.

Though given the cuts, she does have one of the bigger movelists in Strive. I love the new Venom-style approach that has been given to her as well. Though for the moment, and post-first patch, I'm still sticking to Chipp. Anji finally got some good buffs now though.

 

[NintenZ]

Been playing a lot of Accent Core recently (I haven't been able to get to Strive yet but I REALLY want to and will absolutely jump on it when I can get the chance) and god I think Guilty Gear is just such a great fit for Smash Bros, I hope that we can get Sol eventually I just think it jives really well with the chaotic nature of Smash Bros.

I've been listening to soundtracks from the series too for the past couple days and god Daisuke's music is just incredible, some of the best fighting game OSTs period.

 

[TDDolphin]

I'm gonna be 100% honest, I've still yet to play a Guilty Gear game... and yet, after watching a lot of Strive trailers and listening to the music from the series, I kind of want to see Sol Badguy join Smash Ultimate anyway. I'm also a huge fighting game fan, and I've heard a lot of good things about Guilty Gear.

Idk, it's complicated. But go Sol!

 

[SNEKeater]

I'm gonna be 100% honest, I've still yet to play a Guilty Gear game... and yet, after watching a lot of Strive trailers and listening to the music from the series, I kind of want to see Sol Badguy join Smash Ultimate anyway. I'm also a huge fighting game fan, and I've heard a lot of good things about Guilty Gear.

Idk, it's complicated. But go Sol!

That's okay. I think you can totally enjoy a character or a series without playing the games. It's a different approach but still valid. In any case, my first contact with Guilty Gear was falling in love with the soundtrack and the overall aesthetic of the series, which convinced me after some time to play the series.

Guilty Gear is cool and so is Sol :D

 

[ThunderSageNun]

I'm not sure if any one of us here is surprised by Sol's absence, I guess a part of me hoped the River City Ransom spirit event and addition of Terry and Kazuya might have lead to Guilty Gear getting some sort of bone, but it's also not that surprising to see it get no Smash love given how niche it was until relatively recently and not being super tied with Nintendo at the end of the day to make its exclusion feel odd when it's all said and done.
At least we've got plenty of Strive to look forward to for the next few years, or so I hope.

 

[SNEKeater]

I'm not sure if any one of us here is surprised by Sol's absence, I guess a part of me hoped the River City Ransom spirit event and addition of Terry and Kazuya might have lead to Guilty Gear getting some sort of bone, but it's also not that surprising to see it get no Smash love given how niche it was until relatively recently and not being super tied with Nintendo at the end of the day to make its exclusion feel odd when it's all said and done.
At least we've got plenty of Strive to look forward to for the next few years, or so I hope.

Not surprised, but between Ultimate's DLC cycle and the release of Guilty Gear Strive, the series has gained quite the popularity, and Sol Badguy himself has become kinda popular in Smash circles, not big, but I see him being mentioned from time to time in random places, so that's something.

Maybe for the next Smash game? I don't think he would make it as a base game addition, but something like a DLC character doesn't feel impossible at all, as long as the series maintains his momentum until then.

 

[ThunderSageNun]

It's probably impossible to tell his chances for the next game right now. Smash is obviously gonna carry on past Ultimate, but no one can tell what sort of direction the roster will take past it. Bringing everyone back for Ultimate was already a huge undertaking, I don't want to imagine how it'd be for its successor with all the new 3rd parties involved, fancier graphics and if they decide to use rollback for the netcode.

 

[toonito]

I feel he's the FG frontrunner for Smash 6 among unrepped FG franchises. Whereas Ryu got in Smash 4 DLC, Ken in Base Ultimate, Terry got in FP1 and Kazuya got in FP2. Chun-Li and Nightmare are his biggest competition within his genre yet I've felt Chun-Li not as rock solid as I previously thought.

 

[metalhydra273]

I feel he's the FG frontrunner for Smash 6 among unrepped FG franchises. Whereas Ryu got in Smash 4 DLC, Ken in Base Ultimate, Terry got in FP1 and Kazuya got in FP2. Chun-Li and Nightmare are his biggest competition within his genre yet I've felt Chun-Li not as rock solid as I previously thought.

Maybe, but I feel like that's assuming they keep everyone again or opt for a lot of new 3rd parties to replace ones they're dropping. If they pull another ultimate though and GG stays as relevant as it's been, there's a good possibility he could be considered.

 

[Mr. Robotto]

In the end, all I wanted from Ultimate was more proper Fighting Game representation. The happiness I experienced seeing not only Ken, but Terry AND Kazuya getting in Smash has been uncomparable as of now.

This desire of seeing more of my favorite genre in Smash started off with Ryu entering the fray in Smash 4, because well, if he could get in, surely that would pave the way for more companions of his genre to get in Smash as well right? There was a tiny hope within me that this question of mine would be answered someday.

Now enter Ultimate, and looking back now, man, what an amazing ride it has been. As a boy growing up on mostly local arcade games and playing fighting games on consoles, it was a delight to see Ken (the best he ever looked in 3D, may I mind you!) and further developed Street Fighter representation in Ultimate, despite it mostly only being confined to the Street Fighter 2 series. I still wish we got some more content from the other games in the series, and I wasn't really a big fan of how Suzaku Castle turned out to be fairly honest, but I was still glad with what we got. And when the first Fighter's Pass got announced within the same direct, I was still hopeful on seeing more fighting games represented. Mainly hoping for Guilty Gear and The King of Fighters, the two game series I spent the most time with. Though sadly with both of these series not having that big of a presence on Nintendo consoles besides putting out older titles on their systems, I believed it would just stay as a mere dream.

And then the SNK leak happened and I went bat**** insane. Terry's trailer happened and I'm not even afraid to admit that I cried. While not my favorite character from the company, it's definitely the one that makes the most sense to put in first and he's a great way to introduce people to the history-rich company of SNK. While I still have my tiny nitpicks about some of the stuff (no Goodbye Esaka, no cameos from beyond the Orochi Saga?) I felt so spoiled. 50 tracks for god's sake! 20 cameos?! Terry's inclusion still feels very unreal to me to this day and I still look back to it very fondly. My favorite character in Smash, hands down. I still keep rewatching that masterpiece of a trailer and Terry is my go-to character in Ultimate.

Now around 1 and a half years passed, and then, yet again, as the second-to-last-fighter of their respective batch of fighters, Kazuya came kicking in. I admittedly don't have that much of a deep history with Tekken compared to SNK's vast library of fighting games. I only dabbled into Tekken 6 as a kid only sometimes in the arcades, but I didn't properly get into the series till Tekken 7. I was hooked though, it was my go-to fighting game for quite a while. And with Kazuya's inclusion I was thrilled, although admittedly not as thrilled as Sephiroth from the same pass since I'm a huge FF7 nerd too, but still very much excited. Tekken, which is literally THE "mainstream" fighting game, got in Smash. Tekken is huuuuuuuuge, and finally seeing it appear in Smash gave me that sensation of "Damn, took you long enough".

And with that I finally feel like the FG genre has been done more justice in Smash. We started off from only having Ryu, Suzaku Castle, a Ken trophy and 6 songs to... what we have now in Ultimate. Simply amazing, and I thank Sakurai deeply for this commendable achievement. I truly feel like I got what I wanted.

So what about Sol? It's definitely unfortunate that he didn't get in. I love Guilty Gear and having it in Smash would be simply a dream come true for me. For me he still represents that one last cornerstone of both the Fighting Game genre and my library of favorite video game series. Though sadly a man can't have everything and looking at Ultimate now, it is simply already such an amazing game. If all Fighting Game characters, (Ryu, Ken, Terry, and Kazuya) come back in the next game (which I have a postive feeling they will since their respective companies are lax to work with), I can see him having a better chance. Not as base, but moreso as DLC, the man needs his bull****-blazing gimmicks after all. For base, I'm moreso seeing them expand on Tekken or Fatal Fury, like they did with Ken and Street Fighter, or even finally adding a proper KoF character. But hey this is so far in the future and I'd prefer to enjoy the present right now.

Right now we've got Strive DLC to be looking forward to, I've been enjoying this game as much as I can (although college has been making this extremely hard lately lol). Normally there should still be a character revealed and released this fall, so in the spirit of Halloween, I hope it's the dandyman Slayer himself please.

I get the feeling that not only Smash, but that Smash speculation as well has introduced a lot of people to various games within the fighting game genre, and I feel nothing but gratefulness for this. Man, what a ride it has been.

---

tl;dr fighting games are good and I love ultimate

 

[toonito]

In the end, all I wanted from Ultimate was more proper Fighting Game representation. The happiness I experienced seeing not only Ken, but Terry AND Kazuya getting in Smash has been uncomparable as of now.

This desire of seeing more of my favorite genre in Smash started off with Ryu entering the fray in Smash 4, because well, if he could get in, surely that would pave the way for more companions of his genre to get in Smash as well right? There was a tiny hope within me that this question of mine would be answered someday.

Now enter Ultimate, and looking back now, man, what an amazing ride it has been. As a boy growing up on mostly local arcade games and playing fighting games on consoles, it was a delight to see Ken (the best he ever looked in 3D, may I mind you!) and further developed Street Fighter representation in Ultimate, despite it mostly only being confined to the Street Fighter 2 series. I still wish we got some more content from the other games in the series, and I wasn't really a big fan of how Suzaku Castle turned out to be fairly honest, but I was still glad with what we got. And when the first Fighter's Pass got announced within the same direct, I was still hopeful on seeing more fighting games represented. Mainly hoping for Guilty Gear and The King of Fighters, the two game series I spent the most time with. Though sadly with both of these series not having that big of a presence on Nintendo consoles besides putting out older titles on their systems, I believed it would just stay as a mere dream.

And then the SNK leak happened and I went bat**** insane. Terry's trailer happened and I'm not even afraid to admit that I cried. While not my favorite character from the company, it's definitely the one that makes the most sense to put in first and he's a great way to introduce people to the history-rich company of SNK. While I still have my tiny nitpicks about some of the stuff (no Goodbye Esaka, no cameos from beyond the Orochi Saga?) I felt so spoiled. 50 tracks for god's sake! 20 cameos?! Terry's inclusion still feels very unreal to me to this day and I still look back to it very fondly. My favorite character in Smash, hands down. I still keep rewatching that masterpiece of a trailer and Terry is my go-to character in Ultimate.

Now around 1 and a half years passed, and then, yet again, as the second-to-last-fighter of their respective batch of fighters, Kazuya came kicking in. I admittedly don't have that much of a deep history with Tekken compared to SNK's vast library of fighting games. I only dabbled into Tekken 6 as a kid only sometimes in the arcades, but I didn't properly get into the series till Tekken 7. I was hooked though, it was my go-to fighting game for quite a while. And with Kazuya's inclusion I was thrilled, although admittedly not as thrilled as Sephiroth from the same pass since I'm a huge FF7 nerd too, but still very much excited. Tekken, which is literally THE "mainstream" fighting game, got in Smash. Tekken is huuuuuuuuge, and finally seeing it appear in Smash gave me that sensation of "Damn, took you long enough".

And with that I finally feel like the FG genre has been done more justice in Smash. We started off from only having Ryu, Suzaku Castle, a Ken trophy and 6 songs to... what we have now in Ultimate. Simply amazing, and I thank Sakurai deeply for this commendable achievement. I truly feel like I got what I wanted.

So what about Sol? It's definitely unfortunate that he didn't get in. I love Guilty Gear and having it in Smash would be simply a dream come true for me. For me he still represents that one last cornerstone of both the Fighting Game genre and my library of favorite video game series. Though sadly a man can't have everything and looking at Ultimate now, it is simply already such an amazing game. If all Fighting Game characters, (Ryu, Ken, Terry, and Kazuya) come back in the next game (which I have a postive feeling they will since their respective companies are lax to work with), I can see him having a better chance. Not as base, but moreso as DLC, the man needs his bull****-blazing gimmicks after all. For base, I'm moreso seeing them expand on Tekken or Fatal Fury, like they did with Ken and Street Fighter, or even finally adding a proper KoF character. But hey this is so far in the future and I'd prefer to enjoy the present right now.

Right now we've got Strive DLC to be looking forward to, I've been enjoying this game as much as I can (although college has been making this extremely hard lately lol). Normally there should still be a character revealed and released this fall, so in the spirit of Halloween, I hope it's the dandyman Slayer himself please.

I get the feeling that not only Smash, but that Smash speculation as well has introduced a lot of people to various games within the fighting game genre, and I feel nothing but gratefulness for this. Man, what a ride it has been.

---

tl;dr fighting games are good and I love ultimate

well said

i grew up with fighting games so getting Terry and Kazuya was fantastic along the OG clone, Ken. I've never cried at a character reveal but Ryu confirmed for Smash 4 had me on cloud 9 like a lot of people were two days ago. Sakurai's history playing SFII and KOF, Smash itself being a direct response to fighting games, as well as Smash's movement options influenced by KOF is always fun to remember that he's a fighting game fan like us.

Sol missing out hurts especially since Kazuya did make it in (cmon Ryu vs Sol vs Terry vs Kazuya...in Smash we were almost there Sakurai) but I still support Sol and more fighting game representation in Smash and I appreciate our little corner of fighting game enthusiasts in Smash.

 

[SNEKeater]

I'm sure we'll get more FGC characters next game, at least one. Chun-Li is a very likely addition, maybe for base game? Though in that regard I could see them going with Zero if they want another Capcom fighter for the launch roster.

Still, yeah, I would be surprised if we don't get another new series. After KOF/Fatal Fury and Tekken we have Soul Calibur and Guilty Gear IMO as frontrunners. There's also Mortal Kombat which would obviously take priority if Nintendo wanted to please only western fans.

Not to say, as I just said getting more reps from series already repped in Smash is kinda possible if you ask me. Not only Chun-Li but who knows, Akuma? Jin? Heihachi? Kyo? Haohmaru? Nakoruru? There are a lot of cool options left.