Akujikan

I picked it up today, and the NA Guilty Gear PSN page is pretty bare-bones at the moment (on PS4, at least). Elphelt wasn't there for me to DL her, nor was Sin's unlock or anything else. We may have to wait until the 16th, but I think that's a fair middle ground.

I kind of hope she turns out like Ushiromiya Rosa in the sense that her gun is a powerful spacing or combo tool, but she is limited by reloading. Aside from that, I'm neutral on her aesthetic design. I'll need to see how she looks in action.

I feel the same, honestly. I thought her meter building restrictions were too harsh and sword placement took too long. Looks like once people wrapped their head around how the character was best played she really turned out very strong. I suppose I'd rather new characters come out on the stronger side of the spectrum since it means that their intended mechanics actually work outside of the vacuum of a concept. Makes me even more excited for how Sin will turn out.

Even by that definition that means you're referring to Makoto, Valk, Platinum, Terumi and Kokonoe. Makoto was zany in CS2 after the full cast rebalance, not her original CS state (though she was still pretty solid then, with or without parry loop), so that doesn't really count. Plat has never been bonkers, and Terumi is capable of amazing damage but suffers in a lot of other areas. Valk has always been high tier because of his crazy mix up, high damage and mobility, but he's never seen blanket nerfs even outside of his new-DLC-hotness phase so that's a little debatable. Kokonoe is the only DLC character in BB that has thrown a monkey wrench in big enough for the community as a whole to actually consider banning since she trivialized several characters and everyone else still had to fight for their life against an overwhelming number of tools that almost universally resulted in enormous damage and could even reset into an unblockable for a kill. She's since been notably toned down, but she's still a very strong character. 1(.5?)/5 isn't so bad. /shenanigans There is an image in this scan (http://i.imgur.com/g5dh1OU.png) of the CSS with Celica on the left and Lambda on the right. The background appears red, so that's probably a thing. And a couple of translators have said that a line in the article suggests that Nu will no longer have her stances. This is likely because Lambda will be more taking the place of Luna Forma but as a complete (I hope) character. Nu will likely be closer to her classic incarnation as the Dia Forma zoner. I know the latter makes CT players have nightmares, so here's hoping she's a little more realistic this time around.

This news is actually really interesting to me. While the removal of Nu's mode-change is justified since Lambda will be back and will play much more like her close-range variant (Luna Forma, was it?), I think giving Nu amnesia and scrambling her new (and vastly more interesting) tool box is a shame. That said, the idea of making Lambda a super aggressive character with spacing tools made for approach (i.e. Hazama and his drive) is pretty cool. I honestly don't know what to make of Celica. Silly characters have never really appealed to me much and if those screens make her look like anything, its silly. The concept of you taking control of Minerva and using Celica as the puppet for her magic support would actually be really interesting, but I really doubt that's the direction they're going with her. Frankly I dropped BB after Extend and had very little desire to pick up CP (and haven't thus far), but a balance change up with the addition of Lambda makes me think that I may just throw my hat back into the ring. I haven't done much with fighters in general this past year or so, but this resurgence with Xrd, UNIEL and now this is pretty exciting. I'll be keeping a very close eye on this For the record, I wouldn't mind an all-DLC-inclusive PS4 port of this one bit.

For Sin, I would imagine that eating is an input so you can get what meter you can whenever you can. For me the real question is if its like AC HOS charge where you can cancel to it off of normals, or Slash HOS where its a standalone move that can't be canceled into. If its the latter, I'd imagine he'd have an Action Charge equivalent (cancel specials into meat-bun-to-the-face)to make his specials more accessible. Now I'm wandering a little far into Sin-is-Order-Sol wishlist territory, though. For a legitimately interesting thing that's not wishlisting, how do you think eating will interact with the RC system? Will it be Yellow/Red (if they're knocked down or whatever) while actively eating? Will it all be considered recovery frames and get a Purple to discourage people from burning meter to punish those who interrupt meal time? Will it not be cancelable at all? I can't wait to find out more about the nuts and bolts of that mechanic!

Edit: Ninja'd They have always been in the game, but they're a little odd. When the game was very first released they were finishing moves, since they basically had all the same requirements of an Astral Heat, but they weren't very practical since the only way to activate it was to hit your opponent with a fully charged Veil Off spark from 200% meter (I think the only character I ever saw combo into his was Carmine). Now, in the EXE-Late update, they were changed to a desperation super that has its own kind of Veil Off spark. It requires the user to be at less than 30% HP, have 200% meter and will either consume your GRD Vorpal or put you into GRD Break if you don't have Vorpal. They all do fairly high damage, but the damage scaling on them is horrific, so its only ever used as a true last ditch effort reversal and almost never in combos. For most characters or players there are better ways to spend your meter defensively, so we don't see a lot of them in videos.

As someone who likes characters like Testament and Mu 12, I will likely have to give Byakuya a shot. Nanase seems to be joining the group of more basic characters, but she may end up being a lot of fun to play. More than anything, I'm curious as to what these characters are going to have in the way of unique or passive abilities, like Hyde's chip damage normals, Gordeau's GRD steal or Vatista's counter-hit negation.

Honestly, I think outfits would be fun. I really liked Sol's GG2 outfit, classic skins for characters like Pot and Millia, etc. I know they said they didn't want to harm a character's image, so we probably won't be getting any silly ones (which are the only kind of alt skins I can even think of for Bedman), but I'm sure they could do some interesting things. That said, colors are tried and true and you sure can't go wrong with adding to the default 6(?) colors.

I know nothing about dash recovery and how easy you can or can't get hit out of it, but I'm fairly certain that the first 236 in the Mortal Slide series does actually hit twice. If you just do one 236 he throws out the scythe and then swings it up diagonally for the second hit, which knocks opponents away. If you input the second 236 he pulls it back directly towards him (turning his upper body for the pull, as opposed to the simple diagonal swing), pulling the opponent in. The animation is pretty similar, but it is different.

Eltnum is definitely one of the character's I'm more excited to try. She has a lot of good skins (notable standouts of Transylvania Ghost, Neo Venus and Black Barrel), I really like her tool set and then there is of course that "Melty swag", haha. It helps that Blood Drain -Again- is probably my favorite track in the game.

Eltnum's "Snow Fairy" is likely a White Len reference from Melty

French Bread has always had some really strong Engrish, and it shows through with their naming conventions. While not many specials stand out in their silliness (like the aforementioned Red Clad Craver), the color names are really the stars off the show. I appreciate the color names, though, since they're a bit more specific than "netplay black", "the pink one" or simply "#6"

On the subject of tiers, I say play who you like since you are having fun. That said, if who you like happens to be dreadful, maybe dabble in a character you like slightly less but is also stronger for the sake of giving yourself options. I played Testament and Sol since XX, and Testament was never super great until he suddenly got super beefy in AC, but I always played Testament more than I did Sol. I even swapped out Sol for HOS in Slash because I liked the charge system (because Slash HOS was such a strong character!). Honestly, I'm not crazy about any of the top 3 in UNIEL. As a former Testament main, I have a hard time saying no to a scythe user, but Testament and Gordeau aren't exactly parallels. Maybe I'll try him out and will be pleasantly surprised. Your character's tier shouldn't bother you much unless you have really great ambitions for competing in the game; and even then his/her tier should only bother you as much as you let it. On a note unrelated to tiers, I realized I've been using Linne's theme "Night Walker" as my ringtone for close to a year now and should probably get that changed before I have access to the game on the regular.

This made my night.