The Christmas of Legos and Barbies
Gotta Start from Somewhere by Jorito
Hi all. Merry Christmas and a happy new year. :) The most memorable thing about Christmas for my family this year was that my nieces got a RIDICULOUS number of Lego and Barbie sets. X) I'm guilty of contributing to that, having gotten them a couple of Minecraft-themed Lego sets, but I had no idea anybody else was getting them any. In addition to Christmas itself, I hosted the now-traditional game day at my own place, then most of my family went to a photo-safari park and zoo called Wild Florida. As so often happens with big family gatherings, there was a cold being passed around, and I started feeling symptoms on the day of the Wild Florida visit. X) I went anyway, it wasn't too bad of a cold, and I think spending a good part of the day out in the sun was probably good for me.
Progress was pretty decent for the first half of this month, but things of course got a bit hectic as Christmas approached. I thought I'd be able to make another good spurt over the last few days of the month because I took the whole week after Christmas off, but as I mentioned above, I got sick. X) So I've been taking it easy.
A big part of what I did get done was to create a subsystem which looks at the pending battle effects from an action (and any actions triggered by it) and summarizes what they'll do to a particular battler. I mentioned in last month's progress report I wanted to do something like that to control whether a moblin goes berserk or not (even if they've been damaged enough to trigger such, it doesn't make sense for them to go berserk if they're asleep, for example). It should make controlling enemy behaviors more nuanced.
I also started in on the next playable hero I'm adding to the game, Arumarg. So far I've just been making animations for his skillset. Most of Arumarg's skills involve him using his currently equipped weapon, which means there need to be different animations for each possible weapon. X) On the other hand, a couple of the skills, namely Expert Strike (which is basically just an attack with a significantly higher-than-usual critical hit rate) and Rend (an attack that attempts to lower enemy defense at the same time) [i]could[/i] simply reuse the basic attack animations. I'm leaning toward leaving it at that because I'm having trouble thinking of good ways to animate them otherwise, although I feel like I'm being lazy. :P
No progress in RP-land this month. I should probably poke the Zelda RPG folks a bit more firmly than just listing the pending scenes and whose pose is next every week. X)
Ori: The Collection:
This collection includes Ori and the Blind Forest (both original and Definitive Edition, though of course there's probably not much point in playing the original once you have Definitive Edition) and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. They're pretty similar games and I played them in succession, so I'm going to review them almost as a single game.
The story of the games follows a glowing fox-monkey critter. He apparently was spawned from a leaf of the SPIRIT TREE. 8o But he drifted far from the tree and was adopted by a tubby bear-ape critter. The SPIRIT TREE called out to Ori one night by glowing very brightly, but this ticked off a giant owl who came and ripped out the tree's core. This led to the land slowly withering, and eventually the tubby bear-ape critter fell into a hunger coma. So Ori wandered off, and pretty soon ran into a glowy floating orb who tells him about his origins and the need to gather the elements of Waters, Winds, and Warmth in order to revive the SPIRIT TREE and save the land. And so they set off to do so, make friends with a ball-with-limbs-sticking-out critter along the way, wake up the tubby bear-ape critter, yadda yadda. Then in the second game, Ori and company have adopted the giant owl's remaining chick, but she has a wing with some desiccated feathers, so she can't fly (dunno why they wouldn't just get replaced by healthy feathers eventually, they're like toenails). Ori comes up with the idea of tieing one of the giant owl's feathers (which was an ability-unlocking item in the first game) over the deficient wing, and the owl chick and Ori set out on her first flight together. But then they run into a storm and get separated in a crash-landing. While searching for the owl chick, Ori finds out that the SPIRIT WILLOW (which I think is actually supposed to be different from the SPIRIT TREE in the first game, they're in a different forest than before) has had its light separated into a bunch of wisps, and they'll need to be gathered up. Big surprise.
The games feel like they're trying very hard to be deep and transcendent. The title theme is poignant piano and violin music with a cooing vocal, the story is narrated (in the rare spots where cutscenes happen) in archaic phrasing by the sonorous voice of the SPIRIT TREE, and the hero himself IS some kind of spirit critter. Trouble is, it's not clear what sort of message is being conveyed through all this mystic sensation. -.-a 'Nature is sacred'? There's no human or analogous faction involved in the conflicts, it's all forces that are themselves part of nature or spirit. 'Family is important and they help each other'? That's certainly something that crops up a bit and it's a worthwhile statement, but it doesn't really feel like the main focus. 'Mysticism in general is cool, kids'? That's the closest thing to an overall message I can think of for these games. X) I think perhaps they were more simply going for the artistic trappings associated with mystic themes than trying to support any particular moral.
Anyway, getting to the mechanics! The Ori games are relatively easy Metroidvania-style games. You're unlikely to get especially lost, as there's little in the way of branching paths through most areas, and the combat is fairly forgiving for the most part. In the first game, Ori attacks primarily by tapping the attack button when within range of an enemy, causing his floaty orb companion to send out flares of energy that inerringly tag their target. It's brain-dead easy, so all you have to do is watch out for counter-attacks while flaring away until they're dead. In the second game this is replaced with a 'spirit edge' attack Ori does himself, slashing at a wide area. The threat area is about as big as before, but at least you actually have to be facing the enemy and it affects your own movement.
A lot more of the appeal comes from platforming challenges, which of course Ori gathers abilities to become more proficient with in typical Metroidvania style. He gains things like wall-jumping/climbing, a double jump, parachuting (with that giant owl feather), and most famously, a 'bash' ability. The bash allows him to treat enemies and most projectiles as aerial stepping stones, halting time briefly while near them so he can line up a direction, then smashing through them to launch to wherever he's going -- because having an obstacle to break through obviously increases your ability to move, right? ;) Well, nonsensical or no, it is plenty of fun to pull off sequences of mid-air acrobatics using this and complementary abilities.
One little gripe I'll mention is that the developers seemed to value graphical wow over visual clarity. Everything is very impressive-looking, but there's so much glow effects involved in combat that it's difficult to pick out what's going on. Also, Ori himself BEING a monochrome glowy spirit critter, you can basically only see his silhouette. This makes discerning his current movement tough -- for example, there's not a lot of difference between what he looks like when he lands on a ledge and what he looks like when he ends up clinging just under the lip of that ledge, so you can waste a precious second during an intense platforming sequence realizing that you need to move UP before you can continue moving forward.
Bottom line? A decent couple of Metroidvanias, not perfect or the timeless fables they feel like they WANT to be, but well worth the price tag they hold nowadays.
Portal Reloaded:
This is a free, community-made mod for Portal 2. It's set in the same Aperture Science facility as the main game (or at least one that looks very similar), but stars a different, nameless test subject and a male-voiced AI running the place. According to the AI, the test subject has been selected due to her rare ability to withstand the physics of time travel, and she is put through a battery of tests to prepare her for...a special mission. The facility has developed a modification for the portal gun which allows placing a time portal leading to a period exactly 20 years in the future. Peering through such portals has revealed that something has happened to leave the facility in ruin. :o So the AI wants the test subject to become adept at using the portal gun, including the time portal, so that she can deal with whatever threat comes to the facility and CHANGE THE FUTURE. :o Because that always works in these stories, right? ;)
Well, as far as the mechanics of this game goes, you actually can change the future, multiple times over even. For example, if you have some object in the present, like one of the ubiquitous cubes of the Aperture facility, then when you slip through a time portal to the future, an aged version of that object will be sitting right where you left it. You can then pick that future version of the object up and do as you like with it, even bring it back to the present with you and use it to solve puzzles...but if ANYTHING happens to move the original, present-time version of that object, the future version will suddenly vaporize. c.c After all, if the spot you got it from in the future is no longer the place it was in the present, it couldn't have existed from where you picked it up, right? n.n So you have to avoid moving the original version...unless you want the future version to only exist for a while in a way that's convenient for you, like to hold down a pressure plate that controls something and then release it once you've gotten past some obstacle. Head starting to hurt yet? :) The game is full of puzzles that require familiarizing yourself with the paradoxical rules of such time-travel and both avoiding breaking them and exploiting them when necessary. The portals (meaning the regular, space-warping portals we're familiar with from the main game) are affected by these rules too -- you can change the locations of portals in the future, but if you then change the portals in the present, the future ones while switch to where the present ones are. You can also use the time portal to project puzzle elements from one time period to the other, like light bridges or levitation energy tunnels.
It's in the nature of this mod that it will be more difficult than the base game. Adding another portal exponentially increases the complexity of the mechanics, and the fact that it involves time travel -- something outside the realm of human experience -- makes it unintuitive. On top of that, the design of the puzzles wasn't quite up to the standard of quality of the main game, which is of course to be expected in a small-team, amateur effort. There were a few cases where critical puzzle elements weren't as obvious as they should've been, or worse, things change simply because you reach a certain spot, without any visible indication that anything should happen. You have to do a lot of experimental poking around to get a feel for what can be done in a given stage, and with the temporal mechanics causing things from the future to be reset when you change the present, that poking-around process can involve some painful setbacks. X)
Bottom line? It's free, so the only question is whether it's worth your time...which I say it could be, if you really like challenging and unintuitive brain-teasers. X) I enjoyed it well enough, but there were plenty of spots where I felt very stuck.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC fighters analysis (part 2):
Here it is, the final set of Smash Bros. fighter analyses. :) Possibly ever, seeing as the current game is called 'Ultimate' and Sakurai said he's semi-retiring, although I suspect Nintendo will eventually crank out another one with or without him. X) Once again, here's the four-styles summary:
Min Min:
Reportedly Min Min is Sakurai's favorite fighter from the Arms game. ;) My first thought for Min Min is earth-style, after all she has RIDICULOUSLY long reach, and pretty decent striking power. Her regular and side specials have the unique attribute of being essentially variations of her regular attacks, with down-special cycling her through these variations. This, strangely enough, could be considered a tick for or against air-style: having fewer flashy special attacks to use would tend to disappoint air-stylists, but the sort of confusion-fu made possible by rapidly switching between possible movesets is exactly what a more serious air-stylist would want. Especially since she can do attacks with one arm WHILE THE OTHER IS STILL BUSY. O.O Of course, that also fits well with earth-style play, allowing the user to control more space and still threaten anyone they whiff against, and arguably even fire-style play, allowing the user to combo the opponent relentlessly (although she doesn't have the overall speed to satisfy most fire-stylists). There's also the little trick that her up-smash can reflect projectiles, although that's sort of a consolation bonus partially making up for her fewer special moves -- it's not as good as most reflects because it's slow and can't be used in midair. On the whole I'd call her primarily earth-style with a good whiff of air-style.
Steve/Alex:
The air-style quirkiness abounds. For those not aware, Steve and his distaff counterpart Alex are the default player characters from Minecraft (the fighter also has skins that look like a zombie or Enderman, I'll just refer to the fighter as Steve from here on). Steve has a very unusual moveset as a Smash Bros. fighter, especially in regard to his neutral special. Depending on context, it either mines for resources (when standing on ground), upgrades/repairs his equipment according to the best resource he currently has (when standing in front of a crafting table, which occasionally drops automatically when missing from the stage and can also be manually summoned with shield+special), or places blocks beneath him (when used in midair). Yes, in a platform-based fighting game, Steve can place platforms. 8o They're very temporary and can be destroyed with attacks, but they're there and they're a game-changer. Steve's stiff and samey animations, almost like Mr. Game & Watch, make it difficult to read his actions, which is sort of another tick in the air-style column because it confounds water-style (of which air-style is the natural counter). He can also walk and attack at same time, an ability pretty much only shared by Mega Man, and he can even move backward for it. The downside is, a lot of Steve's moves cost him resources to use -- technically even including his regular attacks, since the equipment he uses for them has to be forged and will eventually break. Steve has a little bit of earth-style in that he isn't all that quick and most of his attacks technically involve swung weapons extending his threat past his own hurtbox, though without nearly as much reach as most 'swordies'. You could also argue his walking side-attack has fire-style comboing potential, although he has difficulty catching an opponent in that from a neutral situation. So yeah, I'd call Steve pretty strongly air-style, but in a highly technical way that makes him attractive to competitive players who like to take advantage of 'meta' aspects.
Sephiroth:
o/~ Bell, frog, big cherries, Peter Pan, magic cheese, SEPHIROTH! o/~ Okay, got that out of my system. X) Sephiroth is strongly earth-style with slow movement, powerful hits, and RIDICULOUS REACH with his you'd-never-see-a-sword-this-big-used-this-way-outside-of-fantasy weapon. Nevertheless, there's a decent streak of water-style in him as well, thanks to his unusual down-special. It's sort of a counter move, but instead of being triggered by being attacked, it simply absorbs any hit which might come from the front during the first part of its animation, then dissolves into very short-range projectiles regardless of whether anything hit it or not. Still, his primary bane is speedy fire-style fighters who can weave through his zoning and make him into a punching bag.
Pyra/Mythra:
This is a multi-mode fighter in the vein of Pokemon Trainer and how Zelda/Sheik originally were, but with much less difference between the modes than usual. Both modes have sweeping reach and zoning capability, making them earth-style candidates, but Pyra is more so with slower movement, stronger hits, and a side-special that doesn't move her forward (although it does leave her unable to attack for a moment, which is especially risky for a playstyle revolving around keeping opponents away by swatting at them). Mythra is speedier and more combo-centric, giving her a bit of fire- and water-style potential generally best used for racking up damage. Regardless, zoning is her greatest strength.
Kazuya:
Yet another fighting game guest character, this one from Tekken, which I know little about. My first instinct is to call Kazuya earth-style, as he's well on the slow-and-powerful end. However, he's a brawler, not a swordie or otherwise far-reaching fighter (apart from his highly-telegraphed laser-beam attack). I've heard that high-level play with him involves catching an opponent in a nigh-inescapable long-sequence combo that can build most fighters up to KO-level damage and even finish them off as part of said combo. So in a way, he's a weird amalgamation of the primary attribute of earth-style (slow, heavy, and powerful) with the secondary attribute of fire-style (combo-heavy) that relies on doing water-style (dodging and whiff punishment) without being very good at it...but getting heavily rewarded when he does pull it off. X)
Sora:
And here we have the final fighter to be added to the roster, to the tearful rejoicing of the fanboys. X) Not that I'm bitter or anything, I don't blame Nintendo for going with the most-requested option. I just personally would've preferred something more classic and Nintendo-centric, like the Bionic Commando or Bomberman (yeah, he's already an assist trophy, but oh well). Anyway, Sora is an earth-and-air-style combo. For earth, he has relatively slow speed, swordie disjointed attack (although the reach isn't very good as swordies go), and decent striking power. For air-style, he has big double jumps and floaty air movement, and a neutral special that cycles through three different projectile attacks. He can also do combo attacks in the air, not only increasing his threat but changing his movement. He gets compared with Jigglypuff a lot.
Click to viewHi all. Merry Christmas and a happy new year. :) The most memorable thing about Christmas for my family this year was that my nieces got a RIDICULOUS number of Lego and Barbie sets. X) I'm guilty of contributing to that, having gotten them a couple of Minecraft-themed Lego sets, but I had no idea anybody else was getting them any. In addition to Christmas itself, I hosted the now-traditional game day at my own place, then most of my family went to a photo-safari park and zoo called Wild Florida. As so often happens with big family gatherings, there was a cold being passed around, and I started feeling symptoms on the day of the Wild Florida visit. X) I went anyway, it wasn't too bad of a cold, and I think spending a good part of the day out in the sun was probably good for me.
Progress was pretty decent for the first half of this month, but things of course got a bit hectic as Christmas approached. I thought I'd be able to make another good spurt over the last few days of the month because I took the whole week after Christmas off, but as I mentioned above, I got sick. X) So I've been taking it easy.
A big part of what I did get done was to create a subsystem which looks at the pending battle effects from an action (and any actions triggered by it) and summarizes what they'll do to a particular battler. I mentioned in last month's progress report I wanted to do something like that to control whether a moblin goes berserk or not (even if they've been damaged enough to trigger such, it doesn't make sense for them to go berserk if they're asleep, for example). It should make controlling enemy behaviors more nuanced.
I also started in on the next playable hero I'm adding to the game, Arumarg. So far I've just been making animations for his skillset. Most of Arumarg's skills involve him using his currently equipped weapon, which means there need to be different animations for each possible weapon. X) On the other hand, a couple of the skills, namely Expert Strike (which is basically just an attack with a significantly higher-than-usual critical hit rate) and Rend (an attack that attempts to lower enemy defense at the same time) [i]could[/i] simply reuse the basic attack animations. I'm leaning toward leaving it at that because I'm having trouble thinking of good ways to animate them otherwise, although I feel like I'm being lazy. :P
No progress in RP-land this month. I should probably poke the Zelda RPG folks a bit more firmly than just listing the pending scenes and whose pose is next every week. X)
Ori: The Collection:
This collection includes Ori and the Blind Forest (both original and Definitive Edition, though of course there's probably not much point in playing the original once you have Definitive Edition) and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. They're pretty similar games and I played them in succession, so I'm going to review them almost as a single game.
The story of the games follows a glowing fox-monkey critter. He apparently was spawned from a leaf of the SPIRIT TREE. 8o But he drifted far from the tree and was adopted by a tubby bear-ape critter. The SPIRIT TREE called out to Ori one night by glowing very brightly, but this ticked off a giant owl who came and ripped out the tree's core. This led to the land slowly withering, and eventually the tubby bear-ape critter fell into a hunger coma. So Ori wandered off, and pretty soon ran into a glowy floating orb who tells him about his origins and the need to gather the elements of Waters, Winds, and Warmth in order to revive the SPIRIT TREE and save the land. And so they set off to do so, make friends with a ball-with-limbs-sticking-out critter along the way, wake up the tubby bear-ape critter, yadda yadda. Then in the second game, Ori and company have adopted the giant owl's remaining chick, but she has a wing with some desiccated feathers, so she can't fly (dunno why they wouldn't just get replaced by healthy feathers eventually, they're like toenails). Ori comes up with the idea of tieing one of the giant owl's feathers (which was an ability-unlocking item in the first game) over the deficient wing, and the owl chick and Ori set out on her first flight together. But then they run into a storm and get separated in a crash-landing. While searching for the owl chick, Ori finds out that the SPIRIT WILLOW (which I think is actually supposed to be different from the SPIRIT TREE in the first game, they're in a different forest than before) has had its light separated into a bunch of wisps, and they'll need to be gathered up. Big surprise.
The games feel like they're trying very hard to be deep and transcendent. The title theme is poignant piano and violin music with a cooing vocal, the story is narrated (in the rare spots where cutscenes happen) in archaic phrasing by the sonorous voice of the SPIRIT TREE, and the hero himself IS some kind of spirit critter. Trouble is, it's not clear what sort of message is being conveyed through all this mystic sensation. -.-a 'Nature is sacred'? There's no human or analogous faction involved in the conflicts, it's all forces that are themselves part of nature or spirit. 'Family is important and they help each other'? That's certainly something that crops up a bit and it's a worthwhile statement, but it doesn't really feel like the main focus. 'Mysticism in general is cool, kids'? That's the closest thing to an overall message I can think of for these games. X) I think perhaps they were more simply going for the artistic trappings associated with mystic themes than trying to support any particular moral.
Anyway, getting to the mechanics! The Ori games are relatively easy Metroidvania-style games. You're unlikely to get especially lost, as there's little in the way of branching paths through most areas, and the combat is fairly forgiving for the most part. In the first game, Ori attacks primarily by tapping the attack button when within range of an enemy, causing his floaty orb companion to send out flares of energy that inerringly tag their target. It's brain-dead easy, so all you have to do is watch out for counter-attacks while flaring away until they're dead. In the second game this is replaced with a 'spirit edge' attack Ori does himself, slashing at a wide area. The threat area is about as big as before, but at least you actually have to be facing the enemy and it affects your own movement.
A lot more of the appeal comes from platforming challenges, which of course Ori gathers abilities to become more proficient with in typical Metroidvania style. He gains things like wall-jumping/climbing, a double jump, parachuting (with that giant owl feather), and most famously, a 'bash' ability. The bash allows him to treat enemies and most projectiles as aerial stepping stones, halting time briefly while near them so he can line up a direction, then smashing through them to launch to wherever he's going -- because having an obstacle to break through obviously increases your ability to move, right? ;) Well, nonsensical or no, it is plenty of fun to pull off sequences of mid-air acrobatics using this and complementary abilities.
One little gripe I'll mention is that the developers seemed to value graphical wow over visual clarity. Everything is very impressive-looking, but there's so much glow effects involved in combat that it's difficult to pick out what's going on. Also, Ori himself BEING a monochrome glowy spirit critter, you can basically only see his silhouette. This makes discerning his current movement tough -- for example, there's not a lot of difference between what he looks like when he lands on a ledge and what he looks like when he ends up clinging just under the lip of that ledge, so you can waste a precious second during an intense platforming sequence realizing that you need to move UP before you can continue moving forward.
Bottom line? A decent couple of Metroidvanias, not perfect or the timeless fables they feel like they WANT to be, but well worth the price tag they hold nowadays.
Portal Reloaded:
This is a free, community-made mod for Portal 2. It's set in the same Aperture Science facility as the main game (or at least one that looks very similar), but stars a different, nameless test subject and a male-voiced AI running the place. According to the AI, the test subject has been selected due to her rare ability to withstand the physics of time travel, and she is put through a battery of tests to prepare her for...a special mission. The facility has developed a modification for the portal gun which allows placing a time portal leading to a period exactly 20 years in the future. Peering through such portals has revealed that something has happened to leave the facility in ruin. :o So the AI wants the test subject to become adept at using the portal gun, including the time portal, so that she can deal with whatever threat comes to the facility and CHANGE THE FUTURE. :o Because that always works in these stories, right? ;)
Well, as far as the mechanics of this game goes, you actually can change the future, multiple times over even. For example, if you have some object in the present, like one of the ubiquitous cubes of the Aperture facility, then when you slip through a time portal to the future, an aged version of that object will be sitting right where you left it. You can then pick that future version of the object up and do as you like with it, even bring it back to the present with you and use it to solve puzzles...but if ANYTHING happens to move the original, present-time version of that object, the future version will suddenly vaporize. c.c After all, if the spot you got it from in the future is no longer the place it was in the present, it couldn't have existed from where you picked it up, right? n.n So you have to avoid moving the original version...unless you want the future version to only exist for a while in a way that's convenient for you, like to hold down a pressure plate that controls something and then release it once you've gotten past some obstacle. Head starting to hurt yet? :) The game is full of puzzles that require familiarizing yourself with the paradoxical rules of such time-travel and both avoiding breaking them and exploiting them when necessary. The portals (meaning the regular, space-warping portals we're familiar with from the main game) are affected by these rules too -- you can change the locations of portals in the future, but if you then change the portals in the present, the future ones while switch to where the present ones are. You can also use the time portal to project puzzle elements from one time period to the other, like light bridges or levitation energy tunnels.
It's in the nature of this mod that it will be more difficult than the base game. Adding another portal exponentially increases the complexity of the mechanics, and the fact that it involves time travel -- something outside the realm of human experience -- makes it unintuitive. On top of that, the design of the puzzles wasn't quite up to the standard of quality of the main game, which is of course to be expected in a small-team, amateur effort. There were a few cases where critical puzzle elements weren't as obvious as they should've been, or worse, things change simply because you reach a certain spot, without any visible indication that anything should happen. You have to do a lot of experimental poking around to get a feel for what can be done in a given stage, and with the temporal mechanics causing things from the future to be reset when you change the present, that poking-around process can involve some painful setbacks. X)
Bottom line? It's free, so the only question is whether it's worth your time...which I say it could be, if you really like challenging and unintuitive brain-teasers. X) I enjoyed it well enough, but there were plenty of spots where I felt very stuck.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC fighters analysis (part 2):
Here it is, the final set of Smash Bros. fighter analyses. :) Possibly ever, seeing as the current game is called 'Ultimate' and Sakurai said he's semi-retiring, although I suspect Nintendo will eventually crank out another one with or without him. X) Once again, here's the four-styles summary:
- Fire-style: Fast and aggressive, emphasizing shutting down the opponent's ability to act with combos.
- Water-style: Predictive and reactive, reading and dodging the opponent's attacks then punishing their whiffs.
- Air-style: Wild and unpredictable, finding joy in using the breadth of their character's moveset (and of course jumping a lot).
- Earth-style: Stolid and forceful, preferring slow-but-powerful characters and strong, sweeping attacks.
Min Min:
Reportedly Min Min is Sakurai's favorite fighter from the Arms game. ;) My first thought for Min Min is earth-style, after all she has RIDICULOUSLY long reach, and pretty decent striking power. Her regular and side specials have the unique attribute of being essentially variations of her regular attacks, with down-special cycling her through these variations. This, strangely enough, could be considered a tick for or against air-style: having fewer flashy special attacks to use would tend to disappoint air-stylists, but the sort of confusion-fu made possible by rapidly switching between possible movesets is exactly what a more serious air-stylist would want. Especially since she can do attacks with one arm WHILE THE OTHER IS STILL BUSY. O.O Of course, that also fits well with earth-style play, allowing the user to control more space and still threaten anyone they whiff against, and arguably even fire-style play, allowing the user to combo the opponent relentlessly (although she doesn't have the overall speed to satisfy most fire-stylists). There's also the little trick that her up-smash can reflect projectiles, although that's sort of a consolation bonus partially making up for her fewer special moves -- it's not as good as most reflects because it's slow and can't be used in midair. On the whole I'd call her primarily earth-style with a good whiff of air-style.
Steve/Alex:
The air-style quirkiness abounds. For those not aware, Steve and his distaff counterpart Alex are the default player characters from Minecraft (the fighter also has skins that look like a zombie or Enderman, I'll just refer to the fighter as Steve from here on). Steve has a very unusual moveset as a Smash Bros. fighter, especially in regard to his neutral special. Depending on context, it either mines for resources (when standing on ground), upgrades/repairs his equipment according to the best resource he currently has (when standing in front of a crafting table, which occasionally drops automatically when missing from the stage and can also be manually summoned with shield+special), or places blocks beneath him (when used in midair). Yes, in a platform-based fighting game, Steve can place platforms. 8o They're very temporary and can be destroyed with attacks, but they're there and they're a game-changer. Steve's stiff and samey animations, almost like Mr. Game & Watch, make it difficult to read his actions, which is sort of another tick in the air-style column because it confounds water-style (of which air-style is the natural counter). He can also walk and attack at same time, an ability pretty much only shared by Mega Man, and he can even move backward for it. The downside is, a lot of Steve's moves cost him resources to use -- technically even including his regular attacks, since the equipment he uses for them has to be forged and will eventually break. Steve has a little bit of earth-style in that he isn't all that quick and most of his attacks technically involve swung weapons extending his threat past his own hurtbox, though without nearly as much reach as most 'swordies'. You could also argue his walking side-attack has fire-style comboing potential, although he has difficulty catching an opponent in that from a neutral situation. So yeah, I'd call Steve pretty strongly air-style, but in a highly technical way that makes him attractive to competitive players who like to take advantage of 'meta' aspects.
Sephiroth:
o/~ Bell, frog, big cherries, Peter Pan, magic cheese, SEPHIROTH! o/~ Okay, got that out of my system. X) Sephiroth is strongly earth-style with slow movement, powerful hits, and RIDICULOUS REACH with his you'd-never-see-a-sword-this-big-used-this-way-outside-of-fantasy weapon. Nevertheless, there's a decent streak of water-style in him as well, thanks to his unusual down-special. It's sort of a counter move, but instead of being triggered by being attacked, it simply absorbs any hit which might come from the front during the first part of its animation, then dissolves into very short-range projectiles regardless of whether anything hit it or not. Still, his primary bane is speedy fire-style fighters who can weave through his zoning and make him into a punching bag.
Pyra/Mythra:
This is a multi-mode fighter in the vein of Pokemon Trainer and how Zelda/Sheik originally were, but with much less difference between the modes than usual. Both modes have sweeping reach and zoning capability, making them earth-style candidates, but Pyra is more so with slower movement, stronger hits, and a side-special that doesn't move her forward (although it does leave her unable to attack for a moment, which is especially risky for a playstyle revolving around keeping opponents away by swatting at them). Mythra is speedier and more combo-centric, giving her a bit of fire- and water-style potential generally best used for racking up damage. Regardless, zoning is her greatest strength.
Kazuya:
Yet another fighting game guest character, this one from Tekken, which I know little about. My first instinct is to call Kazuya earth-style, as he's well on the slow-and-powerful end. However, he's a brawler, not a swordie or otherwise far-reaching fighter (apart from his highly-telegraphed laser-beam attack). I've heard that high-level play with him involves catching an opponent in a nigh-inescapable long-sequence combo that can build most fighters up to KO-level damage and even finish them off as part of said combo. So in a way, he's a weird amalgamation of the primary attribute of earth-style (slow, heavy, and powerful) with the secondary attribute of fire-style (combo-heavy) that relies on doing water-style (dodging and whiff punishment) without being very good at it...but getting heavily rewarded when he does pull it off. X)
Sora:
And here we have the final fighter to be added to the roster, to the tearful rejoicing of the fanboys. X) Not that I'm bitter or anything, I don't blame Nintendo for going with the most-requested option. I just personally would've preferred something more classic and Nintendo-centric, like the Bionic Commando or Bomberman (yeah, he's already an assist trophy, but oh well). Anyway, Sora is an earth-and-air-style combo. For earth, he has relatively slow speed, swordie disjointed attack (although the reach isn't very good as swordies go), and decent striking power. For air-style, he has big double jumps and floaty air movement, and a neutral special that cycles through three different projectile attacks. He can also do combo attacks in the air, not only increasing his threat but changing his movement. He gets compared with Jigglypuff a lot.