Pretty interesting character, fits the theme!
Quick review, mostly regarding how the character feels to play since the sprites are great. As the name implies, Assassin is a character who specializes in getting past defenses, a lot of it has to do with liberal use of itr kind 3. I couldn't really find any combos save one, so his damage is ironically not that fantastic. I did get a bit confused with why Assassin glowed, but then I realized its because he summons magic knives.
Basic Moves:
Pretty standard with a few notable differences. He does use his fists to punch, but other times he will use a knife.
* Jump height is actually lower than average, but dash height is slightly higher.
*
Jump attack is really interesting; it has a bit of forward momentum, and for some reason it can still knock you down even if blocked, but it doesn't ignore armor or destroy items instantly like bdefend 100 does.
* His grab attack capabilities are on-par with Julian, being able to hit 7 times in a row with injury 15 each.
* Character is very good at throwing weapons. Notably, he throws a bit slow in mid-air but with incredible speed.
* super_punch is a backhand that will pull the enemy
backwards. I understand the physics logic behind it based on the sprite, but it doesn't make sense unless the enemy you are hitting is at a very specific location infront of Assassin (otherwise it wouldn't look like Assassin is pulling his enemy with the back of his arm between his fist and his shoulder).
Special Moves:
Assassin uses id 7 Firen for his AI, but its not necessary for him to have that id. I didn't bother testing the AI's capabilities since it uses a default id.
Assassin cannot use special moves out of rolling >>D.
D>A throws knives in both directions. The knives are affected by gravity and can be deflected, but they cannot be blocked since they use grab. Consequently, the knives do have quirky behaviors like pulling the victim closer to you and sometimes having issues with grab height(like sinking into the ground if the knife hits the enemy's foot). There's a sweet spot where you can then perform >>JA after the knife connects, but sadly this is about the only combo I could find.
D>J is basically a shadowdash move, and you can choose to press A to stab your enemy.
DvA is a backward leap, and throws 1 knife at your previous location. Not very useful; I think its too slow for a reversal move and it doesn't have state 6 during the falling frames, you can't follow up with a dash attack or otherwise.
DJA is the most important move for this character, but also the one move where I find the most number of issues, so I will go into detail:
- This is a move where Assassin will run ahead and grab anyone in his way. When grabbed, Assassin will use his opponent as a battering ram for a short period of time. This move can be cancelled into a throw or into a regular grab; the latter is done automatically at the end if the player didn't cancel.
- Frankly overpowered. Only 90mp, covers a long distance, has dvz4 (that's a LOT of z-axis coverage! Nearly x2 of walking and x3 of running!), can chain into regular grab for heavy damage, has state 7 when he is coming for you(he blocks while is running), good for reversals and also serves as his only real means of crowd control where Assassin will use the victim's body as a battering ram.
- Assassin will always grab the enemy and hold him such that the victim will face AWAY from Assassin. That's pretty neat, but once the move ends, Assassin will go to frame 120 (regular grab frame). This creates 2 weird things: When assassin initially grabs his victim, you don't hear the "grab" sound until Assassin has stopped moving. The victim will continue to be held from his back EVEN when I'm just punching the enemy from grab, which looks really weird.
- Input Error #1: Normally, pressing A or D will cancel the battering ram into regular grab, and J will be a leap-throw. However, during the first 3 frames of the move, pressing A will instead do what pressing J would normally do, and J does nothing.
- Input Error #2: This move can be used while running... but the input is pressing D>J all at once instead. This is very non-intuitive considering D>J is normally an entirely different move.
- Annoyance #1: There is no -mp tag, which means I can't simply hold back to "cancel"(go into hit_d) the same way I can do so with Firen/Dennis' D>J. Yeah I know, -mp can give issues if you run below 0mp, but there should be enough time between frames as it is where using mp: -1 is unlikely to give problems since the MP regen would have recovered slightly.
- Annoyance #2: I can't hold direction +A to make Assassin do a regular throw. I understand why you wouldn't want to add this since "taction" tag is finnicky when you have a running move that also moves on the z-axis though, but still.
- Annoyance #3: This move can't be used when you're already holding someone in a grab, you HAVE to use DJA to initiate it. I can understand the concern of having a near-infinite grab loop like YinYin's Jason has, but you can always have a clone of the default grab move where the player cannot use DJA if he cancelled out of it, and give it a unique grab animation to indicate so.
- Input Suggestion: Since this is a grab move, I think the input for this move should have been D^J. I mean, there is enough time to ensure that player can adjust his fingers to make the character move ^/v on the z-axis when the character starts running. Furthermore, making the move DJA also locks Rudolf from being using that move with Transform.
Last annoyance unrelated to DJA: This is a grab-based character, but he can't change the direction of his grabs. You can take advantage of the dircontrol: tag to make it such that Assassin can change the direction and thus hold his victim left or right as needed.
Unrelated: apparently I ran out of visual memory for the frame viewer if I open this character on @
YinYin's VDCer for too long alongside LF2 running? Also, the facepic reminds me of @
Ariel's old avatar.
Overall a decent thematic character, but the lack of combos may put some players off. Could be a good choice for a stage mode enemy if he is given appropriate AI.
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