DRIFTER (Majora)
Drifter is a neat little set centered around trash. By hitting the opponent with strong enough moves, or landing certain attacks, she can build up a scrap meter that amps her moveset in various ways. The most notable is by making items, which can buff Drifter’s footstool chances, add a sweetspot to her moves, or flatly boost the damage of physical attacks. While the buffs from these are fairly minimal, they can stack, and she can get an increase to these buffs by getting the rarest item, which allows her to potentially double the stacks. It’s a fairly interesting mechanic that doesn’t force the player to memorize a bunch of item combinations since the buffs are passive, and I especially like how Drifter is incentivized to hold onto Scrap since being hit with enough can potentially drop an item.
The set outside of the mechanic capitalizes on the Scrap mechanic in interesting ways. SSpec is the most prominent, enabling Drifter to create cubes that she can hit at opponents in various arcs with her moves, and potentially stack the damage by placing them on top of the other. USpec is a simple move, but its ability to be canceled into DSpec, which automatically gives her Scrap if she lands it, gives it a good amount of utility regardless since otherwise DSpec is slow. Drifter’s smashes all expend Scrap when charged to give them a boost in range, allowing them to potentially punish spot dodges or force trips that she can punish with scrap cubes. Lastly, DThrow can potentially place the foe inside of a scrap cube, letting her potentially push them off stage.
Drifter as a moveset is largely at its best when interacting with the scrap mechanic. The moves that don't aren’t really bad, as none of them are particularly overpowered or redundant, but they aren’t really wowing either. It also doesn’t actually mention the exact increase on the footstool window provided by Headstompers (not really a stickling point since footstools are a super minor part of the metagame) or the knockback buffs of the Boxing Gloves (which very much is - +.1 for every copy seems right). Lastly, there is a bit of confusing writing in Drifter’s mechanics section; it’s said to cap at 100%, but the paragraph before implies it caps at 20%. The latter statement is meant to refer to the amount of scrap Drifter fills by attacking, since none of her moves deal 30% or over normally, but it’s worded in such a way that it seems to refer to the meter itself. On a related note, the damage increase on the Lens-Maker’s Glasses means that she can deal over 30% if she sweetspots, so it would be neat if she could fill 30% of her scrap meter in one hit, a suitable reward for getting lucky and landing the specific hitbox.
This is a fairly simple set, presumably intentionally so given what the setmaker has talked about working on in chat, but for what it is Drifter is still a solid set that gets the character’s playstyle in Risk of Rain across very well.
BLOOD FALCON (Dae)
I did not expect to read a 50k moveset for any character, let alone a F-Zero character. Nevertheless, I’m certainly happy someone took up the challenge of doing so, especially since you generally only have a character design and a bit of lore to work with.
Blood Falcon, despite what you may expect, isn’t exactly a clone of the good Captain - his moves certainly take a good bit of inspiration from him, but all of them are very different in application. Much like in the actual games, despite his superficial similarities to Falcon Blood plays very differently, focused on flashy hard reads and committal approaches at the expense of being very punishable if he guesses incorrectly. He does have safer moves such as UTilt and to a lesser extent NAir, but for the most part his gameplan is centered around dirty tricks that his counterpart doesn’t have. Jab has two finishers, one that is fast and shieldpokes and the other being slow enough to catch out, but impossible to punish if Blood isn’t hit out of it. He has two ground burst movement tools in FTilt and Dash Attack, with the former being faster and safer and the latter being much stronger if it connects properly. And since no evil Falcon clone would be complete without them, Blood also has a few funny moves, like a super laggy DTilt that kills ridiculously early and an unblockable FSmash that is more worth it for the threat than anything else.
Despite the character being incredibly simple - “edgy Falcon clone” - a surprising amount of character is put into the set. Blood Falcon’s kit has deliberate similarities to Captain’s, such as a NAir that can be looped into itself and a slamming throw that continues the combo, but several differences. The famous Falcon stomp, for example, is the BAir, and instead of being a kill tool its a versatile combo tool hampered by being much worse for securing offstage kills than its counterpart. Blood’s Falcon Dive equivalent is an actual dive that acts as a command grab, giving him great offstage presence combined with his excellent recovery. The shoulder charge is his FAir, a super neat take on the angleable charge move with neat combo applications, and also does what Captain doesn’t and references actual F-Zero techniques. And while I’m fairly sure this was accidental, his USmash is solely dedicated to being an OoS option, calling to mind how Smash 64 Falcon had one of the best OoS USmashes in the game since it came out on frame 4. They’re similar enough to the original moves to be recognizable, but different enough that Blood Falcon doesn’t come off as a clone, while also giving him a combo and read game just as, if not more flashy than his rival’s.
The Specials are last, but they’re all very cool. NSpec is Blood Falcon’s Falcon Punch equivalent, but instead of a hard hit it applies a buff to him that improves his mobility and buffs the knockback of his kill moves but not his combo moves, making both even deadlier. SSpec is a take on Raptor Boost that is meant to outright mock it - puny Captain goes a limited distance and only punches when close to the foe, while Blood can go as far as he wants at super speed and punch whenever he feels like it, at the cost of very frequently being too fast to control. USpec is a self-launching move with slow startup, but very fast acting superarmor that lets Blood escape shield pressure in unconventional manners while also being weirdly safe if he doesn’t hit a shield. Finally, DSpec is a clone of Ganon’s old USmash, which comes out slow but has much less endlag than it should and enables him to get a ton of pressure off, especially since he can charge the move to mess with shield timing and the knockback properties ensure getting hit by it is bad for the opponent regardless of percent. I like the idea of increasing the endlag if Blood spams it too much, as incentive for the player to git gud with it instead of just spamming it, and it doesn’t feel overpowered since he lacks in so many other areas, such as general safety and anti-airs.
As someone who mained Bowser in Smash 4, I can safely vouch for the dopamine levels playing as a big unga-bunga berserker gives, and Blood Falcon is an excellent example of such. I’d pick him over that insufferably honest Captain anyday!
BOWSER (Tortoise)
As I said in the above comment, I was a Bowser main in Smash 4, so seeing a rework is pretty interesting and fairly hype given the character’s variety of abilities. This interpretation stays fairly close to his current playstyle, but with more of an emphasis on baiting him out to punish him like a true boss fight. To aid this, Bowser has some tricks of his sleeve, such as a surprisingly long-ranged FAir to catch out attempts to outspace him and a super fast initial dash that comes at the expense of not having a standard run. It reminded me a lot of Bedman’s movement in Guilty Gear Xrd, where his walk is absurdly fast but his dash is more of a special in disguise than a dash. Bowser’s animations here are also very fun, in particular his NAir, BAir, and FSmash, and while I’m not sure on his DTilt being a lava trap with no real hitbox it does help set up for his strong USpec.
While it’s certainly an interesting take on the character, ultimately as admitted by the playstyle section it doesn’t diverge that much from the canon Bowser. I’m not sure on DAir being random as well, since it means that he has no control over what shell he launches when they all have different effects; maybe they could cycle or be charged in some form? The doc also states that Bowser doesn’t have as much OoS options as in canon, but I’m not sure if that’s really a weakness; USpec starts up 1 frame faster than Whirling Fortress, already one of the best OoS tools in the game, and is a very strong kill move to boot. On that subject, it also has an uppercut activated by holding the A button, but with how fast the move is to start up there’s no way the casual player is getting it - a simple “tap B for uppercut, hold for grab” would be easier and more intuitive. Bowser as a whole still works, and doesn’t feel particularly overpowered due to his big body status and punishable combo breakers, but these mechanical issues combined with not really breaking from the mold hurt the set quite a bit.
Overall, Bowser is a very unique take on one of the most iconic of villains, oozing characterization on every move. While it ultimately doesn’t do that much to stand out, I still recommend reading this for an experience like almost nothing else in the contest’s history.
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