Here's what I think of fans' character requests for Guilty Gear Strive

The latest update from the Guilty Gear Strive dev team goes into a whole lot of detail about a whole lot of things: Bridget is again confirmed “she”, Instant Kills were cut thanks to COVID, and big changes aren’t out of the question for the core systems.

However, what I want to talk about right now is the character request poll. It’s always interesting to read about what characters people want to see in an existing fighting game.

There’s one layer, the most important, which is raw character popularity. It doesn’t matter if a character is irrelevant to the game story, or if players don’t use them, if people love them. They’ll sell copies, after all. A Japanese arcade poll got Dizzy into Guilty Gear Xrd; in fact, Bridget nearly won that spot.

Then there’s another layer, the second, which is who players want to actually play as. Character defines gameplay, and picking up a new character is like starting a new game, so this is really important.

Anyway, here’s the chart.

I want to isolate some popular choices here and talk about their chances for GGST and how they might work in the new game.

Sin Kiske - I’d bet money

Sin's not choice number one popularity-wise, but there's steady international demand.

Ky’s airhead son Sin1 fights with a (denim?!) flag that boasts big range and crushing attack power, but he's a growing boy and needs to keep fed-- in the middle of the fight-- to use his special moves.

This is kind of the reverse of Nagoriyuki— a character who does a whole lot of things that other GG characters have done, but all at once— but Sin might still be unique enough to be viable.

More importantly, Sin has an extended role in the GGST story update, meaning he has a 3D model and a voice actor who’s probably already recorded the lines. I am certain that Sin Kiske is on his way to GGST in this season.

Slayer - obvious

The gentleman vampire and Giant Robo homage Slayer leads the polls in the west, and he ranks pretty well in Japan and Korea as well. He’s well-liked, but it’s really his singular fighting style that makes him popular.

As Guilty Gear’s boxer, using tricky movement and feints to open up his opponent for crushing heavy blows, Slayer fits GGST perfectly. No notes. I’m sure he’s coming eventually.2

Johnny - redundant?

The playboy swordsman and leader of the Jellyfish Pirates, Johnny is the coolest guy in the room. As May’s beloved, he’s not a main GG character, but it feels weird to have Guilty Gear with him just off camera.

But putting his character entirely aside, I think that Johnny is a tough match for GGST. Specifically, his gameplay aligns a lot with Nagoriyuki: slow movement with tricky teleports, big sword range, precision strikes and big damage.

In fact, Nago seems to do a lot of what Johnny already did, but better. I’m sure you could adapt Johnny to GGST, but without a major rework he might be a redundant or even inferior choice.3

Dizzy - might work

The half-Gear daughter of Justice and Sol— nobody is quite sure how this happened, but we know that it did, one way or another— effectively retired from the GG story when she married Ky Kiske. But her wildly creative, risque character design is such a classic that fans voted her back into Xrd, even though very few people actually play her. (See also Bridget.)

Dizzy fights with heavy firepower at medium to long range. Her sentient wings give her an arsenal of distance tools to pressure the opponent from afar.

GGST has slowly been introducing more long-range characters via DLC. While Happy Chaos was probably a mistake, Axl, Testament and Bridget all prove that the zoner style works in this game too.

Though the sheer volume of her tools would probably be toned down for GGST, Dizzy would be welcomed by fans and also lend a little more variety to a game that’s been primarily about up-close slugfests for a while now. I think she’s a strong choice.

Jam Kuradoberi - would struggle

The kung-fu chef with the wailing voice is another popular character among fans and players alike. A beloved comic relief character with zero relevance to the main story: her restaurant keeps burning down and she just wants to make money to bring it back.

Jam is a striker who dashes into point-blank range to attack relentlessly and crack the opponent open, dealing massive damage. Her gimmick is that she can “charge” her moves to enhance their properties and deal even bigger damage.

The problem with Jam in GGST is that almost everybody deals massive damage to begin with, and they have the long range that she lacks. Without one of her key advantages, Jam is merely fast. Her situation would be comparable to Millia, maybe worse.

Unless her kit is rebuilt to deal with the realities of the new game, I think Jam would really struggle in GGST.4

Elphelt - didn’t y’all suffer enough the first time?

Elphelt Valentine was a popular new character in Xrd, and for good reason: what’s not to love about a wedding-themed fighter whose weapons are a bouquet of flowers and a shotgun? Well, Elphelt is the kind of character that fans love and players hate.

Her complex, powerful gun mechanics made her an overpowering threat on the tourney circuit, the kind of character that players quit the game over. I’ve speculated for a while that her ability to trap opponents in the corner indefinitely with no escape led to the “wall break” mechanic in GGST.

Happy Chaos comes off as a second attempt at the “gun fighter” archetype that Elphelt represented. Even after getting nerfed from his overpowering status at launch, “character who can hit you from anywhere on screen with the touch of a button” might just not be a fun idea for a fighting game, in the same sense that Elphelt’s crushing shotgun offense was simply not fun or interesting to fight against.

It’s possible for El to return, but it’s likely that she’d be completely overhauled in the new game like her sister Ramlethal was.

What about you, Dave?

That’s easy. The GG lore fiend in me wants to see Asuka R. Kreuz, the puppet master ominously referred to as “That Man” by most people in the GG world. Though the GGST story turned him into an ally, the man who turned Sol Badguy and his one true love into Gears is Sol’s ultimate grudge match, and they have to throw down in-game one day.

The fanboy in me wants to see Order-Sol, the even more brutish and rough version of Sol Badguy from the past with a reckless fighting style and a cool “charge” gimmick. He’s also my main in GGXX, so I’d be happy to play as him.

As a GGST player and observer of fighting game design, I want to see A.B.A. The single weirdest experiment in the GGXX series, weirder even than Robo-Ky, A.B.A. fights with a giant key and transforms between a weak base form and an extremely dangerous powered-up form by feeding the key bags of blood. The key is her husband. It’s a lot to take in. I want to see what the “modernized” version of a character this crazy even looks like.

That being said, I seem to have talked about Guilty Gear enough that the newsletter is warning me I’m reaching the limit for one post. I’ll leave you with one thought: Haehyun would be good, too.