Hey everyone, it's Tid, and I'm really happy to be presenting the third of five Dev Blog posts. Strange to think we're halfway done already!
Last week you got a taste of how the game itself will be functioning differently, thanks to TSON, and as he said, I'll be talking to you about the characters.

...It's okay, I'm not spoiling 0.8's roster for you. What I'm talking about is the improvement and modification of the characters that are already in the game.
You'll hopefully be pleased to learn that every character that you saw in 0.7 has been revised or improved in several ways, to make each character more unique, more exciting, or both. Now don't worry, I'm not going to spoil the excitement by telling you everything we've done to all your favourite characters, but I am going to show off a couple of the more intricate or exciting modifications, so you know what kind of things you can look forward to.



To kick things off, lets talk about one of my personal favourite characters; Lloyd. Now I've never been a huge fan of Tales of Symphonia, so when tasked with fixing Lloyd up, I didn't really know where to start. After talking to some of the more dedicated fans and watching some gameplay videos, I quickly learned that a lot of his special attacks are combinations of other special attacks. For example, Demonic Thrust has him shoot out a Demon Fang as he spins around into a Sonic Thrust. There are tons of these little combo moves, called Artes, that Lloyd can perform, and I felt it only appropriate to include it in SSF2! It's given Lloyd a whole new mechanic no other character has. Allow me to demonstrate using the earlier example of Demonic Thrust.
First of all you use your Demon Fang move, like you normally would.

Then, just after the attack has been launched...

You'll be able to use a Sonic Thrust, instantly. No charge or windup at all, he launches right into it after shooting the projectile.

It's not an easy task however! You've got to time it just right. You need to aim to hit the button right after Lloyd gets the sword above his head, as shown in the second picture. Don't try it any later or earlier or it won't work.
It isn't limited to just this, though! There are quite a few moves that string together like this. For example, you can go into Sonic Thrust OR Tiger Blade from Down Smash, if you press the buttons after the downwards stab part of the move. Or maybe you'd be more interested to hear that the second hit of Tiger Blade (Lloyd's Up Special) can now be one of several different attacks, instead of just the downward strike.



But enough on that, I'm sure you get the idea, so we'll take a look at a couple of other characters.
Our most talented programmer, TSON, has spent a lot of time and effort, giving Black Mage his own twists, too!
You know all three of his smash attacks pretty well, right? There's Fire, Thunder and Freeze.

Well now there's a little something extra involved. Now, you have the option to fully charge the smash attack, which means Black Mage will launch a totally different, more powered up version of the spell with unique properties!

Look forward to seeing how they all work!

Oh, and did I mention Death? He shows up during Black Mage's downwards aerial attack. Time the attack just right and he'll follow an opponent around for a while before meteor smashing them.

Oh look, it's Mega Man! He's got tons of cool new stuff too, thanks to his dedicated supervisor, Roy, and our fantastic sprite artist, Damian.
After tapping down special, you now use the directional keys to select a weapon, instead of cycling through them all. If you press the special attack button again, you'll switch right away, or you can wait it out.

His up air splits into five, weaker, non-freezing projectiles after flying a short distance. This was a lot of hard work from TSON, so make sure you thank him!

Crash Bomb can be detonated manually, now, with an extra press of the button.




What has Naruto's favourite technique been since episode one? Shadow Clone Jutsu. Unfortunately, until now, SSF2's Naruto moveset hasn't taken advantage of the wealth of potential that comes with Naruto's Shadow Clones.
Well that all changes with 0.8.

Woah! Clones now play a much larger part in Naruto's moveset.
In his throws for example:

Or how about a brand new side special? Shadow Clone Launch lets you fling a Shadow Clone quite a distance.

If a clone hits someone after being thrown by Naruto, the clone will kick the foe back towards Naruto! This is a great way to start combos.

But wait, does that mean Naruto doesn't have Shurikens anymore? Not quite. They now show up in his backwards throw, albeit in a slightly different way.

Down Special has changed a little too. You can now hold backwards while Naruto summons the clone to make them appear behind you.

In the air, down special summons two clones. However, there's a timer on this move so that you can't use it repeatedly.

There's a little spark that shows up to let you know you can use the move again.

Until now, there have been issues with one or two characters having a lot of special features or interesting gimmicks, while other characters felt generic or bland. As you can see, every character is getting some well-deserved attention and this shouldn't be an issue anymore. Everyone has exciting aspects of their moveset to try out and experiment with.



So is it just upgrades and additions to existing moves? Just character-specific gimmicks? Absolutely not! There are several characters with brand new attacks or animations in their moveset all together.
Ichigo's Down Special for example now has a lot more going for it. In the air he'll start to glow red as he falls, and the sword becomes more powerful with every second he falls.

Using it on the ground is a new move entirely. He quickly flash steps upwards before crashing down with a meteor smash. You can even hold down the button to change how high up his flash step takes him!

Fully charging Rasengan gives you something a little different now.

Oh, and by the way, Rasengan changes size based on charge levels.
Almost all of Sora's moveset has been redesigned, to give him a more unique playstyle.

Kirby's gotten several new rocks, and their rarities have been adjusted. You're most likely going to get one of these four, the others are rarer.

Try out Link's Bow while holding a bomb for explosive results.

Speaking of Link, his Gale Boomerang now does exactly what you'd expect.

You can now hold Down while jumping to do Peach's float technique very close to the ground. This lets you use her Aerial attacks as if they were Standard attacks!

Seems like Lloyd's Guardian has been replaced with a brand new move, Grave Blade. Oh, and you may want to try fully charging Demon Fang... Just a word of advice.

The infamous "Ball and Chain" picture from the Dojo is Mega Man's brand new Down Smash attack. You can swing it as long as you like, but it'll get weaker with each swing.

Goku's Kaio-Ken is more threatening than ever, with new effects, and even camera-shaking!




There's also a major department of character improvements I really want to touch on, and it applies directly to all of the characters that have been in any of Nintendo's Smash games. Mario, Sonic, Ness and so on. (Sonic has also been upgraded to his new voice actor!)
A big part of the character development process has consisted of us looking through the data and information directly from Brawl, Melee and SSB64, and transferring that data into SSF2. This means that these characters will behave far more similarly to their Smash counterparts, in several departments. Attributes, attack strength, hitbox placement, and more.
Things like characters without all their tilt attacks, or non-working ledge attacks, have been fixed up and made uniform. All in all, these modifications to recreate official smash titles have really stepped the game forward in terms of authenticity. That's not to say that we've only made these changes for those specific characters, of course. No, we've essentially used them as a jump-off point, and are using what we've learned from making these characters to further improve and refine all of SSF2's newcomers as well. Even if you've played with all the characters in previous demos, I really reccomend that in 0.8 you give everyone a try. You won't be disappointed.

Throw Animations

This section is only gonna be brief, but I would like to mention throws. Until now, they've been pretty lazily thrown together, right? The throws were basically just normal attacks. Well we've brought an end to that for 0.8! Now Mario will be really slamming foes into the ground for his down throw, and swinging them around with his back and forward throws. Link's Hookshot really drags people in, not to mention its modified use as a tether. A lot of characters have some really interesting throws now, so you should definitely check those out.
It's important to note however that this is not a process that will likely be completed for 0.8. While MOST of the characters will have great new throws for this demo, there will undoubtedly still be a few that aren't finished by the time we release. Rest assured that we'll have it all fixed up for future demos.

Custom Item Attacks

To finish off, I'd like to briefly mention one last area.. Item attacks. Until now, a character swinging an item has been nothing but a jab with the item in question stuck to their hands. I'm very pleased to say that we've completely fixed that up.

As you can see, characters are getting some flashy wind-up animations for the Home Run Bat. It really gives the attack some impact!
And Beam Swords?

Woah! Those things have got some range on them! Beam Swords are really a treat to find now, every character has a unique Beam Sword swing, with varying range and effectiveness.

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Well I hope you enjoyed this little show of some of the character-based upgrades we've been working hard on for 0.8. I've mentioned almost every character at least once or twice, and this is just the tip of the iceberg! You'll have to play the demo to find all the cool new features for yourself.
This has been the third of five dev blog posts, next week you'll be getting Void to talk to the more competitive fans about the balancing of the characters. Look forward to it!