Also, here at the top I'll
put a list of the topics that are below so you can just ctrl+f to
the ones you are interested in. If I think of other things to put in
here, I may add more sections later and link back to this post rather
than making a brand new one for that, since I don't want to clutter
the update list with too many things that aren't actually narrative in nature.
And, in case it isn't obvious, this includes a number of spoilers for
the events prior to Episode 100.
1: Stat Charts
2: "The Show"
3: "The Video Game"
1:
Stat Charts
I wanted a sort of internal reference for myself to keep straight what powers different vixens had, at what level—basically, their strengths and weaknesses. What I went with was finding an online radar chart maker, coming up with a selection of "stats" that each vixen might have in varying quantities, and making a radar chart for everyone who'd been established in the story that far. I've continued to make them somewhat intermittently, and unfortunately the radar chart maker I used at first, which produced circular charts that I liked better, vanished off the face of the internet and I had to use a one that I don't like the look of quite as much for the later ones.
Before I show the images themselves, I'll try and explain what
they're all about. Basically, I thought to myself that each vixen
should have around 40 "points" to distribute to the various
stats, with "weaker" ones having a few or several less and
"stronger" ones having more than that. Something to keep in
mind, though, is that these are all very much "loose guidelines"
rather than hard-and-fast, absolute statistics. The goal was to help
me remember what each vixen was supposed to be really good at, and
what her weaknesses are. Also, the numbers completely fail to tell
the whole story. I'll point out a few specifics as we go, but since
each vixen's powers are fundamentally different from the others', a
particular stat being high or low may have a somewhat different
meaning.
Anyway, here are the stats I went with:
Stamina:
The name is fairly
self-explanatory; a vixen's stamina stat indicates how much she can
use her powers before starting to become exhausted. That includes
both running around and fighting, and
using magic. The main nuance to this is that each vixen has a
particular way of replenishing stamina, while this stat only
indicates how long she'd last before collapsing if not replenishing
any at all. 0 stamina (which isn't the case for anyone) would
indicate an ordinary, average human's capacity to do the kind of
physical feats most vixens sort of take for granted mid-fight.
Speed:
This stat encompasses both the ability to physically move fast, and
speed of perception/reaction to the environment. 0 speed is a normal
human's typical reaction and movement time, so basically every vixen
has some degree of super-speed, but some have much more than others.
Strength:
A vixen's physical strength, which is actually being bolstered by
magic rather than being entirely based on her physical muscle mass. A
0 in strength would indicate a vixen being no stronger than her human
form is.
Magic
(Power): This is a vixen's
"maximum power output" in magic, the meaning of which
varies greatly with what her magic can actually do. This is simplest
to explain for "elemental" vixens like Light, Ning, Rowan,
etc., where a low magic power means they can't throw around much
"weight" in that element, and a high magic power means they
can easily produce a highly concentrated burst or area-filling wall
of it at will. Expending more of one's magic power capacity naturally
costs more stamina, of course, and trying to "push" past
one's usual limits is extremely taxing.
Magic
(Control): This is a
measurement of how well a vixen can make her magic do exactly
what she wants. Similar to power, what this means exactly depends on
the vixens, but for "elemental" vixens, high control allows
her to make the element dance and spiral around at will, while
especially low control (and especially
if paired with high power) may mean that her element tends to lash
out erratically and may even be a danger to her allies.
Technique:
Nearly every vixen comes with a weapon; this stat measures how good
she is at "mundane fighting," both with the weapon and just
in general. This stat is somewhat unique in that a vixen with low
"natural" technique can still get really good at handling
her weapon/herself in a fight just from ordinary training and battle
experience. In that respect, technique sort of measures both what
level of weapon and/or fighting proficiency a vixen gets "for
free" as part of her powerset, and "talent" for
learning to fight even better.
Defense:
Most vixens actually have 0
defense, which indicates that they are just as physically vulnerable
to all kinds of attack as any unpowered human. Basically, a vixen
only gets some "points" in defense if it's part of her
specific powerset, and it's a measurement of how well she could take
blunt-force trauma or a bullet. Even a fairly low value, as long as
it's nonzero, indicates that a vixen is particularly tough. The
caveat with defense is that magic of all kinds (including vixens'
"magic" weapons) tends to pierce it, although a
high-defense vixen will still be hurt less by magic than one with low
or zero defense.
I'll go through the list now, and try to explain or make a note of
any special features along the way. Most vixens have at least one
"prime" stat which she excels at, and some have a "dump"
stat while others are a bit more balanced. In many cases there are
multiple "versions" of each vixen, including the version of
her powers she gets while boosted by amp, which tend to add up to
around twice as many "points" as her normal self.
Light:
Light's powers in particular have grown throughout the story so far,
so I have three different stat charts for her without even
counting the "boosted" one. Here's the first:
For the most part, Light's stats are balanced, except that she has
very low stamina and particularly excels in speed. Light
usually makes up for her low stamina by constantly absorbing ambient
light to recover, but she's still easier to exhaust than most other
vixens even in broad, cloudless daylight. She also has pretty high
control over her magic, which in her case means high-precision
illusions and free manipulation of ambient light in general. The
events of "Episode 46: The Explanation" made her a little
bit more powerful, shoring up her weak point and boosting her speed
and magic a little more:
After that, Light "grew" more substantially in "Episode
82: Changes", gaining a number of further enhancements. I think
she's actually been somewhere between the last chart and the
following one from after that event for a day or two in-story, but I
didn't particularly track it:
Finally, here's Light's "boosted" or "amplified"
stats:
As her power grows, and especially in boosted form, it's even clearer
where Light's "stat focus" and "weaknesses" are;
notably, her strength doesn't go up much from its initial state at
all, while her speed just keeps on increasing.
Amp:
A stat chart for Amp is kind of meaningless since she's a
non-combatant, but I felt like making one anyway:
The total of 40 listed on the bottom right isn't actually correct;
her defense is listed at a ridiculous "100" because neither
other vixens nor the black mist monsters can actually hurt her at
all. Beyond that, she has "unlimited" stamina and
ultra-high magic power and control, more or less.
Ning:
Ning started out with the severe weakness of ultra-high magic power
but abysmally low control, which caused her to shoot electricity all
over the place without meaning to. Aside from that, she got a little
bit of defense in her powerset, and emphasizes strength slightly
while still being moderately good in speed. And her stamina isn't
quite as bad as Light's.
In the events of "Episode 21: Sheathing the Sword", Light
was able to "tune" Ning's powerset a bit, granting her more
control at the expense of slightly lower power. Her stat total
technically goes up by one as a result, but this is still pretty much
a lateral change rather than a power growth like what happened with
Light. The end result is a fairly balanced stat spread, apart from
her powers still only granting her a tiny bit of extra defense.
Even though Ning has been boosted in-story, and I have stat charts
for the boosted form of one vixen who hasn't yet, I don't have
a chart for a "boosted" Ning. This is a good example of how inconsistently I've bothered to make them. I imagine she gets a
pretty big boost in speed, strength, and magic power, a moderate gain
in control (what with the ability to "jump around" as
electricity), and maybe slightly higher defense?
Gemma:
Of course, Gemma gets two stat charts because of her two
bodies. Overall, her "dump stat" is magic power and her
"prime stat" is magic control. Gemma's powers are all
about having extremely precise control over all of the
"imitation" magic she uses. Apart from that, Plus and Minus
have "opposite" stats in strength and speed, with Plus
being a little faster and Minus being a little stronger.
Gemma also has her combined form, which gives her better
physical stats than either body individually along with slightly more
magic power.
However, all three of these charts are Gemma's "initial"
stats; I think her power has probably gone up some points in-story
since when these were drawn up. Also, while Gemma's "natural"
defense stat is 0, she can use her imitation of Rory's power to pump
magic into her defense and effectively go up to maybe a 2 or 3.
I also made charts for her two separate bodies' "boosted"
stats, but not for the combined one; I imagine it's similar to how
the regular combined form incorporates extra power from each of its
parts, though.
Her physical stats don't go up much, but her control becomes even
more ridiculous and is paired with a level of power that the
original users of the powers she's imitating mostly don't have in an
"unboosted" state. There's still some sense in which she'll
never be "as good" as the original owners of the powers at
using them on an individual basis, but she obviously makes up for it
by mixing and matching the various different powers to do things they
couldn't do in isolation.
Rory:
Of course, Rory is unique in that she can't use her magic directly to
attack, but instead it gets "rebalanced" into all of her
other stats, or else into things that the stats don't even account
for (like "magic resistance", or even "lightning
resistance" as seen when fighting the electro-worm).
Her weak stats are speed and technique, but even those can be
shored up somewhat by her power if she so chooses. Aside from that,
her best stats are defense, stamina, and strength, even before she
does anything to particularly enhance them. All of this is emphasized
even more by her "boosted" form:
Clark:
Clark's stats are extremely magic-focused, although her expression of
magic is all "physically expressed". That is, she has to
produce physical string and throw it around, or else use physical
touch to heal someone.Her physical stats are all fairly bad,
especially strength. Things change a bit after she gains the
Puppeteer's power on top of her original one, though.
The "new and improved" Clark gets
very high technique because her "weapons" include both the
string/needle bulb and her puppets, both of which she has a pretty
decent level of control over. Her speed and magic stats all go up a
bit, too.
There's also Clark's "boosted" form, although the chart I
have for that is from before she gained a "second power",
so this might be outdated and slightly underestimate her current
level of power while boosted.
Quinn:
This is the only "fusion" I've made a chart for so far,
while sort of mentally "prototyping" how fusion would
affect vixens' powers. Since Quinn only "exists" for the
fully-boosted versions of Clark and Rory, she pretty much gets all of
both of their strengths, leaving just her speed a bit lacking (but,
of course, Rory's power lets her buff that quite a lot at will).
Rowan:
Rowan's prime stat is, and has always, been, technique. She started
out with a "stolen" and therefore incomplete power, leaving
her with relatively low magic capabilities.
After gaining the full use of her powers, Rowan became slightly
faster and "fully realized" her potential in technique, but
primarily made gains in magic. She focuses a bit more on control than
power.
The focus on technique and magic is even more emphasized in Rowan's
"boosted" form. I don't have a stat chart for the slight
gains she made in "Episode 86: Ain't No Rest for the Wicked",
but they're probably roughly in that direction too.
Dawn:
The chart I have for Dawn reflects her powers with the "stolen"
fire powers included; she's presumably a bit weaker than this now
that Cynthia's powers aren't with her anymore.
Either way, she gets high marks in strength, technique, and power, a
tiny bit of defense, and a kind of overall balanced stat spread
otherwise.
Cynthia:
Cynthia's focus is on magic power, and her control isn't bad either.
Her physical stats aren't great and she gets no defense, but her
technique isn't actually too bad. It just pales in comparison to
Rowan's, and to some degree, actually making use of her
technique level requires her to actually try to do so.
Petra:
You might notice the name in this chart is "Earth", because
I made it when I was still first thinking up the character and hadn't
even thought up Simon's name yet, much less the "superhero
identity" of Petra. She has very balanced stats, with somewhat
of a focus on strength and overall magic, but also gets pretty decent
defense. Notably, her stamina isn't all that high, but she has
the added advantage of regaining energy just by being firmly planted
on solid ground, which sort of combines something like Light's
constant regeneration with a higher capacity so that she's especially
difficult to tire out.
I made a chart for how I thought her powers might look if boosted,
but since it hasn't happened in-story I'm a little hesitant to post
it. It might be not entirely accurate if I change my mind about
something.
Sam:
Similar to Petra, this chart uses a "work in progress" name
since I hadn't fully fleshed out the character yet when I made it.
Sam's prime stat is defense, but her physical stats otherwise suffer
quite a bit. She gets pretty good stamina and magic, and not horrific
technique. The stats don't tell the whole story, what with her having
already been a seasoned soldier before gaining her powers, which
bolsters her "effective" technique a bit beyond what her
powers would naturally provide.
I'm actually not sure if both Sam's and Rory's defense being listed
as the same number (10) is entirely accurate; her body is kind of
literally made of steel and can take bullets no problem. A number
like 12 or 13 might honestly be more correct. I also think in-story
I've written her as being a little stronger than only a 3 would
imply; I guess to be specific I imagine her physical strength to be
at least higher than Light's was at the start of the story. But maybe
keeping a struggling monster bound up in wire is actually more up to
her magic capability than her physical strength.
Puppeteer:
I made a chart for Tobias, too.
Note that her stats are out of 20 like most "boosted"
vixens, because swallowing up a lot of other people's powers made her
extremely powerful even without any enhancement. Her physical
stats are terrible, but she makes up for it by never directly
confronting anyone and using puppets instead. Her stamina, magic, and
technique are all ridiculously high, indicating her ability to
control multiple vixen-puppets with fairly strong powers of their own
simultaneously with extremely high precision—and to not get tired
from a protracted fight. Zero defense is her Achilles' heel, and what
she was so keen to take Rory's power in particular to make up for.
She actually would've been equally happy to take Sam's power instead,
if she'd known about it before the very hour of her death.
The gains from the other powers are stunted somewhat by their being
"stolen"; if Clark had chosen to take the "full
extent" of the Puppeteer and everyone else's powers instead of
bringing them back to life, her stat total would've probably gone up
into the hundreds, with magic stats around 40-50 or so, since
she already had very high magic stats to begin with.
Magus:
"Artificial" vixens generally have weaker powers than
"normal" ones, and I wanted to try to quantify that a bit
for myself via lower stat values. The result so far is that each one
kind of focuses heavily on one or two stats, largely to the expense
of the rest of them.
Magus has very high magic power, but her control is kind of hard to
put a number on. In the sense of making an element go and do some
very precise thing that she wants, well, she can't—her spells each
only do exactly one thing. However, she can invent spells on
the fly, and gets quite a bit of versatility out of that which normal
vixens with more "focused" powers usually don't have. The
price of all this magic capability, of course, is that her physical
stats absolutely suck. Her mid-high stamina is nice, but she has a
bad habit of casting high-power spells that burn through it fast.
Hephaestus:
Dr. Brand's "vixen alter ego" isn't really all that
combat-focused.
Her magic is mostly about "reading" other magic, with
"cutting portals into existence" being the only
thing she can do magic-wise that has obvious practical application in
a fight. Her technique and speed are both pretty high to let her make
good use of dual-wielding katanas for self-defense, though.
2:
"The Show"
I definitely imagine Battle Vixens as an anime of some sort, big
surprise.It wouldn't really fit a "monster of the episode"
format because of the way the story actually goes, and even if an
"episode" of the show is several "episodes" of
the story, I still imagine there'd be many episodes with no action or
almost no action whatsoever. When there is action, though,
there should be a lot of fluid animation and varying camera angles,
with some very careful choreographing. It should somehow both
make clear what is going on, communicate how fast it's
happening, and not completely lose the viewer. I think making the
animation really good in this way for fight scenes would be a pretty
tall order, overall.
I guess it would be in English since that's the correct language for
the setting, and since it's the only one I actually speak it's the
only way I can really imagine it going. Actually, it's not hard to
see how the concept could be spun into multiple concurrent shows
sharing the same continuity, including one for the team in Tokyo
which Tenpo and Shuriken are part of, and that one would be in
Japanese (with subtitles for any audience who doesn't speak it).
Various other locations could be covered this way too, with the
events of the "main story" involving Light and the VI
informing all the other series, the Watcher being a major player
everywhere, and everything just generally crossing over in various
ways. Like, instead of the overall "blurry summary" I
actually wrote for the Midnight Summit, it could be an big, one or
two-episode-long crossover with characters from every series
interacting with each other at once. Maybe whoever's in charge of the
show could even host some kind of "fan vixen contest" thing
like the early Mega Man games, and have some of the best suggestions
for people and powers go into some of the spinoff series. I don't
think the story so far has introduced a single person in Canada as of
yet, for example?
Some of the things I've said before about how I'd imagine a version
of the story told in a visual medium definitely apply, like having
title cards throughout the puppeteer arc with different characters in
a particular pose, bound up in red string, and then Tobias herself
dying while in the same pose, bound up by Clark's glowing blue
string instead. I think a lot of the transformation effects could
look really cool in animation, with each vixen having certain unique
flairs, but obviously I wouldn't have things straying into "power
rangers/sailor moon" territory where a fully-animated
transformation plays out every time. Maybe the first time and
a few special events would have long animations, with an abbreviated
version shown to the audience otherwise.
Overall, I think I could see the show having a lot of classic rock (a
very vague, broad term these days, just whatever plays on rock radio
stations) in its soundtrack, but maybe a proper composer would come
up with something better.
As for openings, I picture the first few to several episodes of the
show being cold opens with no theme, maybe up until the first
monsters show up ("Trouble" in the story as it is). At some
point after that, I imagine Matchbox 20's "Let's See How Far
We've Come" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d7EbtLb8ok
) as an excellent opening tune. The first lines (beginning with
"Waking up at the start of the end of the world") could
initially show some scenes from the first episode, of Blake waking
up, greeting Amory, and going and becoming Light, but later episodes
would show other characters waking up with that initial line
instead and follow them. Apart from that, the verses would mostly be
"peaceful scenes" where people are talking and interacting
and such, while the chorus would be fast cuts between various action
scenes. Each first phrase of the chorus (like "I believe the
world is burning to the ground") would be a moment of things
going bad (someone getting hit, pushed back, whatever), and then each
second phrase ("Oh well, I guess..") would be a comeback or
recover where the monster or whoever gets hit back. Every syllable of
each "Let's see how far we've come" would have some motion
timed to it. I'd particularly imagine a set of three or four action
scenes being used for the choruses in this way, with each one strung
between all of the choruses so that the first chorus has scenes near
the start of the fights and the last several "let's see how far
we've come"s showing the endings of those fights along with some
various other positive-leaning scenes. The bridge/break (I'm not sure
of the difference between these terms; I mean the part that starts
"It's gone, gone") could show something especially bad
happening, with a slight hope spot or cut to more positive times at
"It was cool, cool, it was just all cool". Examples of
things this part could show include Emma getting swallowed and Light
becoming enraged, or Rory getting killed and Clark taking revenge.
I go out of my way not to reference the geography of the setting very
specifically, to the point of not giving any of the main locations of
the story actual names. In a setting where a larger number of people
are working on a show, I imagine there would be someone whose actual
job it is (or at least someone who's way better at it than me) to
figure out a plausible location and come up with names of towns, the
university, and such. There would be a lot better establishment of
locations and relative distances, where exactly in the city the VI
base is and how it looks/works logistically, and so on and so forth.
Simply put, there are a lot of details I sweep under the rug that I
think a larger production like a show could probably address much
more porperly.
Another thing that would be hopefully much more clear in the show is
the accents of various characters. The Giver would need to be voiced
by someone who could swap seamlessly between speaking like a medieval
noble, giving very clear, technical and almost nerdy explanations of
magic things, and talking completely casually like a modern-day
human. She'd also have to voice at least two or three other
red-herring characters in totally different ways so that the cast
listing in the credits of early episodes wouldn't give away who Beryl
really is. For other examples, Sam and Gerald Nelson are both
supposed to have fairly southern accents—though not uneducated—with
Ning sort of mixing that with somewhat more immature, maybe
millenial-ish phrasing; Warp is supposed to have a slight Aussie
accent; Dawn and Cynthia are supposed to sound like people raised in,
let's say, a not-so-good environment and educational system. Rowan's
'vixen form' should be completely monotone most of the time, with
slight emotion bleeding through at times and rare instances of
emoting normally, plus even rarer instances of abruptly going into
seething rage. Overall, I guess it'd be necessary for the actors
voicing the two (or more) alternate forms of characters to work
together so that they intone and phrase things in very similar ways,
to enhance the sense that that's the same person in a different body.
That's doubly true for all of Emma's various forms, although it's
plausible that a single person with a lot of range could voice all of
them in subtly different ways. I don't know exactly how fusions would
be voiced; maybe the actor of one of the 'input' people voicing in a
way that sort of imitates the other?
When it comes to voicework, another consideration would be the
vixens' "names" or "key words" or whatever. For
an auditory medium like a show, it'd be necessary to actually come up
with a set of syllables for each vixen to use, which the voice actors
of the appropriate characters would then have to learn to the point
of being able to just roll them off their tongue instantly. I'd think
of each phrase being about as long as an average person's name, but
made up of some very weird-sounding syllables. There's some kind of
vocal structure that no real-world language uses, if I recall the Tom
Scott video on that subject correctly, so maybe some of them could
use that. Overall, someone with a decent grasp of linguistics would
need to come up with these in a way that makes each one sound unique,
yet completely alien to most if not all human language. (As a side
note, for any visual-but-not-auditory medium like a comic, I'd just
represent each name with unique combinations of hand-drawn symbols so
there's no way for the reader to know how they're supposed to be
pronounced.)
3:
"The Video Game"
I have a hard time picturing how the canonical narrative of Battle
Vixens could ever work as a video game. I guess it would have to be
some hybrid mutation of a visual novel (for all the non-action parts)
and a party-based action RPG like the most recent few entries of the
Ys series mixed with Shadow of the Colossus (for the fights)? I guess
it's true that the story has enough characters for a gacha game,
besides an entire planet's worth of vixens the story doesn't
focus on, but then the player character would most naturally take the
place of Amp in order to fit the format, and I imagine that would
completely change the story, too. However, the video game I could
see working, and being sort of psuedo-cannoical, would be a fighting
game.
The premise could be that the Watcher, with the help of some other
extradimensional entity, makes an "extension" to the dream
space that consists of an arena/training yard where the vixens can
properly use their powers and fight each other, all without actually
tiring themselves out or harming each others' actual bodies, for more
"hardcore" training than they could ever do in the real
world. This is pretty much the only way most of them would be okay
with having no-holds-barred fights against each other, and it's quite
plausible overall. This would also open the door for "simulacra"
of characters who are dead or unwilling to participate in the arena,
as well as "old" or "alternate" versions of
characters, to be fought.
Now, I don't actually have a lot of knowledge or experience with
fighting games. I've played street fighters and soul caliburs, I've
played smash bros, but none of it very seriously. I've heard of
frame data but don't really know what it is. So a lot of the
speculating about how the game will work from here on out might not
work at all for being a good game, but since no actual game is
going to materialize anyway I may as well dream, right?
Basically, I imagine this being a very asymmetric fighter, where
there are some basics to the controls that are constant across
all characters, but by and large each fighter has her own unique
quirks not only to her playstyle but even her very controls.
Something like how Devil May Cry 4 and 5 handle having mutliple
player characters, but in a fighting game. The end result should be
that every character feels powerful and unique in her own way,
different players maybe mastering different vixens, and maybe some
degree of rock-paper-scissors where some matchups are fairly even but
others will be a tough time for one side or the other. Players might
be all-rounders who can handle a lot of different vixens well, or
master specialists who are really good at using one in particular.
I mostly imagine the game being a one-on-one fighter, though maybe
there could be tag team or two-on-two modes, or even a special mode
where two players work together to fight some special superboss
characters whose abilities are so complicated and overpowered that
they can only be played by the computer. That in mind, I'm going to
spend several paragraphs from here talking about how I imagine each
vixen would play.
Fighters:
Light would be the "beginner's trap" character. She would
obviously be able to make illusions and make herself invisible, which
a beginner would naturally fall back on and would pretty cheaply and
easily clean up other beginners and the computer on easy mode.
However, for balance there would be visual tells to both, so
higher-level AI and more experienced players would see right through
the kind of illusion use that a beginner would do. The real
capability of Light, which a player who actually masters her could
use quite well, would be her high speed, allowing her to dodge around
rapidly, get lots of little chip hits in and avoid damage, with a
true master also spicing this with some very precise use of illusions
at crucial moments to trip their opponents up.
There would maybe also be an extremely obscure combination of buttons
that, when entered by someone playing Light, would bring up an "are
you sure" confirmation box. If the answer yes is entered for
that question, a brief animation plays where Light goes to throw her
sword with everyone else making obviously panicked "wait, don't
do that!" animations, followed by loud audio noise and the
screen fading to white. This results in a special kind of tie where
everyone loses, bypassing any further rounds that would've been
played otherwise.
Ning I imagine as a glass cannon. Both her close-range physical
attacks with the sword, and her long-range lightning strikes, would
deal massive damage, but she wouldn't be able to take much
damage. On top of that, maybe several of her attacks would have
wind-ups or wind-downs which her opponent could take advantage of to
interrupt her stronger strikes or exploit if they managed to dodge a
strong attack. However, Ning would have some speedy but lower
damage attacks that she could use to stagger an unattentive opponent
and set them up for the real pain. In any co-op mode, Ning would have
the unique trait of her magic attacks (i.e. the high-damage
lightning) also being able to hit her ally, requiring strategic play
to make up for the fact that her ally might be able to draw aggro and
give her "free" attacks on the opponent(s). I imagine she'd
even have some of the kind of "lightning strike from above"
attacks that platformer bosses sometimes do, where a brief flash of
warning shows the opponent where it's about to hit just a bit before
they need to get out of the hitbox, and they alternate or move across
the screen in such a way that no one spot is safe for the entire
duration of the attack. Things like that would come with the
possibility to hit her out of it with a strong enough close-range
strike, as well as either a lot of charge-up that could be
interrupted, or a very long "tired" animation afterward
that could be used by the opponent who successfully dodged to knock
her down.
Clark would obviously have the unique ability to heal herself (or her
ally in co-op modes), probably at the cost of needing to stand still
while doing so. On top of that, she could produce semi-auto-acting
puppets to run around and attack or distract her opponent, and make
needle/string strikes at various ranges. Part of her unique controls
might involve using an analog stick to vaguely direct which way the
puppets should move or to tell their AI to behave in a certain way.
Rory's controls would include a "stat tuning" system where
the player could change her stats on the fly to make her faster,
stronger, more defensive, magic resistant, etc., all by allocating a
set number of points that can be put in our pulled out of each stat
at will. She would also be a natural tank, with even her lowest
defense having her take mere chip damage from most attacks, and
her physical attack would be quite strong. The main weakness is that
she has no magic attack, and her physical attacks are very
short-range, so she'd be tough to use against opponents who can play
keep-away and strike from range. But if she corners her opponent,
there's probably no surviving.
Rowan would be entirely based on counterattacks. Essentially, I
imagine Rowan having a fairly large bank of both physical and magical
counters and dodges, and for every attack that every other
vixen has, at least one of those counters or dodges would no-sell or
at least greatly reduce the damage she takes from it and leave
the opponent open to take damage from a counterattack. However, the
timings and which counters work would vary for every single attack,
and things like Rory's speed stat affecting her animations might also
change the timing in subtle ways. Basically, mastering Rowan would
require studying and understanding all of the other vixens'
playstyles and attacks in order to know how to respond to each and
every one, but someone who'd put in the effort to do so would be a
force to be reckoned with. The best way to play against Rowan would
essentially be to turn her natural strategy back against her, playing
very defensively and punishing mistakes rather than going aggro and
giving her an opportunity to counter and strike back. Alternatively,
you could figure out which attacks are the hardest to time the
counters for, and/or the ones the player isn't so good at
countering, and stick to using those. Rowan would have a
difficult time against any opponent who gets "allies", such
as Clark's puppets or some other fighters, since she can only counter
one attack at a time.
Gemma would be an extremely complex and difficult character to use
well. She'd play a lot more like a "normal" fighter if you
stick to her combined form, but when split into two bodies (which
you'd be able to do at any time, as well as merging any time they're
close enough to each other), the player must actively control both,
at the same time, on an individual basis, with the same controller. I
imagine some kind of layout where the left hand controls Plus and the
right controls Minus, or else vise versa, requiring a wildly
different control scheme from any normal vixen (and from her combined
form). However, if someone got good at using Gemma's separated form,
then any opponent will have to basically deal with fighting two
opponents at once. On top of all of this, Gemma of course comes with
a ridiculous variety of attacks. Maybe there would be some kind of
"element selection system" where you can swap whose powers
she's imitating at any time, mid-combo, with a ton of different
attacks that can all chain into each other to produce an unimaginable
number of particular combos and finishers to use. I also imagine that
most of Gemma's pre-battle, mid-battle, and post-battle dialogue
would be very nervous and self-effacing. The game might have that
thing where, after the fight's over, the winner taunts the loser
victoriously, but Gemma would have a special trait where sometimes,
especially if she lost pretty badly, the "taunt" would
instead be a screen of her apologizing for being "such a useless
opponent" or something like that, and whoever just won against
her looking sorry they did.
Petra would be a solid, straightforward all-rounder with good
defense, good attack both physically and magically which includes
options for hurting her opponent an pretty much any range, but not
much in the way of speed or strange gimmicks to trip her opponent up.
Maybe experienced players would recommend that newbies start learning
to play with her instead of Light so they don't get tricked into
relying on illusions.
Nico would be very unusual to play, having very little in the way of
direct attacks—she'd be able to swing her shovel a few times, and
that's it. Instead her playstyle would rely on planting seeds as
"traps" and then being able to choose when and how much to
grow them. Trees could throw fruit, try to entangle her opponent if
they step too close, box them in until they cut the tree town with
enough attacks, and so on. There would also be the option of her
planting buffing trees to enhance her stats or even give herself
regeneration, all of which an ally in any co-op mode would also
benefit from. In co-op, she'd pair extremely will with any tanky,
in-your-face vixen like Rory or Petra.
Zeno would be a long-range-focused character, all about making light
shields to block attacks and keep her opponent back so she can charge
up a lot of shots with her bow and arrows. She'd have high mobility
to play keep-away with, but low physical defense so that getting
cornered and beaten up is even more punishing for her.
Sam would be the ultimate tank, taking chip damage from all but the
hardest-hitting attacks, and would also be a master at grabbing
opponents from any range to wrap them up, throw them around, slam
them into the ground—that kind of thing. She'd also be able to lay
traps which bind any opponent stepping on them, and anyone wrapped up
in her steel wires would also take continual damage until they get
free, which is probably accomplished by either hitting all the
buttons fast to struggle, or (for some particular vixens) using
specific attacks that cut through the wires.
I imagine Dawn having the ability to switch between a wide variety of
"stances" that each use a different set of ice weapons, and
among her ways of changing stances would be things like throwing her
current weapon set at her opponent or hitting so hard with them that
they break (and deal a lot of extra damage in the process).
Essentially she'd have pretty high versatility and be able to hit
hard at any range by picking the right set of weapons. On top of
that, all of her attacks would count as "magic attacks"
for the purposes of piercing defenses, making her a top choice for
fighting against most tanks. Maybe each stance would have certain
weaknesses to exploit if one is familiar with how it works, though,
and while not a glass cannon exactly, her defense would be
middling-low to make up for the high attack variety.
Cynthia would be mainly focused on magic attack—sending walls of
fire at her opponent nonstop. Her defenses would be pretty low, and a
bit like Ning, she'd be prone to wind-ups and wind-downs that can be
exploited to interrupt or punish if one successfully dodges the
attack itself. Maybe she'd be a little slower than Ning and a bit
less of a glass cannon, with not as high attack and not as
low defense, but she'd at least never hurt her ally in co-op.
Warp's powerset would allow her to dodge most attacks by instantly
teleporting out of their hitbox at the last second. She'd have a
low-range physical attack with her knife, but also be able to throw
it at her opponent at high speeds, and teleport it in midair so that
it comes from any angle the player wants it to—allowing her to
feint her opponent into blocking the front or jumping to dodge, then
teleporting the knife behind or back in line with their new position
where they don't have space to re-dodge. She'd also be able to
teleport in objects from the background and/or offscreen to places
like directly above her opponent, the ground between her and her
opponent, etc.; this technique would have a lot of randomness as to
which items exactly appear, so its damage output or blocking utility
would also vary because of that.
Magus's unique trait would be a whole "magic casting system",
which would include both a Kingdom Hearts-esque menu you could surf
through to pick out a spell to use as well as gesture-based system.
I'm thinking there would be a "cast spell" button that you
can either press to surf through the menu and pick a spell to use, or
hold down and then move the analog stick in a particular gesture in
order to cast the corresponding spell. Every spell would be available
to use in both ways, but using a spell from the menu takes longer
than the gesture if you can input the latter quickly enough, and of
course your opponent is going to know which spell you're using if
they saw you pick it from the menu. Magus would also be pretty bad at
close range, and not have much defense or speed either. Someone
really good at playing Magus would maybe memorize a lot of the
simpler gestures for good utility spells, and be good at quickly
picking powerful spells that require difficult-to-execute gestures
from the menu in a way that makes it harder for the opponent to see
what's being cast in time to respond appropriately.
Superbosses:
The Puppeteer would be one of the game's superbosses,
computer-control only, justified as a simulacrum as I mentioned
earlier. She'd have a unique behavior where she hangs out in the
background and literally can't be hit until you've beaten up a lot
of trash puppets plus all of the vixen puppets she has, and even once
she's come to the foreground and could theoretically be hit, she'll
do a lot of teleporting away from attacks and still be able to
re-summon all of her allies. However, she'd have such low defense and
health that most attacks kill her in one hit, and on top of that her
puppets would be incapable of dealing the finishing blow to
her opponent. Her AI would have her teleport into the foreground to
try to finish off a critically-damaged opponent, enabling the
high-risk, high-reward strategy of skipping the fight against all of
the vixen puppets by tanking damage to bait her into the foreground
and then taking her down before she can make the killing blow. For
co-op players it'd even be possible to sacrifice one player to let
the other take her down, and maybe there'd be a achievement for doing
so.
Las Espadas is another vixen I'd imagine being a superboss. I don't
have too much to say about how she'd fight right now, but she'd
definitely be a much more in-your-face kind of boss than the
Puppeteer, aggressively chasing down her opponents and trying to
shred their health as fast as she possibly can via a wide variety of
attacks that come in quick from all angles.
Another possible superboss would be "Omega Clark", a
version of Clark Quinn who actually took the full power of the
Puppeteer and all of her victims after killing her instead of having
everyone brought back to life. She would be dangerously tanky and
aggressive, self-healing, control multiple puppets at once, and
use her various powers directly instead of gifting them to
puppets most of the time. Perhaps killing the Puppeteer with Rory and
Clark would be a condition for unlocking her fight in the first
place, while putting in Rory as one of her opponents would have Omega
Clark react to her presence in a brief cutscene at the start of the
fight and then be much less aggressive for the first half of
her health bar or something.
Finally, there could also be a version of Light using the full extent
of all of the powers she has access to at once. Between being able to
use the attacks of numerous other fighters, ridiculous move and
attack speed, and being able to also make illusions of all of
those attacks to fake players out with only subtle tells that they
aren't real, she would probably be the most difficult of the bosses, maybe only unlocked after you beat all the others. I guess
there would need to be some mitigating factors, like after some big
attacks she gets exhausted and stands still to allow a few free
hits—unless she's just pretending to be tired so she can
goad the players into attacking and counter them.
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