Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Character Analysis: Geno(Super Mario RPG)


Background


A servant of a “higher power” in the mario universe. Geno manages the star road, a location in the mario universe responsible for granting wishes. He travels to the mushroom kingdom when the dimensional invader smilthy broke the star road and invaded the mushroom dimension. He essentially allies with Mario and Co to recover star road’s fragmented pieces and defeat Smilthy’s invading force.

Geno’s true form is that of an intangible star shaped spirit. Because of that he needed to possess a vessel he could use a physical body. This vessel was a puppet by the name of Geno. Subsequently Geno’s name technically comes from the puppet, and his real name is unintelligible.

Equipment

Safety ring

Reduces elemental damage(fire, ice, lightning) to zero. Protects against attacks that cause instant death and protects against all status effects found in Mario RPG. Those effects include
  • Fear: Enhanced fear that reduces attack and defense by 50%
  • Poison: Poisons a target
  • Sleep: Puts a target to sleep
  • Silence: Prevents usage of special attacks.
  • Mushroom/Scarecrow: Transmutation effects that turn the user into a mushroom or scarecrow.

General items
General consumable items in Mario RPG.

Armor

Star cape
Geno’s strongest armor. Increases physical and magical defense.

Weapons

Unarmed(no special weapon)
Geno’s default attack fires one of his arms like a rocket launcher.
Finger shot

A finger gun that shoots out bullet pellets at an opponent.

Handgun
A larger gun built into one of Geno’s arms that fires large round pellets.

Double punch
Allows Geno to fire both of his arms like rockets.
  • In MRPG https://youtu.be/zPeL-IvAdVo?t=133

Hand cannon
A canon built into Geno’s elbow that launches small cannonballs at an opponent.

Star gun
Two duel guns that fire projectiles shaped like stars from both arms.

Abilities

Geno beam
A giant laser beam that targets a single enemy.
  • In MRPG https://youtu.be/zPeL-IvAdVo?t=352

Geno boost
A stat buff move. It increases attack power and defense by 50%.
In MRPG https://youtu.be/zPeL-IvAdVo?t=361


Geno whirl
Essentially a Destructo disk energy saucer-like projectile attack. It can deal critical damage to instantly kill most enemies in Mario RPG outside of the bosses..
  • In MRPG https://youtu.be/zPeL-IvAdVo?t=371

Geno blast
An attack that rains dozens of lasers from the sky to destroy opponents.
Geno flash
A special move where Geno will transform into a cannon that shoots a large exploding energy ball shaped like a sun.

Possession
Geno’s true form is a flying star-like spirit. He has the ability to possess objects or dolls, granting them supernatural powers. This is how he gains the body he uses in Mario RPG.

Feats


Scaling

Geno is likely on par with the other Mario characters, given he fights side by side with them and takes hits from characters that can damage them. Given Mario doesn’t have a real timeline and Geno has a lack of appearances, I also think feats from later Mario games also probably apply to him.

Mario RPG
Other Mario games

Note: There are other high-end arguments for Mario(Rosalina, Count Bleck, dreamstone,etc), but the ones above are the most accepted.

Weaknesses

Special attacks in Mario RPG require stamina or FP/flower points. This means Geno can't endlessly spam some of his more powerful attacks.

Summary

Advantages
  • Has invincibility
  • Protection against instant death and many elemental attacks
  • Has transmutation
  • Has a time reset item
  • Various attacks and items have a large AOE
  • Decent amount of recovery items
Disadvantages
  • Still not in smash

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Prediction Blog: Shantae vs Filia (Feat. Ultraguy/Strunton)


Background

Shantae

A half-genie from the ocean village of Scuttle town. Shantae acts as the town's protector against outside threats, most commonly the pirate leader Risky boots. She initially has confidence issues in her role as protector but grows into it as the series progresses.

Filia

Filia Medici was once an average schoolgirl, but one day woke up with no memories and a second mouth on the back of her head. The mouth on the back of Filia's head was Samson, a parasite that possessed Filia's hair, which resulted in her amnesia. With no memories or anyone to turn to for help, Filia knew that if she wanted to regain her memories, she would need to trust her new parasite comrade and obtain the Skull Heart, a powerful artifact that grants the wish of others. 

Armor

Shantae

Shantae’s standard uniform. It’s essentially a standard red or blue bedlah outfit commonly worn by Genie’s in popular culture.

Dancer costume
A risqué golden plated snake-themed dancers outfit. This costume doubles the amount of magic power she can put towards the usage of certain magical items but causes her to take 2x damage.
Ninja costume
A costume that increases physical speed, allows her to wall jump, teleport and throw kunai/stars. She also has a short sword for melee.

Officer wagon costume
A costume that comes with an energy gun and allows her to move certain blocks in her vicinity.. The costume also increases her defense.

Jammies
Pajamas that lower physical resistance. In exchange, Shantae can conjure clouds to float on, attack opponents with pillows, and conjure magic sheep that attack enemies.

Swimsuit
It lowers physical resistance but allows Shantae to attack opponents with a beach ball. She can also conjure bubbles to float in the air and swim at faster speeds.
  • In HGH https://youtu.be/hWSZ6q5U9pE?t=290

Filia

Variations
In Skullgirls Mobile, there are multiple variations of Filia that grant her offensive and defensive buffs. Some of the more notable effects they have are...
  • Draining the health of others
  • Disabling another's special moves temporarily 
  • Reflecting 35% of damage back onto others
  • Increased attack damage
  • Health regeneration
  • Preventing others from healing temporarily
  • A list of Filia's variants can be found here  https://skullgirlsmobile.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Filia_Variants

Equipment

Shantae

Fighters gear
Gear that allowed Shantae to learn new physical attacks. This fighter's gear included a set of boots, a sash, a tiara, and a cuff. The boot allows her to perform an upward spin kick. The sash allows her to perform a spinning downward midair kick attack. The cuff gives her the ability to perform a powerful horizontally elbow ramming attack, and finally, the tiara allows her to perform a hair whip spin attack in midair.

Magical Tiara
A tiara that supplies Shantae with an endless well of magic. Allowing her to use her magical abilities and items as much as she likes

Monster cards
Cards that Shantae can equip to grant herself various offensive or defensive buffs. Some of the more notable effects they have are...

Pirates weapons
Pirate equipment that originally belonged to Shantae’s nemesis Risky, but were used by Shantae in pirates' curse. They include

Pirates hat
A large pirate hat that can act as a makeshift parachute. It’s useful for extending jumps. Shantae can also use it to gain altitude in places with an updraft.

Risky boots
A set of boots that allows Shantae to enter a powerful dash. At top speeds she can run over lava, water and spikes. She can also rapidly drive through layers of rock and stone.

Flintlock Pistol
A flintlock pistol used for light ranged attacks. It has infinite ammo and can be used to activate far way switches or traps. It can be upgraded to do additional damage.

Canon
A powerful cannon that Shantae can shoot below herself in midair to damage ground laden enemies and boost herself upwards as a form of a double jump. She can shoot 3 cannonballs before landing.

Scimitar
A large scimitar blade used for melee attacks and powerful jumping downward thrusting attacks. It can be upgraded to do additional damage.

Magic items
Magical items used as a form of attack, and defense. The magic correlated to these items does not appear to be correlated to Shantae’s natural genie magic, as she maintained the ability to use them when stripped of her genie half in Risky’s revenge.
  • These items being usable when stripped of her Genni magic in RR https://youtu.be/nATTf3EhnjM?list=PLJRrnBzysb8BMCdyTWjbst0fd1G_zUIFj&t=1285

Puffs
Storm Puff: Summons a cloud to strike foes with lightning.
Crush Puff: Summons a cloud that explodes after a few seconds.
Mega Puff: Summons a cloud with much greater explosive power than Crush Puff. Summons an electrical air mine to zap foes.
Super Mega Puff: Shantae releases a controllable bolt of electricity from herself to electrocute anyone around her.

Pike balls
Pike Ball: Makes a spiky ball rotate around Shantae,
Fire Ball: Makes a fireball rotate around Shantae, possesses greater speed and power than a Pike Ball.
Super Pike Ball: Surrounds Shantae with two pike balls.
Mega Pike Ball: Surrounds Shantae with three pike balls.
Scimitar: Surrounds Shantae with 7 spinning scimitars.

Fireballs
Flash Bolts: Shoots a wall of three fireballs.
Fire Ball: Shoots a single fireball. (What a twist)
Spit Fire: Shoots out three fireballs in a fan pattern.
Flame Thrower: Spews a stream of fire, has less range than her fireballs but she can somewhat control its trajectory.

Bubble
Shantae: Half-Genie Hero - Swimming With Pike or Bubble - YouTube
Bubble: Creates a bubble shield to block certain projectiles
Mirror: Creates a shield to reflect certain projectiles
Invincibility: Creates a shield that makes Shantae completely invincible

Other weapons/items
Homing missiles: Missiles that home in on enemies
Hp Saver: Reduces damage by 25%
Mp Saver: Reduces magic consumption

Consumable items
Vials/Potions: Restores health
Magic Vials: Restores magic
Magic Potion: Restores health and magic
Auto Potion: Fully heals Shantae if she runs out of health
Monster Milk: Enhances Shantae’s attack power
Super Monster Milk:
Magic Vial: Restores magic
Float Muffin: Prevents Shantae from falling in bottom pits
Vanish Cream: Temporarily grants invincibility
Twin Mints: Creates a clone of Shantae to double her damage
Various food items from seven sirens

Filia

Skull Heart
A powerful artifact capable of granting the wish of others. In Filia's Story, Filia would successfully defeat Marie and obtain the Skull Heart's power. Filia would use the Skull Heart to wish for the restoration of Painwheel's life, but while the wish was granted, the Skull Heart's power would go on to slowly corrupt Filia, transforming her into the next Skullgirl.

Abilities

Shantae

Hair whip
Shantae’s main weapon is her long purple hair. Amazingly she can swing this ponytail like a large whip-like weapon to damage her opponents. Shantae can also reflect some projectiles with her hair whip, such as cannonballs, giving it some defensive properties The power and speed of Shantae’s hair whip can be upgraded in most games..

Other abilities
Backdash: A technique to dodge close-ranged attacks by quickly sliding backward.
Magic Fill: A technique that slowly restores Shantae’s magic
Attract Magic: A technique that attracts items toward Shantae if she is near them

Genie magic

As a half-genie, Shantae contains the ability to use “light magic”, a benevolent form of magic super effective against evil. Shantae typically manifests this magic through physical transformations or spells, which she can activate with magic belly dances. She can utilize this light magic during physical strikes as well however and recently has experimented with using it to grant wishes.

Transformations dances

Monkey
Transforms Shantae into a small monkey. As a monkey Shantae is a lot more nimble when she jumps and can even stick to walls. The form also possesses two relics: the Monkey Claw, which allows Shantae to attack in her monkey form, and the Monkey Bullet, which allows Shantae to jump off walls and fly like a bullet for a short time.

Elephant
Transforms Shantae into an elephant, while she is much slower this form packs a lot of power. It also possesses the technique Elephant Stomp which has Shantae slam herself onto the opponent.

Spider
A belly dance that transforms Shantae into a large spider, which can climb up walls and ceilings. After Shantae collects a relic called spider venom, she can also use a venom based projectile attack in this form.

Mermaid
This belly dance transforms Shantae into a mermaid for underwater exploration and maneuvering. After gaining a separate talisman/relic called the mermaid bubble, she gained the ability to spit large explosive bubbles from her mouth as an attack.

Tinkerbat
A belly dance used to take on the form of the common minions used by Risky Boots, the tinker bats. This form allows Shantae to climb on walls, ram into objects at forces comparable to the elephant transformation and attack opponents with a sword cutlass like weapons.

Harpy
A belly dance that transforms Shantae into a harpy that can fly freely through the air. After collecting a talisman or relic called the harpy’s claw, she can attack enemies with her claws in this form.
Crab: Turns Shantae into a crab that can travel underwater and hide in a protective shell.

Dryad: Transforms Shantae into a tree that can produce healing fruit, not meant for combat.
Mouse: A very small and fast form that makes Shantae hard to see. With the Mouse Bite technique she can also nibble at opponents, though it does not deal much damage.
Gemjug: Transforms Shantae into a jug of gems so Shantae can make some $$$, not meant for combat.
Newt: Transforms Shantae into a newt that can climb up walls. She can also perform a dash attack in this form.
Bat Dance: A form designed for gliding and dark areas, does not possess any combative skills.

Blobfish Dance: Transforms Shantae into a fish that hops around, not meant for combat.

Gastrol Drill: A drill like animal that can bury through the ground.
Tortoise: A large turtles transformation. Shantae can spin into objects on her back like a top or perform a belly flop strike.
Frog: A frog form that allows Shantae to swim faster underwater.
Octopus: An octopus form that can shoot streams of ink underneath itself to boost Shantae in the air.
  • In SS https://youtu.be/0O7Z7oBoPLM?list=PLjen7U7PlzEo9fjbSi5mbtmQ-ZPHIcL2D&t=3414
Misc: During boss fights, Shantae occasionally shows powers she doesn’t normally have in gameplay. Such as summoning water in her crab form, increase the size of her elephant form, use her mermaid form out of water, ect

Fusion dances
Special dances obtained after being given magic power from other half-genies in Seven sirens.

Seer Dance
Makes invisible objects in the vicinity visible.

Refresh dance
Heals Shantae and brings “dead” objects like plants and skeletons back to life.

Spark dance
It causes a large burst of electricity that harms energy enemies and charges electrical equipment.

Quake dance
It causes a massive earthquake that shifts terrain and damages, nearby enemies.

Misc dances
Warp Dance: Teleports Shantae to various towns to locations.
Healing Dance: Restores Shantae’s health in exchange for gems.
Revive Dance: Restores some of Shantae’s health in exchange for magic
Super Revive Dance: Restores all of Shantae’s health in exchange for magic.
Obliterate: Deals heavy damage to all near Shantae.

Filia

Samson
Samson is a centuries old parasite that would fuse himself with Filia's hair. In battle, Samson does most of the fighting for Filia and can transform her hair into almost any weapon he wants.

A list of things Samson can turn Filia's hair into:

Hairball
A move in which Filia curls into a ball as Samson covers her in sharp spikes and they roll forward. An obvious reference to Sonic the Hedgehog's Spin Dash.

Hairball (Projectile)
A hairball Samson spits out of his mouth. 

Feats

Shantae

WayForward Says It Will Consider A 3D Shantae Game When The Time ...
Strength

Speed

Durability

Filia

Strength

Speed
  • Intercepted Double before she could attack Squigly
  • Skullgirls characters can react to and block Parasoul's bullets 
  • Skullgirls characters can react to and block Peacock's laser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_565PfnMbo

Durability

Scaling

Shantae

Risky Boots | Shantae Wiki | Fandom

Filia

Cerebella
In Filia's Story Mode, Filia defeats Cerebella. Filia also fights Cerebella in Cerebella's Story Mode. Cerebella's feats that Filia can be scaled to includes:

Valentine
Another character Filia defeats in her Story Mode. Valentine's feats that Filia can be scaled to include:

Marie
Filia defeats Marie in order to obtain the Skull Heart in her Story Mode. It should be noted that Filia does not scale to Marie's full power, given that she defeated her before she could reach that point. But with that said, Filia should scale to feats Marie was capable of performing around the time they fought.

Verdicts

Ultraguy
I think this is a pretty clear cut fight. Filla is probably only about MCB, while Shantae is likely around large town to small city(based on her scaling options of Risky surviving the volcano explosion and the pirate king’s storm). There’s certainly a possibility Filla might be faster depending on what you allow for both, but even if we gave Filla rela speed based on peacocks lasers and only gave MHS to Shantae the power difference is too high for a potential speed advantage to be relevant. 

Additionally it's pretty obvious Shantae has the better arsenal by a wide margin. She has shields, invincibility, healing, a but load of powerful AOE attacks, invisibility, dozens of weapons, and way more animal transformations than Filla’s hair can match with its own shapeshifting abilities. As well as better maneuverability through her arsenal.

On a whole Shantae should take the win with little difficulty, as Filla doesn’t have a way to put a dent in her defense or survive her offense.

Strunton
Yeeeeeeeah, I don’t think there’s much my girl Filia can really do here to pull off a win. While Samson is likely a more experienced and direct fighter than Shantae, that’s about the only advantage Filia really has. 

Filia and Samson are strong enough to damage Big Band, who weighs 5000 lbs. Shantae is strong enough to fight and damage enemies the size of kaijus. Even when scaling Filia to Marie, who lifted and threw the upper half of a skyscraper, it pales in comparison to Pirate Master’s storm he spanned over Sequin Land.

Filia and Samson are quick enough to dodge bullets. Shantae is fast enough to dodge lightning and can attack with lightning itself. To be fair, one could argue that Peacock’s Z-Ray technically meets enough requirements to be considered a light speed attack (Straight, doesn’t explode, can be focused through magnifying glass, etc.) and Filia is technically capable of blocking said Z-Ray, but Shantae has dodged similar lasers throughout her game, so it would even out if we were to give Filia this amount of leeway.

Filia and Samson can survive getting hit with a small-scale explosion, falling elephants, and a steamroller. Shantae is tough enough to survive an entire battleship exploding without a scratch and take hits from kaiju sized opponents.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Shantae has a very, very, very obvious advantage when it comes to abilities and versatility. She has far more ranged options, can heal herself with her Revive Dances, turn invisible and intangible with her Vanish Cream, clone herself with Twin Mint, and can use the Invincibility Shield to block any attack from Filia. The Magical Tiara grants Shantae infinite use of her magic, so it’s not like she’ll be running out of power anytime soon either.

The only reasonable way I can see Filia pulling off a win is if she were allowed access to the Skull Heart and used it to wish Shantae dead, but more times than not, Shantae’s superior strength, speed, durability, abilities, and arsenal give her more than enough options needed to take Filia down (or at least for now. Hoping the upcoming Skullgirls comic makes it fair. Lol).