Sword Characters In Fighting Games 

Right?? It was something I never noticed until making this. We need more of that

Wow that’s really cool I didn’t know that

Funnily enough, what stands out to me from Hakumen is that his sword strikes are relatively simple, swift and slow to recover (compared to someone like Ragna). They feel decisive and powerful, and they convey a lot of weight - and that's from a blade profile that doesn't even look very imposing. Hakumen strikes an interesting balance between being a greatsword (technically heavy sword but that's me mansplaining) archetype and a Samurai archetype and that combined with his poking/countering playstyle sell the idea of a fighter who waits patiently until he finds the right moment to strike - and when it happens, he goes all-in.

Same, as a fencer as well I just love how they are translated in fighting games

you're totally right! I think I recorded that part before I finished all the research and forgot to take it out. Thanks for clarifying though

Interesting

While making this, I was very surprised to have never heard of this franchise. I'd never even seen the characters before

@@qmanchu I don't blame you. If it hadn't been for Jeanne being playable in SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy I would never have known about the World Heroes franchise. Thanks for the video. You did a good work 👍 Keep it up! Your channel will grow 😄

Capcom vs capcom when?

Really? I'd never heard of that but I'm not surprised. That's so sick

@@qmanchu apparently his older brother was a champion fencer

Such a classic

I was the same way. Well I'd always played fighters but smash got me into actually competing and trying to "get good"

Also there's a good platform fighting game called Rivals of Aether. The basic roster has very small amount of sword fighters (Forsburn has a knife and Clairen has a plasma sword), but Steam Workshop solves the problem because people create their own characters of recreate characters from other games or different media

it's kinda impossible to talk about swords in fighting games without talking about the fighting game that everyone complains about having too many swords

I appreciate that more than you know! I love getting to make these because even when I understand some of these things, I can actually learn even more when researching these

Glad you enjoyed!

I'm also a Genjuro, Ike, and Onimaru enjoyer lol

@@qmanchu Nice! Please keep up the superb content.

Thanks a lot!

What's interesting about sword and shield characters is that they're really not the unique from what I could find. Even the ones from Soul Calibur. So it just made more sense to group all characters with shields together for the sake of the video. And I actually totally agree with you about the samurai vs iaido type

Honestly, the channel only had like 2k subs a month ago. It's growing very quickly! I appreciate all the support I've gotten and can't wait to see where the channel is at by the end of the summer

I'll probably do something in the future on something like that. This was low key a filler episode while I work on 2 really big projects that'll be coming out soon. They just couldn't be done in a week. Hopefully this holds you over till my next one though lol

Lmao I forgot about her!

Fingers crossed

It's funny cuz I almost included Darli in greatswords but decided against it cuz she's something so different

I didn't even think of bokken that's a really interesting idea

Lmao I did think about it but realistically, the video just wasn't long enough to include everything I wanted. There's so many damn fighting games!

Did you mean A.B.A. from Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R? If yes, then I'm not surprised - it's one of the wackiest character design I've seen in a long time

Yo that's a great idea actually. Ivy from Soul Calibur and Poison too

I'm actually saving that for a different essay. There's fighting games with swords, and then there's sword fighting games, if you catch my drift

Agreed! Noted for part 2 if I ever get time to make it. There's a lot of great examples

@@qmanchu forgot to mention this in my original comment but also great video, keep up the good work, good luck on your channel.

True! But SNK also helped with development. I just didn't mention ADK since it's not a household name like SNK is

@@qmanchu Give credits to where it's due, dude. Take Metal Slug, it's an SNK's IP but at the time it's made, the studio/devs hadn't been bought by SNK yet, and when they actually bought the studios, SNK went bankrupt few years later 😐. Then Capcom vs SNK series where it got much praise but from A->Z was done by Capcom and ppl almost always mistake it's for SNK.

@Blake Snowe that's kinda the point of what I mean though, this wasn't really a credit. Just a throwaway line for context

ADK was pioneer in many other things. Ryoko Izumo is the first grappler that is small and quick (one of my favorite grapplers) Johnny Maximum is the first football player in fighting games. Kisarah Westfield is the first female character that fights wearing a highschool uniform. Bobby Nelson is the first basketball player in fg. Etc. Such a shame ADK no longer exist but at least some of their characters have appeared in other games. Hope we see an ADK Team in KOF XV (Fuuma, Kisarah, Jeanne or Natsume)

I've not heard of that game but I'll look into it! The big thing with videos like this is it's hard to mention a lot of favorites as the videos aren't super long. I actually had to cut a bunch of footage out from this video as is haha

HIGHLY RECOMMEND: anything by John Woo. And from the clip I can't remember exactly if it was Hard Boiled or The Killer. But both are incredible. I binged his movies for a different video lol

I wish I could've too. There's just not enough time to talk about everyone in a 12 minute video :/

@@qmanchu yeah true

I want to! Eddventure has a great video on it already so I don't wanna accidentally copy his style or talking points

I mean at this point probably never right? Has there been anything saying otherwise?

Big reason is because this is a video about "fighting games with sword characters". I'm saving soul calibur for a different video because the way I see it, that's a "sword fighting game". Even if a game i show features weapons like Samsho, at least disarming and fighting barehanded is a huge mechanical part of the game. And GBVS, in total honesty, the weapons don't act as weapons the same way they do in SC which pays very close attention to the style and weapon used. So that's another video in the future!

Total transparency, I'm still figuring out who my audience is. There's so many games to mention and the videos aren't long enough to include everything. I avoided SC a bit because there's essentially no bare handed characters but I'll be sure to get Soul Calibur in a future video!

While historical rapiers and sabers weren't light by any means, their modern fencing counterparts have blades that bend with much less resistance. I think a lot of fencer-type characters in fighting games take reference from sport fencing instead of historical fencing (mostly because historical fencing hasn't been popular in modern media until very recently), which is also why the archetype usually showcases quick successive thrusts and a disregard for concepts like point control and bindwork.

@@matthewchandra7072 It seems so.

Not a bad idea for part 2!

I do have SC but the main reason I didn't include it was because I don't play them much. Haven't really touched the series since 3 and 6 wasn't my cup of tea. That said, Soul Calibur is different than the other games listed pretty much. Most of the footage I used, aside from Samsho, is from fighting games with sword characters. Soul Calibur is more like a sword fighting game. Sure there's characters with other types of weapons than swords but it's not like barehanded combat is prevalent in SC. So essentially, I'm saving SC for a different video in the future that's more about fighting games based solely around weapons. And I know I used Samsho, but disarming in those games is a huge factor of the gameplay that made me feel okay making an exception. Hope that helps address your concerns. Just trying to look out to the future to make sure I don't overlap ideas in this video that I want to present in the next one

@@qmanchu Not just Samurai Shodown, but you also included Guilty Gear, Blazblue and Persona 4 Arena, which were weapon-based fighters where barehanded characters were the minority. I mean I get what you were going for, but it was just somethin' buggin' me

@Kaihedgie granblue is weapon focused yeah, I'll give you that but I wouldn't call it a sword fighting game even still. The weapons work more like regular normals than weapons. And Guilty gear I dunno if I'd call it weapon focused lol. Guitars and coffins and swords that shoot flames and are shaped like lighters aren't rly the weapons I'm talking about here. I get it not rubbing you the right way but trust me, Soul Calibur will have its day on this channel.

Damn I haven't actually seen him play yet! I'm still stuck on learning Texas. That sounds rly cool tho. Maybe sword conjurers for part 2 cuz there's lots of those lol

Mostly I misspoke here. If the longswords were for plated armor, the solution was for poking from a distance into places between armor, not smashing. But the colossal greatswords we see were never really a thing and are obviously more of a conceptual thing since they'd be useless in combat lol

​​@@qmanchu Oh yeah smashing is very much _the vibe_ with a lot of greatswords in media and as much as I enjoy a more graceful huge sword I loveee the comically big clangy swords too :) great video, I just like adding context and talking about these things!

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