You don't know what an INCOMPLETE character looks like 

You probably need the other 4 pieces to play him to his fullest potential.

> His guard cancel is punishable on hit by throw What the kentucky fried fuck is this shit

Great video! Also I love that about Vampire Savior, how even the worst character in the game who completely lacks certain mechanics can still be viable.

As a VSav Anakaris enjoyer, these are all valid complaints. I think him not having access to those mechanics is more intentional design than an oversight, but the guard cancel one is probably the most egregious because it's a move in the game he can do (and spend meter on) that effectively hurts him when used against good players. I don't think he would have been top tier if he had all those things (Sas is violence and Raptor has an unblockable on knockdowns), the devs probably wanted him to be a character that was weaker up close so he can't throw or push to get out of that situation. I think it also helps to remember that this game, like a lot of older games, just isn't balanced around high level play in the way games are now. Most of Anakaris' weakness aren't as pronounced until you are dealing with tight pressure from someone who knows frame data, which back in the 90s wasn't nearly as widespread as today.

Anakaris is a deep cut because I legitimately forget that he's in the game all the time unless MightyMar is playing.

I think an interesting example of an "unfinished character" is Khan from Jojo's Heritage For The Future. While he is a full character with a completely unique spriteset (unlike the other secret characters in the game, who are all clones) and a full moveset with access to all the other system mechanics everyone else has (well, for a Passive Stand user anyways), he just *feels* unfinished. Multiple animations are reused within Khan's moveset (2B is a slowed down 2A, jB is literally the same move as jA but does more damage, his supers are both just his 5C[C] and DP animations strung together) and generally an incredibly simplistic moveset (he has a charge move where he dashes forward hitting either mid or low, a DP with no horizontal movement or i-frames, a counter move taken from Chaka, and a button dedicated to a simple tatsu that's just barely positive on hit (though it does give him good air mobility admittedly)), with only two moves being agreed upon to be actually good (his 2A and jC, which are actually a good long low and good all-purpose jumping move that other characters wouldn't mind having). All-in-all, he has almost nothing special at all he has to his name. He has to rely on universal mechanics to get his mix, like doing a basic high-low mixup on knockdown that everyone else has, or setting up tick-throws with his 2A. To me, he reaches the bare minimum of being considered a """finished""" character in any fighting game, not just HFTF. And somehow, he's still not agreed to be the worst character in the game, which is utterly fascinating to me. Despite all of the shit I gave him, Khan's kit still manages to have some practicality as a mediocre at best rushdown that puts him above Mariah, widely agreed upon to be the *actual* worst character in the game. She has a lot more effort put into her than Khan does in terms of animations and mechanics, yet she's considered to be worse than him because her gameplan is just so ineffectual to most of the game's cast, who straight up aren't threatened by her attacks since they don't take chip damage with their Stands up. It's like a barely finished character who sorta suits the game vs a more finished character who doesn't suit her game at all.

Game and Watch (Melee) actually is very comparable to Anarkis. He can't l-cancel (a system mechanic for reducing endlag) half of his air normals and his shield animation puts his hands outside his shield bubble, so he has a hell of a time blocking at all. Despite this, his movement and offstage game are decent, and a couple of his air normals can take up a lot of space, so he's far from the worst character in the game.

Some characters in modern fighting games have bits of incompleteness, like Videl not having Reflect or Faust's super not breaking the wall before, but none of them have ever been well and truly incomplete in the way someone like Sean from 3S is, where your best combo ender besides super leaves you minus on hit, or Axl from the first Guilty Gear, where his main strength is that the programmers forgot to put hurtboxes on some attacks so sometimes hes just invincible for no reason

Victor's actually widely considered to be worse than Anakaris now with Ana being 2nd worse. Vic's an interesting case study by himself though and also somewhat "incomplete", or at least severely outclassed by the cast

Please feature more Darkstalkers info! It's great to see videos about them and not simply being retrospectives (don't get me wrong, those are great to watch too). With the upcoming Capcom Fighting Collection, new players will need to know what to expect, and it certainly doesn't hurt us old-timers to have fresh eyes featuring it! I never want to stop learning about these games!

Those characters may be incomplete, but my day sure isn't now that I've been blessed by yet another video. Praise be.

Drhamin from MK deadly alliance is probably the most intriguing instance of an incomplete character in any fighting game i’ve ever seen. Despite lacking any basic strings and having to rely entirely on juggles for combos, he’s not only not bad he’s a top 5 character simply because his normals in his iron club stance are insanely good

Mighty Mar! Every time I play him, I just think, "Come on bro, just play Q-Bee already so you can never lose again" lmao. As for the current state of character rankings: You're right, Sas is still top tier (#2 in the game behind Lord Raptor). Anakaris is still low tier, of course; but, there are people both in the US and Japan who think Victor is worse in spite of Anak's shortcomings. Funny thing: In Vampire Hunter, he still has all these issues, but is really high on the tier list. I wish I played Hunter, so I could tell you why.

You need to show more older zoners. Some real warcrime shit. Every time i hear someone complain about Axl's or HC's zoning and i think of Justice, Vatista, MvC2 Sentinel, UMvC3 Morrigan or older warcrimes i don't know about

Playing as Anakhris is definitely an uphill battle, but I love his design and his story. And despite his shortcomings, he’s still fun to play.

my favourite unfinished characters would have to be Missing Link Axl who, despite all his many flaws, randomly has full invincibility on some moves, and Kirby Fighters 2 Yo-yo, who is a constant in the song files, has some of their hitboxes in the stage files, and, somehow, takes 10 frames less hitstun than the rest of the cast.

Release Shiki from 2019 SamSho is one of the worst characters I've ever seen in a modern fighting game and comes close to being incomplete. Her 2 part rekka was punishable on hit on the first hit and you could burst out and punish the second hit on hit. Her cross-up overhead special whiffed on crouchers, and her universal overhead was negative on hit. Her only other specials are gimmicky teleports that were easily tagged by any button on reaction and a super unsafe low. So you had a character where you could literally downback forever and if she tried to use any special she got blown up for free on reaction. She was fighting for bottom 1 (some people will argue Kyoshiro was worse) in a game that actually only had like 4 good characters on release.

I've been getting into VSAV on Fightcade and it's been fantastic. Glad to see this get some love and exposure.

LK on a campaign to make words actually mean something again

Bafael has a bunch of good videos about SF4 bad balance, but the one that I wanted to mention is about Vanilla Vega which suffers from the disease of "I have the tools but they suck" or "they work wrongly"

Hmm when I first heard the topic for this vid I thought it was going to go in a different direct. I feel like not having whole system mechanics is a much different version of incomplete compared to how I would describe a character as "incomplete". There's characters who are just invalidated in some fighting games because they lack certain frame data to play the same game as everyone else even if they access to all the same system mechanics. I consider those guys incomplete even if they do have a gameplan. Still a great vid because I don't know anything about Vampire Savior and that was cool to see.

your ending line is what made me subscribe! loved this video

Its strange because Anakaris is actually in the first two darkstalkers games as well, so it isn’t as if they couldn’t have added those mechanics to Anakaris as they were added in vampire hunter and vampire savior like they did with every other character

Anakaris in MvC2 though, super underrated. He can take on the top tiers if you practice enough.

I only think of a character as incomplete when it's in the Rivals of Aether workshop with almost every move and sprite taken from the Sandbert template file.

Anakaris is actually pretty strong when he has momentum because his pressure and neutral are pretty good on their own. The main problem is the second someone gets on top of him, he has no reliable way of getting them off because of the lack of tech hit/guard cancel. Bishamon is a 2-8 match-up for example because he can just lock him down with + on block normals, and Anakaris basically can't do anything.

Looking forward to playin that collection

You should find a way to talk about Lord Raptor/Zabel in DS3, like I think Guilty Gear XX was designed by Raptor mains because Capcom accidentally created the blueprint for Arcsys's whole philosophy on character moverment and offense between his air dash, focus on 4 way mix, and theoretically having no weakness but human error and execution along with getting sweaty and learning how he works making him actually beatable. Like I will say Arcsys has moved past him as the benchmark for how they design now, but it's just incredible how much he at least predicted if not inspired early Guilty Gear. Also he's a great example of how a Top Tier that utterly centralizes the meta of a game, which I think is one of the big things DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN items on a game designers balance priority check lists. Like characters are allowed to be strong now, but once a single matchup and the tech for that character becomes must know to keep a character from just steam rolling on a casual and pro level that's a good indicator of bad balance as much as really polarized match up spreads. Gimme individual bad matchups instead of everybody having a matchup that's a struggle anyday.

Great vid! :D

People used to call Anakaris the "Comboless Wonder" too. Never mind that most of his supers got ridiculous Demon style inputs too and players just aren't gonna find em by trial and error.

the first thing that comes to mind when you say incomplete is khan from hftf certain moves are just worse copies of other moves he has (j.a and j.b are literally identical except j.b does more dmg) worst throw in the game by far, sends opponents super far away and can be teched out of really early which puts him at -14 in the corner his dashing 5C is minus on hit, minus on block, and can't be cancelled still a super fun character regardless lol

Mvc3 wolverine cause he was missing swiss cheese

Meele hasn't many characters that are incomplete but the game as a whole is unpolished: Luigi's Dash attack lack the last hit, Donkey kong's Dash attack doesn't have his hit-box on his feet, Yoshi's grab doesn't connect, MrG&W's Shield doesn't cover him and Kirby's Up Throw and Down Throw can be cancel by the opponent before landing, and there's a whole list of things that doesn't work properly in meele, not by purpose design but for a lack of time.

Incomplete? Vanilla BBTAG.

I've definitely played characters that felt 'incomplete' but more so because I was missing something, or I was used to a tool they didnt have. Where's their launcher? What moves cancel from this? How do I combo into this move? Is it even possible to get this move off anything else besides this very situational option? Stuff like that would make a character feel 'incomplete.' Alot of Battle for the Grid characters would do this for me actually at first cause it was sometimes hard to just do Normal > Special move > another normal depending on character. But then you learn how to use this move, how to combo without launchers, or learn that you the enemy will move in different ways if they're being juggled compared to grounded, stuff like that. Rule of thumb, if you take a character to the lab for 45 minutes and they feel 'incomplete', then you're the one missing something rather than the character. 6:06 then theres Neo in BBTAG who's got the only 4P in the game (to my knowledge) that doesnt punish burst, meaning she's the only character who doesnt give you a combo if you punish burst. Even then, she's nowhere near as bad as "Minus-on-everything Lilith" from DS3

Minor correction, anakaris can't tech normal throws. Can't push block, can't throw, can't guard cancel without dying. Don't know how Mar does it.

Anakaris is a perfect example of an incomplete character. Great video dude. Also, a good example of an incomplete character is definitely Pure from Daemon Bride. She's a clone of a solid character, Nina, but she's literally missing fundamental parts of the game

Glad to see Vampire savior getting more love, great video as always

Great video, i used to play with anakaris in the arcade when i was younger and i never pay that much attention, when i got older and started played more i used phobos more along with anakaris and i pretty much got ingrained that anakaris couldn't do any of this and i just went with it and got called out a lot for not using throwns, guard cancel and tech hit more with other characters.

U got this guy winning tournaments with this character but nowadays people think if a character not s+ it's a struggle lmao

Thanks for the video

this new editing style is weird with the text blocks. Not bad per se just different

I feel like there's a right way to do this, where a single character specifically lacks a system mechanic that others have to balance out some other aspect of the character, it's a good way to create a dynamic and varied cast by emphasizing not only what the character has but what they don't... Dragonball probably has the best version of this that I've seen in Roshi, but more often than not this leaves a character with a huge hole in their kit that makes them a real struggle character. I suppose the key is to make sure that the character has tools that can either replace the missing mechanic's functions or mitigate the weaknesses the missing mechanics give you, but it's a risky balancing act.

A lot of the SNK half of the CVS2 feels really underpowered in comparison to the Capcom side.

I vote we give Anakaris a Tech Hit. I'm guessing it would be mega easy to code and it would help the character out so much. Then just import Huitzil, Donovan and Pyron and VSav Definitive Edition will be complete!

I'm still waiting for AnarChris to show up.

Anarkis is a character I see more than some of the others since I don't play too much darkstalkers seeing mightymar play reminded me of qerb's game and watch really making the most out of a character with a lot of problems

if you want another great example of an incomplete character, look at High Five from Clay Fighter Sculptor's Cut. The character LITERALLY is missing Crouching Heavy Kick, any command normals, has no grabs in spite of being a giant hand, has no Claytalities, has no state for claytalities used on him to cut him in half like the rest of the cast...

yo, 'love how u ended the video! the present-day callback was a dope surprise 😆✊ y'know 🤔 it feels good to have a celebrated fighting game historian *risking* their name to challenge destructive takes. your presence makes all the 'bullshit blazing' suck a little less~ 😌

Never heard of this game, you made it really interesting to watch though good video

Shoutouts to that SNES Hokuto no Ken game where one of the characters couldn't block low because it's not like a king to kneel.

Kinda related but not really. I think sonic in smash looks incomplete. I didn't say feel, I said look. All he literally does is turn to a ball he's had so many games Nintendo could have taken from, like wisps for example but nah just be a ball. Functionally I think he gets the job done but visually, he seems borning to me.

Lol I was just going to ask why isn't Anakaris tech hitting? I had no idea that he couldn't do it lol.

Sadly so many people in the FGC use inaccurate information like this just to get their way from the devs of whatever game they play. I play NRS/WB games and in that "community" it is like next level of awful. Excellent video dude.

Great video. Anakaris is probably like that by design tho, ever since SF2 zoning Capcom has tried to make zoning less powerful.

Darkstalkers is kinda the first game I remember being able to get a general feel for where a character would be in the tier list just from playing them for a bit and trying their combo trials i could clearly see that some characters can get away with a lot more than others or have to jump through significantly more hoops to achieve similar results. I'm not a tier snob by any means but it marks a noticable milestone in how my fighting game instincts developed, so it has a special place in my heart, that and Darkstalkers is largely what introduced me to the world of sweet sweet monster girls. Also I wanted to personally vouch for the fact that yes Sasquatch is easy top tier, he es extremely capable and versatile and is very easy to use and win with and you can just tell pretty much right away after playing as him for even a little bit especially when compared to other characters. I main Dimitri and Pyron btw.

Unrelated, but I'm not sure you can talk about Arakune's aerial low if you play BB Hood, who had essentially the same thing.

Great vid per usual, glad to see you covering my fav boomer game ☺️☺️

Man I'd love love to have a steam rerelease of Vsav with all the missing characters, trials, and a pushblock that doesn't destroy your fingers. Oh and also I guess fix Anakaris' ex Guard Cancel.

Hey! I havent played much bbcf. Would someone run me down why tsubaki was suggested as an 'unfinished' character. She is my character of choice in bbcf so it sorta intrigues me. Thank you ^^

I immediately think of Deejay in USFIV in terms of characters who are just at a disadvantage from the rest of the cast for no reason (i.e. low forward comboing into your fireball works for every other character besides Deejay) and Videl/Master Roshi in DBFZ as characters who were designed to have their own gimmicks that subvert the otherwise universal system mechanics.

Ayyye VSav is my favorite fighting game! MightyMar proves that one man’s trash is another’s treasure

Love me some Darkstalkers! B.B. Hood and John Taliban are my favorites.

I hope they give it to him in capcom fighting collection

I didn't know that about Anakaris, but I agree.

Vsav footage always reminds me of some asterisk and obelisk VHSs I used to have

At least your incomplete character is capable of blocking at all

I would say it's probably just a small quirk he has that he can't throw people. The guard cancel being punishable by throw seems like an oversight. Vatista from Under night can't be counter hit just because it's lore or something like that. So it's a reason similar to that I think.

Play against a good Anikaris on fightcade and you will see he can still fuck you up in the right hands lol. He has tools that are good for keep away and can combo you , while still keeping a safe distance because his moves reach far

Ngl I couldn't pay attention to what you were saying because I was so enthralled by VSAV gameplay.

When you said "incomplete character" I immediately thought of Fulgore in Killer Instinct gold. THen I saw Anakaris in the thumbnail and was like "well, yeah... I guess he takes the cake."

I used to main him lol he's still awesome at zoning, his super comes out really fast so I just used to turtle until I had meter

shuma gorath in mvc2 also feels incomplete

SHOUT OUT TO MIGHTYMAR !!!

Londrieka in under Night

When I see this all I could think about was videl

No wonder Anakaris is Daigo main when he plays VSAV. Daigo likes the challange xD

I remember people saying this about Giovanna during the first strive beta but I never understood how.

Both Wolverine in MVC2.

yoo darkstalkers, always wanted to try one of them

Anakaris ain't incomplete, he's just built different. Capcom thought him having the ability teleport out of the corner was enough for his defense.

The only two things I know that are incomplete are The Backstreet Boys and my brain.

Darkstalkers? I’d hardly know her

cool video don't know how I found you but I'm not complaining

I mean, Guilty Gear still does this to a lesser extent. I haven't played Strive in ages but I believe Potemkin and Nagoriyuki are unable to dash which is a system mechanic. I think they're just better at compensating characters that they take such fundamental options away from.

Characters lacking whole system mechanics is a very extreme case that doesn't come up that often nowadays, so I don't know how useful it is to call only them "incomplete". For example, 1.0 Anji could not get any kind of followup from max range fS/2S, so there was a very good point in calling him incomplete at the time. He was also unable to use his old butterfly for pressure in many situations while other characters had that.

wasnt he like super good with a crazy spamable grab in a different game

I like Anakaris's design.

Alfred Airhawk from Real Bout Fatal Fury 2

Ana-Karis. Not Anarchis, dude. lmao So hyped for the new Capcom collection coming out. It's gonna be sick.

KOF 13 Maxima isn't nearly so drastic an example, but unlike every other character in the game he basically has no way to really use the Drive Cancel/HD system without spending meter. None of his special moves can be Drive Cancelled into another one for a combo since they either can't be cancelled or actually can't be followed up at all without a super cancel. Example, his command grab follow-up can be drive cancelled into other moves, but the opponent is in a state where they can only be hit if you cancel into super. This also means that Maxima also lacks any kind of significant 0/1/2 meter HD combo unlike every single other character in the game, outside of situational combos in the corner that rely on looping his df+C command normal. If any other character punishes a DP with 2 meters and HD, they're gonna get a full HD combo and probably do 70-90% damage if not more for a few characters. Maxima would basically just get to do his BnB with a few extra normals thanks to the HD cancel.

nah mang most incomplete char was frost in mka, ALL moves negative on block

He had strong points and even some favorable matches. If you really want to know what trash tier really means try to play Third Strike with Sean or use a team of Roll/Servbot/Gief in MVC2.

Axl from GGML.

I feel like this kinda oversight is strangely common in old proto-anime capcom games.

he is a special boy and has no flaws

Another character that feels unfinished is Sektor from MK Gold but he's unfinished in the opposite sense. It's like they didn't even try to balance him at all. He can already spam all his special moves till the cows come home while the opponent can barely do anything to stop him, but to top off the shit sundae his weapon is a gun. Because he needed more ranged options apparently. He's cheaper than Christmas decorations in February. Even his ending feels rushed and lazy. It's just Cyrax's but he comes in at the end and kills everyone without a word. Mk4 and all its versions aren't the most well put together games as is but Sektor is absurd even considering that.

Not nearly as bad as this character, but Anna in t7 has a punish that is reversable by females because of the slap fight mechanic, turns a decent chunk of damage on a punishable move into trading health.

LOL. Anakaris is a great example.

Honestly i get what your saying but in terms of modern fighting games jack o in strive really does feel incomplete and honestly i feel like happy chaos does too in some ways yes hes got the options and maybe hes top tier or whatever but he feels like is one move away from bieng complete.