Usually mods are more used to change the mood or atmosphere of a game, like the combination of those of Sifu which plunge you back into the Matrix universe. They can also change the outfit or the appearance of one of the characters in the game, even fix bugs and/or improve the graphics/soundscape. More rarely, they allow new content to be added, and that’s what Ryn, who brought Sin Kiske to Guilty Gear Strive, did.
Character origin and gameplay
For those who have discovered the license with his latest opus, Sin Kiske is the hidden son of Ky Kiske and Gear Dizzy. He is not hidden because of what one of his parents might want to do to him, but because in the lore of the game the union with a Gear is very frowned upon, and Ky as a second king of Illyria cannot afford it. It is for this reason that his son was raised by Sol Badguy, for better or for worse. He is curiously absent from the story of Strive, where failing to have a major role, he could have at least made a small cameo. Fortunately Ryn repairs this affront.
Its gameplay is inspired by the one it had in Rev 2. The young prince shone especially in the neutral game, thanks to the range conferred by his weapon. He had a unique bar, called calories (or food). Unlike the classic bars, he started the round with the latter partially filled, and could use it to cancel a special move into another special move. This drained over time (and more quickly when canceling a special), and Sin had to find opportunities to eat during the match in order to refill it. If he tried to land a special move with an empty bar, a special animation would trigger where the fighter would make players realize that hunger was gnawing at him, and would be exposed to a big punishment from the opponent.
His absence in Strive as a playable character is also quite logical, because he would have duplicated Nagoriyuki. The samurai can also cancel his specials into other specials, and has excellent range in the neutral, especially when his bar is 2/3 full. Unlike Sin, this specific bar is not full at the start of the round, but fills when certain moves are used. Nagoriyki must avoid filling it under penalty of losing 50% of his life, while also exposing himself to an enormous enemy punishment, which often costs him the round.
Would you take some Goku again?
The Dragon Ball FighterZ meme could invade Guilty Gear Strive, given the next mod developed by Ryn.
Fans of the game will also have recognized the famous sequence triggered by Goku’s 2M (which has become a 2K in the excerpt above). On the other hand, the adaptation of a license to another risks this time to be more difficult. At the bar level, we can imagine that Goku’s lvl 1 will cost 50% tension and his lvl 3 100%, which shouldn’t be too hard to adapt. On the other hand, there are only 4 buttons in FighterZ, and if one can imagine that the HS of GGST would replace the S of DBFZ, a problem still arises. In view of the published extract, the adaptation seems to have been as follows: the L became the P, the M became K and finally the H became the S of GGST. With the special on the HS, that would mean Goku wouldn’t have a D, and therefore no swipe with the 2D like the other characters. One of the possibilities of adaptation would be to put the teleports specific to DBFZ on the D, usable of course against 50% of the tension gauge, in order to avoid making the super saiyan too powerful. As for the Dragon Rush, we will have to see if it can be adapted on GGST, but the mechanics seem a little too strong for this game.