My Confront Characters

Image Credit: Arc System Works

A while back I saw a post on BlueSky talking about what they called “Confront Characters”. Essentially, they’re the opposite of a comfort character. Rather than a character that you’ll always love to see whenever they show up, these are the characters that you just can’t stand when they come across your screen. They’re the kind of characters that you just want to deck in the face when you see them.

Today I’ll be looking at four of my confront characters. These are characters that I either hate for their ubiquity in competitive games, the role that they play in the story they’re in, or the fact that they’re just unlikeable jerkoffs. There are going to be some unique picks on here, but I hope that you hear me out on my choices.

Smeargle (Pokemon VGC 2016)

Image Credit: Nintendo, The Pokemon Company

Don’t look at me like that. I warned you that there would be some weird and irrational picks. But when it comes to characters that I just loathe, Smeargle from Pokemon is always the first one to come to mind. There are two reasons why Smeargle is an annoying little twerp that I pray to Arceus never comes back in another Pokemon game. Those are its moveset and its ability.

Now, if you look at Smeargle’s stats, they’re nothing to write home about. 20 Attack, 35 Defense, 45 Special Defense. Its best stat is Speed, and even that doesn’t crack the base 100 benchmark that makes a lot of other Pokemon worth using. But there’s more to a Pokemon than just their stats.

Smeargle has the unique move called Sketch. This move allows Smeargle to copy the last move that was used by a target Pokemon. By using this move correctly, Smeargle can have access to any move in the game. 

In VGC 2016 (the official competitive format for the video games that is played in Double Battles) Smeargle was part of a team format that was referred to as The Big Six. Essentially, this is a team made of the six best Pokemon in the format, and it was very difficult to counter everything that it had. This includes Primal Groudon, Mega Kangaskhan, Xerneas, Talonflame, Mega Salamence, and of course, Smeargle.

Smeargle’s role on the team was to be a disruptive support Pokemon. Its moveset would often consist of Fake Out, a priority move that makes a target Pokemon flinch when used on the first turn. Crafty Shield, another priority move that blocks against Status moves. Follow Me, another priority move that draws all single-target attacks to him. And Dark Void, a move with 80% accuracy that targets both opposing Pokemon and puts them to sleep.

In addition to all of that, Smeargle is also armed with one of the most infuriating abilities in Pokemon history: Moody. This ability activates at the end of every turn. This will provide Smeargle with a two-stage buff in one random stat, while dropping another random stat by one stage. These stats include the 5 main ones (Attack, Defense, Special Attack and Defense, and Speed) as well as two stats that you can’t normally modify: Accuracy and Evasion.

And as for the Item, Smeargles would often hold either the Focus Sash, or a Mental Herb. Focus Sash lets it survive on 1 HP if it has full health. Mental Herb heals it from moves like Taunt that would shut down any of its disruption. There were also the insane people that ran Choice Scarf Smeargle which doubles its Speed, but locks it into using one move until it is switched out. This means fast Dark Voids.

Smeargle was the kind of Pokemon that would be brought to almost every game in 2016. You knew exactly what it would do, but there wasn’t really a good way to deal with it. This Pokemon just added coin flips on top of coin flips. If it got an Accuracy buff, then its Dark Voids become 100% accurate. If it gets an Evasion buff, then good luck hitting it again. It was just such a non-interactive Pokemon for the players, and a boring Pokemon to watch as a spectator.

This was all in the 6th Generation. Because of Smeargle’s ubiquity, there were a lot of things that got nerfed when Gen 7 came along. First, Moody was changed to no longer buff or debuff Accuracy and Evasion. Great change. No notes. What I do take issue with is that Dark Void got double nerfed. First, the accuracy of the move was dropped from 80% to 50%. Second is that no Pokemon besides Darkrai can use the move. If they tried to use it, then it would just fail and waste a turn. 

Overall, Smeargle is a perfect case of “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. Its stats and type may look like nothing special, but anyone who has had to go against this thing knows what it’s capable of doing. And if it’s ever allowed in a VGC format, you can bet that it will be back to take its spot as the most used Pokemon, probably right beside Incineroar.

Happy Chaos (Guilty Gear Strive)

Image Credit: Arc System Works

Top tiers in fighting games are always a strange beast to talk about. Because no matter how many valid points you bring up about a character being too strong, someone will always pop up from the bushes to scream “Skill issue, bro! Learn the matchup!” But every once in a while you’ll get a unanimous consensus from the community that the best character in the game might be just a bit too strong. Enter Happy Chaos.

Happy Chaos was the 3rd DLC character added in Guilty Gear Strive’s first season. When he first released, people weren’t immediately blown away by what he could do. I mean, this was the same version of the game where Sol Badguy and Nagoriyuki could kill you in one interaction (because they clearly can’t do that now). No, it took a little while for people to truly realize what Happy Chaos was capable of doing.

So, what does Happy Chaos have that makes him so strong? The answer: a gun. I’m not kidding. If you took away the gun, he would be strong. But his six-shot revolver that he uses is the thing that pushes him into being too strong, even by Guilty Gear standards.

Happy Chaos has just about everything that you’d want in a fighting game character. His Punch attacks very fast, mashable buttons for interrupting the opponent or stopping air approaches. His Kick attacks have great range and great cancel options that lead into a high/low guess for the opponent. His Slash attacks (particularly his crouch Slash) are great moves to use in neutral. And his Heavy Slash shoots his gun. 

In fact, let’s talk about this gun. Like I said, it has six bullets in the chamber that Happy Chaos can reload anytime he wants to. He can also fire his gun whenever he can. This gun is the most obnoxious thing in the game. He can either use it to zone you out with his Steady Aim shots, or he can use it in combos with Close Slash and At The Ready to carry you over to the wall where he can then either choose to break the wall and get Positive Bonus, or keep the wall and loop his Steady Aim pressure. Also, these are still gunshots. Meaning they’re fast. Like, 2 frames fast. Yeah, you’re not reacting to that shit.

But by far the most annoying part of his gun is being able to use the gunshots to cover his whiffed attacks. See, one of the most fundamental parts of fighting games is standing outside of your opponents range and punishing them when they try to hit you. This is what’s called a whiff punish. Happy Chaos doesn’t play by normal rules. He can whiff all the buttons he wants to in neutral, then just cover his mistake with a 9mm. 

Now, I don’t inherently have a problem with top tiers. As long as they’re interactive as a player, and fun to watch as a spectator, then I say let them stay strong. Characters like Ed and Akuma in Street Fighter 6 come to mind when I think of cool top tiers. But watching Happy Chaos consistently place in the Top Eight in tournaments without anything cool in his arsenal just gets tiring. His At The Ready loops are cool the first few times, but then you see his stupid Deus Ex Machina super and you just wish that this character would get shot by the developers.

Porky (Earthbound/Mother 3)

Image Credit: Nintendo, HAL Laboratory

Spoilers ahead for both Earthbound AND Mother 3. 

Now when it comes to villains in any media, you aren’t necessarily supposed to like them. Sure there are some villains that you can sympathize with, and maybe even see where they’re coming from if they’re done right. But to me, villains work best when they’re meant to be outright despicable. And in my eyes, no villain is more despicable, more hatable than Earthbound’s own Porky Minch.

Now, Porky doesn’t really play that big of a role in the original Earthbound. Most of the time it just feels like he fails upward, teaming up with whoever is in power. This includes characters like Mr. Monotoli, or the Happy Happy Cultists. Most of what Porky does happens off-screen. However, Porky isn’t meant to be the main antagonist of Earthbound. He’s really just a vessel for making things happen for the main cast to clean up. No, to see the extent of his wickedness, we need to look at what happens after Earthbound.

Mother 3 is a fantastic game, and you should really do yourself a favor and play the fan-translation if you haven’t already done so. It’s an incredible piece of appreciation from fans, and the project was headed by someone who used to work as a professional Japanese to English translator.

Porky once again acts as a background threat in Mother 3, limited to a few one-off mentions in the early chapters. It isn’t until the final chapter where he finally reveals himself to Lucas and the party. When Porky shows up, he’s much, much older than he was in Earthbound. It’s unclear how much time has passed between Earthbound and Mother 3. Porky himself says that he doesn’t even know how long he’s been alive for. “Who knows, I might be 1000 years old, or even 10,000 years old. But despite that, I'm still the same kid at heart!”

And that’s the crux of Porky’s character. He may have aged potentially thousands of years, but he’s still the same bratty, egotistical, malicious kid that he was in Earthbound. This malice is what kicks the events of the game into motion. In the game’s first chapter, his soldiers (known as the Pigmasks) show up near Tazmily Village, they get Lucas’s mom killed, and his brother Claus has gone missing. It’s revealed toward the end of the game that Claus had been taken into Porky’s army (known as the Masked Man), and has been treated like a weapon that has been pointed at Lucas and his party.

Porky’s appearance in Mother 3 depicts him as an old, withering man. His body is being held in this machine with spider-like legs, which I always assumed that this machine is what’s been keeping him alive for all of these years. It’s a different machine from what he was in at the end of Earthbound when he was with Giygas. 

Porky steps up against the party as the penultimate boss fight in the game. Once you beat him, Porky locks himself away inside of a device called the Absolutely Safe Capsule. Inside this machine, nothing can get in or out. The capsule can’t be damaged or broken in any way. And according to series creator, Shigisato Itoi, he said that even after the sun is gone, Porky will still be safe inside this capsule.

What makes Porky such a detestable character is his total lack of empathy for anyone around him. When he learns that the Masked Man and Lucas are brothers, he just laughs. He revels in the idea that the dragon will wipe out the world after the final needle is pulled. He traded his humanity for raw power, and that’s what makes him such a hateable villain, and a prime candidate for fictional characters that I want to punch.

Young Xehanort (Kingdom Hearts)

Image Credit: Square Enix

And from a villain that I love to hate to a villain that I just flat out don’t like. Kingdom Hearts is no stranger to villains. With every new game it feels like Nomura goes to the well to pull out thirteen more faces for you to slap around. Of all the villains over this series history, none of them have felt as lame, boring, and sauceless as Young Xehanort.

Our first introduction to Young Xehanort is as a superboss in Birth By Sleep under the guise of Mysterious Figure. He’s meant to be used as a way to foreshadow one of the characters in the next Kingdom Hearts game, much like what Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 Final Mix did. But he’s no Unknown, and he’s certainly no Lingering Will. Mysterious Figure might be one of the worst bosses I’ve ever fought. This is basically a “what not to do” guide for making an action game boss fight. 

Our first official time meeting Young Xehanort is in Dream Drop Distance. Yay… Young Xehanort was gifted the power of time travel by his future Heartless self so that he could transcend time and recruit members of the True Organization XIII. That’s right baby, Young Xehanort’s bringing time travel with him!

Now time travel is very often criticized in writing as lazy and hackneyed by the writer. I personally don’t have strong feelings about it. I’ve made peace with the fact that this is what Kingdom Hearts is now. And honestly, Kingdom Hearts has already jumped the shark so many times. In hindsight, time travel felt like an inevitability.

I just really don’t care for Young Xehanort as a character. His primary role in the story is to show up, say something cryptic, act like a little bitch, and then leave. He just can’t carry himself as a villain. He’s not intimidating like Ansem in KH1. He doesn’t have charisma like Marluxia in Chain of Memories. He’s not as interesting as Xemnas from KH2. He’s not as entertaining as Vanitas from Birth By Sleep. He’s not even effective at being a villain like his old man self is.

Young Xehanort is just a moody teenager who had one bad day and thinks that the world is against him. He thinks that he knows everything about how the world works. And listening to him brood on and on in every cutscene he’s in just gets so tiring to listen to. He’s either complaining about the world, or acting like a smarmy asshole, neither of which make for a compelling villain.

I don’t know what Kingdom Hearts 4 is going to carry over from the previous entries. Personally I’d like to see a new cast of villains and antagonists get added into the shuffle, and maybe have more of a focus on Yozora and the people from his world. Whatever happens, I just hope that Xehanort, young, old, and everything in between, stays gone. I think it’s time for some fresh faces in the world of Kingdom Hearts.

Closing

And that’s my list. Four characters in games that just tick me off. The idea for this article was kicking around in my brain for a while, and it was fun to think of characters that I don’t like. When I think about my favorite games, I really just remember the positives. When I think about Final Fantasy 6, I remember Celes and all of her cool scenes. I don’t think about walking in and out of the Auction House to hope the Magicite is available to buy.

I know that this makes two negative articles back to back, so we’ll try and be a bit more positive next month. I just feel like I need to get more practice writing about stuff that I don’t like.