Moveset Design Document: Reimu Hakurei

Overview

Reimu is a character that shouldn’t be too hard to use, as she is the first character most people are going to try out first. She’s a middleweight on the heavy side, but with a high jump and very floaty. Overall on the defensive side, good at controlling space, but low damage. Should have very good aerial mobility, seeing as she’s a flying specialist in a world where magical self-levitation is Magic 101.

Power: D
Speed: D
Jump: A
Defense: B

Walk Speed: Slow

Run Speed: Slow

Jump Height: High

Fall Speed: Slow

Knockback Resistance: Medium+

Attack Damage: Low

Attack Speed: Medium

Unique Gimmick: Reimu floats horizontally when the jump button is held, much like Peach.

Pros:

• Reimu has a lot of tools at her disposal to control space, and she can play a good zoning game.
  
• The low gravity factor, floating ability, and uninterceptable recovery give Reimu very good aerial mobility.
  
• Reimu is a fairly easy character to grasp, and her attacks are easy to work with, having large projectiles covering a wide area, and the melee attacks having large hitboxes.
  

Cons:

• Her attacks have low damage, so she has a long time to kill.
  
• While her zoning tools are good when it comes to space control, the projectiles have very low power, and Reimu has to approach to get a kill, with no options that allow a quick approach.
  

Moveset

Normal Attacks

Neutral Combo: Reimu does a downwards chop, followed by a side kick, then a two-handed push.

Dash Attack: A slide kick:

Tilt Attacks:

• Forward: Reimu thrusts forward with the gohei.
  
• Down: Reimu makes her gohei spin in front of her, near the ground.
  
• Up: Reimu does a wide sweep with her gohei.
  

Aerial Attacks:

• Neutral: Reimu places a barrier in front of her.
  
• Forward: Flying kick.
  
• Back: Back side kick.
  
• Down: Reimu places a barrier underneath her.
  
• Up: Backflip kick.
  

Grappling

Grab: Reimu grabs the opponent with one hand, then grabs with the second as well if successful.

Pummel: A knee strike.

Throws:

• Forward: Reimu kicks her opponent away and throws a small stream of amulets in her direction.
  
• Back: Reimu switches places with her opponent, then does a palm strike, with an Orb in front.
  
• Down: Reimu releases her opponent, and quickly places a seal on the floor, creating a column of light. Pretty much Evil Sealing Circle done as a throw.
  
• Up: Reimu throws her opponent up a short distance, then shoots a stream of needles upwards.
  

Smash Attacks

Forward: Reimu leans forward with her and extends her arm, with an Orb in front of her palm. The orb does some small hits, then launches.

Down: Reimu slaps an amulet on the floor, making a small explosion. Kind of like a miniature Evil Sealing Circle.

Up: Backflip kick. (Ascension Kick, pretty much.)

Special Moves

Neutral: Reimu throws an amulet. Can be charged for a short while to throw more in a spread pattern.

Forward: Reimu shoots a Yin-Yang Orb that, although slow-moving, homes in on the opponent. (Kind of like Samus’ uncharged missile.)

Down: Reimu creates a barrier in front of her that stays in place for a full second. (More?) This barrier reflects projectiles and pushes opponents away. (Pretty much Palutena’s forward special.)

Up: Reimu vanishes, then appears some distance away in the direction that is pressed while she’s vanished. If an opponent is in the same place when Reimu reappears, she will attack with a kick. (Need to figure out properties of the kick. Particularly, the direction.)

Last Word

Fantasy Seal: Reimu turns towards the player’s viewpoint , floating a short distance above the ground if she’s not already airborne, enters a trance-like state, and glowing orbs begin to spin around her. The orbs merge into her, and then the starts creating more orbs, that home in on opponents. (How many?) If more than one opponent is present, the orbs pick their targets at random. (It’s pretty much how it works in HM already.)

Here's my writeup for Reimu. It's my first draft, and a bit barebones, so I'm going to go back to it eventually.

You may also notice that a lot of what's here is taken from her Soku moveset. I guess we can alter this if we feel the need to, but for now it's a bit derivative. I put Ascension Kick in a kind of unexpected place, I guess, though I consider smash attacks to be kind of low level specials, so I don't see it as that much of a mismatch. Evil Sealing Circle as a throw, though, is weird, but I think we can work with it. The way I have this set up, I think we can get the most out of Reimu's iconic moves. Even her crouching gohei spin is here. I actually intended for Fantasy Nature to be her Last Word, but after not coming up with a good way to implement it, I settled for Fantasy Seal. It's equally iconic as one of Reimu's "ultimates", I think.

I'll update this with animation key frames sketches, hitbox diagrams, frame data, knockback data, and damage numbers as progress on the engine continues.

And, as usual, nothing here is set in stone, so feel free to dissect.

I liked the previous suggestion for her side b where she bats the Yin-Yang orb with her gohei - much like DeDeDe's Gordo. It opens up more opportunities to bat it around after it's in the field too.

Everything else sounds good for her, and personally Fantasy Seal is my favorite spellcard of Reimu's. I also like the idea with throws having more stuff in them, rather than just pummel and launch. This is Gensokyo after all, and danmaku's a staple.

Solid moveset. Good job.

If I had to nitpick, however, I'd much prefer if Ascension Kick was her up special. Mostly because I'm not too fond of teleportation recovery. Ascension Kick might be a tad more manageable.

Also, I know Fantasy Seal is iconic, but I have an idea for a possible Last Word which consists of creating a gigantic Yin Yang Orb before her, and, once it's ready, kicking it across the screen. More or less based on the finisher she uses on Sakuya in Fantasy Kaleidoscope and her move Treasure "Ying-Yang Asuka'i" in Hopeless Masquerade.

And I'd much prefer if the Yin Yang Orb she creates with her side special bounced along the ground like Dedede's Gordos.

About the forward special, yeah, I liked that idea too, but I figured that if someone's going to have homing attacks, it's going to be Reimu. We can still repurpose that special in another character, Yuugi throwing a boulder, for example.

And similarly, Reimu's one of our best candidates for a teleport recovery, and I'd like to have at least one, for variety's sake, even if I'm not the biggest fan of them

I thought her neutral special would be a homing amulet.

Wall of text incoming, mostly about her normals.  Be warned.

Reimu is an interesting case in that, as the protagonist, she should be like Mario and have a straightforward moveset with a few gimmicks, but her gohei gives potential Marth-like range.  As a beginner-friendly character, it's probably a good idea to make her moveset straightforward, with slow but powerful smashes and simple aerial moves and tilts, as well as a decent projectile game.  I say probably because in Soku, Reimu has a LOT of weird moves—purely vertical projectiles and a barrier thing.  Of course, Mario's Cape and FLUDD are unusual moves as well, so perhaps it's safe to give Reimu a fair amount of strange things.

As for the moveset, I definitely like nearly everything you have so far.  I'll elaborate:

Normals
I like how Reimu's Normals work—plenty of safe, pokey moves like up tilt and neutral air that give her easy defensive power.  If dair lets her bounce off foes' shields (like Link) Reimu has a very safe aerial game with nair and dair, and beginner-friendly combo ability with uair and utilt.  I also noticed you proposed kicks for her fair and bair—perhaps one of these could be a kill move?  Bairs are often made into powerful, meaty kicks in Smash Bros—Reimu's bair would be a perfect candidate for a short-range, powerful attack that makes it so she doesn't have to land a smash to finish an opponent.  Her fair could also work, especially if it has a wind-up—makes it a higher risk, higher reward move.

Throws
The forward throw has a couple possibilities—it could be like Mewtwo's forward throw, or it could have her send out a wave of slower amulets that take up a lot of space.  I'm not sure how danmaku-y a feel we'll wind up going for, but there's a couple uses that throw could have.

Aside from that, the up throw has got me interested.  Why?  It looks like Fox's up throw.  For those who don't know, Melee Fox's up throw leads to guaranteed follow ups—one of these follow ups is an absurdly powerful kill move (uair).  Now, I don't know how combo-y we want the game to be, so I don't know if we want Reimu to have a guaranteed uthrow -> bair kill combo, but it would certainly be a beginner-friendly technique (similar to Dr. Mario's dthrow -> fair in Melee).  If we give the game a more Brawl-esque feel in terms of combos, this would probably be much too powerful (look at Diddy's dthrow -? uair in Sm4sh).  Again, I like the move, though our design choices may influence the power of her aerials.

Smashes
A few others have opinions here, so I won't say much, aside from that they look pretty good, but remember to keep her intuitive if she's to be a beginner-friendly character.

Specials
Palutena's side b sucks.  It's slow, can be rolled through, has no range, and doesn't stop physical attacks the way Mario's cape can (at least not in my experience).  Perhaps if Reimu's wall lingered, providing temporary shelter against the danmaku barrage, it could be usable?

Last Word
It's cool. (I don't know how these work right now...)

TL;DR
I like it
1 aerial kill move
Link's Dair bounce
Fox Uthrow combos?
Gimmicky stuff?
Looks solid

Daniel Y wrote:Wall of text incoming, mostly about her normals.  Be warned.

I said this was up to discussion. I welcome your wall of text.

I like how Reimu's Normals work—plenty of safe, pokey moves like up tilt and neutral air that give her easy defensive power.

Well, I intended for her to be safe, so it's good to know you think I'm on the right track.

If dair lets her bounce off foes' shields (like Link) Reimu has a very safe aerial game with nair and dair, and beginner-friendly combo ability with uair and utilt.

It's a barrier under her and I expect it to stay there for a while. I intended it to bounce, yes.

I also noticed you proposed kicks for her fair and bair—perhaps one of these could be a kill move?  Bairs are often made into powerful, meaty kicks in Smash Bros—Reimu's bair would be a perfect candidate for a short-range, powerful attack that makes it so she doesn't have to land a smash to finish an opponent.  Her fair could also work, especially if it has a wind-up—makes it a higher risk, higher reward move.

One of my mains is Sonic, so I know exactly what you're talking about. And yes, that makes perfect sense. I guess her bair is now a finisher.

The forward throw has a couple possibilities—it could be like Mewtwo's forward throw, or it could have her send out a wave of slower amulets that take up a lot of space.  I'm not sure how danmaku-y a feel we'll wind up going for, but there's a couple uses that throw could have.

I frankly don't know how to answer that yet. That second option does seem appealing, but I don't know how the game will handle that. I guess we'll see when it comes time to implement it.

Aside from that, the up throw has got me interested.  Why?  It looks like Fox's up throw.  For those who don't know, Melee Fox's up throw leads to guaranteed follow ups—one of these follow ups is an absurdly powerful kill move (uair).  Now, I don't know how combo-y we want the game to be, so I don't know if we want Reimu to have a guaranteed uthrow -> bair kill combo, but it would certainly be a beginner-friendly technique (similar to Dr. Mario's dthrow -> fair in Melee).  If we give the game a more Brawl-esque feel in terms of combos, this would probably be much too powerful (look at Diddy's dthrow -? uair in Sm4sh).  Again, I like the move, though our design choices may influence the power of her aerials.

Indeed it looks like Fox's up throw. I did reference it for this one. And no, I do not want to give this a Brawl-esque feel in terms of combos. I have stated before how I absolutely despise how Brawl is on that front. Brawl's hitstun values are insane, and an example of very poor game design. So yeah, I do want this to be more combo-y than Brawl, sorry to go on that tangent. Now that you pointed this out, I like it a lot.

Palutena's side b sucks.  It's slow, can be rolled through, has no range, and doesn't stop physical attacks the way Mario's cape can (at least not in my experience).  Perhaps if Reimu's wall lingered, providing temporary shelter against the danmaku barrage, it could be usable?

Yeah, I'm aware that Palutena's side B leaves a lot to be desired, but I think we can make something useful out of it. That being why I had that "More?" between brackets after mentioning the 1 second duration. Making it stay on the field for longer was the first thing I though about to buff it. Then beyond that, we could make it deploy faster, impossible to roll through, maybe?

(I don't know how these work right now...)

I'll have to do a writeup on the essence mechanic I had in mind. I believe you saw some of it on Skype already, but it'd be good to have it written down permanently somewhere.

TL;DR
I like it
1 aerial kill move
Link's Dair bounce
Fox Uthrow combos?
Gimmicky stuff?
Looks solid

Grad to know you like it! Seems like we have something very solid and potentially fun to play here. I can't wait for us to start playing around with her on the engine.

Here's my initial keyframe sheet that I did with all the attacks and some (but not all) other movements.

Link because it's a 6000x6000 PNG