Seth
Remember how I said I love to play rushdown characters with good mobility? While that's the case most of the time, sometimes, things just don't quite work out within a certain character. That character in this case, is Seth. Seth is, as you'd be thinking, a rush down character with mobility, mix-up potential, and has the ability to perform a ton of high hit count combos. Trust me, a good Seth is devastating, but also trust me when I say the good Seths are so...rare. For good reason: it takes a lot of effort to make Seth work, even more so than other characters with difficult execution. The payoff for learning/mastering Seth is massive, but until then, you have a character that's so easily punished and has the lowest health pool in the entire game.
Let's start with what Seth does best, which is air mobility and mix-up potential. Seth's air mobility is arguably the best in the game, with air back dashes and fast falls, he can get out of sticky situations easily in the air, so its best to keep him up above most of the time as he can whiff the opponent's AA options. Also, he excels at mix-ups. His 236 motion special leaves orbs that shoot out projectiles after awhile. Since these are delayed and can be placed in a variety of locations, they are great for preparing mix-ups as you go in towards your enemies. And speaking of those, Seth has a few ways to close the gap. He has a regular gap closing strike move, an active, on demand teleport that Seth players can gauge accordingly (can be punished if used incorrectly), or even an instant mix-up move that has Seth striking his foes from behind. Albeit, Seth has plenty of options, but his damage isn't the most spectacular, and since his health leaves a lot to be desired, one bad mistake could cost him the game.
+ Good air mobility
+ Great mix-up potential
+ Plenty of ways to close the gap
- Lowest health in the game
- Difficult to maximize damage dealt to enemies
Yuzuriha
Yuzuriha is TOUGH as nails to use, probably the second hardest character in the game to learn, tied with Byakuya (with Hilda/Chaos as third). She can do SO much as a character, but her move list is so overloaded with options that extend from her various stances, its really hard to bring out her maximum potential unless you are REALLY dedicated in learning her stance cancels. Yuzuriha is a very unique character that specializes in zone control and mid-screen combos, yes, she's probably the only character that can hit you from mid-screen, go in for a combo, knock you mid-screen again, and continue hitting you mid-screen...while she's far away. Yes, she can be quite an impressive looking character, PROVIDED, you learn her. She has pretty mediocre damage and normals, but look deeper, and you'll find yourself a character that has quite the massive payoff.
Yuzuriha's range with her specials is quite impressive, I mean, look at her Katana! Anyways, Yuzuriha specializes in stances. When using a special move with a star mark, you can make Yuzu go into a stance. While in her stance, Yuzuriha has some MAJOR mobility options, ranging from dodges, teleports, backsteps or jumps. She can use these to re-position herself OR to follow up for more combos. Proper usage of her stance moves differentiates GOOD Yuziriha players from the AMAZING ones, I've got absolutely bodied by Yuzuriha players who fully utilize her stance dodges to continuously punish me. She has mid-screen slashes, jumps that damage her opponent on impact, or teleports, all of which can cancel into a stance. As you can see, Yuzuriha is a lot about mind games and execution, making her a tough character to master.
+ Zone control and mid-screen pressure is top notch
+ Stance moves give her multiple options
+ Good mobility via teleport and stance moves
- Overwhelming options means that she's really hard to use
- Little to no defensive options outside of stances
Hilda
Most Hildas are just spammers, but by any chance you come across a good Hilda, prepare to be locked down in the corner of the screen for days. I personally hate playing as Hilda, hell, gameplay wise, she's probably my most hated character in the game. Her entire game THRIVES on her spamming bullshit on you as you cry in the corner of the screen. Try to jump at her? AA projectile. Rush at her? Good luck dealing with her ridiculous string of projectiles. Her amount of options to body her enemies from afar is ridiculous, but, Hilda has one massive flaw: if she is closed in upon, she's toast. Aside from an unsafe teleport, Hilda has no escape or defensive countermeasures against heavy rushdown, if they manage to close the gap, Hilda is in serious trouble. If you want to play Hilda, you'll need to learn how to control space, fortunately, she has the tools to do some. Expect a hard time though, you'll need to know a lot to use her properly.
Most of the time as Hilda you'd want to be planting all of her bullshit in the enemy's faces. Her standard projectile is quite easy to deal with but she's got a ton of delay moves that'll eventually put a stop in your plans as they all rain down on you. Hit confirming a single projectile might be all that Hilda needs to close in on you and pull off a painful combo, Hilda DOES have a good amount of combo extenders. As mentioned, she even has a teleport to get out of sticky situations, though that can be dangerous to use randomly. Of course, she even has anti-airs to deal with people who brainlessly try to assault her. Still, for all of these options, if she is closed in upon, all of it is for naut, if you're playing someone like Linne, Seth, Carmine or Akatsuki who gives you little room to breathe, you're screwed. Play smart and play dirty, that's Hilda's game after all.
+ Zone control can go as far as the whole screen
+ Can punish from afar
+ Can keep her enemies locked down for days
- Little defensive options if closed in upon
- Many moves are unsafe
Eltnum
One of my favorite characters in the game. I've never touched the "Melty Blood" series so I don't know much about Sion, or Eltnum in this game, but Eltnum is just a ton of fun to play as. She's got ranged command normals, she's got a pistol, and she prefers to fight at mid-close range. She isn't very mobile, she's easily punishable, but she is a character with a lot of control. Eltnum feels like a good mix of many different character types, and the fact that she can deal with a variety of different situations very differently makes her very fun to f**k around with. Sure, she's not the easiest character to use, but put in decent effort and Eltnum becomes one of the best control characters around. She doesn't handle being rushed down too well, but otherwise, she's got a good deal of positive matchups.
Eltnum is best used as a standard neutral character who watches and punishes enemies. She is neither very good at rushing down enemies or throwing down with them from a distance, but she IS pretty good at defense with multiple options for dealing with multiple situations. Eltnum is very easily cornered by heavy rushdown enemies, so good prediction is a must. She has one of the best DPs in the game with Etherlite Air to punish air enemies, as well as her pistol and Eltherlite Ground to deal with enemies trying to rush you from the ground. She is also one of the very few characters in the game that can instantly mix up opponents with her command dash, and some of its variations even allow her to deal damage for some combos. Her pistol shots come out very quick and are hard to punish, but require reloading when she runs out of bullets, use them to punish rather than just for the sake of chipping out or zoning enemies. Also, since some of her command normals have great range, abuse those to get yourself a better positioning in the fight.
+ Great control with various tools
+ Ranged command normals
+ Mix-up potential
+ Mostly stays at a safe range compared to many other fighters
- Few defensive options, gets wrecked if closed in upon by rush down characters
- Many unsafe moves
Chaos
Chaos is serious business. He's really hard to use properly, and if you were to have a fighting game equivalent of him, he's the Carl Clover/Zato-1 of UNIEL, that pretty much spells you trouble if you want to learn him. His unique trait is obvious, he's got a f**king dinosaur following him around in the battlefield. Chaos gets to sick his dinosaur at his enemies, either letting it bite their heads off, tear them into half with its massive claws or spit an unlimited amount of fireballs. The beast known as Azhi is Chaos's spatial control, pressure point, and combo aid...if you master using Azhi, you're pretty much confirmed to be a beast as Chaos. However, the problems arise when you find out that using both Chaos AND Azhi together is no easy feat, and having them coordinate to your liking is going to be tough.
Chaos has a gauge below his health that indicates Azhi's usage. If Azhi isn't attacking, its green and its fine, have it attack and the gauge turns red. When the gauge is red, Azhi CAN be hurt and killed, and when Azhi is destroyed by an attack the gauge turns grey...he cannot be summoned for a short period of time. This means that you can't have Chaos randomly use Azhi to throw out random attacks, without Azhi, Chaos loses a lot of his priorities over his enemies. Most of Azhi's moves tend to end up being control specials, as they tend to cover up massive portions of the screen and zone foes quite nicely. He can even have Azhi teleport for some mixups with Chaos himself. He also has one of the best anti-rushdown tools in the game with Code:Reflect, though this is risky as it leaves Chaos wide open if it whiffs. End of story: with Azhi, you're gold, without him, you're in trouble.
+ Good zone control with Azhi
+ Potential mix-ups and high damaging combos
+ Code:Reflect for anti-rushdowns
- Easy to punish and take advantage off without proper usage of Azhi
- Hard to use
Akatsuki
The damage on this man is insane. Akatsuki is a character that does a lot of damage up close and can pressure his opponents SUPER hard. However, that's the problem with him, IF he gets close, chances are the enemy is in trouble, but if he doesn't close in, he has issues of his own. Akatsuki's mobility is on the lower side of things, probably one of the most problematic characters in the game when it comes to that aspect. He has trouble closing in on zone heavy opponents or characters with high mobility in terms of multiple dashes. Because of that, he is easily punished by other characters, forcing him to play a rough game of cat and mouse. Still, if you want a character that has massive payoff and deals insane damage, Akatsuki is for you.
Akatsuki has few options for going in that are actually safe for him. He has shoot lightning bolts at his enemies to lure out some sort of punishable move, but other than that, he can only try to cheese his enemies with Armor-Piercing Legs, which acts as an overhead. This can be tricky to deal with as an enemy, but whiffing Armor-Piercing Legs leaves Akatsuki completely open to be punished. His normals are pretty okay and his damage is ridiculously high for even his easiest executed combos, you can use this to your advantage. He is DEVASTATED by zone heavy enemies like Hilda, Vatista, and some variations of Carmine as he has little to no way of getting in easily. You'll need to bait out the enemies with your godlike wits in that situation. However, since most zone-heavy enemies have little defensive options, you can proceed to tear them apart when you close in.
+ Very high damage
+ Close ranged pressure game is really, really strong
+ Beginner friendly
- Low mobility options
- Little answer to zone-heavy opponents
Nanase
Nanase is another character that isn't exactly very hard to use, but can be kind of hard to master. She has a rather basic set-up for a rush-down character. She's got a gap closer, a DP, and some sort of zone control with her tornado. All of her moves have follow-ups, which gives her slightly more lee-way to make mistakes, but take in mind that she is very punishable. Nanase has some mobility thanks to her wind-based moves, however she can't really abuse them too much, making her kind of a sitting duck at times. Without a projectile, she has trouble dealing with zone-heavy characters and cannot poke back. Having an unsafe gap-closer doesn't make things easier for her. However, up close, she's quite powerful, capable of hard hitting combos and mix-ups. Techincally, she's not too tough, if you want someone who can rush down and has mobility options, Nanase is a girl you can look for.
When it comes to special moves, Nanase is just GEARED to close in on her opponents. Her gap closer can either come out quick at mid range, or close in full screen slowly. Throwing out her gap closer for no reason leaves her to be punished, but she can follow up for knock the enemy back, letting her stay safe against some enemies. If the gap closer is used to punish the enemy, it sets up Nanase for a favorable position, and up close, she does have decent pressure. Her tornado move sets her up for an overhead, either that or it helps re position her. Her DP is pretty strong since it goes vertically up 90 degrees. Still, her moves are UNSAFE, and especially her gap closer, she CAN get knocked out of it. Don't go too crazy with Nanase and you should be gold.
+ Good mobility around the field
+ Follow-ups with many of her specials
+ Beginner friendly
- Easily punished
- Vulnerable to zone-heavy opponents
Byakuya
Byakuya....another one of the harder characters to use in UNIEL. I honestly don't really like Byakuya for his high technical curve, trap set-up and lockdown based gameplay. In the right hands, he is QUITE the beast, but you don't see many Byakuyas because he isn't the easiest character to play. Being a trap set-up character he NEEDS time to prep the field to his liking and take control of his enemy: against someone who wants to go full ham on him or someone who just refuses to fight him by not moving at all, Byakuya CAN struggle. But, a good Byakuya finds his ways. He is probably best at mid-range, his mobility is below average, his normals aren't the fastest, but they do have some range, allowing to safely poke at some very melee-ranged opponents. If you're a fan of characters like Naoto in "P4A" or Rachel in "BB", then Byakuya might work for you.
Byakuya has poor pressure up close and almost no ranged pressure at all with zero projectiles. His mid game pressure is okay because of his lengthy normals. He wants to start his combos mid-screen, then closing up to finish with his rekka move. His rekka is pretty unsafe normally, so its pretty much only used as a combo ender. He can set up with webs around the field safely after he puts some distance between him and his opponent. He is able to set them up in the air and on the ground if needed (even ends with a teleport for him). Opponents hit by the web lose GRD, and are stunned momentarily, allowing Byakuya for easy combos. However, he has trouble closing in on ranged opponents and his defensive manuvers against heavy rushdown are rather limited. He needs to stay at mid ranged to stay safe and play the field to his advantage.
+ Mid-ranged game and pressure can be quite strong
+ Set-up traps can play the field to his favor
+ Can snowball matches really hard
- Weak defense against heavy zone control opponents or heavy rushdown
- Very hard to use
