Shadow Jago Live Stream Wednesday

They should just clarify once and for all the ultimate move. Yes or no. Tho I think it’s a no. No word on season 1 stage ultras either

Well I’ve found my new male main, but like most here I am hoping that the, “Shago is the only character with an Ultimate” comment means that they’re referring to this season and not S3, would really crush my heart if true.

I wouldn’t be surprised if instead of every character getting an ultimate, they received a grab move similar to what shadow jago now has. As a universal mechanism of instinct usage. Although they might have to completely rework Spinal in order for this feature to be balanced.

I showed up late and only caught the end of the Stream, but I liked what I saw.
Most importantly though…
RED SHAGO CONFIRMED
YES! THEY WERE LISTENING! :heart_eyes:

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Maya, Kan Ra, Aganos, Riptor, TJ, Hisako, Cinder all got one, unless I’m mistaken. I think only Omen and Aria were left out. I vaguely recall a statement from Keits during one of the streams saying that the recapture mechanic wasn’t supposed to go to all of the S2 characters, but just kind of happened that way. Because of the way things went, though, and how many S2 characters have them, it feels like S1 characters missed out.

My point is that recapture, to me, feels like a mechanic that you need to learn and integrate into your play style, which can open up options to continuing a combo but is also risky or blockable. The best analogy I can think of is the concept of Shadow Counters or Counter Breakers - imagine if Season One characters could do these things, but very few characters afterwards. There’s a big difference between a gameplay mechanic and a finishing move.

That’s what I am saying: Ultimates a finihing move so it’s not like there’s any reason to not only exclude it to ONE character. I don’t some characters having different mechanics it adds to diversity and you still break a recapture and can probably break an opponent that staggers you.

Yea I was hoping to get these between season 2 and 3, but it’s not looking like it. And I don’t really expect it to happen during Season 3 :disappointed_relieved:


Shadow Jago himself looks awesome though. He’s just tons of fun to watch fight! Those Combos! All the teleports and his effects look great too. My only slight complaint is after you do the instinct grab thing, it zooms in to his face and then suddenly snaps back full screen, it doesn’t flow very well and looks a little funky. A smoother transition from the zoom would be better. Other than that and the whole Ultimates confusion, Great stream! Really looking forward to playing him friday! Great work to IG and MS, thanks for taking the time to stream!

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I don’t entirely understand what you’re debating here. My entire point is that I don’t like the idea that new mechanics are mainly for new characters, and not updated to already existing characters. If S1 characters don’t get reasonable access to newer mechanics, they will end up being too simple, and have less options than other characters. For example, what if 7 characters in Season 3 can use the stagger mechanic, but only one character each from S1 and S2?

How does this look like I’m saying existing characters shouldn’t get Ultimates? All I said was that I don’t care as much about Ultimates as other people.

In that case we were clearly not on the same page. I had assumed you were saying only S3 should get Ultimates.

But if this is about mechanics between S1 and S2 let us speak of it in private so it doesn’t go off-topic, at least not to far.

Really though so long as stagger isn’t breakable it should be fine though.

Yeah, they’re really going to have to clarify the whole Ultimate “exclusivity” thing soon. Shago looked and played amazing, yet now this is all anyone’s talking about. I’m not someone that desperately needed Ultimates in the first place, but if I were, I’d be a bit salty about this. Regardless, making a match ending move exclusive to one character seems like an odd choice.

I still don’t think that’s the route they’ll go. I mean really, creating the “ULTIMATE” graphic, darkening the screen… All that effort just so one character can use that stuff? It just seems counterintuitive to me. I know that’s less work than having to create an actual ultimate for every character, but still… To give something like that to one character and none of the others? That just seems highly illogical to me.

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I agree with you on this one. I really hope they reconsider making it only for Shago. Sadly I would LOVE to be able to talk about how awesome Shago plays but it feels so overwhelming that Ultimates may only be exclusive to him so it’s the only thing really that just kills it all for me.

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You probably can’t answer this but when ki comes to PC can I buy sjago then

There were colors, and where there are new colors, there’s a chance of new accessories. They did say the full character treatment, and so far, he’s got 9 colors like everyone else (except Omen). It’s likely he has accessories they kept under wraps as a surprise for Friday. Can’t make it too easy on us.

For me, Ultimates and other flashy things take a far back seat to combat philosophy and solid design.

So from the sounds of it, I’m going to love the stream archive :smile:

Thanks again to all who posted about the stream content!

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They clearly got that covered. I would like fr them to put in Ultimates but it literally staggered my optimism for season3.
If I have wait later down the road for Ultimates fine, but I don’t think IG should skimp out on them.

The fact that they said straight up “Shago is the only character in this video game with an ultimate” scares me.

I would a hoped that since they’re taking their time with season 3 they’d be trying to blow us and everyone else away. Gonna be honest I’m as disappointed now as when I found out it wasn’t gonna end a full game when it was released with 6 characters.
It’s a diamond that needs a serious polishing

I personally feel like all the hype I had since the trailer just got ripped away.

Same, felt like the game will never be complete without Ultimates and I had been looking forward to it since season1.

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Gonna talk about gameplay.

I think the best aspect of Shago might be his zoning. It looks pretty good, and shadow fireball (to catch people jumping over) looks like it does pretty good damage.

My main initial concerns were him being gimmicky, in the sense that he could do surge DP or surge slide and catch solid defense (if you know me, I don’t like mixup reversals in fighting games), but that doesn’t look to be the case. Keits said on stream that there is a pretty easy timing that will OS block surge DP and still punish regular DP, and if that’s the case, that’s good enough for me. Surge slide also looks OS blockable, and it doesn’t do a ton of damage and you’ll need a ton of meter to recapture or cash out. I can see people freaking out about this for the first week, and then it goes away.

His pressure looks okay, but incredibly meter heavy. If his safest thing without meter is -3, that is actually very weak. If you cancel button into overhead, I bet you can shadow counter on reaction reliably (or, at least, enough of the time to make it a risky idea). So all he’s really left with is step kick → dash → into throw/dive kick mixup (which is unsafe if you guess right), and one half of that needs a bunch of meter to lead to anything. If Shago has no meter, how are you going to get damage? You probably can’t, really… looks like you’ll have to take a risk on the ground to open someone up.

His dashes look fun to zip around with, but actually look pretty weird as a spacing tool. I imagine playing footsies with this character is actually gonna be pretty hard, because he can’t really safely poke and being at a range where his moves connect seems tough. I imagine a lot of gameplans for day 1 Shago will find this out the hard way. They will try to do goofy dash through mixups that are really unsafe, find out that only really dash forward throw is reliable (and needs meter to lead to anything), and then go back to playing Jago because he gets insane pressure that is all + frames and is a lot easier to pick a spot on the screen and defend/start pressure with.

His combos look really fun though. KI needs more “flashy combo” characters (like Cinder) and I really like this aspect of Shago. Great for combo videos, great to get people excited on stream. This type of stuff directly leads to an increase in KI popularity.

So yeah, overall I like how he looks, and if surge slide and surge DP are reliably defendable then I think this character will be fun and probably upper mid tier somewhere. A lot of cool pressure if you can build a bunch of meter, and otherwise a lot riskier/harder on the ground than it looked on stream.

EDIT - Oh, also, activating instinct and whiff punishing throws with raging demon looks pretty cool, BUT, keep in mind that the best you can do here is 48% and you build no meter. Lots of characters will do way, way more than 48% to you with a good use of instinct meter (probably even Shago, if he uses his regular instinct tools!). I like that it will be situationally useful to kill someone in round 2, though. If Shago had a wall splat ender (which I don’t think he does?) this would probably be really good to bait throws. As it stands it seems like a great reaction whiff punish but not much else (which is fun and cool but not KI’s best move). If someone like Sabrewulf or Sadira reacts with instinct to whiff punish you, you’re going to lose a lot more than 48% on average.

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