@D:
D by D, The Red Cloak is an original character meant to be a sort of self-insert into MUGEN. As far as I can tell his stance and animations are for the most part entirely originally sprited, which is the first thing I jotted down in Notepad because I like such material. NVM he is a recolor of Toni from Shadow Fighter lol. He is of pretty small stature and his skin is grey and he wears similar clothes to Terry Bogard (his big portrait is in fact appears to be a recolor of Terry's NGPC pocket portrait, but I dunno, I am basing this assumption off this picture of bead art someone made. His small portrait is just a regular headshot image.) His spritework is pretty good but he uses some different, often clashy effects tho- his qcb + lp seems to resemble the effect of Ash Crimson's flash kick, while his qcb + mp uses a standard, transparent windy effect. He also appears to have left some kfm sprites in the sff as well as some weird palette differences on his gethits but I'm not sure if they show up ingame. Here are some examples of the effects I am talking about though:
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
Otherwise he seems to be fine, with the exception of his standing and crouching mk (as well as his run sprite), which are literally sprites ripped from Terry Bogard with the pallette matching:
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u know vemon's ankle hurt like a mother*****! LOL - DJHANNIBALROYCE
I'm not sure if this is in here as a joke or anything, but he certainly does not seem like a joke character. If it is a joke, it's very meta and actually funny but I still think these two sprites look way out of place and mar the character's overall presentation. He has some cool intros, one of which has him flying down with bat wings and one where he surveys and compliments the stage before realizing there is a fight going on in surprise. He appears to utilize original voice acting for it which is nice though some sounds, particularly that intro are kind of low while his basic sounds which are completely different (and probably lifted off another char) are pretty high. The character himself is kind of interesting. He appears to have some pretty demonic themes and motifs but remains a very lighthearted character otherwise with a lot of different things going on, I am not exactly sure what D is really but he appears to be a humanoid demon of sorts based on these observations. For example, his HP focus has him charge up for a second before spikes come out of his back (they remind me of Morrigan.) So he does have some cool touches that allow me to praise the originality of D. Please covet this compliment, its worth a lot man. Here I have included a pic of D's standing HP focus:
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
WARNING: THIS SECTION IS LONG.
Now lets move on to gameplay. Honestly I think what hurts this character the most is its gameplay. He has cool things but I don't think his system is very fleshed out or practical. He is currently 5 button gameplay as he lacks an HK. In air, neither his HP or HK works. In the SFF I see some leftover stuff so I guess either these sprites were unused or never intended to be in (or dropped.) His standing HK which is the spikes, works like a focus attack. It takes a second to be charged than hits for about the same damage as your MP and causes a second of stun and then knockdown. Because of the pause I do not think it is possible to combo into, just like a real. The tradeoff is this move is AFAIK unblockable (from what I tested in arcade mode.) The stun is negligible, I can only get one extra hit in before the opponent falls so it is best to just use a super or his medium qcbs. In terms of being used as a focus attacks, I think it comes out too fast to really be balanced. Focus attacks usually take 3 years but this one only takes a short amount of time giving people way less time to react.
His gameplay also maps a different special to each button. His qcb + lp is called ectouppercut, with ash crimson fx that sends the opponent flying and wallbounces, however you cannot juggle off of it. So it also seems very useless in theory. His qcb + mk tornado punch is by far one of his most useful tools, it works like a corkscrew blow or one of Balrog's charge punches as he moves forward and hits you with it. It hits about 7 times so it boosts your combo counter and ego when you combo into it nicely. I got a nice 11 hit combo with it by c. lp > c. lp > c. lp > c. mp > tornado punch. This seems like a cool bnb though the damage really isnt great. You also have his two kick specials on qcf + lk and mk respectively, which both use the same tatsu animation. With his light variant you can actually briefly control the direction you go in, which is cool I guess, and a good way to catch a jump in or someone trying to cross or something. His medium variant will have him hit you in one direction and end in a crack shoot. Both are pretty good and can be comboed into with correct timing. To top it off he has a qcb + p move that allows him to reflect projectiles, and holy shit does it reject projectiles back fast. Its cool but almost ridiculous in how fast it reverses. Overall his system goes from kinda broken to okay to pretty useless in terms of his uppercut. So he lacks some consistency overall.
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
Some other system notes: He can double jump simply by pressing u again at the apex of your jump. I'm not sure about how useful this is, though it allows him to escape easier from pressure with back jumps and you can also use a neutral jump to attempt to bait something. According to the readme, throws can be done with f + lp or mp but seem to be nonexistent which makes me sad cause a character without a throw is severely limited in options. As to his hitboxes there are a couple of questionable ones, particularly on his Terry standing MK and his crouching LP. The MK just looks weird and unnecessary, and the red on the c. LP seems too thin.
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
Finally let's talk supers. His qcbx2 + lp is "Demon Head" and it- dear god what the fuck is happening
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
For Demon Head, D pulls out the head of a demon and it breathes fire on you. The hitbox placement is horrendous. and absolutely batshit insane on hit. Depending on where it hits it will do different things: from close so it draws you in right next to D, hits you 132 times, and the clsn viewer looks like its actually barfing (from medium distance it will move the character slightly around, stop for a second, and move them more, hard to explain.) It looked normal albeit turrible when it wasnt hitting; here it is without hit confirm for comparison.
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
However, on hit the flame goes everywhere, including behind you, as it drags you in and the hitboxes contort around like a russian gymnast. This super is inexcusably shoddily coded, further dragging an interesting concept into the dirt and then spitting on it for good measure. There has to be a lot better ways to do this, I suggest someone try out Demon Head and give D some tips on how to better implement such a super. If you do it close it even flips the demon head so it can continue hitting you after you've passed it. So essentially D turns the head around and start spewing flames onto himself. Good thing he's a demon.... thing. His qcbx2 + K is "smashing pumpkins" and its hilarious, he does his tatsu and scores of pumpkins come flying out you for absolutely dino damage. I would screenshot but for some reason its extremely difficult to get this move to come out. I had to piano mash the input to get it to work. I'm not sure if this is yet again a problem with me. Try it for yourselves, its pretty self explanatory anyway. Damage is way too high especially considering it has the same power cost as Demon Head which does substantially lower (while hitting more lmfao). He has two other supers to look at, but I didn't have sufficient time to do em. At this point, however I think I have already listed sufficient flaws for D to look at.
To conclude, a noble effort and lots of great and unique ideas with a very off-kilter system. It is hurt by damage issues, the super safe focus and reflect, the wonky hitboxes and his demon head super which I think is terrible. Some of the sprites do seem very rough and I also dislike the use of Terry's sprites, even if they arent placeholders, as it make its seem very seem altogether very unfinished. It is helped by the nice spot of voice acting and the cool intros, some interesting tech and creative ideas. So at this point I am conflicted. I don't want the D, but I do not reject the D either. At this point I am very ambivalent about the D. Time will tell, with proper updates it could become really good.
Edit: Thanks to Melvana for pointing out this was not originally sprited but a recolor of Toni from Shadow Fighter. I would never have known that, shows how much I know
Download Link: http://mugenguild.com/forum/topics/nightmare-christmas-release-marco-kaiser-knuckle-149388.0.html (scroll down to find D)
Presentation: 2.5/5
Sprites/Graphics: 2.5/5
Sounds: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
AI: 3/5
Overall: 2.8/5