Another week, another trailer. The silhouette was, IMO, pretty obvious, though there was a small chance of it being something else(in this case, Kasumi was brought up.) But c'mon, most of us knew it was Leona Heidern.
And she looks excellent!
I was very happy here given that I'm a big fan of the Ikari Warriors as an entire unit(Ralf is one of my mains as most know), and so starting them rolling out was something I was waiting for. I mean when it comes down to my favorites in KOF, it's basically the Sacred Treasures, Adelheid and the Ikari Warriors, and I have the first thing and now they're putting the third out!
She looks really cool in the trailer; it was not what I'd call a spectacular trailer in showing off, but it did well at what it did show off; it showed Leona, a beloved regular, doing her classic moves in cool ways. It showed us some combo example, and it gave her back her Heart Attack(AKA: her sticky earring bombs with delayed explosion), and those were fun in the past. She does the guard CD attack at some point(I still suspect that this is going to cost.) The delayed blast seems like it could be really fun for combos and I think putting this back in is going to make her more fun to play.
Also this video was the first time they didn't show any 'Max mode' stuff. She did not once, that I saw, get the blue glow, so whatever that mode is wasn't put in. They showed her do EX-Super Cancel-Dream Cancel, all out of max mode. This could in theory cost 4.5-5 bars depending on how expensive EX moves are, but I'm *still* thinking that we're looking at some sort of dual system-again, two meters, two resources, or two modes even-I won't rule out that third thing.
Another bit is that showing off those supers out of max mode...we dunno what Max Mode even does still, except to enable triple supers, which I cannot think is the only thing. I am admittedly getting antsy on the system stuff. Not that I don't trust it-it looks fun so far! But I just wanna see it already. Hell, I'd be happy to just see the UI; they don't have to explain anything, just show the UI. I'm sure it'll keep us talking about it. I mean they could even show a *picture* of it and I'd be fine!
Anyway, not much system stuff shown except for showing you can do some stuff out of the mode. But this time, name-wise, she's actually called Leona Heidern(where they often left her last name out in older games.). Also, her artwork and a blurb popped up today:
One CAN read 'Important Mission' as an ':O' moment, but then when you think about it, the Ikaris so far had helped stop doomsday lasers(NESTS), as well as doomgates(Ash Saga, when they were pretty overall important, even moreso than they USUALLY are), and given that Ikari 2 had Ralf and Clark fighting aliens(I don't even think I remember seeing those games cut from the canon, either), 'Important Mission' could mean either "Huge" or "Tuesday" for them. Or that just may be the same damn thing.
Now what team do I think she'll be on? Well the Ikari Warriors of course, but I'll allow a small chance that she could be with Heidern himself instead of Ralf and Clark, though I think the latter is MUCH more likely. (Though I do think Heidern is forming his own team.) I'm not ruling OUT the Heidern/Leona/X team, but I just think she is more likely with Ralf&Clark, due just the huge amount of closeness she has with those two.
I mean...;_;
So we'll see. We may get more hints on this soon. But the chances of her leaving *The Ikari Squad* are less than nil; she would never abandon her close people, and Heidern would never send her with strangers. She really doesn't talk to anyone but her squad. It would be senseless and just go against everything. Heidern taking her is one thing but having her on a different squad in general? Not happening. In her case it's more a guess of 'Which Ikaris is she going with.' And seeing Traditional Ikari(with Heidern taking Whip, given they were both DLC as well) is one of the teams I can see sticking.
Team Hints?
Looking over old videos, I was trying to see if I could find any actual team hints for the team-ups. While there are In Hindsight things, they're very hard to tell while they're happening, even though I did call the Sacred Treasures for a myriad of reasons. CYS notwithstanding(we knew they would be together), there were some things that one COULD, if you're going a little Pepe Silvia, see as team hints.
Team Hero: Benimaru's shirt was seemingly the giveaway here(and what I saw, was the reason some people did indeed predict him for Hero Team.) Nakata even pointed this out in his art, talking about his updated look for the team.
Sacred Treasures: For me there were numerous hints. Even putting the other story bits of resurrections aside, Kyo forcing Benimaru to mentor the kids(one with some dangerous power he could barely control) told he had far more important things to do than to drink with Shingo, and that meant Treasures duty. Then there was the fact that Iori and Kyo both had their symbols in their level 3's. Finally, Iori getting Orochi's voice superimposed over his during said level 3? I think in this case it was like 'Yeah these guys are a thing.' So this was like, hints even before the trailer, and then hints right away in the first trailer with Iori's treasure and voice, and it kept going.
Art of Fighting: In this case, it seemed to be King's AoF2 stage. That was what seemed to split people on who the 3rd of AoF was going to be. In hindsight, I could see this as the hint that putting King on her AoF 2 stage would put her in AoF. Yuri in Pao Pao is interesting since Pao Pao has been used for WFT a lot, but ALSO it was the OG AoF's stage, so that was a bit of a ???, but seeing King on AoF2 I feel may have been the stronger hint. We didn't see this until King was announced, though, so she wasn't the first in line.
Fatal Fury: A little mix of things here. For one-this is one of those teams that rarely breaks. The only time they did was in Ash Saga, when Andy was off training Hokutomaru for two games and Joe had to defend his title for one. But it seems like if they're all *in*, they're all together. Now that's not really a hint, though-but I sort of feel like their picks of soundtrack for Andy and Joe, as well as use of the Beach Stage, were enough of a subtle hint that we'd see these three together as usual. Hell, thinking how it's also the 'Year of Fatal Fury' like they were saying, seeing Joe's trailer right off the bat use his old music was probably at least a small hint itself.
Unformed Teams:
WFT: I don't even know the hints here. I've been looking over both Mai's and Yuri's stuff, and I can't say I have found anything. The only thing I have here is the knowledge that this team *usually*, when they're around(well, half the time anyway), takes on a new, or newer, lady in their ranks, like I discussed. But that's not an in-trailer hint so much as it is just some team history.
Ikari Warriors: So far we've only had Leona's trailer. She's on stages that we've seen already, so nothing new there, but they use Irregular Mission as the track for it, which was the Ikari's theme in KOF XIII(which was also subsequently the KOF where they were doing a lot of work to solve the plot involved in the Ash Saga-and the Ikaris were quite important in the Ash Saga overall, even narrowly winning the '03 tournament. Which then resulted in Adel and Heidern working together in, you guessed it, 13, behind the scenes, since the character cuts galore happened.) Leona was with Ralf & Clark there, and she also was very very steadfast in joining them in that one as shown in the team stories(which, well, 13 team stories aren't a hint, they're just team history.)
Besides the track *possibly* alluding to her teammates(Ralf/Clark probably? That said that's...sort of the common guess), her cool sentai outro pose she does could also be a bit of a Ralf/Clark hint? I'm kinda squinting here but we might no more after we see more stuff popping up.
Alrighty, decent sized blog this week! Here's hoping for some more news incoming or some more hints next week. More mechanics, a UI picture maybe...? I can hope.
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