Yes, I did watch like 16 hours of Max. What gave it away? Support the channel: / hqrubbish Join the Discord: / discord My Twitter: / hqrubbish 2nd channel: / @timesting #fgc #baiken #guiltygear
I liked Baiken's playstyle in Ggxxac+r, and it never occurred to me until a year ago that most people liked her for 2 big reasons. She is one of my 4 mains in that game (the other 3 being Order Sol, Faust and Potemkin) and I main her in Samurai Shodown. Haven't gotten a chance to play xrd or strive yet though
I love the current state of TH-cam, I click on a video titled ‘Do You Actually Like Baiken?’ I then notice that the video is 50 MINUTES LONG and it opens with, “I’m sure you’re familiar with The thought experiment of the ship of Theseus.”
I see Baiken's changes as kind of meshing with her character development. Throughout the series she's mellowed out and become mentally healthier due to finding motivations outside of revenge. The Baiken of GG1 was violent and bloodthirsty, while in the X series she's preparing for battle. In Xrd she's helping people and doing things that aren't chasing down "That Man" and finally come Strive she's found something to truly dedicate herself to with Delilah. When a character's gameplay and aesthetic changes, sometimes you don't feel like sticking around (trust me as a KoF fan I know this very well) but I think at least within the context of the game it's justified. Also gotta be that guy and hit you with the um actually, because Xrd Baiken has definitely seen a pretty tremendous increase in usage. She's a fixture of top 8s both on the West Coast and in TNS online brackets.
absolutely agreed. I think Daisuke is generally really good at showing character developing through changes in their design. Examples include: Ky wearing a much more civilian outfit in Strive instead of Holly Order robes to show how he's growing past his child soldier phase, Ramlethal wearing less ridicoulous (even if still ridiculous) clothes, Testament looking way less edgy as they stop resenting humanity or, y'know, Bridget. The problem with that is the fact that Strive is supposed to be showing us these characters have a happy ending of sorts, so a lot of the cast is mellowed out - the game basically lacks an actual villain figure, considering that HC is still acting polite, I-no never drops her faux-nice attitude and with Zato no longer being an asshole he was pre-Xrd, fight scenarios lack any genuine drama. Even Granblue Fantasy VS, which people memed on because of how polite and nice characters were to each other had acctual villains. I think in this instance Daisuke's creative consistency kinda detracts from the overall appeal of the game by limiting the characters' emotions. And as a guy who loved Baiken specifically because of how angry and mean she was all the time (hell, she even had personalized insults for every character in the cast), that's kind of a shame. Wish fullfilment in media doesn't have to be power fantasy. As a generally calm and emotionless person I found myself gravitating to anime specifically beacuse a lot of it presents the fantasy in which being emotional, even angry and irrational can actually be a good thing, it can be the source of your power. I'm not happy seing Baiken become more functional because her being so openly angry and emotional and yet so confident at the same time is what made her stand out. Also, Smaller Bust Baiken and Smaller Hair Baiken and No Eyepatch Baiken (the inclusion of eyepatch. where previously she would just flaunt her missing eye is probably the biggest indicator of the change in her design philosophy) are mods that make her playable in Strive
@@koldi9746100% agree. Especially with mods for strive being required. I got into gg in strive, mostly for baiken cause I saw how badass she was, but then I started playing +R and honestly, I'm kinda mad at the modern baiken design now, cause I love the OG design for her soooo much more. Ah well.
100% Even if I loved playing a character of an older game, if they have some sort of character growth from game to game its almost good to see it, and so the new gameplay changes that come to reflect that I welcome and even desire.
I’ve mained her across iterations since she was first playable, and in that time, I’ve grown and changed-dramatically in some aspects-as a person. I love her Strive appearance. She’s finally, genuinely allowing herself to breathe, to take care of herself; it’s evident in how she carries herself, how her body has changed, and how relaxed she is around others in comparison to the past. I am getting around to taking care of myself and letting go of things, too-it’s like I’ve grown up alongside her.
Max talking about Baiken moving towards being the character people thought she was just hammers that Baiken really is an ideal. She is not a moveset or a specific design, but a collection of tropes and history(her legacy, lore and time in the collective consciousness is part of the reason she can't be substituted by any similar designs.) that people are attached to. She's THE One Armed Badass Sexy Samurai in videogames, and people want that more than they want perfect design cohesion. She's kind of unique in that regard, but i suspect Juri will have the same fate.
Baiken's just a microcosm of the series as a whole. Aesthetically, thematically, and mechanically, the series itself has been in a constant state of flux where once defining features have been phased out while still somehow feeling like the core identity is there. Baiken has changed because Guilty Gear has changed. What they are now isn't what they were and what they are in a decade will likely be different as well. Growth and change is the point. Also, the whole "no one plays Baiken" thing: 6th most overall played in Xrd, currently 3rd most played in Strive. While being DLC in both games. People play Baiken. She's popular. May not have a high presence in top level play, but she is very widely used among the total playerbase.
Change isn't always forward or progressing. In far a lot of times, it leads to decline. I feel like that's why what happened with Strive ultimately and consequently Guilty Gear as a whole.
im a 100% sure you never played old guilty gears with the real badass "ima guard cancel your whole life bro" baiken. she is but a shadow of what she were, please aknowledge this and let's make a minute of silence in her honor.
Baiken never particularly appealed to me but I have to say, I think what people always find appealing about her is her attitude. She hasn't become less abrasive and masculine over time, it's only now that this very brash way of being is paired with exxentuating and contrasting with her female figure. The ending shot of her Xrd IK is perfect for that. She's casually smoking a pipe and looking down at the opponent she just killed with a scowl, but her body (not just her tits) moves in an alluring way. Or stuff like her taunt laugh, or her presentation in story modes. I guess it's something like the same reason people like tsundere characters? Except it's made 1. More extreme because Guilty Gear 2. Less anime-ish and cloying because she's a grown woman and doesn't just call people baka and get offended over nothing 3. Her power and confidence means oogling her doesn't feel... slimy? I know I'm trying to explain sex appeal but that's kinda a big thing for why people like fighting game characters.
Number 3 is a very important element, so I'd say you've done well with your explanation! Personality (or demeanor) allows for the attractiveness of the character to emanate from who they are, as opposed to merely how they look, which in turn makes whatever outward presentation of sexual appeal there is feel far more genuine. I mean, you're definitely still "supposed" to look at Baiken's bits, but ogling her feels more incidental. She exudes coolness, and a bit of goofyness before downright sexual appeal. If I could draw a comparison to a similar character as far as masculinity goes, Catherine from Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a great example. She's a remarkably attractive character, as to be expected, but it's her fun-loving nature and complete confidence in her own ability that really sells her appeal. Ogling her then doesn't feel fake, or slimy, as you put it. It's just casual, in a healthy way.
I think part of it comes down to this: there are characters in games that people love, but don't necessarily play. The characters are familiar faces and you love the look and/or personality, but you know absolutely nothing about how they play nor do you have the inclination to find out. Even then, when the character is missing, you just don't feel right. You may not have played that character specifically, but you're so used to them being there that once they're gone, you feel like the game's incomplete and something is fundamentally wrong. For me, two such characters are Leon and Gen Fu in Dead Or Alive. I don't play either of them nor do I have any interest in learning them, but since they've always been there (Gen Fu was in every game since the first one and Leon was introduced in DOA2), they feel like integral parts of the game to me. When they were both absent in Dead Or Alive 6, I felt like something was irreconcilably wrong and I still can't wrap my head around their exclusion (you can't say anything about story because none of the DLC characters in that game have any story relevance whatsoever). Another instance fir me is the exclusion of Choi and Chang in KOF XV. Did I play them? No, but one of my brothers did. Did I feel like something was missing when I found out they were cut? Absolutely. Do I want them back knowing full and well that I personally have no interest in playing them? Without question. Why? Because KOF doesn't feel right to me without them. I like Baiken's designs and see each one as a logical progression given how time is passing, characters are aging, motivations are evolving, and aesthetics are changing to match that. I was introduced to her first with Xrd and while she could do with a smaller ponytail, I can see her also letting her hair grow out like that over time thinking it'll make her look more threatening (yes, it's headcanon, but it's something that I think would fit). Do I hate any of her previous designs? No. Do I like her Xrd design best? Yes. Do I see why people would want Baiken to stay and will deal with whatever concessions are made just so they can see her again? Yes. After all, ArcSys went out of their way to give her a unique Instant Kill theme in Xrd and unique intros and outros in Strive just to show everyone that she, for one reason or another, is special. I see nothing wrong with someone's presence being all you need to be happy.
This is how I felt with Bridget going into Strive. I'd barely touched fighting games, and hardly knew anything about Guilty Gear. I just knew of Bridget because of channels like WatchMojo covering her for obvious reasons back in the day. So when I saw Strive for the first time and was taken away by its presentation, I immediately went: "Hey, is that one character I know in the game? Bridget, right? No? Well are they in the last one? No? Why not?" When Bridget was announced, I was happy a familiar face was coming back, and was happy for her fans. Hearing about the change in her presentation made me even more happy for the character and her fans. At that point I was heavily considering trying fighting games for real, and the combination of "more beginner friendly," "familiar face returns," and "wow that Ramlethal character looks cool." pushed me to buy the game. Now I'm hooked on my second ever traditional fighter and heavily considering Street Fighter 6, even managing to get in on the second closed beta.
I see people try to tell me from time to time that "story" in fighting games have no impact on how they feel about the game and that all they care about is the gameplay. But with time, it's clear to me that things really aren't that cut and dry as there are a lot of factors that fit into that description that DO have an impact. Presentation and characterisation often tends to be the hook that gets people to try out certain characters. Maybe they appeal to you because you find them cool (like Sol did with me), maybe like Bridget or Testament they act as positive representation of you or their theme resonated with you. The point here is that a lot of factors go into why people stick with some characters beyond just how they play. It's why Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite bombed. A game like Team Fortress 2 is actually pretty good with highlighting this. Imagine if someone like Demoman or Heavy didn't exist. That game would not have the same type of charm it has now and feel lacking in some way.
Yeah Baiken has slowly been shifting away from her original design and while I understand a lot of the older fans feel slighted or like their character was taken away from them but I think it's a bit more than that. I feel like Arcsys really latched onto an opportunity to take a sort of originally maligned character and push her to the forefront of the game's "visual presentation". Yes it's fanservice and yes her toolkit has been shifted very far from her first iteration but the simplification of a rather complicated toolkit has been positive for player retention both for the game series but also people are having less difficulty sinking time into Baiken herself. She's a weirdo and while I've enjoyed her since +R, strive has been the most approachable version for me. Edit: I played with a friend for 6 months before they asked about why her kimono was torn, not realizing she was missing an arm
I think she had the worst disconnect from visual to playstyle that spawned the "there are no baiken players" meme. You see a samurai character and what you get is a contractor that lays floor mats and barely any actual sword moves You get a survivor of double amputation and a sword swinger that's got absolute garbage toughness stat and defensive playstyle. You buy into a female Sol and get stuck with a porcelain turtle.
@@HellecticMojo It's kinda worse when you add in her amputated arm has weird gimmicky things an engineer-esque character would have. A retractable hookchain? A fucking gun? A tether? It's a lot of random bullshit. lol
@@Xenozillex that shit is cool as hell tho, as someone who actually mains this character, I'd be pissed off if she was just "sword character", it's not like there's a rule for Samurais to only ever use Katanas either, they'd mostly use spears, ocasionally guns and bows historically
Tbh the fact that she doesn't refer to herself as a samurai should tell you everything you need to know. She may use a katana and wear some traditional garments, but that's about it. She serves no lord, she doesn't really have a code of honor, she fights "dirty" in a sense because she has concealed weapons. And I think that's awesome! She breaks the stereotype and it makes her so much more unique and fun than any old samurai character. I think her differences are her strongest points
@@HellecticMojo Survivor but a porcelain doll? You're half right, she has low health but her Guts rating is as high if not higher than Chipp's depending on what game you play. Looking at how skinny and scraggly she is (rather WAS) it'd make sense for her to take more damage than normal since she's the same body type as every other low health character in the game. HOWEVER, she IS a survivor because has the Guts rating to back it up and survive a lot longer than she should
Very interesting video! There was a ton of interesting stuff about her past versions, and stuff I didn't really think about in terms of her design. I do wish you did a little more research into her Strive version though - Hiiragi is pretty interesting tool with a lot of interesting implications and techniques. To be honest, I feel like even though she doesn't have a ton of special moves, they all have a lot of applications in different situations (though to be fair, a bunch of them are tied to system mechanics like meter or kara cancelling). In Strive's case, I feel like she still needs more time to grow - some of the techniques you mentioned from past games are super interesting to me, but I wonder how long it took for them to be discovered. Again, very good video!
You broke down Baiken’s design, history and popularity. You explain a lot things that I didn’t expect. (VA, Max and move changes.) Visuals and art you put into this were great as well. I’ve known people who only main this character for her looks then dropped her when they stopped winning in Strive. The video gave me an appreciation on how Baiken has changed over the years. Better or for worse. I hope the next game will continue to have Baiken. Thanks for making this Rubbish. I hope this video get more people to see your other content.
Baiken is one of those characters people love to have around no matter the circumstances. She fits the mold of certain people's favorite tropes and that's all that matters.
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines you really need to understand terms like gaslighting before throwing it out there man. The video in question (or not, not sure what you feel about it) seems to be a pretty good discussion about the topic although the presentation was a bit too long in some areas
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines It's not, why do you think there was so many memes about Baiken fans not actually playing Baiken before strive? A lot of people did just kind of have a surface level fondness of her so poking fun at it isn't really an issue
@@GreatRusio I absolutely understand the term. But thanks for attempting to gaslight me about the meaning of the word, and demonstrating what gaslighting is in the process. You don't like that people like you are being called out for it, so now you attempt to gaslight people about what gaslighting is. Gaslighting really is like an uncontrollable tic for you people, isn't it? You can't help yourself. It's your defense against everything.
She's the reason I picked up guilty gear, but since I like her more for her lore and coolness factor, I ended up telling a ton of people that "I like 95% of her design".
As a casual who started with Strive, here's what makes Baiken appealing to me outside of the obvious sex appeal: She looks and sounds rough, and has powerful presentation through both her confidence and ferocity. She's like a feral bear, but she also exhibits elegance with her cinematics. Taking her story into account, those elements seem founded and give me a deep interest in her character. The changes she underwent in Strive, learning to let go of her hatred and becoming somewhat of a mother/father figure to Delilah, make me happy for her (even if she's fictional). I like Strive's look the most, something about the business added by the coat & hair alongside the sheer increase in volume across the board, make her look powerful to me. Strive's colors are also very vibrant, giving her a visual edge over Xrd. I do like the original version's roughness, and would put that in a close second. It's also very "feral" but in a different way. Her XX design seems almost too simple and clean for me, alongside her occasional grin not giving off that angry look seen elsewhere. She seems more like she's having fun, rather than throwing herself with violent intent. As for moveset: She's okay in Strive, but she definitely feels stripped down, even compared to other characters. Even if I'm a casual, seeing a short movelist makes her seem undercooked, and going back to see videos of her in Xrd just make me go "Well why can't I do that?" She feels too limited, like her moveset is holding her back, and because of that I only play her when I'm feeling like fooling around. If I want to play seriously I'd instead pick up Ram or Bedman because they have fun, aggressive playstyles that reward creativity. It's not "Baiken is a badass who's really fun," it's "haha angry booby lady go brrrr, eat my fireworks."
This is not an attack, or at least I hope it isn't, but I do wonder then: If you like what she can do in xrd, have you ever picked up the game and played her? I mean, the games's cheap and it has rollback, so I don't see why you wouldn't play her
@@biosonic6514 I don't currently have any interest in getting Xrd, nor do I want to spend the money atm- but if I do end up getting it at some point I think she'd be the character I try first.
@@KStarPRGoes on sale pretty cheap, pretty often. And we've got rollback now. Free advice on Suzuran, her command dash that lets her use her Azami follow-ups: If you "piano" the button inputs for the Suzuran and your chosen follow-up, you can make the attack come out almost immediately, without seeing any of the Suzuran. Like, if my combo needs the rising slash, I would input 41236 K~P, just slightly staggering the delay between the K and P input.
Enjoyed the video, I'd argue a lot of these points though. VISUALS: Visually, she's always been "bad ass female samurai with one arm, with hidden weapons". To pretend that she didn't have traditional sex appeal (when looking at guilty gear X) I'd argue is disingenious when her outfit has always showed off her breasts for no reason (though they didn't used to be tactical missiles). Even the version of guilty gear X has her tits being magically prevented from a wardrobe malfunction. I'd argue that earlier versions of Baiken struggled to give the character more apparent unique qualities that separated her from "a one-armed badass female samurai" to "this is Baiken". The gigantic hair, and the change to make her outfit dramatically more pronounced and visually distinct maintains her identity as "one-armed badass female samurai" while still creating a much more pronounced character design unique to GG. Potemkin similarly got upgraded from "the half naked grappler dude", to "Potemkin". So if you liked badass samurai, you still got it, but now in a way that felt much more specific and unique to guilty gear. I think it's categorically false to call the current iteration of Baiken as "more generic" when the first version draws immediate comparison and analogues to other existing media, whereas I can't think of who Baiken would be likened to now. I personally dislike the gigantic balloons she calls breasts but that has little to do with generic/not (since in practice, there are more female samurai that don't have two head-sized balloons on their torso). 2. Why didn't people complain about her mechanic differences? They did. They did a lot. But the difference is this is a problem with Strive, not Baiken. At this point, no one has the expectation that complex movesets, unique mechanics and interactions will be preserved when ported. To be shocked that the character lost some toolkit would be to not know what happens to all characters coming into Strive. Yes, you can list 8 different moves off of Azami as "Wow look Baiken's the only one who got hit hard", but that's kind of inane. By that token, wow Sol had 10 dragon install specific moves he lost. I guess we all agree Sol is by far the most changed character. There's just no longer that much point beating the dead horse of "wow Strive simplifies characters so if you liked this aspect of the character, it might now completely just not exist!" If you didn't like new Baiken, then you recognized that's what happens with the transition to Strive, much like what everyone else did when playing their respective characters. Instead, if you felt like the parts that were kept was the main reason you enjoyed Baiken (i.e her offense), hey! She still embodies what you care about the character! This doesn't mean you actually didn't like Baiken (you're not actually contractually obligated to enjoy all facets).
These are just my two cents but I'd have to say Ramlethal has to be one of the biggest character changes from Xrd to Strive (and also Elphelt since she's in the game now) While I do agree that Baiken lost a lot of the stuff that made her stand out in older games, I also welcome the fact that she's pretty easy to understand in Strive and she's my main because of it. I mained Jam in XX and Xrd, and I really wanted to main Baiken since the old games but I never could get the hang of how her kit works and how to approach her And it didn't hit me until I saw this video and I'm not sure if that what the devs were going for but Strive Baiken is just Baiken in Missing Link in terms of gameplay. She has the core moves: Yonzansen, Kabari and Tatami Gaeshi and she is more on the aggressive side which is pretty how she was in Missing Link
First off gonna say that I love this video! But I think that saying that they stripped baiken of her unique defensive threat in strive feels a bit incomplete. On the current patch of strive, while there is no single action she can take out of blockstun, strive's system generally requires there to be gaps somewhere in pressure and baiken is probably the character single best equipped to take advantage of them. Even without her metered options, between her parry that does a fuck ton of damage and builds a fuck ton of meter and gives meaty cS oki, 4f 5P that hits crouch, and throw that can end rounds on the spot she's very good at turning around defensive situations. She both has a very threatening tool to stop people from taking their normal routes on offense and tools to take advantage of the behavior that threat causes in her opponents. There are also tons of insane people defensive options that baiken players do on top of that. I feel like even if her guard cancels or azami were gone, the spirit of baiken being the scariest character to run offense on still lives.
This is a truly phenomenal video! The quality of the editing and high level research is incredible! You definitely earned yourself a subscriber! I hope this video blows up because of the clear amount of effort and heart you put into the video!
In a world of TH-cam shorts, 10 minute game reviews and hype content, this dude decided to drop an hour long movie out of nowhere. On a single character. Someone get this man a production team and a salary already!
this is a neat video but easily solved: the ship of thesseus was never real, and also all these baikens are fake. i met the real baiken while she was digging up burgers from the dumpster behind the mcdonalds on 5th and reginald's. i tried to say hello but she threw her sword at me and i'm dead now.
This is such an incredibly cool and well edited video essay. I gotta give you credit and it’s also can be viewed as a great historic video on Baiken as a character
As someone that always liked actually playing Baiken, the ship of Theseus is a perfect analogy as to why she didn’t work for me in STARVE, they changed so many parts of her that even though she looks similar, better even, what made me like playing her isn’t there anymore. It changed in Xrd, but it was still there, but Starve Baiken is barely a husk of what she was. IMO they sacrificed the few ppl that actually played her to try and make her a more popular pick, and I’m not sure it even payed off. That said, Strive did that to several characters, Testament was the other way around to me, went from no interest at all to main… Ram went through something similar as well.
I'd say Baiken is analogous to a slap fight competition. Many people love seeing it, make fan works about it (Godslap) but very few would actually want to participate in the slap fight itself.
I think saying "People didn't complain about Baiken's chamges in Strive" is disengenuous. I feel like there were a ton of people that were justifyably upset over the massive cut to her toolkit. Obviously Strive is a different game and the higher committment to buttons in it would have made guardcancels and possibly even her counter stance monsterously overpowered, but the loss in capabilites she has I feel had a lot of people disappointed. I for one, if I ever get around to playing more Xrd, would definitely consider picking her up as a secondary to Chipp. Either her or Sin idk. In +R she can do some really interesting stuff, and I love the look of some of her combos, but I don't think her gameplay has me all too interested. Plus I'm really bad with execution, so there's that. In regards to her "presentation", I fucking love the Xrd/Strive design, and her voice is absolutely incredible. While the design is definitely more busy, I think the way her right sleeve looks shredded to bits instead of simply "cut" is a lot more badass, and characters having their shoulders highlighted somehow is something I really like in characterdesign, which is why the jacket hanging off of her I think is a pretty neat design element. +R Baiken I like the attitude of in some of her animations, but her actual characterdesign I find just alright. She doesn't feel as wild in a way. Idk, this comment was mad unstructured and I am not exactly clear whether I came to a concensus on anything, but no one is gonna read this anyway, so who cares. Have a nice day
I can confirm your first point cause as a +R Baiken, I personally was pissed off about this, I never expected her to play exactly the same but for them to rid her of all her defensive tools which was her defining trait while also nerfing tatami to just be an oki tool and combo starter, removing kire tatami, a technique she'd had since Guilty Gear X and adding nothing else except a decent but generic parry grab and a tether, quite frankly felt like an insult for ever asking for that character
My preference for Baiken's designs are simple: I like samurai girls I like delinquent girls I like girls with eyepatches I like big heavy metal hair You take a samurai girl and give her a delinquent, a cool eyepatch, and increase her hair volume to 80s metal musician levels, then I am satisfied.
as someone who loves baiken and plays her in every iteration, I love how different the character is and how she changes. I think that's an appeal to me is how different it is to learn the character between games but keeping the general weird defensive playstyle that I love, strive dampened that and its disappointing but its still the version of her I've played the most. I often don't like her iterations for the first few hours of playing but once I get an understanding I start enjoying her a lot, this happened for every game I've played her in and its something ive come to expect.
I got into Strive as my first fighting game BY playing Baiken. She's simple enough to understand, while also feeling rewarding to get better with. Simply put I saw Guts Samurai Woman and immediately clicked lmao
Then you get into her XX Accent Core +R version. Arguably THE MOST execution-heavy-yet-busted version of her to date solely cause across all other GG games, she got one specific change in +R that made her ACTUALLY good, if not, disgusting (her guard cancel specials can be done during her guarding dash out in the open, giving her defensive-only-tools nutty applications in both neutral and offense on a whim). Edit: This carried over to Xrd, though at a cost, Azami pretty much isn't that good on the ground nor can she negative edge her specials anymore.
I dont play guilty gear, but i simply love baiken so much... for the simple reason that... she's totally fucked up, i mean, look at her!! She doesnt have an arm, she doesnt have an eye, she's probably filled with scars hidden inside that kimono _and she still fights_ She fights even with a natural disavantage of missing a limb and an eye, and she doesnt give a damn. She says "ore" which is a male pronoun for "me/I", she calls people like sol and sin "monster" and "small monster" Shes just incredible, i really love her.
0:07 thank you, I came up with the Ship of Theseus idea all on my own. I am the rare free thinker. I don't think the small fighting-game youtuber made this opening animation about Theseus, but whoever did is really fucking awesome.
Got to say, the strive redesigns are fantastic in terms of how fun they are to play against. I felt the same way you talked about in this video about Strive faust's aesthetics & gameplay stylings (almost everything about him changed, the humor aspect having a far darker direction) - but god DAMN if he isnt a blast to play against now
I always loved Baiken's "deranged woman, filled with hatred and revenge" style. Made her cool. Something that you don't see extremely often. After XRD came out she kinda stopped feeling like this deranged woman running around with a sword and attacking anyone who knew the man she wanted to enact her revenge on. She kinda started feeling like an angry, grumpy female police officer or vigilante, at least for me. Call me boring or crazy, but I loved her Missing Link design the most.
My final take away is that Baiken is wanted by players not for the character herself, but the concept of the character. Like Smash Players requesting a character for decades, only to finally get that character and be lukewarm about them after the honeymoon phase is over. Amazing film, was not expecting my viewpoints on climate change and the separation of Beauty, Intimidation, and Challenge to be rewired in my brain by a film about a character I’ve only seen in porn. Amazing work
For me, all the voices carry a tough, angry aura. And her posture and mannerisms come off as a a wild, untamable woman. She is herself with no restraint in any iteration. That’s what I love
the gameplay stuff is interesting but the plot stuff is kinda weird in this video tbh. like baiken becoming a bit nicer isnt really some attempt to tone her down, thats just, every character in strive becoming more normal, thats the games whole theme, people coming to peace with themselves. she's still dismissive and rude in most of her quotes in gameplay, she's just picking a fight less. its kinda weird to boil a lady down to 'curvaceous mom figure' just because shes nice to a kid sometimes. might have some baggage to unpack there.
I had 600-700 hours on Baiken in Xrd and have about 800 hours on her in Strive. Was a pretty competetive and knowledgeable about her in both. What hasn't changed between the two parts is the general game plan. Fighting games are not about planning to block. So if you are pretty good with her, you do similar stuff most of the time. I miss azami and iabd tatami (though it can be somewhat reproduced), also I liked having more followup options, but the rope and kenju are fun as well. Also the thing that never changed about her charachter is being a rude agressive badass with little regard for anyone's opinion. Visually it was more pronounced in XX, but the idea of it hasn't changed. I enjoy and respect her outlook on life and like how she mellows out a bit with time passing by. Also, I woudn't put tandem top and tatami in the same box. Tatami has many more cases for use than disc. It is a defencive tool, an offensive one and also several kinds of setplay. And man, she was fucking hard in XX and Xrd. I literally had to switch from pad to hitbox and spend 2 months retraining my muscule memory to gain an ability to do kire tatami and tk youzansen (dp input) consistently, so I am happy for those, who didn't have to suffer through that just to play a cool samurai chick like her. In strive she also gained a lot. Youzansen has now uses outside of just being an unreactable overhead. It is ambiguous crossup, much better neutral tool, a part of several safejump setups, a pressure reset, it has different purposes and combos for inputs 2369, 2368, 2367, 9236, 8236, 7236 and iabd236. So I don't feel like she lacks depth right now. She was much more complex in Xrd, true, but I have hard time remembering many people outside Mystic and Maruken, who utilized all of her kit correctly, so making her more accessible is a good thing IMO. Also, Baiken fans, who actually play her are really dedicated and are total tech monkeys and lab monsters. Cudos to them.
This is from someone that was glancing at Guilty Gear for a long time before finally getting Guilty Gear when Strive came about: 1. Edgy Swordsman - I loved lots of edgy things growing up 'cuz trying to be cool, though I legitimately loved most edgy things anyways. Also grew up in the 90s sooo that'll bias me a bit since everything was trying to be edgy. In terms of fighting games, Strider & Jin for Marvel vs capcom 1. Ridley and Sephiroth in Smash Bros Ultimate. Meta Knight in Smash Bros Brawl even before I knew he was OP because he introduced me to the concept of a duel, and in a world of cute enemies, he stands out much more strongly than other edgy characters in a an already edgy world. Any other game out there, I'm usually gonna use a ninja, or typical samurai with a scar on their face since there usually is one in every game's roster. 2. Her theme in Strive - Let's just say I relate to her theme heavily, and haven't really seen anything else along those lines. I listen to it if I ever start getting too angry at things and it calms me down and focus on what's important in life. Also, metal with buddhist stuff? Like excuse me? I've never seen this combo anywhere else, so it fills a special niche I love that is no where else. The song is just so perfect (even if there it sounds a bit funny where the singer sounds like kermit for a moment lol) Only reason why I haven't mentioned gameplay because I'm still learning characters in Strive, and it's not even my primary fighting game, and I'm used to adapting to different playstyles so I don't have any preferences. Just about everyone's gameplay in Strive looks so friggin' fun to play. So it's all about their character, and they all have a lot of character in Strive, it's like the only fighting game that isn't smash that I could literally anyone in the roster and be happy with it. Though, for now I'm maining Jack-O because I find the 2 personality thing relatable with one side that is serious & smart with the other side being goofy & air headed, and her theme is kind of a reminder that while it's good to always be trying for stuff, ya gotta take time to remember to enjoy life & and be positive. Of course, not every relatable theme is something I want, I-No for example just ends up making me feel angry/depressed with everything in life after listening to it, so I kinda have to not main her. Also, the Jack-O pose meme with Lethal League's Ordinary days theme kept reminding me of Guilty Gear before I used to listen to that theme. Oh, also been really getting into exercise, and playing Jack-O keeps reminding me to get more flexible.... And the Jack-O pose is just really really fun to do... Also, In some areas I like to represent myself with a protogen, and Jack-O's face looks very very close to a protogen's face, I just dunno why I like that look for a face but it makes emotions be happy. So yeah, while I'd love to play the heck outta Baiken, I'm attempting to stick to only one character per fighting game when I can, so Jack-O happens to be the one. Of course, that may change with some DLC if somehow a better character for me comes out. Just saw that Bedman is in the game now, he looks so crazy fun and I've always been a sucker for non-human characters, since they usually do unique aesthetics & gameplay to play up the non-human stuff, so it's less generic than a traditional character that'll I'll see in a million other games.
I honestly feel like if they just dropped the jacket and the eyepatch, I'd love current Baiken. It looks too busy - it pulls her away from the element she did really well (samurai). It also makes it harder to match her with Anji, who has remained pretty consistent in his own design.
Fantastic video. I personally started with Xrd, and while that alone could vouch for why Xrd Baiken is my favorite, I mostly like how many tools she has while still being few and simple enough to execute that I don't end up metal stacking myself. XX Baiken is probably her strongest iteration, and Strive is objectively her simplest one, but Xrd hits that sweet middle ground where I can understand what to do and how to do it while still having fun operating a complex character. I actually did have that "Period of disappointment followed by acceptance." when she got into Strive. I was really looking forward to a new design, and seeing that she was almost unchanged from Xrd coupled with some of my favorite tools of hers (Azami, Suzuran and Kabari followups) getting gutted in favor of the tether made me pretty lukewarm on her for a few months. I understood why they changed her, but it didn't make it easier. Over time I learned to have fun with what was there, and I'm really happy with how much attention she got in the story mode. Also, never make me look at Beefy Sword Slayer again, please.
really the major difference people I see in baiken's design is her being far more broad in the literal sense. we can see that in the earlier iterations she was slimmer, even skinny. she wasnt very tall, her walk animations were hunched up and isolated, it really showed that she's incredibly... unhappy. her new design shows the opposite. she's bulked up quite a bit, her shoulders being more broad, her at least leg muscles being far bigger and her hair looking if still as unkempt, much more powerful. and she is facing you chest on. it really shows how Baiken went from "I've lost everybody" to "i have myself" and that's why some people don't really connect, say, XX baiken to Xrd baiken
I think he is asking the question: Why add her as a playable character if nobody plays her and people only like her because of an ideal rather than as a fighting game character.
@@pin8584 Because the value of characters exists beyond playing them. Otherwise we would be happy with a roster of only the characters that we play. For example I play Heihachi, Bob and M. Raven in T7, but would I be happy if the roster were only those 3 characters? Of course not.
@@pin8584 The whole "nobody plays her" became invalid in Strive tbh and it stuck more as a meme. She was quite popular with casuals in Xrd, and in Strive, as of the last info we had on character numbers, she was top 5 most played characters. That thought would fit someone like Faust more.
I think there is a theme to her gameplay that has not only stayed consistent, but has been doubled down on. Commitment. Baiken has tools that work in any stage of the game. She has great offense, great defense, and great neutral. The catch is that all of her options are high commitment. If you block her overhead, she NEEDS to RC or she gets hit. If she parries even slightly too early, she'll become vulnerable. Her tether can potentially hurt her just as much as it can help her, and she only gets a measly +2 on block to help her make sure the former doesn't happen. Her neutral, while strong, is reliant on her opponent taking the initiative, making it significantly less effective when she's behind. She's a character who puts all her eggs in one basket, living hard and dying harder. This is thematically tied to her severed arm, as someone with only 1 arm would need to make heavy commitments, dropping their guard to attack and vice versa.
im glad that for once a 50 minute video about a subject that could be figured out in one sentence, or hell, one word, has managed to actually get me to think more deeply about about the topic. excellent work! 👍
Wow...This is a very well crafted video. I was first introduced to Baiken in XX and she was the first character I selected (it was actually Chipp but I switched from him almost as soon as the match started). She always reminded me of Himura Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin, but with more edge and being female. She is similar to Leona Heidern from KOF in that they gave her implants which accentuates the sexual appeal of a character I already liked. For me this is a positive design addition, though an unnecessary one because I already liked the character. I can't speak to all the elements of Baiken's gameplay because I was a child when I first played her in XX and I didn't understand the intricacies of fighting games. I just wanted to play what I was attracted to, be it cool, sexy, cute, or all of the above. In general, I enjoy Baiken's character design more in Xrd and Strive but I prefer her game design more in her XX and Xrd. The only cool thing she has gameplay-wise in Strive is her tether-bell mechanic, and between that and her parry throw, she is pretty underwhelming because as you mentioned in your video, more than half of her kit from Xrd and XX that made her unique was removed for Strive. But similar to Ramlethal, I guess Arc System wanted to make her more accessible to more people who may have been put off by her gameplay while simultaneously making her more conventionally visually attractive. Strive Ramlethal is the perfect example of when Max said at 49:18 "I think they [Arc System] have a pretty good balance at turning Baiken into the character that people thought she was." Comparing her Strive version where she swings her large swords directly from her side when she strikes her opponent, to her Xrd version where the same swords teleport to some predetermined location while she fights primarily with her bare hands. The Strive version makes more inherent sense. I'm the type who will play a character regardless of difficulty if I am attracted enough to their character design, their personality and how well that is reflected in their animations. Once again, great work on this video!
i think the reason i like baiken is because her character development i personally like xrd baiken but playing strive baiken and seeing her develop into almost a mom character i think it's nice to se her change its fun growing up with her weather she changes her design its almost like she is evolving by letting down her walls to be nicer witch is a part of her giving up her revenge. i miss old baiken game play but i love her new character.
I completely understand what you're saying, I've been introduced to Baiken in AC+R then as you described XRD changed but it was still scratching the itch (gameplay wise) as for the design in both of those games, I loved the addition of the coat and her hair getting longer and a little more unkempt honestly, to me she still had that rugged and calloused feel to her (even with the virtually invisible ripped sleeve) her "assets never bothered me except much like her hair they ballooned as well... As for -STRIVE-? Well I had found out they absolutely gutted her parries (which is what I loved about her to begin with) I hesitated to pick her up again but as I saw the tether, and the Kenjyu Overdrive I became more and more open to it especially because Happy Chaos was added (there is no other feeling like shooting Chaos point blank with that firework and winning the match with one shot after he's unloaded 30 clips into you.) I can appreciate your video because it made me love Baiken more than I did already, what she was, what she is, and what she will be. Thank you
As someone who never played GG games until strive, but did go back and try out +R, when I saw how Baiken used to look I immediately downloaded the strive mods to change her back to her original design which I find so much more appealing. Gameplay wise she is quite fun and I see the appeal in the old and new versions of her for very footsie based players like myself, in the basics of her kit she still has anyway. I think that's what Max means by "the character people thought she was". It seems she is one of the many characters in games that the low-mid level players utilized an entirely different style that they enjoyed, but is not how high-top level players utilized her. Instead of making a new character that played the way low-mid level people wanted her to, they made her into that character and got rid of the kit that pros used her for, while retaining her "fundamentals". Similar to others you mentioned, I don't main her. I and all my friends secondary her, but she just doesn't have "the sauce" if you will to really showcase a unique style. Where she was unapproachable in past games, now she's sort of bland, almost anything you like about her you can find in another character who emphasizes that aspect more. Her more unique things like the tether are honestly still the least enjoyable and worst part of her kit to the point even some pros barely use it. They stripped her down to the fundamentals that the low-mid level players knew and understood, but now besides a mediocre tether gimmick that's all she is. The base always wants that set of fundamental skills and close enough aesthetics to be in the game because they understand it's a core of what makes the game itself, in the same way most people want to see characters like Chun Li return even though she isn't highly picked either especially at low-mid level. But few people actually want to main those characters because they don't really fit anyone's preferences for a certain style of play as well as at least one other character in the game. In contrast high level players will opt to use her exactly to capitalize on her fundamental based kit, if they think she is stronger that other characters who would play in a similar enough way.
Funnily enough, I never cared that much about Baiken (or Guilty Gear in general), but this video really made me appreciate her and now I kinda wanna try playing with her if I ever play Strive.
Strive/Xrd design is my current favorite because it has an aesthetically pleasing flow and volume to it. Strive really perfected it by bumping up the ponytail and shrinking the, what I am going to call, "hair horns" a bit, creating an almost fully circular silhouette in her idle pose. 15:13 for reference.
Plenty of people play Baiken in Xrd, but very few play her well, so she has minimal tournament representation (though she still isn't Answer). One aspect that this video omits is that in both +R and Xrd, the living legacy games, Baiken is rather ridiculously difficult. In +R her bnb has to have a frc in it (though it looks really cool when you pull it off). In Xrd she constantly does pretty rough motions and doesn't function without them. If you are bad at any of iabd tatami, kire tatami, tk yozansen, airdash dustlooop timing, and landing kuchinashi link, you can give up playing her. Aside of that, I agree with everything you've had to say. I started with XX, in +R I am put off by her gameplay, and Xrd I'm put off by the design. Strive Baiken is basically the same character as all the other Strive characters that aren't Happy Chaos. Sad to say SNK understands what Baiken is better than Arcsys does.
As someone who was a +R Baiken main for nearly 2 years (I kinda dropped fighting games for the time being), it took about 2 to 3 months to execute her core gameplan with any level of consistency, she's not hardest the character in the game but she's also far from being easy to play either, she's not only hard but unintuitive, it takes a lot of love for the character to not just learn someone easier
Sorry bro but if you think those minor aethetic changes makes her less recognizable (kimono wise), you probably are a Metropolis citizen "he can't be super man he wear glasses", the rest I get it, what I liked of her is the savagery, Baiken have something around all the games she has that "You don't want to mess with that person" Aura, she is BRUTAL and I love her new demeanors because makes her even more bad ass she is a weird mix of a beast and a samuray and each time she just evolves in brutality, also her story is interesting she was one of the characters that was old enough in Japan to witness when sht hitted the fan. Also awesome intro, it got me stuck
XRD baiken was and always will be my favorite, I like strive baiken but she now has a very one dimensional gameplan which has me play the game religiously for a solid 2 days because well I still love baiken and the game but get pretty bored because every matchup is basically the same aside from one or two characters where you might play slightly more defensive but you’re going to approach the same way. And then I don’t play strive for a certain amount of time usually a month or two. I then just hop back onto XRD and feel right at home. I tried to play XX and still fell in love with baiken despite how similarly different she was from XRD gameplay wise but I haven’t nearly spent as much time with the game as I honestly should’ve but I do appreciate the XX baiken design a little more then the XRD design because she looks more rugged, badass, and scarred. Which has me reinstall the game to lab out baiken for about an hour play the arcade for her and get the different endings then hop back on XRD. I do this every so often. Istill fall in love with the XRD design I like her hair more and the coat I feel is super cool but I honestly just wish they could’ve kept the exact same simplicity that they exhibited in XX with battle damage. Her gameplay will always be my favorite because I love the play style of “beat my head against a brick wall” with mixup options and then also have counter defensive options because it’s funny and I don’t like to block (lol), I honestly got into the game because of Johnny as opposed to baiken but stayed because of her. Her move set of basically having a utility belt instead of an arm I found hella badass, the wide diversity of counters I found fun as fuck even if I’m still pretty dogshit at it and I still like a dip shit go for the command grab off of her Kabari because “funny suplex”. Overall I like her gameplay the most out of probably any fighting game I’ve ever played specifically XRD with XX not that far behind it despite it being pretty similarly different and while I do love strive baiken it’s just not the same with all the options you can do off of her counters taken away. And how strive screams about her simplicity simply because that’s just the name of the game.
On a more broader point about how characters change between games, there are examples of characters that are mechanically redesigned for the better in newer, presumably less mechanically interesting titles. Poison from SFIV to SFV comes to mind. In SFIV Poison is basically a shoto with kinda unique (for sfiv) projectile and a rekka. In SFV Poison is a reactionary non-committal long limb zoner with disjointed hitboxes, while having an offensive edge if needed and fucked up mixups with her Molotov VT. I've seen some weirdos still liking SFIV Poison, but in general people like SFV Poison more. Even though more people hate fighting against her in SFV.
I Loved the video the editing, story telling and quality was incredible and I hope you will continue to make videos like this. I've entered the world of guilty gear after baiken's release on strive, so I'm not knowlegeable in the older versions of her, and as a fellow Baiken main I will share my thoughts. When you describe how she was in previous games, I think that all the changes of her design were a step in making baiken the character that everyone loves. while you say that the aesthetics continuation of the character a failure, I think it succeeded in what the character represents in Xrd and Strive, commonly known as "Character Developpment", (I'm gonna dive into lore stuff so I might be wrong here feel free to correct me) baiken's objective up until Xrd and Strive is revenge, revenge of her destroyed country, and to achieve that she must become strong at all costs, that's why her aesthetics reflect the reject of any convention, that can also explain why her lost arm was such a important part of her animations in the older games, it wanted us to see that she's a war torn warrior. That isn't the case in Xrd and Strive, she began to stray away from this dangerous path, adn I think that's when the aesthetics changes makes way more sense, for me it strikes the perfect balance bewteen a badass that gives the "mess with me and I'll make you regret it" vibe and the more approchable and motherly figure vibe, for example the fact that her lost arm is less noticeable makes sense given the path she tries to walk on, she's willingly trying to hide with the jacket (and yes even her huge BONKERS helps in giving that vibe I just decribed, even though it was probably also made to appeal to a larger audience). Thats why I like both of the designs but not for the same reasons and I really think we should analyse those redesigns by what the characters represents now and not by how she looked the game before. In the gameplay side of things, I think that's the main thing holding back the pick rate of the character, fighting games was and is a really hard type of game, and when you make a complex character in a already complex genre, it is guaranteed that the character pick rate is gonna drop. And strive really made that barrier considerably lower for baiken, like you described, no more weird shit on block, she's way more straight forward in her offense and defense, but they still managed to make her feel like the "don't mess with me" vibe that I was describing earlier, moslty because of her parry (so fucking satisfying to just grab you oppoent and SLAM him to the ground when they dared attack you). and that made people who liked baiken and couldn't play her because of her high skill celing get to actually play her in strive (also helped by the fact that strive a significantly easier game overall). To wrap up my thoughts, I think that the fact that people want a character that they will not necesarily play is completly normal, because of 2 things. One, baiken was in the franchise from the very beginning and it feels off to not have the full original cast when a new game comes out, take smash bros, do you really see a new smash game without the original cast from 64. Imagine Captain falcon, an iconic figure of the series being a DLC ? Nah. Second people only have (usually) one main character, in any given fighting game you probably like aesthetically or gameplay wise multiple characters, but you can only invest your time in one because it's a fighting game, and fighting games are too hard to have time for a second one. Thank you for this video, fighting games video essays needs to be more popular.
Baiken first appealed to me because she kind of resembled the main character of Lady Snowblood, and even had a similar revenge story in discarding her womanhood for revenge. Plus I was at the time still a big fan of Rorouni Kenshin - and a still a fan, but I've had to separate the author from the fiction - and Baiken sort of resembled a character that would come from that universe. Plus, I'm a fan of two character types most of the FGC hate: Party characters and Grapplers. I liked Baiken's play style of always being in your face and pressing you while you have to be careful of her various counter moves. I thought it was a play style that fit a raging one-armed, one-eyed ronin. Did I like how strive took away a lot of her play style in favor of the rope mechanics? At first, I was mixed on it but I thought about it and adjusted to it. It kind of grew on me and kind of made me think of it as a new trick to keep up the pressure on opponents. So yeah, I still like Baiken. Always have, always will.
I play Baiken, I've only played Strive but. I LOVE her more badass Ronin-inspired designs in the older games, which makes me sad we probably won't get a high-definition version of the older designs.
Good video. Might as well how I feel since, why not. I love her Xrd iteration and definitely wanna try her Accent Core iteration; but her strive iteration didn't necessarily land so well with me. I love her Azami followups and her general heavy parry playstyle to the point where I'd be totally happy to play her in both of her older iterations, but I'm not too sure if I'd play her a top if I got back into strive. I did end up enjoying her a bit when she launched, but I stopped playing by the end of pass 2 and I don't know if I'd player her again. I think she still plays with a lot of the same fundamentals so I might end up feeling comfortable enough to play her but I might also end up falling back on zato, pretty much the only character I ever played in strive until her release. She's really intersting in general, especially her older iterations. Her identity from the previous game was very unhealthy for the game playstyle-wise though, so I can totally understand why she was reworked so much and why it was mostly stripped down into a more commonplace normal-based defensive character with access to a riskier parry. As for her visuals... honestly they just bother me because of the way people discuss or think of the character. At one point I think I complained to a friend how it makes me look weird playing her because they had continued to make her breasts bigger every single game, which made me rather uncomfortable and I think made them uncomfortable as well. I tend to enjoy the general visual style and concepts in both of her core iterations, but the exaggerated elements of her design just make me self conscious. I'm a gameplay first person so I don't want to be seen like that, you know?
Not anymore. I loved her and played her for her ability to punish predictable block strings and pokes. I really loved her weirdly aggressive- but- defensive playstyle. She was my hope for reinvigorating my interest in strive, and I was let down
Okay first of all, this video was fucking awesome and you should feel great for having created it. Go buy doughnuts or something. I watched this in the middle of the night after falling asleep way too early and it was really captivating, 51 minutes just flew by. As for me, I've always liked rough badass women that don't really care a lot about what other people think and in that sense, I like all versions of Baiken for different reasons (most of my created characters in games like Monster Hunter could be alternate universe versions of her without intending to be) The one I played the most (although not a lot compared to other people, I'm one of those "Hey it would be really awesome to be good at this but I don't invest the time" kinda guy) is XRD Baiken and after she clicked for me and I figured out how to parry bait into the rope super (regrettably can't remember the name off the top of my head) where she clings to the wall before winning the round has felt really good to play. So much so that I was disappointed when I found out about the Strive moveset. I mostly like her in Strive for the lore since I wish for her to find peace after all she went through. Aesthetically tho I've modded her to look less over the top like in XX, she looks too sluggish/complicated to me in XRD and Strive but not enough for me to dislike her. In the end, the meme held true, all the Baiken Mains since GG1 will finally be able to play her in Strive lmao
The fgc really doesn't care for the story of the characters huh? Its A very big part of it. Then again maybe this is for the people that only play guilty games with the thought that they are just fighting games. i will say the video really comes off very side ways on strive with the perspective of someone that looks at the game in a very surface level way
Several years ago before i ever heard of GG, i xrd baiken's character art and idle animations and told myself "she looks cool. Not gonna play the game tho." Then i eventually saw tournament play and passing, heard her voice lines, saw the fucked up shit she can do while blocking and fell in love with the character. I told myself if i decide to get into GG im maining her. Strive comes out and im bummed. No Baiken no Buyken! I said. Then they finally released her and im just really underwhelmed. "Did they do this to all legacy characters in strive?" I wondered. Turns out its a mix of yes and no. Fast foward to today and after soul searching i pick up baiken back up and after all her buffs she feels as busted as i wanted her feel. Watching memokarp win a huge tourney solidified my feelings and i havent touched any other character but her ever since. So in a way i slowly learned to like everything about baiken over the years.
I would actually really love to hear your thoughts on Strive Faust, since you talk about overall design and silhouettes and recognizable. Would Strive Faust be a “failure”? Because I don’t think so, but that’s seemingly what your definition would have me believe
I mean Strive Faust did alienate a certain population of funny doctor enjoyers but, new Faust is representative of a evolution of his character in the lore. Self sacrifice to try to atone for the sins of the past leaves him as a husk. Baiken in contrast arguably goes through the most radical status quote shift in strive story giving up her quest for revenge, and yet her visuals are almost unchanged from Xrd.
Bruh...This line of thinking is what I ascribe to UMVC3 almost to a T. Everybody loves it so much, to the point of attacking other games in it's defense, but almost nobody truly wants to play it beyond the people who never left it.
As a disabled person, having only one working arm, Yes, I selfishly enjoy having someone like myself being seen as a bad ass, popular, and sex appeal. Without needing some robotic ,or magical replacement to be a capable fighter. Given how much he simps for Max he should understand Naiken players well. Since it makes him happy that's goo. Personally I don't care r If Max plays Baiken, Chipp, or with himself. I don't care if no one plays Baiken as a result of Guilty Gear being hard to play one handed, trust me I know,. If it keeps people buying the games who cares?
"she is one of the series most iconic characters but she also just happens to be one of the least played characters in the entire franchise's history" that's not true tho, she's one of the top 5 most played character in XRD
Overproduced (love it!). Great points (thanks for the history lesson). I don’t think I can fully agree. I think what’s happening here is a misconception of what a character is to fighting game fans. Not players, but fans. Folks like cosplayers and artists, for example, who might be very interested in the game, but not actually even be interested in learning or playing it. Baiken was important to those people most of all. As a character idea. As something that is relevant to other fans of the game (equals “is in the most recent version of the game”). These kinds of fans are very open to engaging with the audiovisual element of the character, and even changing it (fan art), and most importantly, they produce free marketing for the game even if they do not buy it themselves! This situation is not unique: Tekken has a very similar discrepancy between play usage and actual popularity of quite a few characters, especially females. One example: Zafina and Jun have consistently been one of the least played characters in their respective games, but fans want them back quite rabidly. As for Baiken losing half of her kit in favour of accessibility - I don’t have a stake here as I am not a Baiken player. What I see here is ASW capitalising on popularity, and trying to tie the perception of the game to the actual game by changing the game. If I played Baiken, I would have dropped her. That said, If I played Baiken, a very complex character, I would have probably also been able to play other characters, and had someone to fall back on, and would not have dropped the game entirely. No matter how cruel it sounds, it’s not a huge loss, and probably the best decision from ASW.
This is a fantastic video, that said I have to disagree with some of it as much of it is opinionated. Baiken’s core design has changed significantly with xrd, but the thing is that pretty much all characters have. Characters from Sol to Baiken to Chipp to Ram to Testament to Bridget, if we think of thematic/personality changes, GG has seen A LOT of change by fighting game standards. Sol has mellowed out significantly, Chipp has simultaneously got humble and become a colonizer, Ram is much more chill/neutral, Testament and Bridget literally transitioned, and Baiken like Chipp has significantly mellowed out and focused on formed family. In terms of visual design, I’d say she’s MORE distinct now compared to XX. Her new silhouette and design language communicates a form of compactness/density. The comparatively gigantic coat/kimono and her hair make the tatami mats and hook and cannon and now a gun and bell rope she pulls out of nowhere mor believable. You could argue the bigger rack contributes to this design philosophy, but nah I still think that’s mainly sex bait
I felt like the dichotomy between the fact that she acts like the most roughest, toughest, stoic man's man but she's got the body of a gravure idols is fascinating. There really isn't another fighting game character like her.
Great video, I liked and subscribed. Everyone else has already gushed over the production value so I'll let them speak for me on that front. Let me try to grapple with the actual message of the video a little, since I think I do, to some degree, fall into the crosshairs of it. I'm a fan of Baiken, as is made obvious from my pfp. I agree with you so far as I feel the boobification of her design over the course of the series has cheapened her as a character, leading to a lot of people being attracted to the "surface-deep beauty" you mentioned. Despite this, I do genuinely like pretty much every iteration of her; instead of seeing them all as the same character, though, I kind of see it as different slices of a ""real"" person who's grown and changed over, well, 25 years. Not many fighting game characters get to travel and evolve through an entire character arc, especially ones with as little screentime as Baiken gets in GG's story, but she's somehow managed it. While it's true that comparing X2 Baiken to Strive Baiken presents you with two significantly different people, the core behind the mask, the essence of who *Baiken* is, has remained the same: A woman who has lost her homeland and almost everyone she loved, grappling with the grief and pain that she's been left with, cutting down anything that gets in her way. The difference between games is in how she deals with the void within herself. At first she's practically a rabid dog, lashing out at anyone who gets too close; then, she's driven by vengeance towards a particular goal on a lone path, shunning anyone who tries to walk with her; then, she learns to work with others to accomplish her goals; and finally, in strive, she's starting to lay her vengeance aside and find peace (which is mostly detailed in the lyrics of her song "mirror of the world"; the song also has a lot of neat buddhist themes, tying back to her facial tattoo). I don't think she's a ship of Theseus at all; her final form is significantly different to how she was at the start. But the thing is, that's what people do. They change. Honestly, I'm just glad she's happy. Is this a little weird, considering she's a fictional 3D samurai? For sure. But considering I'm replying to a 51-minute video essay dedicated solely to her character, I don't think it's too out there.
This I feel like applies to almost every character throughout the Guilty Gear series, though as said in the video, Baiken probably has had the least gradual shift of them all (with the jump between XX and Xrd being an extremely different design in many ways) Daisuke Ishiwatari seems to love his universe beyond just the fighting game, and most of the ideas behind stuff like character designs and the such seem to be fueled by in-universe plot progression and character development. By the end of the Strive story Sol doesn't even wear his iconic red anymore, he's just gone and become some guy. Baiken's design being much less wild and disheveled, alongside her "boobification" really does help lend not just for fanservice (which I'm sure is the Doylist explanation) but a Watsonian justification would lend it to her now more mellowed-out personality no longer in search for revenge, and as a sort of motherly figure to Delilah who's now a character
i picked baiken in strive because i heard she had a parry when i was first looking into it as my first fighting game, then i went back and looked at her older iterations and got bummed out that she didnt have suzuran or azami because it looked fun and really cool. i still hope they add something like suzuran or expand on her hiiragi more when they add a new special to her eventually during season 3. edit: coming back 4 months later after playing her older iterations and i can definitely say i love baiken, all her kits give me something different to enjoy about a character that i absolutely adore. xrd is probably my favourite overall version of her but +r execution is just so damn cool. consequently this has made strive baiken a little bit less appealing for me in gameplay but i still love her all the same and still has a place in my heart even if i do prefer older versions of her kit more. i'm still no good at her since i've only put about 300 hours across all her iterations but i hope to get to a solid place with all 3 eventually.
I'll share here my experience of discovering baiken. Before trying out guilty gear strive that was my first introduction to the licence, I first listened to the music. I was listening on a daily basis guilty gear strive osts and out of all of theme my favourite one was Mirror of the World. Then one day bought the game with the season pass to try it out and on looking for which character to pick I saw Baiken, she looked so fucking cool, the one arm one eye aesthetic reminded me of berserk a lot and instantly loved it, but also her expression, it was very appealing. Then I launched training mode and it hit me, my favourite music from the game was her character theme. From here on I was absolutely sold. I later searched for her Lore and was not dissapointed either. She exudes strength both of body and mind and confidence, first thing I thought on seeing her walk animation was not "woah so sexy" but more like "so confident", tbf it's a bit goofy as well haha. To put it more simply, I love her design, her personality, her lore and enjoyed her gameplay too.
People like her because she's both incredibly hot with those massive mammeries, hot face, and cool drip and hair but ALSO has an interesting story and is just a cool character in the actual lore. So she's eye candy plus badass, the perfect combo. People don't play her because her playstyle is weirdly unique and hard to master so if you actually want to have fun, you can't play her unless you're a sadist.
This dude is entirely wrong on Baiken's aesthetics. Other than making her more chunky (which happened to every character in the series pretty much between XX and Strive) her aesthetic direction hasn't changed at all, it actually got pushed further, making many of her animations more belligerent and rugged compared to XX. The argument of "her titties are bigger and torn sleve isn't as prominent, so she's completely different now" is dumb. And this dumb assertion makes the rest of the video pointless. It's really simple: people liked Baiken's aesthetic, but they found her too complicated to play. Now that she's got dumbed down, more people started to play her. That's it. Also, it's pretty weird to present Baiken as changed beyond recognition when Testament is in the game.
There both terrible and I can barely think of any XX or Xrd Baiken players, (including myself) that wanted to play this iteration of the character, only returning character Strive didn't fuck up was Bridget
@@stormysoup1083 I can see the argument for Baiken in terms of gameplay, she's definitely very boring in Strive. With other returning characters at least the new kits are still fun, even if completely different from the previous games, but without azami and suzuran Baiken has become extremely bland. My main point was about visual design though, i don't think it changed all that much.
It's pretty simple. Many people like the aesthetics, character design and theme of Baiken, her personality and story as well, but are never quite willing to put in the time to learn how to play the character, back then because she was very technical and possibly even now because these people are usually just casual fans who don't stick around to play a lot in general. Now, as you point out, her design has changed as well as did her voice acting, without that there was much upheaval among Baiken fans. I think this was due to the fact that, while the changes were important, especially going from X to Xrd, the general aesthetics and theme of the character was still respected, and that being those of a sexy, badass samurai woman. Baiken had many voice actresses, and they all play the rough masculine-sounding warrior woman voice, so her attitude stayed the same across many versions of the game. Most people didn't mind the visual changes from X to Xrd because the redesign was considered to be a good one. Is it a pretty shallow view of the character? Absolutely yes, but most people are indeed just casual fans who have a shallow view of the entire series, and it's not really a bad thing, that's just how they choose to enjoy things. More dedicated Guilty Gear fans were those that probably paid more attention to her aesthetical and gameplay changes over the years, but they are a minority and there's also the fact that gameplay-wise most hardcore Guilty Gear players hated fighting Baiken so they didn't mind drastic changes to her kit (even though I personally think that taking away her counter-focus playstyle is bad), and visually speaking the Xrd redesign still maintained the fundamental aspects of Baiken if it downplayed the more unique aspects of her earlier design. This is also connected to another fact. Design and theme wise, Guilty Gear started off as a very edgy and metal anime series, and then it mellowed out progressively, to the point that Xrd and Strive's aesthetics seem completely removed from the original PS1 game, with just X being the middle child connecting the two interpretations of the series. All characters have been affected by this somewhat, but Baiken is definitely one of the most affected, going from a masculine, gender non-conforming, psychotic warrior woman to a waifu who's still very badass and still has a very good story, but the mood and story direction has changed drastically. She's not alone in this, but it gets very obvious with her.
Baiken is the reason I started playing Guilty Gear X back when a friend first showed it to me on the Dreamcast. ... and Baiken is partially the reason I stopped playing Strive. The character in Strive named Baiken may share her appearance, name and general mannerisms, but she plays almost nothing like the character I enjoyed for so many years. People keep saying things like "She reflects the growth of the series" but this isn't growth, it's decay. I mean sure, her movelist going from 40+ moves down to 4 is reflective of the direction Strive is going in, but I'd hardly call that "growth."
What a great video! We all should be glad something of this calibre was added to the FGC. As someone (trying) to design a fighting game, this has given me plenty to think about... and perhaps be inspired by.
Peak content as always. I have really strange experience with Baiken exactly because of things you put out I randomly play AACCR, Xrd and Strive and each time first few matches are spent to switch mindset both in her visuals and gameplay. As a sorta.... fan, I guess i can put my answer to why I like her this way: I really like when character I play breaks convention(s) of the game i play and pushing my enemy to think outside of their usual flow while also being fair if person can do the switch. While i understand that this wording can be used against any character, Baiken and several other chars in other fighting games have it more defined where they can punish a thing which other chars usually let happen. In that sense each Baiken consistently offers me this kinda experience which I enjoy
Absolutely amazing video. Baiken is the character that got me into Guilty Gear, because of her design, specifically GGXXAC+R. Her one arm and one eye made me think "What happened to her, why did these things happen?" which made me interested in her lore. And then gameplay-wise, I did feel frustrated at times, but I didn't want to quit on the character, so I just dealt with these annoyance, and she's become more fun, and thats what I liked. To me, Baiken's secondary appeal after the guard cancels, was the skill ceiling in +R. It is so satisfying to finally climb over that hurtle, the "sublime" if you will. And I feel like that aspect is missing in Strive, in my personal opinion. And with her character design, I vastly prefer her XX design, because I feel that in some part, there were some unwarranted changes to her design. Like the eyepatch, looks cool, but why was it needed when her first designs didn't have it at all? And like what was mentioned in the video, the less emphasis on the tattered sleeve where her missing arm is. Thank you so much for making this video, it was well-crafted, and I just hope someone eventually makes a video highlighting Baiken's lore to get people to be familar with her.
I think the problem of the "ought to be accessible to everyone" mindset with fighting games is that sometimes a weird playstyle is what attracts people to a character. They have things that other characters don't have but usually at the cost of something else - in Baiken's case allot of HP. This video made me think allot of how mid tiers in Smash Melee are suddenly progressing way faster than they ever have post-Slippi online and these were some funky characters. Donkey Kong's shield is so bad at times to win neutral players have labed out approaches were they crouch cancel and come in backwards because the shield is more reasonable from behind in dealing with projectiles. But in return you have these sick grab combos and a unique cargo throw, as well as several good punishing moves. And the people who have represented the character are a fraction of what any of the conventional players use, but some have reached to barely falling short of a major tournament win. To make that mission statement possible though means cutting out everything that made them unique to begin with besides the idea of what they are. And it's not like it's wrong to like a character for what they represent but personally I'd want there to be a bit more than that. Something that is different but viable if your willing to sink the time into, because all the other archetypes exist and are a dime a dozen. It's not a bad thing for a playstyle to exist that only a portion of your audience will go for when all the other forms of expression already exist in abundance elsewhere.
Cool sexy swordwoman is something that 90% of people would agree is cool, I hate fighting her, but I totally understand the appeal; like really, even with the design changes she got in Xrd, Baiken is by all purposes still baiken. For example, Juri had a similar aesthetic design change in SFV, but no one really complained about it because her attitude was mostly the same.
To be honest in terms of baiken's design, I'm a bit split because on one hand I do genuinely like her xrd/strive proportions, specifically the ponytail I love how it flows with spesific moves and I have just always loved big ponytails, however on the other hand I do prefer her XX clothing, specifically the lack of the jacket as it kinda ruins the silhouette her charicter would otherwise has and clutters it up, making it less clear at a first glance in contrast to her XX clothing. Despite that I do still really like both designs however due to me first being exposed to her strive design I would personally give it the edge even if I would still like to make some clothing changes
This was a really excellent video. I got into the series at Rev and Rev2. I really liked Baiken's design in Rev2, but in hindsight, I do lament her lack of gruff androgyny in my favorite game. A friend of mine described her ML and X designs as a "Cigarette Gijinka", which was funny, and kinda hit the mark. Strive Baiken broke my heart with the loss of Suzuran and any true defensive shenanigans. I was happy to see her back, but she lost so much sauce. I do think it's true that 90% of Baiken fans are just horny, and don't want to put the effort into learning her. She shares this issue with Leona from KOF, who has also over time succumb to a falling in line with the Other Hot Girls in their respective series'.
Really great, incisive video; I think there’s something of her still in the newer 3D designs, but I can’t play her anymore (ironically, I do love the redesigned Testament tho). The gameplay changes are a part, but it’s the vibes: no fast dash/aggression, the way she’s styled more like a motorcycle gang “delinquent”, the way she walks/moves (I hate how pandering her visuals are, when her old sex-appeal was a focused competence and “I don’t give shit”). I *do* like the idea of developing her story and character, but I think the design undermines it: turns her into more of a trope and downplays the ways she wasn’t “comfortable” to many fans, as you note. I feel it might be interesting to contrast this with Cammy: who has a similarly rabid “fanbase” (many of whom do not play her) and the initial backlash to her evolution, how Capcom managed to sell it, because of the execution (and a lot of blokes patting themselves on the back ‘cos her arse moves). I like sexy characters, most women I know do, but how you go about it matters: boobs and butts move, cool, even v cool, but having it be there and putting it at the visual centre of your characters design says something. I also love Cammy because she is aggressive, focused, stylistically competent, and has a visual design that is not conventionally feminine either, when you look at her muscles, her shoulders, her arms. She has scars, a traumatic backstory, she fights (and is designed to look like) Battle Angel Alita; we all have a type. Her new design furthers her story and breaks with the past, it reflects her present more. I actually love her OG outfit, but she’s more contemporary and she looks the best she ever has now. Her silhouette and movement is preserved, with tweaks: glad to see new moves, old ones enhanced, old attacks brought back. Her walk animation is different (I miss that, a little) but the new one isn’t bad; just like her stance has sometimes looked worse (and her burnout is super jank) but these are small disappointments in the context of many tiny and positive changes. Tier wise, I think she will struggle in this edition, but I’m far from pro and she’s going to be a blast to play. Contrast, I guess. As you mentioned: current Baiken looks cool but is not really the character I loved anymore. Thanks again: I’m heading off to listen to Momentary Life on loop for a bit (again, love the new story-song, but that track *is* Baiken). Izayoiu na yo…
If you have any practical interest in most versions of Baiken whatsoever. Make sure to go check out www.youtube.com/@Shinjinnn
Baikon face
I liked Baiken's playstyle in Ggxxac+r, and it never occurred to me until a year ago that most people liked her for 2 big reasons. She is one of my 4 mains in that game (the other 3 being Order Sol, Faust and Potemkin) and I main her in Samurai Shodown. Haven't gotten a chance to play xrd or strive yet though
I love the current state of TH-cam, I click on a video titled ‘Do You Actually Like Baiken?’ I then notice that the video is 50 MINUTES LONG and it opens with, “I’m sure you’re familiar with The thought experiment of the ship of Theseus.”
Always love video essays like that
Exactly my thought process, see funny thumbnail of booba woman, "do you like booba woman", click.
*Theseus*
yeah..
@@ratatouilledrinksclorax9897… so is this a way of saying she had a boob job?
You're like too short sighted for celebrating early that a video is good only because there is a philosophical idea on it
I see Baiken's changes as kind of meshing with her character development. Throughout the series she's mellowed out and become mentally healthier due to finding motivations outside of revenge. The Baiken of GG1 was violent and bloodthirsty, while in the X series she's preparing for battle. In Xrd she's helping people and doing things that aren't chasing down "That Man" and finally come Strive she's found something to truly dedicate herself to with Delilah. When a character's gameplay and aesthetic changes, sometimes you don't feel like sticking around (trust me as a KoF fan I know this very well) but I think at least within the context of the game it's justified.
Also gotta be that guy and hit you with the um actually, because Xrd Baiken has definitely seen a pretty tremendous increase in usage. She's a fixture of top 8s both on the West Coast and in TNS online brackets.
Yeah she screams less as the series goes on and she sounds more mellow through each game!
absolutely agreed. I think Daisuke is generally really good at showing character developing through changes in their design. Examples include: Ky wearing a much more civilian outfit in Strive instead of Holly Order robes to show how he's growing past his child soldier phase, Ramlethal wearing less ridicoulous (even if still ridiculous) clothes, Testament looking way less edgy as they stop resenting humanity or, y'know, Bridget. The problem with that is the fact that Strive is supposed to be showing us these characters have a happy ending of sorts, so a lot of the cast is mellowed out - the game basically lacks an actual villain figure, considering that HC is still acting polite, I-no never drops her faux-nice attitude and with Zato no longer being an asshole he was pre-Xrd, fight scenarios lack any genuine drama. Even Granblue Fantasy VS, which people memed on because of how polite and nice characters were to each other had acctual villains. I think in this instance Daisuke's creative consistency kinda detracts from the overall appeal of the game by limiting the characters' emotions.
And as a guy who loved Baiken specifically because of how angry and mean she was all the time (hell, she even had personalized insults for every character in the cast), that's kind of a shame.
Wish fullfilment in media doesn't have to be power fantasy. As a generally calm and emotionless person I found myself gravitating to anime specifically beacuse a lot of it presents the fantasy in which being emotional, even angry and irrational can actually be a good thing, it can be the source of your power. I'm not happy seing Baiken become more functional because her being so openly angry and emotional and yet so confident at the same time is what made her stand out.
Also, Smaller Bust Baiken and Smaller Hair Baiken and No Eyepatch Baiken (the inclusion of eyepatch. where previously she would just flaunt her missing eye is probably the biggest indicator of the change in her design philosophy) are mods that make her playable in Strive
I agree 1000% with you and was gonna comment the same thing.
@@koldi9746100% agree. Especially with mods for strive being required.
I got into gg in strive, mostly for baiken cause I saw how badass she was, but then I started playing +R and honestly, I'm kinda mad at the modern baiken design now, cause I love the OG design for her soooo much more. Ah well.
100% Even if I loved playing a character of an older game, if they have some sort of character growth from game to game its almost good to see it, and so the new gameplay changes that come to reflect that I welcome and even desire.
19:17 "An asian broad with a sword?" Yes nigga, that IS my aesthetic.
This is the highest production value video I've ever seen in the FGC. Absolutely nuts
He snapped
I can count on one hand how many TH-camrs for any content have this level of production value. We are truly spoiled by them.
I’ve mained her across iterations since she was first playable, and in that time, I’ve grown and changed-dramatically in some aspects-as a person. I love her Strive appearance. She’s finally, genuinely allowing herself to breathe, to take care of herself; it’s evident in how she carries herself, how her body has changed, and how relaxed she is around others in comparison to the past. I am getting around to taking care of myself and letting go of things, too-it’s like I’ve grown up alongside her.
nice :)
Max talking about Baiken moving towards being the character people thought she was just hammers that Baiken really is an ideal.
She is not a moveset or a specific design, but a collection of tropes and history(her legacy, lore and time in the collective consciousness is part of the reason she can't be substituted by any similar designs.) that people are attached to. She's THE One Armed Badass Sexy Samurai in videogames, and people want that more than they want perfect design cohesion.
She's kind of unique in that regard, but i suspect Juri will have the same fate.
I'm imagining Juri with feet the size of Baikens tits
Collective Consciousness Control that you will(WON’T) *SEEEEEEE!!!!*
Baiken's just a microcosm of the series as a whole. Aesthetically, thematically, and mechanically, the series itself has been in a constant state of flux where once defining features have been phased out while still somehow feeling like the core identity is there. Baiken has changed because Guilty Gear has changed. What they are now isn't what they were and what they are in a decade will likely be different as well. Growth and change is the point.
Also, the whole "no one plays Baiken" thing: 6th most overall played in Xrd, currently 3rd most played in Strive. While being DLC in both games.
People play Baiken. She's popular. May not have a high presence in top level play, but she is very widely used among the total playerbase.
Change isn't always forward or progressing. In far a lot of times, it leads to decline. I feel like that's why what happened with Strive ultimately and consequently Guilty Gear as a whole.
There is no stat that proves baiken was the 6th most played XRD character. That's entirely cope.
@@antonivi8968 Yeah, Strive is the mainstream wannabe Guilty Gear game. It's like Smash or fortnite, directed to a more general audience.
im a 100% sure you never played old guilty gears with the real badass "ima guard cancel your whole life bro" baiken. she is but a shadow of what she were, please aknowledge this and let's make a minute of silence in her honor.
@@entropy7705 don't know what the stats looked like back then, but event hubs shows baiken as #8 for xrd rev 2
Baiken never particularly appealed to me but I have to say, I think what people always find appealing about her is her attitude. She hasn't become less abrasive and masculine over time, it's only now that this very brash way of being is paired with exxentuating and contrasting with her female figure. The ending shot of her Xrd IK is perfect for that. She's casually smoking a pipe and looking down at the opponent she just killed with a scowl, but her body (not just her tits) moves in an alluring way. Or stuff like her taunt laugh, or her presentation in story modes. I guess it's something like the same reason people like tsundere characters? Except it's made
1. More extreme because Guilty Gear
2. Less anime-ish and cloying because she's a grown woman and doesn't just call people baka and get offended over nothing
3. Her power and confidence means oogling her doesn't feel... slimy? I know I'm trying to explain sex appeal but that's kinda a big thing for why people like fighting game characters.
Number 3 is a very important element, so I'd say you've done well with your explanation! Personality (or demeanor) allows for the attractiveness of the character to emanate from who they are, as opposed to merely how they look, which in turn makes whatever outward presentation of sexual appeal there is feel far more genuine. I mean, you're definitely still "supposed" to look at Baiken's bits, but ogling her feels more incidental. She exudes coolness, and a bit of goofyness before downright sexual appeal. If I could draw a comparison to a similar character as far as masculinity goes, Catherine from Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a great example. She's a remarkably attractive character, as to be expected, but it's her fun-loving nature and complete confidence in her own ability that really sells her appeal. Ogling her then doesn't feel fake, or slimy, as you put it. It's just casual, in a healthy way.
Just say she’s Tsunade with a sword👍
No the thing people found most appealing, is her huge rack.
@@darkr3g837amazing 😍😂😂😂😂 how could you hate that??
@@darkr3g837 Swordere
I think part of it comes down to this: there are characters in games that people love, but don't necessarily play. The characters are familiar faces and you love the look and/or personality, but you know absolutely nothing about how they play nor do you have the inclination to find out. Even then, when the character is missing, you just don't feel right. You may not have played that character specifically, but you're so used to them being there that once they're gone, you feel like the game's incomplete and something is fundamentally wrong.
For me, two such characters are Leon and Gen Fu in Dead Or Alive. I don't play either of them nor do I have any interest in learning them, but since they've always been there (Gen Fu was in every game since the first one and Leon was introduced in DOA2), they feel like integral parts of the game to me. When they were both absent in Dead Or Alive 6, I felt like something was irreconcilably wrong and I still can't wrap my head around their exclusion (you can't say anything about story because none of the DLC characters in that game have any story relevance whatsoever).
Another instance fir me is the exclusion of Choi and Chang in KOF XV. Did I play them? No, but one of my brothers did. Did I feel like something was missing when I found out they were cut? Absolutely. Do I want them back knowing full and well that I personally have no interest in playing them? Without question. Why? Because KOF doesn't feel right to me without them.
I like Baiken's designs and see each one as a logical progression given how time is passing, characters are aging, motivations are evolving, and aesthetics are changing to match that. I was introduced to her first with Xrd and while she could do with a smaller ponytail, I can see her also letting her hair grow out like that over time thinking it'll make her look more threatening (yes, it's headcanon, but it's something that I think would fit). Do I hate any of her previous designs? No. Do I like her Xrd design best? Yes. Do I see why people would want Baiken to stay and will deal with whatever concessions are made just so they can see her again? Yes. After all, ArcSys went out of their way to give her a unique Instant Kill theme in Xrd and unique intros and outros in Strive just to show everyone that she, for one reason or another, is special.
I see nothing wrong with someone's presence being all you need to be happy.
Exactly. Does anyone want a roster limited to their mains? No.
@@austingoyne3039 especially since every character is someone's main somewhere
This is how I felt with Bridget going into Strive. I'd barely touched fighting games, and hardly knew anything about Guilty Gear. I just knew of Bridget because of channels like WatchMojo covering her for obvious reasons back in the day. So when I saw Strive for the first time and was taken away by its presentation, I immediately went: "Hey, is that one character I know in the game? Bridget, right? No? Well are they in the last one? No? Why not?"
When Bridget was announced, I was happy a familiar face was coming back, and was happy for her fans. Hearing about the change in her presentation made me even more happy for the character and her fans. At that point I was heavily considering trying fighting games for real, and the combination of "more beginner friendly," "familiar face returns," and "wow that Ramlethal character looks cool." pushed me to buy the game. Now I'm hooked on my second ever traditional fighter and heavily considering Street Fighter 6, even managing to get in on the second closed beta.
Yep, do these people also comment about cosplayers and artists who never play the character?
I see people try to tell me from time to time that "story" in fighting games have no impact on how they feel about the game and that all they care about is the gameplay. But with time, it's clear to me that things really aren't that cut and dry as there are a lot of factors that fit into that description that DO have an impact. Presentation and characterisation often tends to be the hook that gets people to try out certain characters.
Maybe they appeal to you because you find them cool (like Sol did with me), maybe like Bridget or Testament they act as positive representation of you or their theme resonated with you. The point here is that a lot of factors go into why people stick with some characters beyond just how they play. It's why Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite bombed. A game like Team Fortress 2 is actually pretty good with highlighting this. Imagine if someone like Demoman or Heavy didn't exist. That game would not have the same type of charm it has now and feel lacking in some way.
Yeah Baiken has slowly been shifting away from her original design and while I understand a lot of the older fans feel slighted or like their character was taken away from them but I think it's a bit more than that.
I feel like Arcsys really latched onto an opportunity to take a sort of originally maligned character and push her to the forefront of the game's "visual presentation". Yes it's fanservice and yes her toolkit has been shifted very far from her first iteration but the simplification of a rather complicated toolkit has been positive for player retention both for the game series but also people are having less difficulty sinking time into Baiken herself. She's a weirdo and while I've enjoyed her since +R, strive has been the most approachable version for me.
Edit: I played with a friend for 6 months before they asked about why her kimono was torn, not realizing she was missing an arm
I think she had the worst disconnect from visual to playstyle that spawned the "there are no baiken players" meme.
You see a samurai character and what you get is a contractor that lays floor mats and barely any actual sword moves
You get a survivor of double amputation and a sword swinger that's got absolute garbage toughness stat and defensive playstyle.
You buy into a female Sol and get stuck with a porcelain turtle.
@@HellecticMojo It's kinda worse when you add in her amputated arm has weird gimmicky things an engineer-esque character would have.
A retractable hookchain? A fucking gun? A tether? It's a lot of random bullshit. lol
@@Xenozillex that shit is cool as hell tho, as someone who actually mains this character, I'd be pissed off if she was just "sword character", it's not like there's a rule for Samurais to only ever use Katanas either, they'd mostly use spears, ocasionally guns and bows historically
Tbh the fact that she doesn't refer to herself as a samurai should tell you everything you need to know. She may use a katana and wear some traditional garments, but that's about it. She serves no lord, she doesn't really have a code of honor, she fights "dirty" in a sense because she has concealed weapons.
And I think that's awesome! She breaks the stereotype and it makes her so much more unique and fun than any old samurai character. I think her differences are her strongest points
@@HellecticMojo Survivor but a porcelain doll? You're half right, she has low health but her Guts rating is as high if not higher than Chipp's depending on what game you play. Looking at how skinny and scraggly she is (rather WAS) it'd make sense for her to take more damage than normal since she's the same body type as every other low health character in the game. HOWEVER, she IS a survivor because has the Guts rating to back it up and survive a lot longer than she should
Very interesting video! There was a ton of interesting stuff about her past versions, and stuff I didn't really think about in terms of her design.
I do wish you did a little more research into her Strive version though - Hiiragi is pretty interesting tool with a lot of interesting implications and techniques. To be honest, I feel like even though she doesn't have a ton of special moves, they all have a lot of applications in different situations (though to be fair, a bunch of them are tied to system mechanics like meter or kara cancelling). In Strive's case, I feel like she still needs more time to grow - some of the techniques you mentioned from past games are super interesting to me, but I wonder how long it took for them to be discovered.
Again, very good video!
Lk when he had hope in his eyes. o7
Oh, look! An ace combat fan in the wild!
"In these lands we love an enjoyer" Speak for yourself >:(
ha
Damn he dissed you and you comment lmao
You broke down Baiken’s design, history and popularity. You explain a lot things that I didn’t expect. (VA, Max and move changes.) Visuals and art you put into this were great as well.
I’ve known people who only main this character for her looks then dropped her when they stopped winning in Strive. The video gave me an appreciation on how Baiken has changed over the years. Better or for worse. I hope the next game will continue to have Baiken.
Thanks for making this Rubbish. I hope this video get more people to see your other content.
Baiken is one of those characters people love to have around no matter the circumstances. She fits the mold of certain people's favorite tropes and that's all that matters.
This whole "BuT dO YoU rEaLlY lIkE bAcOn?" crap the community is doing is blatant gaslighting and it's starting to piss me off.
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines you really need to understand terms like gaslighting before throwing it out there man. The video in question (or not, not sure what you feel about it) seems to be a pretty good discussion about the topic although the presentation was a bit too long in some areas
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines It's not, why do you think there was so many memes about Baiken fans not actually playing Baiken before strive? A lot of people did just kind of have a surface level fondness of her so poking fun at it isn't really an issue
@@GreatRusio
I absolutely understand the term. But thanks for attempting to gaslight me about the meaning of the word, and demonstrating what gaslighting is in the process.
You don't like that people like you are being called out for it, so now you attempt to gaslight people about what gaslighting is. Gaslighting really is like an uncontrollable tic for you people, isn't it? You can't help yourself. It's your defense against everything.
@@povertyeditor4898
Yes it is, and "bUt MuH mEmEs" doesn't change anything.
She's the reason I picked up guilty gear, but since I like her more for her lore and coolness factor, I ended up telling a ton of people that "I like 95% of her design".
She's the sole reason I even give a a single shit about guilty gear. I see big tittied one eyed samurai woman, and so I came.
As a casual who started with Strive, here's what makes Baiken appealing to me outside of the obvious sex appeal:
She looks and sounds rough, and has powerful presentation through both her confidence and ferocity. She's like a feral bear, but she also exhibits elegance with her cinematics. Taking her story into account, those elements seem founded and give me a deep interest in her character. The changes she underwent in Strive, learning to let go of her hatred and becoming somewhat of a mother/father figure to Delilah, make me happy for her (even if she's fictional).
I like Strive's look the most, something about the business added by the coat & hair alongside the sheer increase in volume across the board, make her look powerful to me. Strive's colors are also very vibrant, giving her a visual edge over Xrd. I do like the original version's roughness, and would put that in a close second. It's also very "feral" but in a different way. Her XX design seems almost too simple and clean for me, alongside her occasional grin not giving off that angry look seen elsewhere. She seems more like she's having fun, rather than throwing herself with violent intent.
As for moveset: She's okay in Strive, but she definitely feels stripped down, even compared to other characters. Even if I'm a casual, seeing a short movelist makes her seem undercooked, and going back to see videos of her in Xrd just make me go "Well why can't I do that?" She feels too limited, like her moveset is holding her back, and because of that I only play her when I'm feeling like fooling around. If I want to play seriously I'd instead pick up Ram or Bedman because they have fun, aggressive playstyles that reward creativity. It's not "Baiken is a badass who's really fun," it's "haha angry booby lady go brrrr, eat my fireworks."
This is not an attack, or at least I hope it isn't, but I do wonder then:
If you like what she can do in xrd, have you ever picked up the game and played her? I mean, the games's cheap and it has rollback, so I don't see why you wouldn't play her
@@biosonic6514 I don't currently have any interest in getting Xrd, nor do I want to spend the money atm- but if I do end up getting it at some point I think she'd be the character I try first.
@@KStarPRGoes on sale pretty cheap, pretty often. And we've got rollback now.
Free advice on Suzuran, her command dash that lets her use her Azami follow-ups:
If you "piano" the button inputs for the Suzuran and your chosen follow-up, you can make the attack come out almost immediately, without seeing any of the Suzuran. Like, if my combo needs the rising slash, I would input 41236 K~P, just slightly staggering the delay between the K and P input.
Enjoyed the video, I'd argue a lot of these points though.
VISUALS:
Visually, she's always been "bad ass female samurai with one arm, with hidden weapons".
To pretend that she didn't have traditional sex appeal (when looking at guilty gear X) I'd argue is disingenious when her outfit has always showed off her breasts for no reason (though they didn't used to be tactical missiles). Even the version of guilty gear X has her tits being magically prevented from a wardrobe malfunction.
I'd argue that earlier versions of Baiken struggled to give the character more apparent unique qualities that separated her from "a one-armed badass female samurai" to "this is Baiken". The gigantic hair, and the change to make her outfit dramatically more pronounced and visually distinct maintains her identity as "one-armed badass female samurai" while still creating a much more pronounced character design unique to GG. Potemkin similarly got upgraded from "the half naked grappler dude", to "Potemkin".
So if you liked badass samurai, you still got it, but now in a way that felt much more specific and unique to guilty gear. I think it's categorically false to call the current iteration of Baiken as "more generic" when the first version draws immediate comparison and analogues to other existing media, whereas I can't think of who Baiken would be likened to now. I personally dislike the gigantic balloons she calls breasts but that has little to do with generic/not (since in practice, there are more female samurai that don't have two head-sized balloons on their torso).
2. Why didn't people complain about her mechanic differences?
They did. They did a lot. But the difference is this is a problem with Strive, not Baiken. At this point, no one has the expectation that complex movesets, unique mechanics and interactions will be preserved when ported. To be shocked that the character lost some toolkit would be to not know what happens to all characters coming into Strive. Yes, you can list 8 different moves off of Azami as "Wow look Baiken's the only one who got hit hard", but that's kind of inane. By that token, wow Sol had 10 dragon install specific moves he lost. I guess we all agree Sol is by far the most changed character.
There's just no longer that much point beating the dead horse of "wow Strive simplifies characters so if you liked this aspect of the character, it might now completely just not exist!" If you didn't like new Baiken, then you recognized that's what happens with the transition to Strive, much like what everyone else did when playing their respective characters. Instead, if you felt like the parts that were kept was the main reason you enjoyed Baiken (i.e her offense), hey! She still embodies what you care about the character! This doesn't mean you actually didn't like Baiken (you're not actually contractually obligated to enjoy all facets).
Well said
These are just my two cents but I'd have to say Ramlethal has to be one of the biggest character changes from Xrd to Strive (and also Elphelt since she's in the game now)
While I do agree that Baiken lost a lot of the stuff that made her stand out in older games, I also welcome the fact that she's pretty easy to understand in Strive and she's my main because of it.
I mained Jam in XX and Xrd, and I really wanted to main Baiken since the old games but I never could get the hang of how her kit works and how to approach her
And it didn't hit me until I saw this video and I'm not sure if that what the devs were going for but Strive Baiken is just Baiken in Missing Link in terms of gameplay. She has the core moves: Yonzansen, Kabari and Tatami Gaeshi and she is more on the aggressive side which is pretty how she was in Missing Link
First off gonna say that I love this video!
But I think that saying that they stripped baiken of her unique defensive threat in strive feels a bit incomplete. On the current patch of strive, while there is no single action she can take out of blockstun, strive's system generally requires there to be gaps somewhere in pressure and baiken is probably the character single best equipped to take advantage of them. Even without her metered options, between her parry that does a fuck ton of damage and builds a fuck ton of meter and gives meaty cS oki, 4f 5P that hits crouch, and throw that can end rounds on the spot she's very good at turning around defensive situations. She both has a very threatening tool to stop people from taking their normal routes on offense and tools to take advantage of the behavior that threat causes in her opponents. There are also tons of insane people defensive options that baiken players do on top of that. I feel like even if her guard cancels or azami were gone, the spirit of baiken being the scariest character to run offense on still lives.
This is a truly phenomenal video! The quality of the editing and high level research is incredible! You definitely earned yourself a subscriber! I hope this video blows up because of the clear amount of effort and heart you put into the video!
In a world of TH-cam shorts, 10 minute game reviews and hype content, this dude decided to drop an hour long movie out of nowhere.
On a single character.
Someone get this man a production team and a salary already!
That's very kind of you, but I'm all set from the projected 20 dollars this video is going to make me.
@@HQRubbish we're hitting double digits!? Financial freedom here we come!
this is a neat video but easily solved: the ship of thesseus was never real, and also all these baikens are fake. i met the real baiken while she was digging up burgers from the dumpster behind the mcdonalds on 5th and reginald's. i tried to say hello but she threw her sword at me and i'm dead now.
baiken died in 9/11. this story is false
@@hefdef9961 oh yeah? then who killed me, smartass?
47:21 I loved the fact that strive has dark and light skins for almost all their fighters
This is such an incredibly cool and well edited video essay. I gotta give you credit and it’s also can be viewed as a great historic video on Baiken as a character
As someone that always liked actually playing Baiken, the ship of Theseus is a perfect analogy as to why she didn’t work for me in STARVE, they changed so many parts of her that even though she looks similar, better even, what made me like playing her isn’t there anymore. It changed in Xrd, but it was still there, but Starve Baiken is barely a husk of what she was.
IMO they sacrificed the few ppl that actually played her to try and make her a more popular pick, and I’m not sure it even payed off.
That said, Strive did that to several characters, Testament was the other way around to me, went from no interest at all to main… Ram went through something similar as well.
I'd say Baiken is analogous to a slap fight competition.
Many people love seeing it, make fan works about it (Godslap) but very few would actually want to participate in the slap fight itself.
I think saying "People didn't complain about Baiken's chamges in Strive" is disengenuous.
I feel like there were a ton of people that were justifyably upset over the massive cut to her toolkit.
Obviously Strive is a different game and the higher committment to buttons in it would have made guardcancels and possibly even her counter stance monsterously overpowered, but the loss in capabilites she has I feel had a lot of people disappointed.
I for one, if I ever get around to playing more Xrd, would definitely consider picking her up as a secondary to Chipp. Either her or Sin idk.
In +R she can do some really interesting stuff, and I love the look of some of her combos, but I don't think her gameplay has me all too interested. Plus I'm really bad with execution, so there's that.
In regards to her "presentation", I fucking love the Xrd/Strive design, and her voice is absolutely incredible.
While the design is definitely more busy, I think the way her right sleeve looks shredded to bits instead of simply "cut" is a lot more badass, and characters having their shoulders highlighted somehow is something I really like in characterdesign, which is why the jacket hanging off of her I think is a pretty neat design element.
+R Baiken I like the attitude of in some of her animations, but her actual characterdesign I find just alright. She doesn't feel as wild in a way.
Idk, this comment was mad unstructured and I am not exactly clear whether I came to a concensus on anything, but no one is gonna read this anyway, so who cares.
Have a nice day
I can confirm your first point cause as a +R Baiken, I personally was pissed off about this, I never expected her to play exactly the same but for them to rid her of all her defensive tools which was her defining trait while also nerfing tatami to just be an oki tool and combo starter, removing kire tatami, a technique she'd had since Guilty Gear X and adding nothing else except a decent but generic parry grab and a tether, quite frankly felt like an insult for ever asking for that character
"YEAH I BEEN WAITIN FOR THIS"
-3rd strike announcer, 1999
My preference for Baiken's designs are simple:
I like samurai girls
I like delinquent girls
I like girls with eyepatches
I like big heavy metal hair
You take a samurai girl and give her a delinquent, a cool eyepatch, and increase her hair volume to 80s metal musician levels, then I am satisfied.
as someone who loves baiken and plays her in every iteration, I love how different the character is and how she changes. I think that's an appeal to me is how different it is to learn the character between games but keeping the general weird defensive playstyle that I love, strive dampened that and its disappointing but its still the version of her I've played the most. I often don't like her iterations for the first few hours of playing but once I get an understanding I start enjoying her a lot, this happened for every game I've played her in and its something ive come to expect.
I got into Strive as my first fighting game BY playing Baiken. She's simple enough to understand, while also feeling rewarding to get better with. Simply put I saw Guts Samurai Woman and immediately clicked lmao
Then you get into her XX Accent Core +R version.
Arguably THE MOST execution-heavy-yet-busted version of her to date solely cause across all other GG games, she got one specific change in +R that made her ACTUALLY good, if not, disgusting (her guard cancel specials can be done during her guarding dash out in the open, giving her defensive-only-tools nutty applications in both neutral and offense on a whim).
Edit: This carried over to Xrd, though at a cost, Azami pretty much isn't that good on the ground nor can she negative edge her specials anymore.
I dont play guilty gear, but i simply love baiken so much... for the simple reason that... she's totally fucked up, i mean, look at her!!
She doesnt have an arm, she doesnt have an eye, she's probably filled with scars hidden inside that kimono _and she still fights_
She fights even with a natural disavantage of missing a limb and an eye, and she doesnt give a damn.
She says "ore" which is a male pronoun for "me/I", she calls people like sol and sin "monster" and "small monster"
Shes just incredible, i really love her.
The visuals in this video are INSANE. Like I'm taking notes INSANE.
0:07 thank you, I came up with the Ship of Theseus idea all on my own. I am the rare free thinker.
I don't think the small fighting-game youtuber made this opening animation about Theseus, but whoever did is really fucking awesome.
Almost spat my drink when I heard "Max is still not playing baiken"
Got to say, the strive redesigns are fantastic in terms of how fun they are to play against. I felt the same way you talked about in this video about Strive faust's aesthetics & gameplay stylings (almost everything about him changed, the humor aspect having a far darker direction) - but god DAMN if he isnt a blast to play against now
I always loved Baiken's "deranged woman, filled with hatred and revenge" style. Made her cool. Something that you don't see extremely often. After XRD came out she kinda stopped feeling like this deranged woman running around with a sword and attacking anyone who knew the man she wanted to enact her revenge on. She kinda started feeling like an angry, grumpy female police officer or vigilante, at least for me. Call me boring or crazy, but I loved her Missing Link design the most.
My final take away is that Baiken is wanted by players not for the character herself, but the concept of the character. Like Smash Players requesting a character for decades, only to finally get that character and be lukewarm about them after the honeymoon phase is over. Amazing film, was not expecting my viewpoints on climate change and the separation of Beauty, Intimidation, and Challenge to be rewired in my brain by a film about a character I’ve only seen in porn. Amazing work
For me, all the voices carry a tough, angry aura. And her posture and mannerisms come off as a a wild, untamable woman. She is herself with no restraint in any iteration. That’s what I love
the gameplay stuff is interesting but the plot stuff is kinda weird in this video tbh. like baiken becoming a bit nicer isnt really some attempt to tone her down, thats just, every character in strive becoming more normal, thats the games whole theme, people coming to peace with themselves. she's still dismissive and rude in most of her quotes in gameplay, she's just picking a fight less. its kinda weird to boil a lady down to 'curvaceous mom figure' just because shes nice to a kid sometimes. might have some baggage to unpack there.
I had 600-700 hours on Baiken in Xrd and have about 800 hours on her in Strive. Was a pretty competetive and knowledgeable about her in both. What hasn't changed between the two parts is the general game plan. Fighting games are not about planning to block. So if you are pretty good with her, you do similar stuff most of the time. I miss azami and iabd tatami (though it can be somewhat reproduced), also I liked having more followup options, but the rope and kenju are fun as well. Also the thing that never changed about her charachter is being a rude agressive badass with little regard for anyone's opinion. Visually it was more pronounced in XX, but the idea of it hasn't changed. I enjoy and respect her outlook on life and like how she mellows out a bit with time passing by.
Also, I woudn't put tandem top and tatami in the same box. Tatami has many more cases for use than disc. It is a defencive tool, an offensive one and also several kinds of setplay.
And man, she was fucking hard in XX and Xrd. I literally had to switch from pad to hitbox and spend 2 months retraining my muscule memory to gain an ability to do kire tatami and tk youzansen (dp input) consistently, so I am happy for those, who didn't have to suffer through that just to play a cool samurai chick like her.
In strive she also gained a lot. Youzansen has now uses outside of just being an unreactable overhead. It is ambiguous crossup, much better neutral tool, a part of several safejump setups, a pressure reset, it has different purposes and combos for inputs 2369, 2368, 2367, 9236, 8236, 7236 and iabd236. So I don't feel like she lacks depth right now. She was much more complex in Xrd, true, but I have hard time remembering many people outside Mystic and Maruken, who utilized all of her kit correctly, so making her more accessible is a good thing IMO. Also, Baiken fans, who actually play her are really dedicated and are total tech monkeys and lab monsters. Cudos to them.
I love the strive design too, he has less stuff but way more utility.
This is from someone that was glancing at Guilty Gear for a long time before finally getting Guilty Gear when Strive came about:
1. Edgy Swordsman - I loved lots of edgy things growing up 'cuz trying to be cool, though I legitimately loved most edgy things anyways. Also grew up in the 90s sooo that'll bias me a bit since everything was trying to be edgy. In terms of fighting games, Strider & Jin for Marvel vs capcom 1. Ridley and Sephiroth in Smash Bros Ultimate. Meta Knight in Smash Bros Brawl even before I knew he was OP because he introduced me to the concept of a duel, and in a world of cute enemies, he stands out much more strongly than other edgy characters in a an already edgy world.
Any other game out there, I'm usually gonna use a ninja, or typical samurai with a scar on their face since there usually is one in every game's roster.
2. Her theme in Strive - Let's just say I relate to her theme heavily, and haven't really seen anything else along those lines. I listen to it if I ever start getting too angry at things and it calms me down and focus on what's important in life. Also, metal with buddhist stuff? Like excuse me? I've never seen this combo anywhere else, so it fills a special niche I love that is no where else. The song is just so perfect (even if there it sounds a bit funny where the singer sounds like kermit for a moment lol)
Only reason why I haven't mentioned gameplay because I'm still learning characters in Strive, and it's not even my primary fighting game, and I'm used to adapting to different playstyles so I don't have any preferences. Just about everyone's gameplay in Strive looks so friggin' fun to play.
So it's all about their character, and they all have a lot of character in Strive, it's like the only fighting game that isn't smash that I could literally anyone in the roster and be happy with it. Though, for now I'm maining Jack-O because I find the 2 personality thing relatable with one side that is serious & smart with the other side being goofy & air headed, and her theme is kind of a reminder that while it's good to always be trying for stuff, ya gotta take time to remember to enjoy life & and be positive. Of course, not every relatable theme is something I want, I-No for example just ends up making me feel angry/depressed with everything in life after listening to it, so I kinda have to not main her.
Also, the Jack-O pose meme with Lethal League's Ordinary days theme kept reminding me of Guilty Gear before I used to listen to that theme. Oh, also been really getting into exercise, and playing Jack-O keeps reminding me to get more flexible.... And the Jack-O pose is just really really fun to do... Also, In some areas I like to represent myself with a protogen, and Jack-O's face looks very very close to a protogen's face, I just dunno why I like that look for a face but it makes emotions be happy.
So yeah, while I'd love to play the heck outta Baiken, I'm attempting to stick to only one character per fighting game when I can, so Jack-O happens to be the one. Of course, that may change with some DLC if somehow a better character for me comes out. Just saw that Bedman is in the game now, he looks so crazy fun and I've always been a sucker for non-human characters, since they usually do unique aesthetics & gameplay to play up the non-human stuff, so it's less generic than a traditional character that'll I'll see in a million other games.
I honestly feel like if they just dropped the jacket and the eyepatch, I'd love current Baiken. It looks too busy - it pulls her away from the element she did really well (samurai). It also makes it harder to match her with Anji, who has remained pretty consistent in his own design.
Fantastic video. I personally started with Xrd, and while that alone could vouch for why Xrd Baiken is my favorite, I mostly like how many tools she has while still being few and simple enough to execute that I don't end up metal stacking myself. XX Baiken is probably her strongest iteration, and Strive is objectively her simplest one, but Xrd hits that sweet middle ground where I can understand what to do and how to do it while still having fun operating a complex character. I actually did have that "Period of disappointment followed by acceptance." when she got into Strive. I was really looking forward to a new design, and seeing that she was almost unchanged from Xrd coupled with some of my favorite tools of hers (Azami, Suzuran and Kabari followups) getting gutted in favor of the tether made me pretty lukewarm on her for a few months. I understood why they changed her, but it didn't make it easier. Over time I learned to have fun with what was there, and I'm really happy with how much attention she got in the story mode. Also, never make me look at Beefy Sword Slayer again, please.
really the major difference people I see in baiken's design is her being far more broad in the literal sense. we can see that in the earlier iterations she was slimmer, even skinny. she wasnt very tall, her walk animations were hunched up and isolated, it really showed that she's incredibly... unhappy. her new design shows the opposite. she's bulked up quite a bit, her shoulders being more broad, her at least leg muscles being far bigger and her hair looking if still as unkempt, much more powerful. and she is facing you chest on. it really shows how Baiken went from "I've lost everybody" to "i have myself" and that's why some people don't really connect, say, XX baiken to Xrd baiken
Gotta be one of the most interesting and entertaining character retrospectives I've ever seen - thank you for the great video!
Subbed 😊
Who says you have to main a character to want them in game?
I think he is asking the question: Why add her as a playable character if nobody plays her and people only like her because of an ideal rather than as a fighting game character.
@@pin8584 Because the value of characters exists beyond playing them. Otherwise we would be happy with a roster of only the characters that we play.
For example I play Heihachi, Bob and M. Raven in T7, but would I be happy if the roster were only those 3 characters? Of course not.
@@pin8584 The whole "nobody plays her" became invalid in Strive tbh and it stuck more as a meme. She was quite popular with casuals in Xrd, and in Strive, as of the last info we had on character numbers, she was top 5 most played characters. That thought would fit someone like Faust more.
I think there is a theme to her gameplay that has not only stayed consistent, but has been doubled down on. Commitment.
Baiken has tools that work in any stage of the game. She has great offense, great defense, and great neutral. The catch is that all of her options are high commitment. If you block her overhead, she NEEDS to RC or she gets hit. If she parries even slightly too early, she'll become vulnerable. Her tether can potentially hurt her just as much as it can help her, and she only gets a measly +2 on block to help her make sure the former doesn't happen. Her neutral, while strong, is reliant on her opponent taking the initiative, making it significantly less effective when she's behind. She's a character who puts all her eggs in one basket, living hard and dying harder. This is thematically tied to her severed arm, as someone with only 1 arm would need to make heavy commitments, dropping their guard to attack and vice versa.
I don't know how your video essays haven't more popularity, truly a great one.
im glad that for once a 50 minute video about a subject that could be figured out in one sentence, or hell, one word, has managed to actually get me to think more deeply about about the topic. excellent work! 👍
Wow...This is a very well crafted video.
I was first introduced to Baiken in XX and she was the first character I selected (it was actually Chipp but I switched from him almost as soon as the match started). She always reminded me of Himura Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin, but with more edge and being female.
She is similar to Leona Heidern from KOF in that they gave her implants which accentuates the sexual appeal of a character I already liked. For me this is a positive design addition, though an unnecessary one because I already liked the character.
I can't speak to all the elements of Baiken's gameplay because I was a child when I first played her in XX and I didn't understand the intricacies of fighting games. I just wanted to play what I was attracted to, be it cool, sexy, cute, or all of the above. In general, I enjoy Baiken's character design more in Xrd and Strive but I prefer her game design more in her XX and Xrd. The only cool thing she has gameplay-wise in Strive is her tether-bell mechanic, and between that and her parry throw, she is pretty underwhelming because as you mentioned in your video, more than half of her kit from Xrd and XX that made her unique was removed for Strive.
But similar to Ramlethal, I guess Arc System wanted to make her more accessible to more people who may have been put off by her gameplay while simultaneously making her more conventionally visually attractive. Strive Ramlethal is the perfect example of when Max said at 49:18 "I think they [Arc System] have a pretty good balance at turning Baiken into the character that people thought she was." Comparing her Strive version where she swings her large swords directly from her side when she strikes her opponent, to her Xrd version where the same swords teleport to some predetermined location while she fights primarily with her bare hands. The Strive version makes more inherent sense.
I'm the type who will play a character regardless of difficulty if I am attracted enough to their character design, their personality and how well that is reflected in their animations.
Once again, great work on this video!
i think the reason i like baiken is because her character development i personally like xrd baiken but playing strive baiken and seeing her develop into almost a mom character i think it's nice to se her change its fun growing up with her weather she changes her design its almost like she is evolving by letting down her walls to be nicer witch is a part of her giving up her revenge. i miss old baiken game play but i love her new character.
I completely understand what you're saying, I've been introduced to Baiken in AC+R then as you described XRD changed but it was still scratching the itch (gameplay wise) as for the design in both of those games, I loved the addition of the coat and her hair getting longer and a little more unkempt honestly, to me she still had that rugged and calloused feel to her (even with the virtually invisible ripped sleeve) her "assets never bothered me except much like her hair they ballooned as well... As for -STRIVE-? Well I had found out they absolutely gutted her parries (which is what I loved about her to begin with) I hesitated to pick her up again but as I saw the tether, and the Kenjyu Overdrive I became more and more open to it especially because Happy Chaos was added (there is no other feeling like shooting Chaos point blank with that firework and winning the match with one shot after he's unloaded 30 clips into you.) I can appreciate your video because it made me love Baiken more than I did already, what she was, what she is, and what she will be. Thank you
As someone who never played GG games until strive, but did go back and try out +R, when I saw how Baiken used to look I immediately downloaded the strive mods to change her back to her original design which I find so much more appealing. Gameplay wise she is quite fun and I see the appeal in the old and new versions of her for very footsie based players like myself, in the basics of her kit she still has anyway. I think that's what Max means by "the character people thought she was". It seems she is one of the many characters in games that the low-mid level players utilized an entirely different style that they enjoyed, but is not how high-top level players utilized her. Instead of making a new character that played the way low-mid level people wanted her to, they made her into that character and got rid of the kit that pros used her for, while retaining her "fundamentals".
Similar to others you mentioned, I don't main her. I and all my friends secondary her, but she just doesn't have "the sauce" if you will to really showcase a unique style. Where she was unapproachable in past games, now she's sort of bland, almost anything you like about her you can find in another character who emphasizes that aspect more. Her more unique things like the tether are honestly still the least enjoyable and worst part of her kit to the point even some pros barely use it. They stripped her down to the fundamentals that the low-mid level players knew and understood, but now besides a mediocre tether gimmick that's all she is. The base always wants that set of fundamental skills and close enough aesthetics to be in the game because they understand it's a core of what makes the game itself, in the same way most people want to see characters like Chun Li return even though she isn't highly picked either especially at low-mid level. But few people actually want to main those characters because they don't really fit anyone's preferences for a certain style of play as well as at least one other character in the game. In contrast high level players will opt to use her exactly to capitalize on her fundamental based kit, if they think she is stronger that other characters who would play in a similar enough way.
Funnily enough, I never cared that much about Baiken (or Guilty Gear in general), but this video really made me appreciate her and now I kinda wanna try playing with her if I ever play Strive.
Strive/Xrd design is my current favorite because it has an aesthetically pleasing flow and volume to it. Strive really perfected it by bumping up the ponytail and shrinking the, what I am going to call, "hair horns" a bit, creating an almost fully circular silhouette in her idle pose.
15:13 for reference.
The intro to this video is absolutely top tier! I was so captivated by the editing of the beginning, it felt like the start to a movie, so cool.
Plenty of people play Baiken in Xrd, but very few play her well, so she has minimal tournament representation (though she still isn't Answer).
One aspect that this video omits is that in both +R and Xrd, the living legacy games, Baiken is rather ridiculously difficult. In +R her bnb has to have a frc in it (though it looks really cool when you pull it off). In Xrd she constantly does pretty rough motions and doesn't function without them. If you are bad at any of iabd tatami, kire tatami, tk yozansen, airdash dustlooop timing, and landing kuchinashi link, you can give up playing her.
Aside of that, I agree with everything you've had to say. I started with XX, in +R I am put off by her gameplay, and Xrd I'm put off by the design. Strive Baiken is basically the same character as all the other Strive characters that aren't Happy Chaos. Sad to say SNK understands what Baiken is better than Arcsys does.
As someone who was a +R Baiken main for nearly 2 years (I kinda dropped fighting games for the time being), it took about 2 to 3 months to execute her core gameplan with any level of consistency, she's not hardest the character in the game but she's also far from being easy to play either, she's not only hard but unintuitive, it takes a lot of love for the character to not just learn someone easier
Sorry bro but if you think those minor aethetic changes makes her less recognizable (kimono wise), you probably are a Metropolis citizen "he can't be super man he wear glasses", the rest I get it, what I liked of her is the savagery, Baiken have something around all the games she has that "You don't want to mess with that person" Aura, she is BRUTAL and I love her new demeanors because makes her even more bad ass she is a weird mix of a beast and a samuray and each time she just evolves in brutality, also her story is interesting she was one of the characters that was old enough in Japan to witness when sht hitted the fan.
Also awesome intro, it got me stuck
XRD baiken was and always will be my favorite, I like strive baiken but she now has a very one dimensional gameplan which has me play the game religiously for a solid 2 days because well I still love baiken and the game but get pretty bored because every matchup is basically the same aside from one or two characters where you might play slightly more defensive but you’re going to approach the same way. And then I don’t play strive for a certain amount of time usually a month or two. I then just hop back onto XRD and feel right at home. I tried to play XX and still fell in love with baiken despite how similarly different she was from XRD gameplay wise but I haven’t nearly spent as much time with the game as I honestly should’ve but I do appreciate the XX baiken design a little more then the XRD design because she looks more rugged, badass, and scarred. Which has me reinstall the game to lab out baiken for about an hour play the arcade for her and get the different endings then hop back on XRD. I do this every so often. Istill fall in love with the XRD design I like her hair more and the coat I feel is super cool but I honestly just wish they could’ve kept the exact same simplicity that they exhibited in XX with battle damage. Her gameplay will always be my favorite because I love the play style of “beat my head against a brick wall” with mixup options and then also have counter defensive options because it’s funny and I don’t like to block (lol), I honestly got into the game because of Johnny as opposed to baiken but stayed because of her. Her move set of basically having a utility belt instead of an arm I found hella badass, the wide diversity of counters I found fun as fuck even if I’m still pretty dogshit at it and I still like a dip shit go for the command grab off of her Kabari because “funny suplex”. Overall I like her gameplay the most out of probably any fighting game I’ve ever played specifically XRD with XX not that far behind it despite it being pretty similarly different and while I do love strive baiken it’s just not the same with all the options you can do off of her counters taken away. And how strive screams about her simplicity simply because that’s just the name of the game.
On a more broader point about how characters change between games, there are examples of characters that are mechanically redesigned for the better in newer, presumably less mechanically interesting titles. Poison from SFIV to SFV comes to mind. In SFIV Poison is basically a shoto with kinda unique (for sfiv) projectile and a rekka. In SFV Poison is a reactionary non-committal long limb zoner with disjointed hitboxes, while having an offensive edge if needed and fucked up mixups with her Molotov VT. I've seen some weirdos still liking SFIV Poison, but in general people like SFV Poison more. Even though more people hate fighting against her in SFV.
I Loved the video the editing, story telling and quality was incredible and I hope you will continue to make videos like this.
I've entered the world of guilty gear after baiken's release on strive, so I'm not knowlegeable in the older versions of her, and as a fellow Baiken main I will share my thoughts. When you describe how she was in previous games, I think that all the changes of her design were a step in making baiken the character that everyone loves. while you say that the aesthetics continuation of the character a failure, I think it succeeded in what the character represents in Xrd and Strive, commonly known as "Character Developpment", (I'm gonna dive into lore stuff so I might be wrong here feel free to correct me) baiken's objective up until Xrd and Strive is revenge, revenge of her destroyed country, and to achieve that she must become strong at all costs, that's why her aesthetics reflect the reject of any convention, that can also explain why her lost arm was such a important part of her animations in the older games, it wanted us to see that she's a war torn warrior.
That isn't the case in Xrd and Strive, she began to stray away from this dangerous path, adn I think that's when the aesthetics changes makes way more sense, for me it strikes the perfect balance bewteen a badass that gives the "mess with me and I'll make you regret it" vibe and the more approchable and motherly figure vibe, for example the fact that her lost arm is less noticeable makes sense given the path she tries to walk on, she's willingly trying to hide with the jacket (and yes even her huge BONKERS helps in giving that vibe I just decribed, even though it was probably also made to appeal to a larger audience). Thats why I like both of the designs but not for the same reasons and I really think we should analyse those redesigns by what the characters represents now and not by how she looked the game before.
In the gameplay side of things, I think that's the main thing holding back the pick rate of the character, fighting games was and is a really hard type of game, and when you make a complex character in a already complex genre, it is guaranteed that the character pick rate is gonna drop. And strive really made that barrier considerably lower for baiken, like you described, no more weird shit on block, she's way more straight forward in her offense and defense, but they still managed to make her feel like the "don't mess with me" vibe that I was describing earlier, moslty because of her parry (so fucking satisfying to just grab you oppoent and SLAM him to the ground when they dared attack you). and that made people who liked baiken and couldn't play her because of her high skill celing get to actually play her in strive (also helped by the fact that strive a significantly easier game overall).
To wrap up my thoughts, I think that the fact that people want a character that they will not necesarily play is completly normal, because of 2 things. One, baiken was in the franchise from the very beginning and it feels off to not have the full original cast when a new game comes out, take smash bros, do you really see a new smash game without the original cast from 64. Imagine Captain falcon, an iconic figure of the series being a DLC ? Nah. Second people only have (usually) one main character, in any given fighting game you probably like aesthetically or gameplay wise multiple characters, but you can only invest your time in one because it's a fighting game, and fighting games are too hard to have time for a second one.
Thank you for this video, fighting games video essays needs to be more popular.
I feel the video was great BUT the video would be perfect if you could sit down and talk with Max on camera.
Baiken first appealed to me because she kind of resembled the main character of Lady Snowblood, and even had a similar revenge story in discarding her womanhood for revenge. Plus I was at the time still a big fan of Rorouni Kenshin - and a still a fan, but I've had to separate the author from the fiction - and Baiken sort of resembled a character that would come from that universe.
Plus, I'm a fan of two character types most of the FGC hate: Party characters and Grapplers. I liked Baiken's play style of always being in your face and pressing you while you have to be careful of her various counter moves. I thought it was a play style that fit a raging one-armed, one-eyed ronin.
Did I like how strive took away a lot of her play style in favor of the rope mechanics? At first, I was mixed on it but I thought about it and adjusted to it. It kind of grew on me and kind of made me think of it as a new trick to keep up the pressure on opponents.
So yeah, I still like Baiken. Always have, always will.
I play Baiken, I've only played Strive but. I LOVE her more badass Ronin-inspired designs in the older games, which makes me sad we probably won't get a high-definition version of the older designs.
Good video. Might as well how I feel since, why not.
I love her Xrd iteration and definitely wanna try her Accent Core iteration; but her strive iteration didn't necessarily land so well with me. I love her Azami followups and her general heavy parry playstyle to the point where I'd be totally happy to play her in both of her older iterations, but I'm not too sure if I'd play her a top if I got back into strive.
I did end up enjoying her a bit when she launched, but I stopped playing by the end of pass 2 and I don't know if I'd player her again. I think she still plays with a lot of the same fundamentals so I might end up feeling comfortable enough to play her but I might also end up falling back on zato, pretty much the only character I ever played in strive until her release.
She's really intersting in general, especially her older iterations. Her identity from the previous game was very unhealthy for the game playstyle-wise though, so I can totally understand why she was reworked so much and why it was mostly stripped down into a more commonplace normal-based defensive character with access to a riskier parry.
As for her visuals... honestly they just bother me because of the way people discuss or think of the character. At one point I think I complained to a friend how it makes me look weird playing her because they had continued to make her breasts bigger every single game, which made me rather uncomfortable and I think made them uncomfortable as well. I tend to enjoy the general visual style and concepts in both of her core iterations, but the exaggerated elements of her design just make me self conscious. I'm a gameplay first person so I don't want to be seen like that, you know?
Rusbish is lterally the best recomendation that youtube has ever pushed my way .
Not anymore. I loved her and played her for her ability to punish predictable block strings and pokes. I really loved her weirdly aggressive- but- defensive playstyle. She was my hope for reinvigorating my interest in strive, and I was let down
Okay first of all, this video was fucking awesome and you should feel great for having created it. Go buy doughnuts or something.
I watched this in the middle of the night after falling asleep way too early and it was really captivating, 51 minutes just flew by.
As for me, I've always liked rough badass women that don't really care a lot about what other people think and in that sense, I like all versions of Baiken for different reasons (most of my created characters in games like Monster Hunter could be alternate universe versions of her without intending to be)
The one I played the most (although not a lot compared to other people, I'm one of those "Hey it would be really awesome to be good at this but I don't invest the time" kinda guy) is XRD Baiken and after she clicked for me and I figured out how to parry bait into the rope super (regrettably can't remember the name off the top of my head) where she clings to the wall before winning the round has felt really good to play.
So much so that I was disappointed when I found out about the Strive moveset.
I mostly like her in Strive for the lore since I wish for her to find peace after all she went through.
Aesthetically tho I've modded her to look less over the top like in XX, she looks too sluggish/complicated to me in XRD and Strive but not enough for me to dislike her.
In the end, the meme held true, all the Baiken Mains since GG1 will finally be able to play her in Strive lmao
The fgc really doesn't care for the story of the characters huh? Its A very big part of it. Then again maybe this is for the people that only play guilty games with the thought that they are just fighting games. i will say the video really comes off very side ways on strive with the perspective of someone that looks at the game in a very surface level way
Several years ago before i ever heard of GG, i xrd baiken's character art and idle animations and told myself "she looks cool. Not gonna play the game tho." Then i eventually saw tournament play and passing, heard her voice lines, saw the fucked up shit she can do while blocking and fell in love with the character. I told myself if i decide to get into GG im maining her.
Strive comes out and im bummed. No Baiken no Buyken! I said. Then they finally released her and im just really underwhelmed. "Did they do this to all legacy characters in strive?" I wondered. Turns out its a mix of yes and no.
Fast foward to today and after soul searching i pick up baiken back up and after all her buffs she feels as busted as i wanted her feel. Watching memokarp win a huge tourney solidified my feelings and i havent touched any other character but her ever since.
So in a way i slowly learned to like everything about baiken over the years.
I would actually really love to hear your thoughts on Strive Faust, since you talk about overall design and silhouettes and recognizable. Would Strive Faust be a “failure”? Because I don’t think so, but that’s seemingly what your definition would have me believe
I mean Strive Faust did alienate a certain population of funny doctor enjoyers but, new Faust is representative of a evolution of his character in the lore. Self sacrifice to try to atone for the sins of the past leaves him as a husk. Baiken in contrast arguably goes through the most radical status quote shift in strive story giving up her quest for revenge, and yet her visuals are almost unchanged from Xrd.
Bruh...This line of thinking is what I ascribe to UMVC3 almost to a T.
Everybody loves it so much, to the point of attacking other games in it's defense, but almost nobody truly wants to play it beyond the people who never left it.
19:08 - “What would that way constitute? An Asian broad with a sword?”
Me: *_“YES!”_*
As a disabled person, having only one working arm, Yes, I selfishly enjoy having someone like myself being seen as a bad ass, popular, and sex appeal. Without needing some robotic ,or magical replacement to be a capable fighter. Given how much he simps for Max he should understand Naiken players well. Since it makes him happy that's goo. Personally I don't care r If Max plays Baiken, Chipp, or with himself. I don't care if no one plays Baiken as a result of Guilty Gear being hard to play one handed, trust me I know,. If it keeps people buying the games who cares?
"she is one of the series most iconic characters but she also just happens to be one of the least played characters in the entire franchise's history" that's not true tho, she's one of the top 5 most played character in XRD
Overproduced (love it!). Great points (thanks for the history lesson). I don’t think I can fully agree.
I think what’s happening here is a misconception of what a character is to fighting game fans. Not players, but fans. Folks like cosplayers and artists, for example, who might be very interested in the game, but not actually even be interested in learning or playing it. Baiken was important to those people most of all. As a character idea. As something that is relevant to other fans of the game (equals “is in the most recent version of the game”). These kinds of fans are very open to engaging with the audiovisual element of the character, and even changing it (fan art), and most importantly, they produce free marketing for the game even if they do not buy it themselves!
This situation is not unique: Tekken has a very similar discrepancy between play usage and actual popularity of quite a few characters, especially females. One example: Zafina and Jun have consistently been one of the least played characters in their respective games, but fans want them back quite rabidly.
As for Baiken losing half of her kit in favour of accessibility - I don’t have a stake here as I am not a Baiken player. What I see here is ASW capitalising on popularity, and trying to tie the perception of the game to the actual game by changing the game. If I played Baiken, I would have dropped her. That said, If I played Baiken, a very complex character, I would have probably also been able to play other characters, and had someone to fall back on, and would not have dropped the game entirely. No matter how cruel it sounds, it’s not a huge loss, and probably the best decision from ASW.
This is a fantastic video, that said I have to disagree with some of it as much of it is opinionated. Baiken’s core design has changed significantly with xrd, but the thing is that pretty much all characters have. Characters from Sol to Baiken to Chipp to Ram to Testament to Bridget, if we think of thematic/personality changes, GG has seen A LOT of change by fighting game standards. Sol has mellowed out significantly, Chipp has simultaneously got humble and become a colonizer, Ram is much more chill/neutral, Testament and Bridget literally transitioned, and Baiken like Chipp has significantly mellowed out and focused on formed family.
In terms of visual design, I’d say she’s MORE distinct now compared to XX. Her new silhouette and design language communicates a form of compactness/density. The comparatively gigantic coat/kimono and her hair make the tatami mats and hook and cannon and now a gun and bell rope she pulls out of nowhere mor believable. You could argue the bigger rack contributes to this design philosophy, but nah I still think that’s mainly sex bait
I felt like the dichotomy between the fact that she acts like the most roughest, toughest, stoic man's man but she's got the body of a gravure idols is fascinating. There really isn't another fighting game character like her.
Great video, I liked and subscribed. Everyone else has already gushed over the production value so I'll let them speak for me on that front. Let me try to grapple with the actual message of the video a little, since I think I do, to some degree, fall into the crosshairs of it.
I'm a fan of Baiken, as is made obvious from my pfp. I agree with you so far as I feel the boobification of her design over the course of the series has cheapened her as a character, leading to a lot of people being attracted to the "surface-deep beauty" you mentioned.
Despite this, I do genuinely like pretty much every iteration of her; instead of seeing them all as the same character, though, I kind of see it as different slices of a ""real"" person who's grown and changed over, well, 25 years. Not many fighting game characters get to travel and evolve through an entire character arc, especially ones with as little screentime as Baiken gets in GG's story, but she's somehow managed it. While it's true that comparing X2 Baiken to Strive Baiken presents you with two significantly different people, the core behind the mask, the essence of who *Baiken* is, has remained the same:
A woman who has lost her homeland and almost everyone she loved, grappling with the grief and pain that she's been left with, cutting down anything that gets in her way.
The difference between games is in how she deals with the void within herself. At first she's practically a rabid dog, lashing out at anyone who gets too close; then, she's driven by vengeance towards a particular goal on a lone path, shunning anyone who tries to walk with her; then, she learns to work with others to accomplish her goals; and finally, in strive, she's starting to lay her vengeance aside and find peace (which is mostly detailed in the lyrics of her song "mirror of the world"; the song also has a lot of neat buddhist themes, tying back to her facial tattoo). I don't think she's a ship of Theseus at all; her final form is significantly different to how she was at the start. But the thing is, that's what people do. They change. Honestly, I'm just glad she's happy. Is this a little weird, considering she's a fictional 3D samurai? For sure. But considering I'm replying to a 51-minute video essay dedicated solely to her character, I don't think it's too out there.
This I feel like applies to almost every character throughout the Guilty Gear series, though as said in the video, Baiken probably has had the least gradual shift of them all (with the jump between XX and Xrd being an extremely different design in many ways)
Daisuke Ishiwatari seems to love his universe beyond just the fighting game, and most of the ideas behind stuff like character designs and the such seem to be fueled by in-universe plot progression and character development.
By the end of the Strive story Sol doesn't even wear his iconic red anymore, he's just gone and become some guy. Baiken's design being much less wild and disheveled, alongside her "boobification" really does help lend not just for fanservice (which I'm sure is the Doylist explanation) but a Watsonian justification would lend it to her now more mellowed-out personality no longer in search for revenge, and as a sort of motherly figure to Delilah who's now a character
i picked baiken in strive because i heard she had a parry when i was first looking into it as my first fighting game, then i went back and looked at her older iterations and got bummed out that she didnt have suzuran or azami because it looked fun and really cool. i still hope they add something like suzuran or expand on her hiiragi more when they add a new special to her eventually during season 3.
edit: coming back 4 months later after playing her older iterations and i can definitely say i love baiken, all her kits give me something different to enjoy about a character that i absolutely adore. xrd is probably my favourite overall version of her but +r execution is just so damn cool. consequently this has made strive baiken a little bit less appealing for me in gameplay but i still love her all the same and still has a place in my heart even if i do prefer older versions of her kit more. i'm still no good at her since i've only put about 300 hours across all her iterations but i hope to get to a solid place with all 3 eventually.
I'll share here my experience of discovering baiken. Before trying out guilty gear strive that was my first introduction to the licence, I first listened to the music. I was listening on a daily basis guilty gear strive osts and out of all of theme my favourite one was Mirror of the World. Then one day bought the game with the season pass to try it out and on looking for which character to pick I saw Baiken, she looked so fucking cool, the one arm one eye aesthetic reminded me of berserk a lot and instantly loved it, but also her expression, it was very appealing. Then I launched training mode and it hit me, my favourite music from the game was her character theme. From here on I was absolutely sold. I later searched for her Lore and was not dissapointed either. She exudes strength both of body and mind and confidence, first thing I thought on seeing her walk animation was not "woah so sexy" but more like "so confident", tbf it's a bit goofy as well haha. To put it more simply, I love her design, her personality, her lore and enjoyed her gameplay too.
People like her because she's both incredibly hot with those massive mammeries, hot face, and cool drip and hair but ALSO has an interesting story and is just a cool character in the actual lore. So she's eye candy plus badass, the perfect combo. People don't play her because her playstyle is weirdly unique and hard to master so if you actually want to have fun, you can't play her unless you're a sadist.
This dude is entirely wrong on Baiken's aesthetics. Other than making her more chunky (which happened to every character in the series pretty much between XX and Strive) her aesthetic direction hasn't changed at all, it actually got pushed further, making many of her animations more belligerent and rugged compared to XX. The argument of "her titties are bigger and torn sleve isn't as prominent, so she's completely different now" is dumb. And this dumb assertion makes the rest of the video pointless.
It's really simple: people liked Baiken's aesthetic, but they found her too complicated to play. Now that she's got dumbed down, more people started to play her. That's it.
Also, it's pretty weird to present Baiken as changed beyond recognition when Testament is in the game.
There both terrible and I can barely think of any XX or Xrd Baiken players, (including myself) that wanted to play this iteration of the character, only returning character Strive didn't fuck up was Bridget
@@stormysoup1083 I can see the argument for Baiken in terms of gameplay, she's definitely very boring in Strive. With other returning characters at least the new kits are still fun, even if completely different from the previous games, but without azami and suzuran Baiken has become extremely bland.
My main point was about visual design though, i don't think it changed all that much.
It's pretty simple. Many people like the aesthetics, character design and theme of Baiken, her personality and story as well, but are never quite willing to put in the time to learn how to play the character, back then because she was very technical and possibly even now because these people are usually just casual fans who don't stick around to play a lot in general.
Now, as you point out, her design has changed as well as did her voice acting, without that there was much upheaval among Baiken fans. I think this was due to the fact that, while the changes were important, especially going from X to Xrd, the general aesthetics and theme of the character was still respected, and that being those of a sexy, badass samurai woman. Baiken had many voice actresses, and they all play the rough masculine-sounding warrior woman voice, so her attitude stayed the same across many versions of the game. Most people didn't mind the visual changes from X to Xrd because the redesign was considered to be a good one.
Is it a pretty shallow view of the character? Absolutely yes, but most people are indeed just casual fans who have a shallow view of the entire series, and it's not really a bad thing, that's just how they choose to enjoy things. More dedicated Guilty Gear fans were those that probably paid more attention to her aesthetical and gameplay changes over the years, but they are a minority and there's also the fact that gameplay-wise most hardcore Guilty Gear players hated fighting Baiken so they didn't mind drastic changes to her kit (even though I personally think that taking away her counter-focus playstyle is bad), and visually speaking the Xrd redesign still maintained the fundamental aspects of Baiken if it downplayed the more unique aspects of her earlier design.
This is also connected to another fact. Design and theme wise, Guilty Gear started off as a very edgy and metal anime series, and then it mellowed out progressively, to the point that Xrd and Strive's aesthetics seem completely removed from the original PS1 game, with just X being the middle child connecting the two interpretations of the series. All characters have been affected by this somewhat, but Baiken is definitely one of the most affected, going from a masculine, gender non-conforming, psychotic warrior woman to a waifu who's still very badass and still has a very good story, but the mood and story direction has changed drastically. She's not alone in this, but it gets very obvious with her.
Baiken is the reason I started playing Guilty Gear X back when a friend first showed it to me on the Dreamcast.
... and Baiken is partially the reason I stopped playing Strive. The character in Strive named Baiken may share her appearance, name and general mannerisms, but she plays almost nothing like the character I enjoyed for so many years. People keep saying things like "She reflects the growth of the series" but this isn't growth, it's decay. I mean sure, her movelist going from 40+ moves down to 4 is reflective of the direction Strive is going in, but I'd hardly call that "growth."
The endless photos in my phone says yes bruv.
What a great video! We all should be glad something of this calibre was added to the FGC. As someone (trying) to design a fighting game, this has given me plenty to think about... and perhaps be inspired by.
❤
I was NOT prepared for this video quality omg
Peak content as always.
I have really strange experience with Baiken exactly because of things you put out
I randomly play AACCR, Xrd and Strive and each time first few matches are spent to switch mindset both in her visuals and gameplay.
As a sorta.... fan, I guess i can put my answer to why I like her this way: I really like when character I play breaks convention(s) of the game i play and pushing my enemy to think outside of their usual flow while also being fair if person can do the switch. While i understand that this wording can be used against any character, Baiken and several other chars in other fighting games have it more defined where they can punish a thing which other chars usually let happen.
In that sense each Baiken consistently offers me this kinda experience which I enjoy
I feel like I spent 51 minutes watching someone intentionally miss the forest for the trees just to justify calling modern Baiken a basic bitch.
Absolutely amazing video.
Baiken is the character that got me into Guilty Gear, because of her design, specifically GGXXAC+R. Her one arm and one eye made me think "What happened to her, why did these things happen?" which made me interested in her lore. And then gameplay-wise, I did feel frustrated at times, but I didn't want to quit on the character, so I just dealt with these annoyance, and she's become more fun, and thats what I liked.
To me, Baiken's secondary appeal after the guard cancels, was the skill ceiling in +R. It is so satisfying to finally climb over that hurtle, the "sublime" if you will. And I feel like that aspect is missing in Strive, in my personal opinion.
And with her character design, I vastly prefer her XX design, because I feel that in some part, there were some unwarranted changes to her design. Like the eyepatch, looks cool, but why was it needed when her first designs didn't have it at all? And like what was mentioned in the video, the less emphasis on the tattered sleeve where her missing arm is.
Thank you so much for making this video, it was well-crafted, and I just hope someone eventually makes a video highlighting Baiken's lore to get people to be familar with her.
How...is this this level of editing even possible?!
I think the problem of the "ought to be accessible to everyone" mindset with fighting games is that sometimes a weird playstyle is what attracts people to a character. They have things that other characters don't have but usually at the cost of something else - in Baiken's case allot of HP. This video made me think allot of how mid tiers in Smash Melee are suddenly progressing way faster than they ever have post-Slippi online and these were some funky characters. Donkey Kong's shield is so bad at times to win neutral players have labed out approaches were they crouch cancel and come in backwards because the shield is more reasonable from behind in dealing with projectiles. But in return you have these sick grab combos and a unique cargo throw, as well as several good punishing moves. And the people who have represented the character are a fraction of what any of the conventional players use, but some have reached to barely falling short of a major tournament win. To make that mission statement possible though means cutting out everything that made them unique to begin with besides the idea of what they are. And it's not like it's wrong to like a character for what they represent but personally I'd want there to be a bit more than that. Something that is different but viable if your willing to sink the time into, because all the other archetypes exist and are a dime a dozen. It's not a bad thing for a playstyle to exist that only a portion of your audience will go for when all the other forms of expression already exist in abundance elsewhere.
On top of insane production quality, this video is unfathomably based. Please make more!
Cool sexy swordwoman is something that 90% of people would agree is cool, I hate fighting her, but I totally understand the appeal; like really, even with the design changes she got in Xrd, Baiken is by all purposes still baiken.
For example, Juri had a similar aesthetic design change in SFV, but no one really complained about it because her attitude was mostly the same.
And I don't talk about gameplay because as you said most people don't really play the character lmao
To be honest in terms of baiken's design, I'm a bit split because on one hand I do genuinely like her xrd/strive proportions, specifically the ponytail I love how it flows with spesific moves and I have just always loved big ponytails, however on the other hand I do prefer her XX clothing, specifically the lack of the jacket as it kinda ruins the silhouette her charicter would otherwise has and clutters it up, making it less clear at a first glance in contrast to her XX clothing. Despite that I do still really like both designs however due to me first being exposed to her strive design I would personally give it the edge even if I would still like to make some clothing changes
the "max is still not playing baiken" fucking sent me
This was a really excellent video. I got into the series at Rev and Rev2. I really liked Baiken's design in Rev2, but in hindsight, I do lament her lack of gruff androgyny in my favorite game.
A friend of mine described her ML and X designs as a "Cigarette Gijinka", which was funny, and kinda hit the mark.
Strive Baiken broke my heart with the loss of Suzuran and any true defensive shenanigans. I was happy to see her back, but she lost so much sauce.
I do think it's true that 90% of Baiken fans are just horny, and don't want to put the effort into learning her. She shares this issue with Leona from KOF, who has also over time succumb to a falling in line with the Other Hot Girls in their respective series'.
bro how long did this take to make holy moly
Please don't ask me that question.
Really great, incisive video; I think there’s something of her still in the newer 3D designs, but I can’t play her anymore (ironically, I do love the redesigned Testament tho). The gameplay changes are a part, but it’s the vibes: no fast dash/aggression, the way she’s styled more like a motorcycle gang “delinquent”, the way she walks/moves (I hate how pandering her visuals are, when her old sex-appeal was a focused competence and “I don’t give shit”). I *do* like the idea of developing her story and character, but I think the design undermines it: turns her into more of a trope and downplays the ways she wasn’t “comfortable” to many fans, as you note.
I feel it might be interesting to contrast this with Cammy: who has a similarly rabid “fanbase” (many of whom do not play her) and the initial backlash to her evolution, how Capcom managed to sell it, because of the execution (and a lot of blokes patting themselves on the back ‘cos her arse moves). I like sexy characters, most women I know do, but how you go about it matters: boobs and butts move, cool, even v cool, but having it be there and putting it at the visual centre of your characters design says something.
I also love Cammy because she is aggressive, focused, stylistically competent, and has a visual design that is not conventionally feminine either, when you look at her muscles, her shoulders, her arms. She has scars, a traumatic backstory, she fights (and is designed to look like) Battle Angel Alita; we all have a type.
Her new design furthers her story and breaks with the past, it reflects her present more. I actually love her OG outfit, but she’s more contemporary and she looks the best she ever has now. Her silhouette and movement is preserved, with tweaks: glad to see new moves, old ones enhanced, old attacks brought back. Her walk animation is different (I miss that, a little) but the new one isn’t bad; just like her stance has sometimes looked worse (and her burnout is super jank) but these are small disappointments in the context of many tiny and positive changes.
Tier wise, I think she will struggle in this edition, but I’m far from pro and she’s going to be a blast to play. Contrast, I guess.
As you mentioned: current Baiken looks cool but is not really the character I loved anymore.
Thanks again: I’m heading off to listen to Momentary Life on loop for a bit (again, love the new story-song, but that track *is* Baiken).
Izayoiu na yo…
What does Izayoiu na yo mean?