Avatar Selection and You

I think that you can say a lot about yourself by the characters that you choose to play a game with. I personally like to see your character as a reflection of yourself on the screen. If you’re playing an online game, your character is how other players will see you; from the Pokemon that you put on your team, to the builds that you go with in Soulsborne games. The best that you can do is fully own the character that you use.

Back when I was a kid, Mario Kart Wii and Mario Party 7 and 8 were the two games that me and my older siblings would always play. While the three of us all gathered around that CRT TV in the living room, my go to character was always Dry Bones. And it was the same back in middle school, playing Mario Kart DS with my friends during our study hall. Dry Bones is just a funny little guy, and I’ll always pick him when I get the chance. I am a true, loyal Boner.

So today, I’m going to take a look across several different games and genres about the different characters and playstyles that I’ve adopted over my years. And maybe I can inspire you to try something new.

Guilty Gear Strive

Image Credit: Arc System Works

When it comes to picking a character in a fighting game, the number one thing that both the pros and casual players will tell you is to pick whoever you think looks the coolest. That’s a mentality that I inadvertently adopted when I was a kid playing Super Smash Bros. Melee with my friends. As a kid, I didn’t know that Falco was top tier. I just knew that he was Fox, but cooler.

Of course, the other character that I liked to play as was Zelda. There was just something about the way she played that was fun. But growing up as a boy, I couldn’t play as a girl with my friends. They’d all make fun of me for doing that. Fortunately, that’s a fear that I grew out of by the time I was in high school when I proudly played as Zelda in Smash 4. The worst character in the game, btw.

Nowadays, I’m largely removed from Smash Bros as a whole. I’ll still play it on occasions with friends, but I certainly don’t take it as seriously as I used to when I was younger. Thanks to having ample freetime during the 2020 Pandemic, I started to explore more traditional 2D fighters.

When I started playing Guilty Gear Strive, the character that I used as my main was May. She had a lot of funny things, like pelting the enemy with the entirety of Sea World. Then during the game’s third season, ArcSys made a bunch of changes to her gameplay that made her a lot less fun for me to play. I then had to go on a fighting game player’s least favorite journey. Finding a new main.

Enter Leo Whitefang. Leo takes some time to get used to, but he’s well worth the effort. Leo is a very strong character with a lot of tools that good characters want, such as a reversal DP, a fast projectile that’s used to keep your opponent in check, and some good air-to-air buttons. He also has a unique gatling system where he can go back and forth between his far slash and heavy slash attacks. But the real reason to play Leo is for his special attribute: the Backturn Stance.

Leo’s Brynhildr Stance (or Backturn Stance if you don’t speak German) might be one of the most absurdly strong things I’ve ever seen in a fighting game. This is a special stance that Leo can enter after doing certain moves or even by just getting a grab. 

While in Backturn, all of Leo’s buttons get changed. His Punch becomes a one-button anti-air. His Kick becomes a 5 frame low that’s +3 on block AND links into itself. His Slash attack changes to a long ranged thing that is great at applying pressure. His Heavy Slash turns into a slow lunging overhead. And his Dust button changes to a shield that gives Leo a counterattack AND a reflector. 

I think what helps contribute to Leo’s success is the fact that he’s never been nerfed in a meaningful way. He’s caught a few strays with system mechanic changes throughout the seasons. Throughout almost four years of the game, Leo has remained fantastic. While he’s not a common character, he’s definitely a bracket ruiner that you need to be ready for.

Granblue Fantasy VS: Rising

Image Credit: CyGames, Arc System Works

Let’s end off the fighting game section with the little fighting game that could. The original Granblue VS had the unfortunate fate of being released in February of 2020, right before the world shut down for the pandemic. Thankfully, it got a second chance in 2023 with the release of Granblue VS Rising. This game is awesome. There’s a ton of accessibility features to help onboard new fighting game players, and there’s a free version to try out that gives you four characters to try out.

As for my main, that belongs to Zeta, the Crimson Bomber! Armed with the Spear of Arvess, Zeta’s gameplan is to get in the opponent’s face and bombard them with the most oppressive knockdown offense in the game.

What makes Zeta so strong is that she can get a diabolical mixup after a knockdown. She has a move that lets her bounce off of the opponent up to three times, and follow up with another aerial attack. By mixing up your approaches on knockdowns, it can lead to a huge mental stack on your opponent, and you can easily open them up. Zeta will need to win a few interactions to get a win, and if your opponent can’t win the guessing games, then they don’t have a chance. And you can’t even use a Reversal to get out of the pressure either because Zeta gets a safejump on every knockdown.

Personally, I’d probably play Zeta even if she wasn’t considered a high tier. Her playstyle is just a ton of fun. She really feels like the ultimate knowledge check character. That said, she’s also very volatile. If your opponent knows how to deal with it, then it can be hard for the Zeta player to gain an advantage. She’s very all or nothing, and her taking a damage nerf in the Versusia patch also isn’t doing her any favors.

Final Fantasy 14

Image Credit: Square Enix

I think that by far the most user friendly aspect of Final Fantasy 14 is the fact that you’re free to change jobs at any time. For someone like me who always needs to change things about my avatar. Every time I entered a new expansion, I would always change jobs to run through the expansion with. And given that I’ve caught up with FF14’s story, there’s four jobs that I always find myself returning to. Two DPS, and two Tank jobs.

Starting with DPS, the two jobs that I switch between are Red Mage and Dancer. I started the game playing Summoner, but switched over to Red Mage when I had the chance. Red Mage has always been a super cool job to me. I like that it’s able to switch between both physical and magical damage.

But more than that, I also enjoy the utility that Red Mage offers. See, whenever Red Mage casts a spell, you get one use of Quickcast, which allows for an instant cast of the next magic. This can be used in conjunction with the Resurrection spell for an instant revive. One of the greatest feelings is being able to revive the healer (or healers) in a party, and keep the raid going. You can’t get a feeling like that from any other job.

As for Dancer, I just enjoy the simplicity of the job. The general idea is to pick a Dance Partner at the start of the raid, then provide them with buffs from moves like Standard Step, Shield Samba, Devilment, Technical Step, Curing Waltz, and Improvisation.

If you remember from last month’s article, I talked about how I’ve always been drawn to support characters, and how they strengthen the party’s damage, rather than being the main damage dealer. And to me, Dancer is the job that lets me do that. I also like how easy it is to pick up and play. It’s very low-key, and I can easily autopilot the job, since it isn’t on a strict rotation. Also, Dancer glamors are just the best. 

As for the Tank jobs, there are two in particular that I love using. Paladin is usually my go to, since I’m just a huge fan of the sword and board style of knight. And the Final Fantasy Tactics inspired moves at higher levels were a huge draw for me. And much like Dancer, the Paladin’s rotation is very easy to get the hang of.

But my favorite would have to be the Gunbreaker. As a massive FF8 fan, this job is one big love letter to that game. There’s just so much fun to be had with Gunbreaker, especially if you like clicking buttons. 

See, everytime you complete a combo, you get one Cartridge stack. These Cartridges can be used on certain moves. The one that you’ll mostly be using it on is the Gnashing Fang combo, a three-part combo that does insane damage. Then when you get to level 70, that three piece combo becomes a full six piece meal! And at level 100, you gain ANOTHER three piece combo with Reign of Beasts.

There’s a running gag in the FF14 community that Gunbreaker is just 3 DPS in a trenchcoat, and there’s a lot of merit to that. It’s the squishiest of all four Tank jobs, meaning that you need to rely heavily on your damage mitigations. But in exchange it also puts out some of the highest damage of the Tanks.

On a personal note, this was also the job that I used to go through Dawntrail when that expansion dropped. See, they added in two DPS jobs that patch, so I knew that DPS queues were going to be a nightmare. And given that I’m not a fan of playing Healer, I rolled with Gunbreaker for the whole expansion, blind tanking these dungeons and figuring it out as I went along. I really enjoyed the rush of not fully knowing what boss mechanics I needed to look out for, and learning fights like Valigarmanda was an experience that I hadn’t had up to this point since I was playing catch up until Dawntrail dropped.

Marvel Rivals

Image Credit: Marvel, NetEase Games

Yeah, bet you never thought I’d talk about this game! There was one night a few weeks back when me and my friend Trevor (of Soul Calibur 6 fame) were looking for a new game to add to our game night lineup. I ended up suggesting Marvel Rivals, as it was free to play, and we both agreed that this game kinda rules! Now, there’s a ton of characters in this game, and I can’t possibly go over all of them here. So instead I’ll focus on one character from each class that I enjoy using.

Starting with Tanks, this is a role that I was more or less forced into playing because nobody else online ever wants to play Tank. You’ll always end up with three people who insta-lock in Iron Man, Spider-Man and Star-Lord, but never anyone who wants to play a Tank. Now, I’ll also be the first to admit that I’m awful at shooters. Without any form of aim assist, I look like I’ve never touched a controller before. So how can I, a person with atrocious aim, possibly help my team in the shooty shooty game? Easy. Don’t use a gun!

Enter Thor: the God of thunder! Thor’s whole gameplan is that he bonks people with a hammer. You run up to the enemy DPS and you bonk them on the head until they die. All of Thor’s cooldown moves give him extra HP, meaning that he can take a long time to bring down. He also has good movement with his Storm Surge move, letting him fling himself forward with Mjolnir. And if range is needed, he can either throw Mjolnir, or enter a state where he throws lightning at the enemies.

Thor is very simple, very unga bunga, but that’s also why he’s so much fun! I don’t want to think. I wanna hit stuff! If there’s any downside to him, it’s that his Ultimate is kind of lame. It’s just a big slow slam that has a pitiful radius. It’s just very underwhelming, and it feels like it has no utility, outside of when you’re under the speed boost from Mantis’s Ultimate.

Onto DPS, there’s a lot of characters to choose from, but the one that I was the most interested in was Psylocke. Yeah, me and the rest of the player base. If you want to play her online, you better have fast fingers, otherwise she’s getting snatched.

The idea behind Psylocke is that she’s meant to be disruptive to the enemy team, moving fast, going invisible, and sneaking behind enemy lines to pick off opposing DPS, or to just steal the attention of the other players.

Playing as Psylocke brought me back to my TF2 days, playing as Spy on Dustbowl, and seeing how long I could keep my shenanigans going for. She’s a lot more technical than a lot of other DPS, but she is very rewarding if you learn to play her correctly. Now if the rest of you could pick up a Tank so that I could play as her, that would be swell.

And finally, the Healers. Look, I’m just never going to be a healer guy. I understand the importance, but it’s just too stressful for me. The only way that I’ll play a healer is if my team is in desperate need of one. So just give this entry to Jeff the Land Shark because he’s easy to be good with. He’s just a funny little guy who passes my vibe check.

Closing

Another month, another article down! I don’t really have too much to say on this one. A lot of the characters that I find myself using are simply for the fact that I just like their designs. From the first time that I saw Falco in Super Smash Bros. Melee, to 2025 when I saw that snazzy re-design for Psylocke in Marvel Rivals, to giving Zeta a cool bomber jacket in Granblue VS Rising. Aesthetics go a long way in a character’s appeal to people. Good gameplay behind them is honestly just a bonus.

There’s so much more involved with avatar selection, and I only just scratched the surface on the topic. I still have a bunch of characters that I could talk about. And this article didn’t even include things like Pokemon that I’ll often use on repeat playthroughs, or RPG characters that will always have a spot in my party. That’s all for another time though.

I have a big article planned for next month. We’re going to be taking a look at a game that is very important both to me, and gaming as a whole, as we celebrate its 30th anniversary. See you all then!