Arot's Blogs: 2019

The adorable, psychotic, badass villain of the depressingly underrated fighting game, Blade Strangers. If you haven't heard of her or the game she's from, I would not be surprised... and if that's the case, you should totally play the game. It's awesome. Anyway, let's start with a few miscellaneous notes before we get to the good stuff:

Blade Strangers' story mode is incredibly short, so this blog will be as well.
Lina's ending isn't canon, but I'll mention it anyway, because certain aspects of it ARE canon.
I couldn't get any screenshots, GIFs or videos of specific abilities, so for now, they'll only be written descriptions.
Blade Strangers is yet to get a sequel and probably never will. If it does and Lina is featured, I will be updating this blog as soon as I possibly can.

Now, let us begin!

Background

Alright, sooo Lina's background is just the premise of Blade Strangers's story: In the world of Blade Strangers, every universe is one of many simulations being generated by an interdimensional network of servers. These simulations are overseen by the goddess Exiva and her Motes, a group of sentient computers, and protected by their champions, the Blade Strangers. A being known as Lina appears and begins consuming the servers' data, devouring entire universes and their respective Blade Strangers, thus adding to her power. To protect the multiverse, the Motes summon heroes from universes Lina has not yet reached, altering their memories to make them believe they are participating in a fighting tournament. The one left standing will be named the new Blade Stranger in the hopes of awakening their power and allowing them to defeat Lina. Said tournament is essentially a Venn-diagram of interconnected universes that the motes created... how this works, I have no idea. There are 9 universes shown in-game: Code of Princess, Azure Striker Gunvolt, Shovel Knight, Binding of Isaac, Umihara Kawase, Cave Story, 1001 Spikes, Doki Doki Poyatchio and... some unnamed universe featuring an original character.

By the end of the game's story, she has successfully eaten 8 out of 9 of the universes, and is ultimately confronted by Solange from the Code of Princess universe. Canonically, she loses... but if she DOES win... we'll get to that later. Now, let's move on.

Personality/Intelligence

With any other character, I wouldn't put these two categories together. Lina, however, is pretty simple; she's fucking psychotic, has a split personality (cute and bloodthirsty, respectively), has a sentient halo thingy name Devian who serves as her primary weapon and power source, and that's it... that's all there is to it. Now, with that out of the way, let's get into the more interesting stuff.

Skills/Abilities/Moveset

This section is pretty short and sweet. Her attacks almost exclusively revolve around her giant ring-shaped companion thingy and her floating power-button blades. The two abilities she has that don't have any screenshots or animations are Teleportation and Air-dash. Her character trailer does show her teleporting, though. Also, here's a neat video of some of her combos. This site has a list of all her attacks and their framedata/hitboxes and is where I got the following images, if you wanna check it out.

Devian Blade:

Lina uses one blade to slice upward in front of her.

Giga Mine:

Lina creates a miniature black hole a few feet in front of her. While it isn't shown in this screenshot, the combo video I linked shows it off quite frequently.

Kama Flash:

Lina turns one of her blades into a scythe and swings it in a semicircle around herself. More flashy than it is useful.

Spin Blade:

Lina turns her blades into some kind of floating beyblade.

Drill Smash:

Lina uses her blades to make 2 gigantic drills in the middle of the battlefield. Very easy for her to miss with this one, as the opponent can simply stand between them.

Heavy-Attack:

I don't know how they couldn't have thought of a better name for this. Anyway, with this technique, Lina splits her blades apart and has them rapidly jab in front of her. Very powerful, but very short range (obviously).

Downhole:

Lina turns her blades into a drill and aims it directly downward in front of her.

Super Geyser:

Lina uses her ring to summon a gigantic laser underneath her opponent. It hits multiple times and has ridiculous range, vertically.

Final Laser Lv1:

Essentially a horizontal Super Geyser, but much more powerful. It has incredible range and hits multiple times.

Final Laser Lv2:

Essentially an upgraded version of Giga Mine. It doesn't have a ton of range, but it's her most powerful attack.

Feats/Scaling

Likely immune to reality warping on a multiversal scale via scaling to the Motes; extra-dimensional beings with supposed complete control over an infinite number of virtual universes. They were powerless to stop her and required outside help from Solange and other characters.
At least equal to the goddess, Exiva, stating that she means nothing to her. Exiva is a being far more powerful than the Motes (and is their boss).
Has presumably beaten every member of the game's cast, considering Solange is the only other character left alive by the end.
While she only consumes 8 universes in-game, it's implied she's been doing this quite rapidly and for a very long time.
As stated in the previous section, Giga Mine creates small black holes.
While her ending isn't canon, we do learn that if she defeats Solange and eats one more universe, she ends up overloading and releasing all the energy of every universe she has consumed, causing an infinite loop of creating and destroying the Blade Strangers' infinite universes and ends all of existence via the "Blue Screen of Death"

Casually flies interstellar distances in a matter of seconds and likely between different universes.

Summary

Attack Potency: Multiverse Level, potentially Multiverse Level+ if she eats too much.
Durability: Multiverse Level.
Combat Speed: Immeasurable (via scaling to the Motes and Exiva)

Strengths

Insanely powerful, to say the least.
A decent number of ranged attacks.
Infinite/Immeasurable speed is kinda OP.
Possible immunity to reality warping and resistance to various states/elements is also kinda OP.
Moveset is relatively diverse, so she's not very predictable.

Being as psychotic as she is definitely contributes to her unpredictability

Teleportation.

Weaknesses

With the game's story being so short and simple, along with Blade Strangers not getting any sequels yet, she doesn't have very many feats and likely would make for a boring DB episode.
Probably not very smart.

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If you haven't figured it out by now, this Lina blog is just filler before my next big DB Analysis blog thing. Anyway, thank you all for reading! I hope you enjoyed it and have a wonderful day/night/whatever time it is.

Ah, the 2008 pseudo-reboot of the Prince of Persia franchise. A masterpiece of a 3D platformer, overshadowed by the vastly inferior Assassin's Creed 1 upon release... and horribly underrated, simply due to it "Not being the Sands of Time"

Before we get started, I have a few details I need to get out of the way. I'll list them off, because I'm too lazy to write them in paragraph-form:

While the Prince and Elika do have their own sections dedicated to them, there are several of Elika's abilities that actually only apply to the Prince (more on that later).
There are actually 2 games in this era of Prince of Persia: the PS3/360/PC game (and its DLC) and its below average sequel on the DS. I'll be using feats from everything, though the latter hardly matters.
No quality footage or screenshots of The Fallen King currently exist, so there won't be any hyperlinks for a while (I'll try and make my own when I have more time).
For many of my calcs, I'm assuming the Prince is 6 feet tall and 200lbs (the weight of average muscular man), as he certainly isn't short and is definitely a fit guy.
Ahriman's power is relatively vague in his weakened forms, so don't expect him to be mentioned very often.
Elika DOES NOT scale to Ormazd, she simply received her powers from him.
Since the first game is so open-ended in terms of progression and how you fight the monsters and bosses, several feats I'll be mentioning are sorta optional (more on this later).
I'm assuming the Ormazd plates in the game are probably nothing more than a game mechanic.
Instead of just shattering, stuff likes to just turn to dust... like... all the time.

The Prince

"I was on my way home! I had more gold than you could count! I'd've have wine! Women! I'd've had carpets this thick! Now I'm stuck with an angry God and a crazy woman!"

-Background-

Early on, he was already known to be an adventurer. His mother had frequently mentioned that she would rather have him stop adventuring and settle down with a wife. However, the Prince refused to do so. Later in his life, both of his parents died. He was at first taken in by his uncle, but after accepting that his parents won't be coming to claim him, the Prince decided to strike out on his own.

The Prince believes people cannot be trusted and that living in the past is ignorant. His "live for today" attitude allows him to perform death defying stunts without fear. Through dialogue with Elika, the Prince reveals that when he was a child, his parents went to the aid of another kingdom, leaving him in the care of relatives.

It is heavily implied that the Prince secretly fears losing a friend, or at least someone close to him, which is the reason why he constantly changes companions (Farah, Elika, etc.) in order to not become close to anyone; the loss of his parents and nearly everyone around him may attribute this. They promised that they would retrieve him one day, but never did, and he presumes they died. He describes their act as "fighting someone else's battle", which he thinks is a waste of time.

-Equipment-

This is probably the shortest equipment section on one of these blogs that I've ever had to do. There are literally only 2 pieces of equipment for the Prince, and Elika has none.

-Long Sword-

The Long Sword is a standard long and short range weapon. The Prince uses the sword primarily in combat against the Corrupted and in a few minor tasks. With the Long Sword, the Prince can unleash devastating combos in combination with his gauntlet, acrobatics, or with Elika's magic. The blade also seems to have evil-repelling properties, as it bypasses dark shields that the Concubine creates and straight-up destroys pillars of Corruption on contact.

-Gauntlet-

The Prince uses the Gauntlet for multiple purposes. In combat, he uses it to throw enemies into the air, break certain shrouds around enemies, and chain together combos for more damaging attacks (more detail will be in the "abilities" section). When the Prince is asked by Elika where he acquired the Gauntlet, he simply replies that he found it. Another conversation between the two reveals that the Prince is a tomb raider, suggesting he may have stolen it.

-Skills/Abilities-

Using his gauntlet and acrobatic skills, the Prince can jump incredibly high, gripfall down walls (shown above), climb up walls of various surfaces/materials, run along walls, and CRAWL ON CEILINGS.The Prince is also a master swordsman and is decent at puzzle solving (though he always had Elika's help). There's not much more to go over, as his moveset is incredibly basic. Elika is the one who does all the flashy and spectacular stuff.

-Feats-

-Strength/Attack Potency-

-In "The Fallen King" The Prince an casually turns boulders to dust in a single strike.

The pulverization of rock (turning it to dust) is 214.35j/cc. The boulders being over 2 meters tall (1m radius) would make this pulverization feat 7.71 tons of TNT (large building level).

This doubles as a durability feat.

-The Prince is capable of kicking the Concubine through a gigantic marble pillar, turning it to dust. This pillar is at least 20 feet tall and 3 feet wide, requiring 0.04 tons of TNT (low-end small building level).

I couldn't find any footage or screenshots of it being destroyed, because it requires the Prince and the Concubine to be in front of one of the 3 pillars during the finishing blow. Such specific conditions being met during the battle doesn't happen very often (1 out of my 5 playthroughs of the game).

-Sword strikes create sonic booms when the Prince clashes with the Mourning King and the Warrior. This also acts as a Durability (Newton's third law of motion) AND speed feat, as the Prince is occasionally the one charging at them.

The Warrior also turned this into this. Potentially could be a building level feat or higher, but I don't know if I can calculate it.

-Durability/Endurance-

-Has survived several long falls, the Prince more often than Elika, who simply flies or teleports to the bottom.

-Can tank blows from and defeat all the vessels (Concubine, Warrior, Alchemist, Hunter)

-While under the effects of the "Breath of Ormazd" or the "Wings of Ormazd," smacking into walls at possibly supersonic speeds barely scratches either of them, only stunning the Prince.

-Can survive punches from a weakened Ahriman. If footage existed of the Prince or Elika getting hit, I would link it here instead of just the boss fight. Sadly, every LP or walkthrough of this battle is always flawless, so... yeah.

-Both the Prince and Elika survived a direct assault from an awakened Ahriman, along with the epicenter of the resulting sandstorm, which had just destroyed the temple he was sealed in. Ahriman at full power is capable of consuming the entirety of Persia. However, if he WERE at full power during this scene, the Epilogue and the events of "The Fallen King" most likely wouldn't have happened.

By counting an average number of strides it takes for the Prince to get from the back of the temple to the front, comparing his height to a part of the archway, and using my mad photoshop skilz I was able to estimate that the temple is 187.9m long, 172.9m wide, and 72.7m tall (excluding the tree). Accounting for empty space, this means that Ahriman and his sandstorm turning the temple to dust should be a minimum of 903.2 tons of TNT (Mult-City Block) or potentially a maximum of 7,790 tons (Town level)

-He can run across the entirety of Persia with seemingly very little rest, though this could just be game mechanics. This doesn't matter much, since Elika can teleport them practically anywhere.

-Speed/Agility-

-Breath of Ormazd appears to create a vapor cone around the Prince while he's running, though it could just be - and probably is - magic

It's implied that the breath of Ormazd makes it possible for the Prince to sprint indefinitely so long as he doesn't crash into something. Like the previous feat, this is possibly just a game mechanic.

-As stated in the "Strength" portion, his attacks sometimes create sonic booms. He can also react to and block similar attacks from the Warrior and the Mourning King.

-His acrobatics probably defy the laws of physics to some degree. He can also somehow carry his momentum for several minutes at a time... which also shouldn't be possible.

-Summary-

Strength/AP: Large Building Level
Durability: Multi-City Block - Town Level
Combat Speed: Superhuman, possibly Supersonic

-Strengths-

Expert swordsman
His gravity-defying acrobatics can give him decent control over the battlefield
Most likely pretty decent at stealth and avoiding traps, as some ancient tombs are full of them.
Some physical resistance to dark magic, but not much.

However, his sword can dispel darkness/corruption.

-Weaknesses-

Heavily reliant on Elika and her magic
Very cocky and sarcastic
Lacks any projectiles or ranged attacks

Elika

"What is one grain of sand in the desert?...What is one grain of sand in the storm?"

-Background-

Presumably born in the City of Light, Elika was the daughter of the Mourning King and his wife. Throughout her childhood, she pretended to not enjoy being a princess. In some nights, however, she would reveal her true nature to her mother, whom often told stories to her. One night, she confronted her mother about a dream she had once. In the dream, night never ended and morning never came. Her mother then revealed to Elika that she had the same dream. Elika asks her mother to talk about it and she obliges, telling her the tale of The Hunter, presumably for Elika to learn the importance of wisdom when fairy-tales start becoming reality. Elika acts as a servant of Ormazd, god of light and a guardian of the Tree of Life. After Ahriman was released, Elika became leader of the Ahura and leads a resistance against the Dark God.

Elika is initially closed off and defensive around the Prince, not revealing anything about herself unless absolutely necessary. However, she gradually begins to reveal more about her past and the current situation as her trust in him builds throughout their journey. She is quite knowledgeable on both the Corrupted and Ahriman as well as the use of her powers, explaining the back story of every location and Corrupted in detail.

-Skills/Abilities-

-Powers of Ormazd-

Elika was blessed with the powers of Ormazd by the God of the same name upon her first resurrection. With them, she assists the Prince throughout their journey across Persia, and without them, their journey would've been impossible. There's not really a lot to the background of these powers. Let's move on.

-The Step of Ormazd-

Allows Elika to jump hundreds of feet in one direction in only a few seconds. It's one of her simpler and less useful abilities.

-The Hand of Ormazd-

Essentially a metaphysical grappling hook. It's very similar to the Step of Ormazd, but goes maybe half the distance and is easier for Elika to control.

-The Wings of Ormazd-

Allows Elika to fly for a short period of time. While it does look like a vapor cone is forming around her, this could just be her magic or some fancy visual effect. It's also unclear who's actually steering; her or the Prince.

-The Breath of Ormazd-

Allows the Prince to run up, down, and across walls and ceilings, completely ignoring gravity. This power was mentioned earlier in the Prince's "Feats" section. One thing to note is that the Prince can only turn 90 degrees and only if Elika makes him.

-Levitation-

Used as a form of double-jump to help the Prince cross larger gaps than he normally could on his own.

-Teleportation-

Note that I'm only using a picture of the in-game map because there's no actual animation for it. In the game, Elika can only teleport herself and the Prince to fertile grounds and the Tree of Life, but this is most likely just a game mechanic.

-Energize-

Instantly (and temporarily) rebuilds destroyed areas of the current environment. This ranges from small platforms to walls up to 2 stories high. The Prince can then climb up, slide down or run across these structures. Its usage in combat is pretty limited, though.