I just meant that he doesn't really need to be compared to Knuckles since those abilities are completely different from his. He's got a base you could potentially build off of that's distinct from others, and I think building off of his might (punintended) is a good start towards that. Projectile and spike protection, wall busting, potentially giving his hammer drop a small AOE shockwave could work well for his kit. Mobility wise, wallkicks aren't everything, but they are legitimately good. I wouldn't write them off. In fact, the way SSNMighty's wallkicks work have him stick to it, and slowly slide down until you jump off. Imagine being able to
spindash up the wall as an alternative?
There's just not really anything Mighty provides that isn't already possible with other characters if not outright just better with said other characters.
About this though, I can only half agree. The main game is kind of already designed around the 6 playable characters and their separate abilities, so unless things are balanced around new characters with new abilities, worrying about sharing traits with others is kind of moot. As long as he's properly balanced and plays well, it should be fine.
As for the others,
First, I don't think I would consider Heavy and Bomb at all. They're most definitely addon material.
I have no clues about what to do with Bark. A large, powerful, slow character seems like it'll be a bit difficult to balance, but that's just me. Bark is a grappler, though. If his moveset had to with picking up and throwing enemies (and maybe even items like monitors, the TNT barrels in ACZ, etc.) it could make for an interesting experience.
Bean
does rely a lot on his bombs, and it's
stupidly fun. I haven't tried beating the whole game as him though so I doooon't know exactly how viable it is in the long run.
Ray just screams tanooki suit to me. I'm not sure how balance around that outside of making it control like Mario's cape flight.
Charmy on the other hand can be balanced. Consider this: Instead of infinite flight, he is in a state of constant hovering, never actually touching the ground. Much like UFO Kirby here.
And in this state, he is given a small number of floaty jumps. Charmy would be an incredibly safe character as far as traversing the environment goes, but could struggle with damaging enemies as a drawback. Because of his floaty nature, he can't simply jump on enemies to damage them, and instead must attack with his stinger. This would make fighting unorthodox, and probably would discourage you from engaging in regular enemies. Is this a terrible idea? Maybe, but it's an idea nonetheless.
Vector is a tricky one, and frankly I don't have many ideas for him either. He can air dash and climb walls, which ironically is more of a direct downgrade from Knuckles than Mighty is LOL. I can still throw a few things at a wall and see if they stick.
- Vector's a power type, so he could potentially bust through walls.
- Vector's a crocodile, so his jaws are incredibly powerful. He can chomp badniks and spit them back out as projectiles.
- Again, he's a crocodile, so he should be able to swim.
- Maybe you could add his ground pound from Heroes? I guess the difference from Mighty's would be that he bounces upward??
- I wanted to say his donut shaped spindash could have special properties, but I don't know what. Maybe someone more innovative than me could come up with something.