1CCBBH - 715. Warriors of Fate (Portor, 1 Credit Clear)

Описание: I'd built this one up in my head for so long as being an unlikely clear, given that it's generally regarded as one of the harder Capcom belt-scrolling beat-em-ups (and it's LONG). I finally sat down with it and put some time in to drilling the later stages and bosses, and things started looking more doable.

Portor / Kan-U (Guan Yu) is my character of choice because the punches on his regular attack combo feel fantastic, the hitboxes extend past where his fist is actually shown punching so you have good consistency in actually being able to finish combos with him. In addition to that, he can actually choose which direction to throw enemies when ending a combo with Down or Up - Down tosses enemies in the direction you're facing, while Up tosses them in the other direction. This is extremely important for maintaining crowd control in this game. His special move (Down, Up + Attack) is... well it has its uses (there's a nice loop on the stage 5 boss), but sometimes it's rather inconsistent on landing enough hits to knockdown enemies, and it has a lot of recovery frames that can get you hit. I always forget about it and do it on accident a lot.

I started the night off with my attempts on this by fucking up on the stage 2 boss repeatedly. I spent so much time with the later stages I underestimated how stupid the stage 2 boss can be. Turns out just staying on the horse and mashing the jump attack button is pretty good.
Stages 3, 4, and 5 went without much incident.
On stage 6 I fucked up and didn't get the special sword drop from killing the guy on the horse halfway through the stage. I think I was too slow in moving up so he retreated after the first couple hits. This makes the bosses fight a bit tougher, and I just barely got the kill before losing a life.
Stage 7 went flawlessly up to the boss, where I took a couple hits early and lost the hammer so I couldn't do any more stunlocks. Barely pulled out the win again.
Stage 8 started off terribly, got a lucky health drop, and then immediately lost almost all my health. Was barely able to hang on and survive to the big health refill. Again I wanted to fight the boss using hammer stunlocks, but again I messed up and lost the hammer. Things got worse and I lost a life. I ALMOST lost a second life before securing the kill.
Stage 9 is mostly easy because of the secret Kusanagi Sword. For the last boss, the optimal strat is to take out the female minions as quickly as possible, then kill all of the archers except for one. As long as the archer stays alive, no more enemies can spawn, which is important because the next wave to appear would be a wave of Duffy (fat guys) running around, which you absolutely do not want to happen. As for the actual last boss you want to always try to avoid being locked on with him horizontally, because he has a Blanka ball attack and a running charge. As usual with bosses in this game, get them lined up vertically and let them come to you. He has an annoying wakeup attack that wastes time if you knock him down with anything other than a throw, so finishing combos with a throw is always important. Somehow everything went relatively in this fight and I didn't lose a life, despite having 1 to spare.

Super stoked to have finally gotten this one. Let's try to get some more new beat-em-up clears in 2026......

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