Killer Instinct (2013)/Shadow Jago/Character Intro

Introduction

Lore

A corruption of a formerly great hero's strength, Shadow Jago is a merciless monster who comes into battle with no restraint, growling like an animal and bellowing when he pummels his foes with an onslaught of relentless attacks. He seeks out all who oppose his Shadow Lord in order to defeat them and take their energy for himself and in preparation for Gargos' invasion. Fighting with a serrated sawblade instead of a scimitar, he shares Jago's physical strength and combat prowess. Through the grace of his Shadow Lord, Shadow Jago's powers have been augmented, allowing him to blink in and out of sight at will to confuse his foes and claim ultimate victory.

Gameplay

Despite his appearance, Shadow Jago is completely unlike Jago in many ways. Though they share many normals, Shadow Jago has improved mobility in a faster walk speed, teleporting dashes that can be cancelled into a dive kick, throw, or DP, as well as an air dive kick that lets him adjust his air arc for incredibly tricky approaches. He interacts with shadow meter far more than any other character in the game with his special Surge mechanic. By spending 40% of a stock, he can perform an enhanced special move with extra attributes, letting him make his mixups far safer and offering access to incredibly flashy combos. He is also, however, a far riskier character than most. He struggles to keep the pressure going without his meter and his special openers are all unsafe on block save for his overhead, which is slow, interruptible, and negative on block. This makes him a character whose risk must be managed carefully. However, he does have a very well rounded toolkit that allows him to play much more solid than many thank. Mix up your opponent, make them wish they could've blocked that dive-kick, frustrate them with your tricky movement and annihilate your way to an Ultimate.

Character

Strengths

Weaknesses

Variable playstyle: Shadow Jago has all the balanced tools of a shoto - a fireball, a forward-advancing move that can call out buttons and enemy projectiles, a strong low and decent, confirmable buttons. Shadow Jago also has extremely disrespectful moves, including a teleporting cancellable forward dash, that let him run into his opponent's face and dare them to deal with what he's doing. This allows for a switch between a balanced, grounded playstyle and the nutty playstyle of a madman to mess with your opponent's mental and catch them off-guard. Fireballs!: Unlike Jago, who can only throw multiple fireballs in Instinct, and Omen, who can only ever have one set of regular fireballs on the screen, Shadow Jago has no limit to the amount of fireballs he can have on a screen. Although they are faster than most fireballs, making it a little harder to approach behind them unless he spends meter on a Surge Air Fireball, this also means that flooding the screen with annoying hitboxes for your opponent to deal with is easy. This is on top of the fact that Shadow Jago can confirm off any fireball hit with a bar of meter by using Shadow Dark Demise, making him that much more of a threat. Slippery: Shadow Jago has many unique movement options, on top of his regular movement speed already being decent. He can use a low recovery (on whiff) dive kick to change his air angle, an air fireball to stall himself in the air, and a teleporting dash to get him out of sticky situations, making him exceptionally hard to pin down, let alone guess where he might be hitting you from. High damage, situationally: Because of his Combo Trait combining Omen's and Jago's traits, when Shadow Jago earns a lockout, he can dump heavy and medium autodoubles to rack up the damage. In addition, his instinct gives him access to Annihilation, a Raging-Demon-type move with relatively fast startup that chunks about half of your opponent's healthbar (less as his instinct is spent), allowing you to even the odds off a single punish.

Unsafe: Shadow Jago only has one meterless safe opener in his overhead, which is incredibly slow, interruptible when cancelled off some buttons, and is still negative on block. You will otherwise have to spend meter to open somebody up safely, and you will never be able to get an easily confirmed safe grounded opener, meaning you have to learn to confirm your normals. Low damage, usually: While Shadow Jago's lockout and punish damage is incredible, his damage outside of such leave much to be desired. His DP isn't as chunky as Jago's, and his projectiles don't do as much damage as any other character does. This is off-set by his strong vortex, but it means you have to hit your opponent with a setup many more times than they probably have to hit you. Meter management: How Shadow Jago uses his meter will make or break a match-up due to his Surge mechanic. Shadow Jago is incredibly strong at any space of the screen with two full bars of meter, but has trouble controlling the pace when he doesn't have any to spend on a Surge. Tricky combos: Shadow Jago's linkers and autodoubles are all reactable to someone with a decent enough eye, meaning you will have to rely on their long cancel windows to delay combos and mess up your opponent's timing, or resets to catch them trying to break rather than just dialing in linkers and auto-doubles hoping for a lockout. Edgy: His theme, like Omen's, is a darker, growlier form of Jago's theme, and most of his named moves have "Dark" in the name. This might actually be a pro for the reader.