Group 1: Vipehr
Group 1: Dead Soul
Group 1: Ekimaru
Group 1: Kira
Riyakou Wrote:
umbrascitor, if you could please, do your worst for my Persephone.
My worst, eh? Then get ready for a
Full-Kontact Character Beatdown! PERSEPHONE Name: "Persephone" sounds great for Mortal Kombat. In Greek mythology, Persephone at first appears to be a perpetual damsel of distress, being the slave-bride of Hades. But her predicament also makes her the Queen of the Underworld, who
"carries into effect the curses of men upon the souls of the dead," which is in all ways legitimately badass. The name brings the promise of a complex and powerful character, so let's see how she holds up.
Appearance: Persephone appears to be a goddess/knight with light and dark aspects, which is thematically very appropriate for the mythical Persephone. She looks like a SoulCalibur character, but it seems she was built in the SC creator by necessity, so let's forgive that. The question is, could this character design work in MK or can it be altered easily enough to fit MK's aesthetic? With Ashrah as a model, perhaps it can. Now let's learn more about Persephone, the divine mistress of the shado--
Story: -- oh. Our Greek mythology assumptions were just a tiny bit off.
This Persephone is basically the
Eywa of Zaterra, the living consciousness of an entire realm, like the semi-sentient planetary life forces from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It seems a little over the top at first glance, but it does have a home in MK. After all, MKD established the existence of a sentient One Being whom the Elder Gods divided into the many mortal realms. This life force, therefore, is just a fragment of that ancient cosmic entity. Presumably when the Kamidogu of Zaterra was broken (the minor realms have Kamidogu too, right NRS?) the energy was unbound from its realm and fled to the Elder Gods for safety.
Boy was that a mistake. True to their nature the Elder Gods didn't give a shit, and decided to take one instead. In their infinite wisdom they completely overlooked the existence of Khameleon, and drove the life force to sacrifice its planet-ness to breed with Reptile and start the incest train a-chuggin'. And because a humanoid goddess intimately touching a lizard's
cloaca is totally gross, the Elder Gods disavowed having any hand in this madness and cast her into the Void under an assumed name. They called their harlot Persephone after Shinnok's dead daughter, because maybe they didn't like Shinnok for some reason, who knows.
The Elder Gods' sadistic Saw games with Persephone end in tragedy when she later learns that there was already a female Zaterran (making her sacrifice pointless) and Reptile has no interest in copulating anyway (making her entire mission pointless). We assume the Gods have a hearty laugh, and that's the end.
Wait a minute,
what? That's the end? So... Persephone has no more plans for the future? Her story just sort of... stops? This story was really going somewhere until that point. But now it's just kind of depressing and, well, pointless. All of this dramatic stuff happened, and there is no closure or progression for us to look forward to.
Unless of course the next act ventures into girl-on-girl fanfic territory so that Persephone and Khameleon can somehow restart their race themselves. Because when it comes to dinosaurs,
life finds a way.
Gameplay: While her story fits together well enough while being pretty freaking bizarre, her gameplay is just pretty freaking bizarre. Without the ability to jump or crouch, and only being able to dodge using three-step teleport inputs, she would be utterly crippled in a fast-paced tournament setting -- or even in a normal game against anyone with decent skills. In order to even survive she has to spam the Buffalo-Heart tactic, which would be tedious to the player and infuriating to the opponent.
Thematically, we wonder why she summons animal spirits that are actually modern Earth animals that would have evolved long after the evacuation of the dinosaurs. Wouldn't Zaterra have had its own alien fauna to live on in Persephone's memory? That would've been cool to see.
The X-ray seems to have little to do with swastikas or sundials, but rather the points of a compass -- and the bone breaks still don't quite correspond to those points. So while the attack itself
might be a clever and brutal use of her planetary magnetic field, the name and description don't bear that conclusion, or any conclusion at all as to what is happening.
And the Fatalities... dying of
grief? Like Dampierre's
thing? And what about that fade-to-black Fatality? At least when Sub-Zero
did it we got to hear some screams, and it
still was a big let-down: a joke finisher to make fun of MK censorship in the old days. We as a general audience do not have, need, or want non-violent Fatalities, as evidenced by the near-unanimous public outcry against MKvsDC, resulting in the much-praised ultra
megaviolence we have in MK9.
Personality: Being that planetary consciousness beings aren't the most outgoing types, her shining lack of personality is somewhat forgivable. She just sort of floats there and kind of moves in a direction, like a planet does. That being the case, why is she jeopardizing everything she's trying to preserve by picking fights with random, immensely powerful warriors who will quickly murder her and destroy all hope for Zaterra simply because she's incapable of ducking under a punch? This character's entire presence in the game appears to revolve around a fiery cosmic ball of bad decision-making,
tidally locked so that her mistakes are constantly burning her in the face with no hope of escape.
Conclusion: Persephone starts out looking really good for Mortal Kombat, but unfortunately the splendor fades quickly once you squint a bit and see past the dazzle. This is a character who, according to every written description in her story and game presence, literally accomplishes nothing. It sounds like an unspeakably harsh judgment, but as painful as it is to say, it appears that the realm of Zaterra was lost for a reason.
Beatdown Lineup: Blight, Neuros, Ameerah
I am a Lurker for Rapture. My lord Cthulhu will see you all conquered. JOIN THE CULT OF CTHULHU TODAY!!!
big thanks to flameshang for the sig. 
art by fear-sAs
