Vanguard Princess



In a not-so distant future, worldwide conflict and strife have brought the world to exhaustion. Once, a passenger plane was shot down by accident where everyone in it died, save one uninjured young girl. Before long she grew up to be beautiful, but as time passed, a mysterious ability began to awaken within her. At first she was brought to a private research institute, but when the government learned about her, they began to analyze her power for military purposes. She has a power capable of bending the laws of the universe itself, later called 'Tactical Sorcery'. She held great skill, but the military wanted more power so she underwent cruel human experiments. And then, after a certain accident, her powers went wild, causing the 'Astral Impact'. The impact gave a lot of girls 'Tactical Sorcery' and later, such girls became common at the front lines. They were called 'Vanguard Princesses', due to their beautiful appearance, and were an inspiration to the soldiers. One year later, when the war was coming to an end, the girl came back, now as the 'Enforcer of Reason' and sought mankind's destruction. For some unknown reason, the Vanguard Princesses proceeded to battle.

A 2009 free indie fighting game created by an ex-Capcom employee, entirely on his own. The cast is entirely female, but unlike most games of its ilk it does not play like a button mashing doujin fighter nor Guilty Gear, but rather like the original Street Fighter II.

So what's so special about this game among other doujin fighters? With few exceptions, there is no canceling (or buffering) in general. Combos in this game rely on link combos, which in layman's terms is like this: You hit the enemy with the attack that without canceling you can recover before the enemy can recover from his hitstun, giving another chance to hit her, just like Guile in old days. On their own though, the girls have very limited combo potential.

This is where assists comes into play.

Before the match you can you choose a support character (out of four, five if you count a boss support) that will help you keep the opponent in the hitstun long enough for you to recover to continue the combo. As a creator said, it's not 1-vs-1 game, it's a 2-vs-2 game.

Every character is a Ms. Fanservice.

More about the game can be found here. A complete wiki is available here.

This game contains examples of:

 * Absolute Cleavage: Luna, Hilda and Juliet. A little disturbing with the latter, since she doesn't look older than twelve.
 * The Archer: Ayane.
 * Assist Character: The gameplay is built with them in mind.
 * Ass Kicks You: Two of Natalia's attacks give the player quite a view given how little she wears down there.
 * Bare Your Midriff: Eri.
 * Beam Spam: Some of Kurumi's Union Arts qualify as this, depending on her assist.
 * Haruka's Crimson line Liberty Art has you manually input buttons presses to spam her beam.
 * BFG: Luna has a special move where she uses one.
 * BFS: Yui's sword.
 * Cool Sword: Saki's sword.
 * Cute Bruiser: Lilith.
 * She's a Glacier Waif too, seeing as she's the Zangief equivalent of the game.
 * Defeat Means Friendship: Kurumi's ending.
 * Dual Wielding:
 * Dual Tonfas: Eri.
 * Guns Akimbo: Luna.
 * Every Girl Is Cuter With Hair Decs: Almost everyone in the game falls under this trope.
 * Eyepatch of Power: Ayane.
 * Expy: Luna is Stripperiffic, has long, ponytailed red hair, and uses guns (even pulling out a giant rifle for one of her specials). The resemblance to Yoko is uncanny.
 * Gainaxing: everyone who isn't a Pettanko.
 * Gun Kata: Luna.
 * Highly Visible Ninja: Kaede.
 * Improbable Aiming Skills: Just how is Ayane able to launch a volley at that close a range anyway? Also, juggling with arrows.
 * Improbably Female Cast
 * Joshikousei: Saki, Yui, Rikako.
 * Lethal Joke Character: At the first glance, Kurumi seems to be a Joke Character: her normal attacks don't do a lot of damage and her health is low. However, she is the only one in the game who can cancel, and her normals can be chained. But her biggest advantage is that her support gauge fills very, very quickly, enabling her to do more stuff with the support characters. (It doesn't hurt that her first super move, Unison Arts, does ridiculous amounts of damage AND restores some of her life. However, it requires both a full super gauge and a full support gauge.)
 * Little Miss Badass
 * Magic Skirt: Juliet, Shiera, and Kanae.
 * Meganekko: Kaede.
 * Ms. Fanservice: While it's true that every character is one, Luna is a Ms Fanservice among Ms Fanservices (NSFW).
 * Muscles Are Meaningless: All over the place.
 * Mysterious Past Kurumi. According to Lilith that she was ! Depending on how it went, it may be a Dark and Troubled Past.
 * Named Weapons: Yui's sword, Sakuya.
 * Names to Know In Anime: Very much averted for the most part, since most of the cast are from H-Game seiyuus. The very exception is Chiaki Takahashi (as Hilda).
 * No Arc in Archery: Possibly justified because Ayane isn't really shooting from far away but at that distance, why bother to use a bow anyway?
 * Panty Fighter: Almost (see next entry) every girl has an attack that flashes her knickers. Some of them don't even have to do that much.
 * Panty Shot: Almost everyone.
 * Sempai Kohai: Newcomer Rikako is apparently Saki's sempai.
 * Simple Staff: Haruka's staff.
 * SNK Boss: Averted with Hilda Rize. While she may have the tools to be so, the AI is generally stupid and wont give you any trouble.
 * Stance System: The core of Luna's gameplay.
 * Stripperiffic: Luna, Kaede, Natalia, Hilda and her support characters, Juliet.
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: Eri and Kurumi, respectively, can arguably be this.
 * Traffic sign polearm: Newcomer Rikako's weapon of choice happens to be a metal traffic sign (that has a symbol for "no tanks").
 * Waif Fu