Enguarde the Swordfish/Suigyo's version

''One would expect Enguarde to be a fish out of water in a fighting game, but this character proves this wrong, as this Enguarde can apparently live outside of water and can freely move through the stage as if he's swimming. Enguarde's gameplay is similar to Guilty Gear, sporting several mechanics from said series, and relies a lot on his comboability, as his attacks are weak; his custom A.I. takes advantage of this.''

Gameplay


Enguarde is a six-button character that uses the buttons for light, medium and heavy Normals, the  and  buttons for dash attacks and the  button for "special techniques", like dashes; Enguarde has a Guilty Gear-esque gameplay, having several gameplay mechanics from said series, including the Roman Cancel and an IK Mode that allows the player to activate Instant Kills; Enguarde is also able to parry, and when an attack is successfully parried, Enguarde gains a whopping 1000 Power. Unlike traditional characters, Enguarde is able to move freely through the stage, being limited only by the stage boundaries, and can freely attack anywhere on the stage; his movement speed is fairly slow because of this, but fortunately, Enguarde is able to dash toward the opponent. Enguarde can automatically gain Power at a slow rate, even when not doing anything, which can help with the vast amount of Power-consuming moves Enguarde has.

The damage of Enguarde's attacks, including Hypers, is fairly weak, but Enguarde has great comboability to compensate for this, being able to perform long combo strings and juggling the opponent by just mashing buttons, and the player can make use of the Roman Cancel to extend combos even further, and it's even possible to perform infinites with a lot of skill; because of his low damage output, Enguarde mainly relies on comboing to defeat the opponent; in addition, many of Enguarde's Normals have infinite priority; on the other hand, Enguarde has a damage dampener which lowers Enguarde's low damage output even further. To compensate for Enguarde's lack of crouching and aerial attacks, Enguarde has a vast amount of moves that use Power and are activated with directional inputs, though many of them are attributed as Normals, and all of the moves that were intended to be Specials as stated in the Readme are attributed as Normals. Enguarde has a notable flaw where pressing activates a Hyper that takes out half of the opponent's Life on the first successful hit and 1/4rth on the second one; hitting the opponent with this the third time activates a different attack that K.O.'s the opponent; while this consumes Power, there's no Power requirement, which means this move can be easily spammed for cheap and effortless victories.

Enguarde has notable for having three different gauges. The Boost gauge allows Enguarde to uses his dash and has three units and gradually refills at a fast rate. The Water Ball gauge is used for certain attacks; these attacks are projectiles and are among the few projectile attacks Enguarde has and two of the can make the opponent lose Power when they hit; like the Boost gauge, it has three units and gradually refills at a fast rate. Finally, the Enguarde gauge fills up by hitting the opponent with certain Hypers and allows the player to perform two OHKO moves when it's full. In addition to the OHKO moves that make use of the Enguarde gauge, Enguarde has two more OHKO moves, which are Instant Kill moves and require the IK Mode to be activated first, though these moves are attributed as Normals; they're activated with  and. Notably, when Enguarde's Life drops below 300, he enters some kind of rage mode, during which Enguarde's attacks deal more damage, the damage dampener is no longer in effect and Enguarde automatically gains Power at a significantly faster rate.

Enguarde has a custom configurable A.I. with 11 different levels, with 11 being the default; on this level, it may take a while for the A.I. to hit the opponent, but once he hits the opponent, he usually starts a very long combo string and keeps juggling the opponent, often finishing the combo with a Hyper, dealing a lot of damage in spite of Enguarde's naturally low damage output; in addition, the A.I. can easily parry most attacks, making it incredibily hard to damage him; this A.I. is very brutal and almost impossible to defeat for a human player without using cheap characters or debug keys. On lower A.I. levels, the combo strings are usually shorter but the behavior otherwise remains mostly the same.

Gold color


In this palette mode, Enguarde gains several cheap enhancements, like having a perpetually full Power bar that does not deplete, as well as a perpetually full Boost and Engaurde gauge, having no damage dampener and slowly recovering Life; the same enhancements can also be enables with the Option.txt file. Notably, the Boost gauge graphically glitches and stretches out.

Trivia

 * M. Bison, God Rugal and Shuma-Gorath appear in Enguarde's intros.
 * The opening cutscenes from Donkey Kong Country 2 and Donkey Kong Country 3 also appear as intros, though Dixie Kong and Kiddy Kong are absent from the latter.
 * When Enguarde is K.O.'d, a random death sound from Donkey Kong Country 2 or Donkey Kong Country 3 plays.
 * Enguarde comes with an Option.txt file that allows the player to enable several cheap settings, such as having an unlimited Power bar and gradually recovering Life, as well as changing the A.I. level.