Toroko Warriors/Arial

Arial is a playable character in Toroko Warriors, being one of the six playable third-party characters that can be downloaded for use in the game. Arial is a coquettish demon emerging from the Neitherspere with the unique ability to control minds and hosts and use them either for her own benefit or to aid teams. This gives her a plethora of distinct strategies that differ her from all the other characters in the game, her distinctness offering her an advantage that others lack.

Arial is a balanced character, with average offense, defense, speed and control statistics. Her unusual ability to control active opponents and take over the bodies of fallen warriors as protective vessels makes her a formidable ally, for she can access the abilities of any foe and use them to aid her allies, especially if they lack that specific type of support on their own team. Outside of using others as puppets, Arial can attack with music-themed moves and drink to raise her stats.

Playstyle
Arial has a perfectly balanced character, having rounded out statistics and average height and weight. Her jumps are slightly above normal, and the player can hold down the jump button to have her levitate. She lacks the ability to use wall jumps, but she can grip onto and pull herself above ledges. Arial has three different strategies to use on the battlefield: the first one is using musical instruments for (literally) all purposes, able to use offensive, defensive, and support options with them. Her second and third involve taking on the body of a foe and using them as her vessel, be it alive or down, and either healing her team or going all out on the opposition. To somewhat coincide with the idea that demons are immortal, Arial slowly regenerates her health over time, which is very useful considering that a lot of her statistics are fairly mediocre. When Arial's not using her instruments or controlling a host, her attacks are simple, yet fast punches and karate chops.

The idea of Arial being perfectly balanced presents her with no obvious disadvantages, yet no notable advantages in either of the primary four stats. When combined with some of her really tricky gimmicks, this makes Arial notably tricky to battle as she has no easily exploited weaknesses to speak of. Her simple attacks, like fast punches and chops are mentioned before, can quickly put a dent through enemies. She can use the special attack button to use instruments as long as her FINALE isn't ready to be used, and use her attack buttons to dish out simple attacks that easily combo into a powerful jab with her clenched-up fists. This is an efficient way to take on enemies, but the attacks don't deal much damage and it usually works only one one foe at a time. If foes gang up around Arial, she'll have to resort to her musical instruments, but she doesn't need to fret as each is a simple, yet powerful tool that severely aids her in battle.

Arial has a wide range of musical instruments, she can switch between whichever ones when the player uses the inner triggers. Her favorite instrument, the trombone, functions very much like a gun and serves well as Arial's prime ranged weapon. By holding down the special attack button, Arial will take out her trombone. The longer the player holds down the button, the more powerful and the more distance the resulting projectile goes. Once the player releases, Arial will fire a powerful sound wave from her instrument which has effects that vary entirely on the held charge. With a small charge, the sound will simply deal damage to the opponent. A longer charge will blow away the opponent and deal more damage than normal. The longest charge has a devastating effect: not only does it reach a far distance, but it deafens any opponents it hits for the rest of the match! To compensate for its incredible power however, the charges must be held for a long while, rendering Arial open to attacks.

Other than the almighty trombone, she has other instruments that can be used for offensive purposes. She can pluck a banjo to curse nearby opponents with bad luck, inflicting them with status conditions like burns or lowering down their stats, or she can pluck strings on a loud guitar to topple over nearby foes, which can be useful against heavy or power-based foes. Arial can also utilize cymbals to induce strong paralysis in a foe right near her, rendering them numb for a little while. The triangle can be used to lure opponents over to Arial; if the player is ready to battle a foe she can draw their attention with this. Besides the trombone, her other powerful instrument is a huge drum, which when pounded damages and shakes around opponents nearby, but it doesn't offer the same deafening or power effect that the trombone has. In comparison however, it does allow her to hit many more opponents that are nearby her.

Arial has plenty of instruments that work well on defense. She can utilize an xylphone to keep up a shield; tapping the attack button in beat to the in-game drums will keep the shield up, and if opponents attack the shield as soon as a beat is made, their attack will be countered and backfire on them. However, it is possible for opponents to slide through the shield between beats and attack Arial -- it is unlikely that they will look closely to see her xylophone though. She can hold a pair of strong drumsticks and use them to defend against attacks, and "beat" her opponents with them too. By using a flute, she can lure nearby opponents to sleep and stop them from attacking her momentarily. The saxaphone allows her to call over allies when she needs help, often teleporting a dutiless ally over to her. A trumpet however is her standout defense tool; when blown, she'll launch forward a sticky bomb which attaches to her opponent and explodes after a while when it's least expected.

Supportive instruments are also part of Arial's game. These include the violin, which can resurrect opponents from the dead and bring them back to working for her team; the harp, which heals all status conditions on herself and allies near her; the bongos, which increase the offensive power of herself and allies nearby; the accordion, which taunts foes and prevents them from using status moves; and finally the tuba, which deafens all foes nearby temporarily and neutralizes the abilities of other Arial players on the battlefield, preventing those Arials from using instruments and fighter manipulation temporarily. While these instruments are strong and have useful presence on the battlefield, they require cooldown time after being used so that Arial doesn't become too powerful. Instruments are a very vital part of Arial's gameplay and it's important to master all of what she has in order to provide some of the most important offensive presence in the entire game.

The last two of her instruments have completely different purposes. By using a baton, she can rise a fallen fighter, friend or foe, to fight or her side. If she waves it towards a resurrected foe, regardless if she brought it back up to begin with, it will obediently collapse back onto the ground. As she can only use three resurrected fighters at once, sometimes dropping one for a stronger one is necessary. Her other is a flute, which enables her to use a fighter as a host regardless of whether or not they're active and fully functional. By using a flute when an opponent is at low health (10%) and after she's attacked them, her soul will infiltrate the body and use it as a vessel, her moveset completely changing to match her foe's. She can use these abilities to fill roles that her team may not have already, such as an offensive core like Quartz or a support player like Leah. As the vessel's life is low, she should work to getting it healed before she can wreak total havoc.

Resurrected fighters have a will of their own, their objective is to take down the foes of the Arial that brought it back to life. However, by waving her baton towards enemies, Arial can precisely tell them who to kill, allowing for more customizable and free strategy. Every resurrected foe has 33% of their original health and 80% of their original statistics; getting an ally such as Eris to buff them would be excellent. All resurrected foes are likely to use their combo attacks, but are capable of using more complex attacks such as Leah using her various needles. These are a very viable and reliable defense for Arial; these resurrected allies can serve as meat shields and save Arial and potentially some allies from some nasty attacks or status conditions. A cool side effect is that the undead can't take on status conditions, so they completely absorb burn and poison damage and aren't fazed by stat decreases as their stats are already fairly low.

Taking over the body of a foe gives Arial numerous advantages on the battlefield. For starters, this completely revamps her strategies and gives her new ones to work with: using her vessel, she can either assist her team by filling in missing roles or slide her way into the other team. Arial somewhat works like the Team Fortress 2 spy in this regard; opponents may not even notice Arial has taken over a body unless she has hurt them or has visibly hurt an ally of theirs. This makes Crow a perfect body for Arial to take over, for Crow is capable of hurting allies as part of her moveset, so it'd be impossible to tell if Arial was in a Crow body or not unless she is very obviously acting offensively towards "allies". Arial does not take damage when in a vessel, and when the vessel shatters, Arial will look exactly the same way she did before taking it over. If she has crossed into enemy territory, Arial can wreak havoc and annihilate the opposition around her.

Arial is not flawless, however. Her selection of instruments is indeed large and useful, but the vast majority of them require cooldown time before they can be used again and Arial is somewhat left vulnerable when using them. Most of Arial's instruments are aimed only in a single direction, so she can be attacked from behind. Her only average stats prevent her from having any excellent presence on the battlefield in offense, defense, or supportive cores, but she does have access to various instruments of differing purposes, so it makes her a jack-of-all-trades. The bodies she resurrects are fairly weak and can easily be obliterated by foes that were designed to destroy them. When she takes over a foe, she cannot use any of her unique talents and she needs to heal up the body before she can truly be effective when using it. She additionally can't use her instruments when her FINALE is ready, so she can't do any checks to make sure that her FINALE will work to its full potential.

Typically, Arial wouldn't need help in combat as her instruments can cover a thousand problems she might obtain while battling, but when she does need that sort of help, it would be for quick, reliable healing. Lacking any healing tools, Arial should hang around supportive allies such as Leah or Cura who are capable of putting her and her resurrected bodies back up to full strength. Arial is a fantastic partner for Offense fighters such as Oni and Thorn, they would strongly appreciate her ability to shake off burns and protect them from enormous threats. While Arial is a good check to all tricky foes like Alcyone and Cosmetta, Defense-based foes like the Mistake and Meldi give her lots of problems as she is more than likely unable to shatter their wall-like defenses. Thorn is one of the best partners for Arial solely or her ability to pierce through enemy defenses. This sum her up well -- a good and fun partner for all purposes, but one that requires some fairly obscure ways of help in order to remain fresh and alive.

Arial's FINALE is Phantom Play, which forces her to summon a crew of a thousand souls to use all of her instruments at once, creating an episodic sequence of events where opponents are constantly struck by elemental spells and damaging sound waves. During the orchestra, Arial will be able to free-roam the battlefield and cause opponents she comes near to attack each other, taking over their minds with the 25-second FINALE attack. By waving around her baton, she can use energy drained by the orchestra to heal up her allies and refresh her team back to normal. As the orchestra nears its end, it speeds up significantly, with the strongest attacks being launched before it all dissipates. If Arial was in a body before launching the entire attack, her FINALE is instead her vessel's, further helping her blend in with her opponents -- although as she's going to be attacking the opposition, that probably won't mean a lot. The FINALE takes a while to charge.

While lacking superb stats, Arial has a unique playstyle that gives the team she's on quite a number of fortunate bonuses. With Arial on a team, opponents can expect to be hit with status aliments, deafness, and strong attacks from her varying instruments. Her wide assortment of tools makes Arial a very valuable fighter.

Instrument Shift
By pressing the shoulder buttons, Arial can switch between instruments and use them with the press of the special attack button. Depending on the instrument, holding down the button may achieve different results. Does not function when a FINALE is ready.

Drink
Pressing down on the left inner trigger will switch between four colors for Arial; red, blue, green, yellow. Pressing the right will get her to drink down a glass of a sweet fluid in that color, raising offense/defense/speed/control, depending on the color of the drink. She can only use this five times in a round.

Standard

 * "Arial is a charismatic demon with an outgoing, rather friendly personality.  Originating from the Neitherspere, she has the uncommon ability to control and take over humans and make them her vessels!  She's also a flirty lady who wishes to get anything her eyes set upon.  She looks as if she came straight out of the 1940's era, sporting both hair and clothing in that sort of style.

Alt

 * "Arial's high interest in music has managed to work its way into part of her battle style!  Arial can use her favorite instrument, the trombone, to harm her foes with powerful sound basts.  Apart from that, she can also utilize a banjo to inflict bad luck on foes or use a violin to resurrect fallen allies from the dead.  Worth noting is her ability to make fighter bodies her vessels or fallen ones as temporal meat shields."

FINALE

 * "Phantom Play is Arial's FINALE attack.  This 25-second long orchestral masterpiece has all of Arial's instruments being used, launching all sorts of attacks and moves towards opponents across the entire arena.  The influence of Arial's baton can control the way the orchestra works too -- foes directed by the baton may attack each other and help Arial's team win!"

Trivia

 * Some of Arial's tactics were inspired by the Spy from Team Fortress 2.