Project V/Ganondorf



Ganondorf (The Legend of Zelda) "Do not think that this ends here... the history of light and shadow will be written in blood!"

Ganondorf is one of the fifteen selectable fighters in Project V, representing the Legend of Zelda franchise. He has been selected due to his misrepresented self in the Super Smash Bros. series and his unique, slow gameplay that gives him several opportunities to "disrespect" his foes. While being mostly an arms fighter in Smash, Ganondorf has been slightly changed here to make greater use of his actual abilities from his origin franchise, utilizing a sword and more darkness attacks instead of just using his arms and legs to battle. His moveset still greatly resembles what it was before though, and his titanic power remains. Ganondorf has become more valuable in competitive play, with a new and improved recovery and a significant lack of speedy, lightweight characters to outplay him.

Because the game is unreleased and the competitive scene relies heavily on demos, it is impossible to determine where Ganondorf is regarding his competitive stance. On the predicted tier, however, he ranks at 7th with his newfound range, improved recovery, and kept power being able to bash and annihilate opponents with his new and improved attacks. His high prowess puts strong pressure on Little Mac, Ridley and Marie, who have to find opportunities to attack without being hit by his strong attacks. With such high weight, he is easy to juggle and combo, and his slowness makes it difficult for him to ward off faster foes like Poison and Greedy or put up with Ike's damage racking and fantastic combo ability.

Attributes
Ganondorf has incredible power and weight in exchange for half-assed speed, able to dish lots of damage out very fast with the proper set ups and opponent predictions. A lot of his moves can be quite laggy, but when they land they can do monstrous amounts of damage and cause opponents to deliberately change strategies. Ganondorf has the slowest walking speed, a poor dashing speed, high falling speed, low air speed, and low jumps, making him the character with the most poor mobility. This is improved with his more viable recovery option, however. Most of Ganondorf's attacks utilize his fists or his sword, combining his self from the Smash series with more true incarnations of Ganondorf. Just like before, Ganondorf is a great bait-and-punish character, with his objective on the battlefield being to read and crush opponents for doing the wrong actions. With rage in effect, Ganondorf can be an unstoppable, cheap force.

Ganondorf has some huge flaws, however. His aforementioned poor mobility makes it difficult for him to approach faster foes and he has to rely on reading opponent strategies in order to hit them with his moves. Doing the wrong move can easily result in Ganondorf himself being punished, which can be dangerous thanks to his high falling speed and his poor jumps, making him rely on his fairly linear recovery, which makes him easy to gimp. Big and K. Rool offer Ganondorf the most trouble, with their high range and good attack speed helping them outlast Ganondorf's immense power. Despite his flaws, Ganondorf has some very strong moves and can send inexperienced players flying off the screen in no time, and his sudden "disrespect" moves can allow him to take stocks pretty fast.

Moveset
Ganondorf uses both his fists and his sword to fight, both of which being powerful tools in Ganon's arsenal. Most of his attacks are accompanied by a "darkness effect" and have high power, and in some cases, long range. Any attack is good for KO'ing his foes apart from his abmysal throwing game, with his tilts and smash attacks in particular being the most powerful attacks. His most viable ones are his aerials, which come out pretty fast even if their end lag is a little high. It is worth nothing that with Ganondorf's poor speed that a lot of his attacks take a small bit to recover from, making him easy to punish. Ganondorf players must be aware of air dodging opponents and prepare to punish those.
 * Neutral Special: Dead Man's Volley.  Pulling out his trident, Ganondorf quickly unleashes a ball of energy and whacks it at opponents. While the move can be hit back with surprisingly little effort, Ganondorf can whack the attack back to make it bigger, stronger, and faster. The move's power caps out after four total whacks, making it into an effective killing machine that can take out opponents at surprisingly low percentages.  If Ganondorf doesn't block in time, he can easily be hit by his own weapon. If powered up, the ball gains an electrical effect that pierces through opponents, dealing high multi-hit damage with the last hit having high knockback.
 * Forward Special: Flame Choke.  Ganondorf will rush forward and place his hands around an opponent's neck, choking them and slamming them straight down if they were in the air.  This can be used to perform Ganondorf's infamous "Ganoncide". Compared to his Smash incarnation, Flame Choke carries Ganondorf over a long distance.  When powered by the special attack bar, flame choke leaves behind a trail of dark fire with high knockback and launches foes horizontally forward, having a great chance of killing them. If Flame Choke misses, it will leave ganondorf helpless.
 * Recovery Special: Flight of Ganon.  Ganondorf will levitate and the player can choose where to direct him.  Ganondorf is surrounded by a thin shield of dark energy that damages opponents for multi-hit damage on contact, the last paralysing opponents and allowing Ganondorf to get a free hit on them.  It doesn't last very long but allows Ganondorf to have an easier time making it back to the stage via being able to easily sweetspot ledges with it.  When powered, Ganondorf's flight duration is longer and getting hit by the attack will cause good knockback.
 * Crouch Special: Dusk Spiral.  Ganondorf swings his trident into the ground and gets on it, spinning around with his sword stretched out. This will get him to behave like a tornado, tapping the green button repeatedly will keep the attack going.  This deals little knockback, but can cause plenty of multihit damage and put pressure on opponents with difficulty getting to Ganon.  With a filled special bar, Ganondorf will spin faster and be able to move around, with the most outer hitbox on this move doing the most amount of knockback.  It will stop on its own within ten seconds, however.

In competitive play
Due to time constraints, this is incomplete.