Irma: The Assassin of Fang[]
Irma is...Interesting. To put it bluntly, she is what we would call a 'counter' styled character. While most people aim for the 'clean hit' to land on score pages or to tip up their opponent's with their gimmicks limiting their options, Irma goes balls to the walls crazy with the desire to Parry every attack she can regardless of what that might be. Given she uses both a sword and a dagger, this gives her some interesting attacks to preform at that, though in earnest her gimmick's complexity makes her hard to use, and even the best players might find her requiring too much to do well with...
Strategy[]
So first and foremost, what are we even trying to do with Irma? Well, the simple answer to this is to 'parry'. The long answer is to guess every single attack your opponent is going to preform to chose the right Swing, Thrust, and Fake to land on a parry page. if you think this is a tall order, you'd be right, yet this is how Irma deals in the damage and takes her targets down. This is because of how her Parry works, forcing the opponent onto a disadvantage SCORE page, and let's Irma hit them were it hurts the most. Case and point, if Irma scores a High Parry, she will always cause a Leg Wound, and and Low Parry's for Body Wound. Given that Irma's MOD's aren't really that great, this lets her get in some of the higher damaging SCORE pages most characters have, letting her deal the most she can.
But, let's just say we DON'T go for counters, let's play her like Leina, using her Swings, Thrust, and Fakes? Well her Swing's only disable their respective color, while her low thrust only disables red, while her high thrust...disables nothing at all! In earnest, Irma is one of the few cast who almost doesn't disable her options at all! She also has her dagger that she can use for a 'safe' ranged attack, but due towards it disabling her Parry and Stab's, more less she can only do it once before needing to retrieve it, this is more a 'last ditch' option then anything. This along with her Parry's would on paper make her an utterly strong fighter, and to a degree, when used by a player who knows the game inside and out, will end up just that!...Though then we get towards her SCORE and matrix's and...
Vs. Irma[]
...This is where I sigh, and pretty much go 'Irma is really really bad'. Queen's Blade wants Irma to be 'fast', and they want her to abuse her speed in turn for lots of rapid hits and what have you, but in turn she has matrix's that lean on score pages more often then not, and even then, her SCORE pages beyond her parry's are PRETTY bad all around ( 4 for Arm and 5 for leg alone! ), and given the era she was made in, she lacks a heal of any kind to boot. This by default isn't directly 'bad', but given she hits about as hard as Leina, but without the 'tankness' Leina has to play the poking game and able to take hits, Irma is playing the poking game and CAN'T take hits. This leads towards her feeling very fragile, and risking it all on a gimmick that requires you to know what your opponent is about to do 100% of the time, and able to counter play it with the right option, whatever it might be.
In earnest, this brings up the true issue around her kit, that Irma is 'too' technical for normal play. She requires TOO much prior understanding of the game and how it works to even have a small glimmer to win, more less be 'viable'. If she guesses wrong, she's going to eat a painful hit in turn. If she avoids taking damage, she's then in a spot where she now needs to SCORE on you in some fashion, or risk losing her advantage of her attacks not disabling as harshly as others. Then due towards her MOD's, if who she's fighting have very good Leg and Body SCORE's, she's not going to be able to do much of any damage at all. So in earnest fighting her evolves down towards being unpredictable in your movements, allowing you to just faceroll over her as she attempts to make any hard reads, and failing that, hopes her attacks are just faster...
Overall Judgement[]
As much as I love the concept behind Irma, someone who you don't pick at first, but use once you've become far better at the game to then dunk on others with to show you're pretty much a 'Pro', she just requires such tight and refined playing that it becomes utterly hard to do well with her under most situations. God forbid she ends up fighting someone who punishes parrying ( Like Claudette) or has such good attacks they just don't have to even care about such a gimmick ( Alleyne....just....Alleyne ). Given Irim was also an 'early' book, there's a very 'lacking' feeling overall towards her when sat towards both newer books in general, or just near the end of the first Queens Blade series at that. It's a shame too as she's doing something very different, it's just too bad that it's so hard to make work...
- Skill Level: Expert ( and nothing less )
- Rank: D