Board 8 > ~FIGHT!~ Alucard and Link vs. Joshua and Estelle Bright

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Alucard and Link have challenged Joshua and Estelle Bright to a fight! Location of the fight: Le Locle Canyon - A region controlled by the Bracers Guild, and used by its members as training grounds. Large and comfortable guest lodgings are surrounded lush woodlands beyond which lies an advanced hi-tech fortress, fit to hold back an army. Access to all four of the location's areas are permitted. Attackers will start in the depths of the Balstar Channel, where Kurt is fought, whilst defenders will begin at the Guild Lodge. Which side will win?

Guidelines

-The fight will occur in real-time (like an FMV sequence). Gameplay mechanics are less important than how the characters would function in a real-time environment.
-The members of each team are ideal teammates capable of executing a prearranged battle plan.
-Unless stated otherwise, characters have access to their full arsenal of abilities and equipment. They may not always work at full power, however (e.g. a petrifying spell may have only a partial hindering effect not seen in gameplay or even fail outright against sufficiently powerful mercenaries). Use your own discretion.
-No mercenary can ever start in a location where they would die instantly, destroy the arena merely by existing in it, or end up ringed out of the terrain before abilities. If there's no room within a terrain to fit them, the terrain will stretch out until there's at least one yard of available, moving, safe space. Attacks may not damage the terrain enough to cause automatic deaths or ring-outs, save with a concerted effort.
-There may be SPOILERS from all of the games the characters are from.

Rules for Voting

-Bold your votes.
-You do not need to require justification for your vote, though the admins reserve the right to disqualify votes in the advent of obvious alt voting and other similar scenarios.
-Leaders cannot vote for their own teams, but they are free to argue their case.
-If you want to switch your votes simply bold the change; there's no need to delete your post, though you may if you wish.
-This match will end in 24 hours.

Alucard is as he appears in the Castlevania series. He has access to his full set of Alucard equipment, Crissaegrim, Mablung, Masamune, Shield Rod, Fist of Tulkas, Skull, Dark and Iron shields, two Heaven Swords, Holy Glasses, Twilight Cloak and all relics, spells and subweapons. He may summon any familiars he likes, though Fairy will not come with healing items to heal him with. Feats from the Castlevania anime are considered valid.

Link is as he appears in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He has access to all of the Champion abilities, save Mipha's Grace, in their plus forms, all of his techniques and all of his movesets from Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. He comes into battle equipped with the Master Sword (complete with usable beam attack), all elemental swords both one and two-handed, all Ancient weaponry, all rods, Lizal Tri-Boomerang, Savage Lynel Bow and Crusher, Bow of Light, and all kinds of arrows, including Ancient Arrows. He has his Paraglider and the Sheikah Slate, with full access to all its capabilities save the amiibo function, and rides into battle on the Master Cycle Zero.

~VS~

Joshua and Estelle Bright are as they appear in the Trails series. They both are equipped with endgame weapons and armour, as well a Gladiator's Belt and Headband each. They have full access to all of their Crafts and S-Crafts save for Phoenix Wave, start the fight with 60 CP, and have full access to their Brave Orders. They both have access to all of their Orbal Arts seen in Trails of Cold Steel 4, though Lost Genesis will not have instant-kill properties.

I'll say this... Link and Alucard? Two tough customers... gonna be hard to top 'em

Team Link's Argument:

Two words: Power. Differential. Pound for pound, Team Link has much more firepower at their disposal than a pair of jRPG scrubs. How do they deal with a teleporting, swag-walking, mist-form-taking badass like Alucard? How do they handle the explosive power of Ancient Arrows? Alucard and Link are both used to navigating hostile terrain, too. They'll get out of the sewers in no time and then wreck fools.

But seriously though, Link is an allstar in BotW. If you're familiar with previous iterations just forget all you know about them because they legitimately just don't exist compared to the new and improved model. He can bullet time, fire off multiple arrows at a time (each of which can carry an explosive payload), rides a sick divine motorcycle and can strike many times in the blink of an eye. He's super duper roided compared to past selves. His Hyrule Warriors moveset only adds to his combat prowess, not that he needs it to kick ass. He's not a tagalong to Alucard here -- each of them could possibly defeat both of the Brights together, and combined their power advantage is overwhelming.

So overall, the terrain favoring the bracers is negligible and powerwise they are highly disfavored. This is a very simple mop-up fight.

Team Estelle's Argument:

You'd think Alucard and Link would know better than to walk straight into the lion's den. You'd be wrong. This couldn't be a more lopsided matchup if they were fighting with their hands behind their backs. Let's run down the list of advantages best boy and girl pack, hmm?

-First strike guaranteed. Joshua is an elite stealth operative. He managed to sneak past the Enforcers of the almighty Ouroboros organization, plant bombs all over their flagship skyship Glorious and bomb it to hell, then give their greatest combatant the slip. He's gonna see the opponents coming, come up with a trap, and lead off with a vicious ambush.

-Buff advantage: Joshua and Estelle have buffs to speed, strength, durability, and even one-shot physical attack immunity (which Link and Alucard specialize in). They have debuffs to all those things, too. Worse, their magic attacks passively dish out debuffs and they hit in a super wide area. They're going to stack the deck against each other massively and it's not gonna be pretty. Joshua's Master Quartz even inflicts automatic debuffs with attacks randomly, too! Oh, and they have healing to patch their own wounds. Alucard can lifesteal, but any damage dealt to Link stays, which is really not good for him.

-Terrain advantage: Le Locle has multiple excellent battlegrounds to pick fights in. The cramped fortress, the thick woods...Joshua and Estelle are pathfinders and they know the place well. They can prepare a brutal ambush and even split Link and Alucard up using the various control switches at the fort. Divide and conquer was pretty good shit, last I checked.

All told, there's just no chance of victory for Team Alucard. In an honest fight they might have a chance, but this is gonna be anything but honest. They know how to fight together and enable each other, they're on home turf, and all the intangibles point their way. It's not gonna go well for the invaders.

I think joshuas nesr guaranteed first strike is interesting because he can juggle anyone he gets and Link doesnt traditionally strike me as soneone who survives getting gibbed.

But Alucard is a lot to handle for Estelle.

It all depends on what Estelle goes for I think. If she leads with one of her heavy duty spells she can debuff Alucard to hell, damage him and then keep him busy long enough that Joshua can dispatch Link maybe and get something done. If she jumps straight to thwacking Alucard with a stick things don't go so well for her and then it's Josh solo vs Alucard which...might be possible to clinch but I wouldn't bet on it. I feel like starting off with a spell to supplement Joshua's ambush (something like Megalith Fall, which reduces defense guaranteed, or Gravion Hammer which lowers speed and movement range, also guaranteed) is sensible, and it'd make things more even.

The other thing to note is Estelle is naturally built for a tanking setup. Her Master Quartz are Skuld and Brigid, the former of which grants automatic 10% max HP regen at start of battle (and again if she drops low) and tacks a bit of extra further regen on top at all times, and the latter of which automatically maxes out her CP if she dips low. So she's going to be hardy and if she gets put against the ropes, she'll be able to bust out a limit break instantly. Whether that's enough to buy the time she needs to either retreat to heal or let Josh come in to help, I don't know.

...Oh, actually, I probably should post a list of the relevant details, huh

https://kiseki.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_master_quartz_(Cold_Steel_IV)

Joshua gets Zephyr and Tempest from this list. Estelle gets Skuld and Brigid.

https://kiseki.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_orbal_arts_(Cold_Steel_IV)

And they get the relevant arts in the master quartz list. Their Brave Orders respectively halve team turn delay for Joshua (so, just constantly taking more actions, which jives with how his time quartz gives him auto-haste and he has a Quick-type orbal art), and Estelle's cuts damage taken by all allies in half. They're actually remarkably well suited for the roles they're likely to take up in this particular fight, honestly.

even after learning more about the opponents, Ill go with Team Alucard for now

A lot of matches so far have been decided by JRPG protags having buff/debuff suites, and this one at first glance sees no different? Faerie can't carry healing items, and Alucard doesn't have his Stone-resist gear, so something like a Petrify quartz is deadly to both.

Joshua and Estelle

In the situation, where it's not only on their home territory, but it goes beyond ideal teammate clause to being allies that have had experience in fighting with each other. I feel the debuffs and buffs available will cause a lot more problems, and wiith both sides, if this goes to an extended fight (with neither side just one shotting the other) the tools that Trails gives Joshua and Estelle goes well to a battle of attrition.

Team Bracer has the home field advantage here. I think they can win it

Gotta go with Alucard and Roid Link

I feel like Alucard just wins here buffs or no buffs but what buffs are we specifically talking about itemized.

Also does Link have anything relevant here in terms of utility.

Joshua and Estelle, easily

Lopen posted...

I feel like Alucard just wins here buffs or no buffs but what buffs are we specifically talking about itemized.

Also does Link have anything relevant here in terms of utility.

second this, assume I know nothing when you explain

What are Josh and Estelle's durability feats? Like not counting buffs, just base durability.

Because like Alucard and Ancient Arrows...

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/11137/111371329/6748070-alucard%20feat%20speed%20%2815%29.gif

Like these are attacks that WILL land. I absolutely do not give credit for being able to tag Alucard with a debuff or status before he's in range, and this is him just punching; he could do that with a sword in SotN! Not to mention Daruk's Protection from Link nulling physical damage and repelling projectiles. Like, if this were a fair fight, absolutely, 100%, Estelle and Joshua would... still lose. But this isn't a fair fight; Alucard and Link I absolutely do not believe let themselves get tagged with the debuffs necessary to bring them down quickly and snowballing.

But I need to know, like, actual stuff the Brights do besides their list of spells. Which sound nice, but everything I have ever heard about Estelle involves a big stick or violence, so I am unsure if they go for optimal here (I THINK Joshua does but like. Alucard sounds like the perfect person to provoke Estelle).

Lopen posted...

I feel like Alucard just wins here buffs or no buffs but what buffs are we specifically talking about itemized.

Also does Link have anything relevant here in terms of utility.

-Chrono Drive: Teamwide speed and movement range up. Joshua starts battle with this on automatically.
-Chrono Break: The reverse of the above, debuff.
-Chrono Burst: Quick type effect, take several actions instantly.
-La Forte: Teamwide ATK up in a very large aoe.
-Crest: Teamwide DEF up in a medium aoe.
-Adamantine Shield: One shot physical immunity. Completely no-sells an attack no matter how big it is, as long as it's physical.
-Earth Pulse: 25% max HP regen for a few turns.
-Adamantine Order: 50% damage taken reduction for a few turns. Stacks with Crest, IIRC.
-Shadow Formation: 50% Delay Reduction (how fast actions that have a buildup time, like powerful spells, resolve) for a few turns. Distinct from Chrono Drive.

In addition, their attacks dish out a wide variety of status effects just as a matter of course. They are...

-Ivy Nail: Moderate earth damage, 50% chance of poison, 50% chance of petrify.
-Megalith Fall: Significant earth damage, inflicts DEF Down on top guaranteed.
-Gravion Hammer: Massive earth damage, heavily debuffs speed and movement range, guaranteed.
-All fire arts: Various chances to inflict Burn, which is a heavy DoT. Zeruel Cannon, the strongest one, has 100% burn chance.
-Air Strike & Aerial Dust: Air damage (minor and major, respectively) plus chance to inflict blind and guaranteed blind, again respectively.
-Nemesis Arrow & Ixion Volt: Air damage (moderate and massive), plus small and very high chance to inflict Seal (can't use physical attacks or techniques, wears off fairly quickly), respectively.
-Soul Blur: Minor Time damage, plus 50% chance to inflict Nightmare, which is a sleep effect that transforms into a random other debuff when the target wakes up.
-Joshua's physical attacks: 95% chance to inflict random debuffs, including those above. Both basic attacks and his physical techniques can do this.

If this seems like a very long list you'd be right. Pretty much every offensive move in the Cold Steel series does some kind of debuffing double duty. The Brights have a very large 'ruin this dude's day' kit. Uncertain how well these will work vs Link and Alucard once battle is joined, but they're very good options.

As for Link, he has three notable tricks up his sleeve utilitywise:

-Daruk's Protection: Omnidirectional invulnerability barrier for two hits (IIRC), but only as long as he's actively defending (shield raised). Visible around him as a ruby crystalline shell, similar to how Nayru's Love looks in OoT but red.
-Magnesis: Can pick up metallic objects that aren't held and move them around and throw them.
-Stasis: Short temporal freeze on one target, goes away if they are hit immediately. Has a cooldown.

If the first strike doesn't disable him or leave him too busy defending himself to reach for his Sheikah Slate (basically a tablet he uses to activate the latter two moves), he can make things kinda lopsided, so that makes the opening ambush particularly important.

Kamekguy posted...

What are Josh and Estelle's durability feats? Like not counting buffs, just base durability.

Because like Alucard and Ancient Arrows...

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/11137/111371329/6748070-alucard%20feat%20speed%20%2815%29.gif

Like these are attacks that WILL land. I absolutely do not give credit for being able to tag Alucard with a debuff or status before he's in range, and this is him just punching; he could do that with a sword in SotN! Not to mention Daruk's Protection from Link nulling physical damage and repelling projectiles. Like, if this were a fair fight, absolutely, 100%, Estelle and Joshua would... still lose. But this isn't a fair fight; Alucard and Link I absolutely do not believe let themselves get tagged with the debuffs necessary to bring them down quickly and snowballing.

But I need to know, like, actual stuff the Brights do besides their list of spells. Which sound nice, but everything I have ever heard about Estelle involves a big stick or violence, so I am unsure if they go for optimal here (I THINK Joshua does but like. Alucard sounds like the perfect person to provoke Estelle).

Durability feats are tricky to quantify because, by and large, Estelle and Josh prefer to dodge rather than tank (Joshua in particular is pretty much a ninja, stylewise, down to having shadow clone techniques). At the same time, though, multiple battles that happen in the Trails series have enemies do the smart thing and lead off with their S-Crafts (limit breaks, p much). Here, for example, is the climax enemy of Josh and Estelle's last game as main protagonists, Leonhardt the Bladelord:

https://youtu.be/qOPQnh9MT3U?t=390

You either bring one specific character who can interject an invulnerability move anywhere in the turn order as a limit break or you have to facetank this, no other way to deal with it. The latter is easier said than done -- the damage you can see there is probably not representative of what happened storywise, because it's on the ultra-hard difficulty where enemy stats are all cranked up to infinity, but it gives an idea of the kind of stuff they've had to deal with.

Relatedly, this is Joshua's most notable combat feat, defeting Loewe in single combat after the entire party fought him:

https://youtu.be/4jXidODZnSM?t=51

He's got practice dealing with badass super fast swordsmen, fwiw (and with them being able to keep up with him). I'm not sure how I'd measure Loewe vs Alucard, but they should at the least be in a similar ballpark. He's a soloer of armies who repeatedly smacks the hell out of the party every step of the way, and even in the final confrontation it takes all you have to make him stand down, not actually kill him.

Is the duration infinite on the buffs where it's not otherwise specified?

Lopen posted...

Is the duration infinite on the buffs where it's not otherwise specified?

All of them last 4 turns from application, IIRC. Chrono Burst being the exception since it just gives you actions.

I'm really gonna need like, actual feats for Estelle and Joshua rather than focusing on a list of debuffs.

4 turns? Yeah that's not that great really.

I feel like Alucard just dunks on them when the stuff wears off honestly. Link honestly might too. Really not getting the hype here. Like what's setting them above generic RPG protags here. What does Joshua have that puts him above say Lloyd Irving (who to me is a cut above most RPG characters and Alucard would still whomp him).

I posted one above, if it helps any. Another one I can think of for Joshua is he's super mobile -- when he raids the Glorious, his escape is jumping off it to another airship that is like...probably like 30 meters away or something? In a single bound. I forget if Estelle made the jump with him or not but it was pretty remarkable, the kind of mobility you'd expect to see out of a final fantasy dragoon in the air but from someone who has no specialty in that kind of thing. There's also their assault on the Sun Fort in Trails to Zero, where they show up to assist the main party of that game and are leaps and bounds ahead of them in lore hype and power.

Y'know, I was really impressed with Joshua there.

Then I noticed Alucard had Alucard Shield and not just Shield Rod, but Malbung.

Alucard like. What're we doing here? One-shot immunity doesn't matter since Alucard is a bunch of quick attacks anyway, Alucard has glasses that let him see invisible things, passive soul steal on hit, he just has to TOUCH you and you start melting, and he can combo that with Malbung to ignore the potential defensive buffs and just go in. And this lasts a full minute and 20 seconds. And this is not taking into account that his speed dashes are just natural and not weapon-dependent now.

Like it was a fun thought exercise for JUST Crissaegrim Alucard, but this set-up passively MELTS Dracula by jumping into his face and doing nothing else.

Lopen posted...

4 turns? Yeah that's not that great really.

I feel like Alucard just dunks on them when the stuff wears off honestly. Link honestly might too. Really not getting the hype here. Like what's setting them above generic RPG protags here. What does Joshua have that puts him above say Lloyd Irving.

Well, comparing Joshua to Lloyd for a sec...

-Kratos is much weaker than Loewe, if we're comparing enemies they dueled and beat. Kratos has no feats to his name, whereas Loewe could fight and subdue the dragon Ragnard singlehandedly, who was so powerful it could casually wreck a major city if not stopped, could take on armored divisions with tanks solo and crush them, and of course clowns on the party repeatedly even while massively holding back.

-Lloyd's strongest tanking feat is taking a mega buster shot to the back. Joshua's is taking a limit break, unless you think his team found a way to no-sell it outright.

-Shadow clone jutsu stuff. They're not illusions, they're actually real and can hurt you. Lloyd has nothing that lets him be in multiple places at once.

-Just a ton of lore hype comparatively. Joshua was one of the Enforcers, agents of the evil conspiracy of the Trails world. They're also known as Legions, because each one is considered to be worth an army of regular (orbally augmented) soldiers. Though less combat focused than the other enforcers, as he specialized in guerilla tactics and espionage, he's still considered to be in their weight class, and proves it when he duels Loewe. In subsequent post-Sky series games, Joshua and Estelle also show up and casually oneshot enemies that the party is struggling with dealing with (the Zero/Azure cast is much, much more 'normal dudes' overall than Josh and Estelle are after their adventures are concluded). They also fight a gigantic mecha known as an Aion, who is capable of warping space and time singlehandedly and drive it back. Again contrasting that series' current party, it takes all of the current protagonists working together to stalemate one of them temporarily while getting super gassed, and then another mecha has to self-destruct on the enemy they're fighting to actually bring it down. The story takes pains to emphasize that Joshua and Estelle are beyond more normal characters after their own games conclude.

Link and Alucard

Dont really see all that much so impressive for Joshua or Estelle that given the chance, Link or Alucard couldnt likewise do. BotW Link was beating the strongest knights in his realm when he was 6 and able to take on dozens of laser-shooting spider mechs, has bullet time for crazy dodging + aiming of ancient arrows, Daruks Protection for instant deflect/reflects a couple times, etc.

And Alucard dwarves the rest on whatd be raw stats, along with his own bag of tricks. Turning into poison mist, shield rod, soul steal aoe, Criss attack speed, familiars, etc.

Spells in Trails aren't super instantaneous, you can't just have the whole buff/debuff suite up super quickly. One of the reasons a lot of them do double duty is because they're part of an ongoing fight and their damage is incredibly important, and not just something you precast/recast like Final Fantasy buffs. So while Josh and Estelle have access to the whole suite it's one of those things where I don't think it's fair to assume they have all their buffs all the time. Also they do wear off at medium time length and need to be reapplied. Josh was pretty good at this, iirc, especially with his time manip shit. But it's something to take into account.

As far as the actual battle goes, hm. I think a lot of it comes down to who Joshua tries to First Strike. (in caps, cuz he has a skill for it.) If it's Alucard I think they're gonna struggle a lot, if it's Link it's more advantageous... but both Alucard and Link have very strong defensives. I do think Josh has a solid chance of getting behind Link and if he does that would go really well for him. Estelle is gonna get up into melee and start thwacking people. I think she's a good match for Link in melee, Alucard is again a little bit trickier. I don't think she can take him straight up.

Can the Brights tag-team Alucard? maaaaaybe. Actually leaning towards a yes, but with Link there backing him up they have to split their attention into two duels, (and specifically a duel of Estelle v Link and Josh v Alucard) use their ambush perfectly (josh is good at this though) and it seems like it's just gonna be a lot harder for them than the other way around.

Going with Alucard after a real tough fight. The Brights get Link, but I think they don't got enough in the tank to slay the vampire man afterwards.

As a note, Joshua does have healing (and Estelle has regeneration). So if you feel they're gassed after, so long as they're not dead, they can bounce back. Overall, I take Joshua and Estelle, but it's close and a lot of it has to do with the fact that this terrain has ways to isolate enemies that I don't think Link and Alucard can get through in a reasonable amount of time. Huge iron walls are a challenge to break through even for mercs of their caliber, and two 2v1s are not something they can surmount. Put this match in Dracula's Castle and I vote the other way.