Sora (Super Smash Flash 2)

Sora is a newcomer starter character in Super Smash Flash 2. His design is overall based on KINGDOM HEARTS II.

Sora is currently ranked 22nd out of 40 on the tier list, placing him in the B tier, a small leap from his 25th-place position on the last tier list at the very bottom, but it is still a big drop from his 5th-place position on the tier list for the previous demo build, giving him having the third largest tier drop. Sora's strengths include a has great combo ability, good range in most of his attacks, solid, speedy aerials and has reliable KO moves in his forward smash and up smash. He has a great air game with his low falling speed keeping him in the air longer than usual, long range in his attacks and little start up and ending lag in most of his aerial attacks. He is one of the best edgeguarders in the game so breaking his guard will be tough.

However, Sora's weight and fast falling speed makes him easy to KO vertically and horizontally. Some of his recovery options leave him open while he is trying to get back to the stage and Finishing Leap covers very unimpressive vertical distance. He has low priority for someone with a disjointed hitbox and has a hard time KOing his opponents due to having only two reliable KO moves which are needed to be kept fresh in order to KO, much like Yoshi.

Sora appears to have a low player base and lackluster representation in online tournaments. His tournament placings fluctuate, but are generally low and his results are incredibly inconsistent when compared to other characters.

Attributes
Sora is an air-focused character. Sora has fast, low-lag aerials with good range in them. His strongest aspect is his air game, which is where his combo ability shines the most. He has reliable KO ability in his forward smash and a very damaging up smash. Sora has a very strong recovery, as he can perform Aerial Recovery and then a Flowmotion. Sora has a spectacular edgeguarding game, which opponents may have trouble breaking through. His Command Deck is very useful as well: Blizzard may be used to freeze enemies for a short time, Thunder is an excellent anti-air move, and Fire is useful for its KO ability.

However, due to Sora's below average weight, though he is not far from being a medium weight, and below average accelerated falling speed, makes it easy for him to get KO'd vertically and horizontally. Additionally, he lacks reliable ways to deal with projectiles, as his main options are slow or require him to be on the ground, which gives him trouble breaking through opposing campers.

Arguably, his most crippling flaw is his possession of few reliable KO moves which make him need to keep the few KO moves he has fresh which may prove problematic with opponents who perform good D.I., momentum canceling, or heavy characters like. His forward smash has a lot of ending lag, And his up smash is often used as an anti-air, and often will not KO most characters until over 100%. His down smash does not have that much KOing power, either.

Even though Sora may have a good recovery, his recovery options leave him vulnerable and making him susceptible to being gimped; he also may have trouble recovering when he is up against a good edge guarder. Aerial Recovery gains a lot of vertical distance and does not transition into a helpless state, but it is rather slow. Flowmotion has angling issues, poor startup, does not ledge snap, and has a very small edge grab range.

He has a mediocre grab game. His throws, outside of his down throw, have little utility. His back throw is almost useless due to having set knockback. That being said, his down throw can chain throw to high percentages on fast fallers and high fallers using either well-timed dash grabs or on-spot turnaround grabs.

Changes and Revisions
Despite the considerable amount of nerfs Sora has been given, he has received multiple buffs for many of his moves, which most are increasing hitbox sizes.

Ground attacks:
Forward smash: Down smash:

Aerial attacks:
Neutral aerial: Up aerial: Forward aerial: Back aerial:

Ground attacks:
Jab Up smash:

Special moves:
Strike Raid: Flowmotion: Command Deck:

Ground attacks:
Forward smash: Up smash: Down smash:

Aerial attacks:
Neutral aerial: Up aerial: Down aerial:

Special moves:
Flowmotion: Aerial Recovery: Command Deck:

Tier placement history
In the tier lists for demo v0.6; Sora ranked 6th of C tier on the first list and ranked 8th of C tier on the second list where he was seen as a lower-mid tier character. On the tier lists for demo v0.7; Sora stayed a solid mid tier character due to him staying C tier for both lists. He ranked 9th of C tier on the first list and ranked 8th of C tier on the second list. Sora's tier position jumped in demo v0.8v; Sora ranked 4th of A tier where he was seen as top tier character. In demo v0.9a; Sora ranked 5th of what can be considered A tier where he is still seen as a top tier character. However, in demo v0.9b, whilst initially considered a Top 5 character by many, Sora dropped to 25th of C tier where he is now seen as a low tier character again. On the second tier list of V0.9b, he dropped once more to at 29th of C tier, dead last and is considered the worst character of the demo. However, in new tier list Sora raised from 29th tier to 27th, making him no longer the worst character of v0.9b.

Trivia

 * From demo v0.6 to v0.8b, Sora's portrait was taken from KINGDOM HEARTS II.
 * Sora is one of the few characters that does not applaud on the results screen when he loses., , , , , and also share this trait.
 * Throughout SSF2 ' s development, Sora has gone through the most changes to his moveset out of all the characters in the game.
 * As of version 0.9b, Sora is the only character to have two KO audio clips instead of four - one KO audio clip and one Star KO audio clip alongside with Jigglypuff and.
 * In demo v0.6 to v0.7, Sora's voice clips was taken from the very first video game, KINGDOM HEARTS.
 * With the exception of the dark-blue swap, the Keyblade's trails slightly change color with the different palette swaps Sora has. However, his Flowmotion aura stays the same.

External link

 * Sora's v0.8 Dev Blog