Characters / One Must Fall

A list of tropes pertaining to specific characters in the One Must Fall video game series. (All trope examples will be assumed to refer to 2097; when referring to the Contested Sequel Battlegrounds, please specify it by name.)

Pilots

Crystal Devroe

• Berserk Button: Crystal does not like her parents' deaths being trivialized, as evidenced when you challenge her while playing as Angel in Story Mode.
  Angel: I care nothing of your trivial loss.
  Crystal: Trivial? You'll pay for your attitude!
• Death or Glory Attack: Her AI pattern. She loves special moves and throws because of the enormous damage they deal, but doing so leaves her open to counterattacks. It's usually the only time you can attack her, because otherwise she tends to block.
• The Determinator: She'll dig as far as she can to find out exactly why her parents died, even if it means beating it out of the other competitors. Including her own brother.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Especially in Battlegrounds, where she makes 43 look good.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Christian. She's level-headed and methodical in trying to find out the truth behind their parents' deaths.
• You Killed My Father: Unlike Christian, she doesn't quote the trope name verbatim when she confronts Kreissack, and likewise only accuses him of somehow being involved in her parents' deaths as opposed to being directly responsible.

Steffan Tommas

• Hot-Blooded: Unsubtle, aggressive, and throws himself 100% into everything he does.
• Insufferable Genius: While not the most broken of computer characters, he can build up a horrifying chain of power shots if you're not careful...and the in-game storyline acknowledges just how cocky he is.
• Jerkass: His pre-fight banter reveals that Steffan is a dick.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The one nugget of gold being that, if you play as Christian, Steffan volunteers information to help Christian track down the people behind the Devroes' deaths, despite his overall character not giving him any real reason to do so.
• Leeroy Jenkins: His AI. Aggressive and a big fan of power hits, but not good at blocking and tends to get suckered into feints.
• Lightning Bruiser: Hits hard, moves quickly, can take a few punches. If he were better at avoiding damage, he'd be a nightmare.
• Spoiled Brat: The game's manual actually calls him this.
• Teen Genius: He's 17.

Milano Angston/Steele

• Badass in a Nice Suit: Wears a white business suit in Battlegrounds.
• The Dragon: To Raven, arguably, as the other man had hired him for WAR security detail.
• Fragile Speedster: Highest agility of all the competitors, but the lowest endurance. He'll bounce all over the screen, but one basic combo can stun him, and a second one can finish him off.
• Honest Corporate Executive: He becomes this in Battlegrounds.
• Older Than They Look: Is 35 during the events of OMF 2097, but looks 20. Looks more appropriately middle-aged by the time of Battlegrounds.
• Secret Legacy: The manual notes that he is the son of one of WAR's original founders, and intends to take control of the company and steer it back towards his father's intentions. In his ending, he muses over changing the company's name to "Aeronautics & Robotics Technologies", or ART.
• Self-Deprecation: An amusing one if you have a Mirror Match while playing as him.
  Milano #1: When I think about you...
  Milano #2: ...I kick myself...

Christian Devroe

• Berserk Button: In Tournament Mode's North American Open, if you finish Crystal with a Destruction move, Christian (a secret player in that tournament) will not take it well. Also, in Story Mode, Kreissack brings out the worst in him.
• Blood Knight: The manual says that he never stops training to win.
• Chick Magnet: His description at the character select screen says that his aggressive style invokes "desire in the hearts of many young women." Then again, being as focused on revenge as he is, he probably hasn't noticed.
• Expy/No Celebrities Were Harmed: He is absolutely not Ken Masters.
• Hot-Blooded: Even less subtle than Steffan. Also motivated by only two things—revenge on Kreissack and protecting his sister.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: For all his rivalry with Crystal, he's still very protective of her. A good way to invoke this is to play in Tournament Mode, fight Crystal, and finish her with a Destruction move, which prompts an unranked challenge from Christian.
• Leeroy Jenkins: In his ending, where he tries to challenge an entire group of mercs, unarmed. A bit of his AI as well, where he's aggressive but very predictable.

• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Quoth the game manual: "WAR killed his parents, and he wants revenge." Subverted when he confronts the Iron Fist group in his ending, as their leader pointedly tells him that his vengeance is now finished with Kreissack's death.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Crystal. He's reckless and headstrong in his quest for vengeance.
• You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die: Says this verbatim when confronting Kreissack.

Shirro

• Cool Old Guy: 73 years old and can still kick the crap out of you.
• Deadpan Snarker: Snarks people right back if they give him any sass.
  Steffan: Hey pops, ain't it time for your nap?
  Shirro: No, it's time I spank a whining baby.
• Mighty Glacier: He's slow, but he's strong and he fights defensively.
• Nice Guy: Always smiling and a gracious winner, unlike more arrogant characters.
• Old Master: He knows several martial arts, participates in tournaments, and is 73. He only lacks for a school or students of his own.

Jean-Paul

• Badass Bookworm: Brilliant with math and analysis, pilots giant robots and kicks butt with them.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Doesn't say much, but don't underestimate him or he'll quickly smash you with a surprise special move.
• Child Prodigy: According to the manual, he was found at a very young age to be able to absorb any kind of information, and always scored perfect on any test.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  Milano: Hello, friend.
  Jean-Paul: Good-bye, friend.
• Good with Numbers: He's a market analyst for WAR.
• Insufferable Genius: More low-key about it than Steffan, but yes, he is.
• Jack of All Stats: The most well-balanced stats of any of the contenders with no obvious deficiencies.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Among the ten contenders for Ganymede in Story Mode; not quite so much in Tournament Mode, which has the similarly red-haired, green-eyed fighter Scarlet.
• The Spock: Especially in his ending, where he says that it's only logical that he won.

Ibrahim Hothe

• Cool Old Guy: Second oldest behind Shirro. Very polite and mentorly to others.
• Genius Bruiser: He designed the Jaguar HAR.
• Just Think of the Potential!: His reaction to the NOVA Project, minus the human-brain aspect.
• Stone Wall: His style of fighting—tons of defense but low speed, so he'll stay in one place and tank one or two hits, then interrupt you with a surprise attack.
• Younger Than They Look: His official bio states Ibrahim is 48 at the time of the first game. At the same time he is mostly bald and his hair is all dark grey, making him easily look a decade or two older.

Angel

• Ambiguously Brown: She's actually from Ganymede.
• Fantastic Racism: A Ganymede native with a hatred for humans.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Her philosophy. Her ending reveals why this is.
• Ice Queen: Very dismissive of everyone else and their motives and ambitions, which pisses them off to no end. That, or they are confused about who the hell she is.
• Mystical White Hair: A White-haired human-like alien from Ganymede.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: Short pale hair, unusual eye color, inhuman behavior/origin, all check out.
  • She also happens to predate Rei by a year. 2097 came out in 1994 while Evangelion first aired in 1995.

Cossette Akira

• Berserk Button: Cossette is...very sensitive about her loss of physical mobility, according to her character bio.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Her defensive personality is also the reason for her defensive fighting style.
• Career-Ending Injury: Played straight and subverted. Her injury that she sustained in The Arena ended her career in that sport...but she hasn't been prevented from participating in HAR combat, since the fighters' minds are chemically linked to their 'bots, thus preventing the pilots from sustaining physical injury.
• Disabled Snarker:
  Christian: I can only hope that the future ruler (of WAR) will be just.
  Cossette: Oh, I will, believe me.
• Genius Bruiser / Genius Cripple: She's the one who designed the Electra HAR and a number of space stations.
• Handicapped Badass: She's paralyzed from the waist down as a result of an injury from The Arena, a sport wherein competitors actually piloted the robots, as opposed to having their minds chemical transferred into them. Doesn't stop her from kicking ass, though.
• Stone Wall: Strong defenses, but slow on the approach and uses very simple attacks that usually don't do much damage.

Raven

• Ambiguously Brown: He appears to be Native American, though it's not really touched on even in the manual.
• Blatant Lies: Raven's claims in his character bio that the over two dozen people he murdered were killed "in self-defense." Apparently.
• Bodyguard Betrayal: A part of his storyline. However, Kreissack naturally sees it coming.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In the shareware version.
• The Dragon: To Kreissack. Interestingly, Raven does NOT get placed as the opponent you fight before Kreissack in Story Mode; in fact, you can expect to fight him anywhere in the line-up prior to the final match.
  • Dragon with an Agenda: He wants to take over Ganymede, as Kreissack intends him to do—only he's not doing it for Kreissack.
  • The Starscream: He's not exactly secretive about his intentions to betray his boss.
• Irony: His ending, where he thwarts an assassination attempt and now needs a bodyguard of his own. He himself is amused at the very thought of it.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Rare steak, as revealed in his ending.
• Younger Than They Look: Is 26 in 2097, yet looks 40. Averted in Battlegrounds where he still looks 40, but actually is 40 or so by that point.

Major Hans Kreissack

• Big Bad: A lot of the bad things in the OMF universe can be traced to him and Project Nova.
• Brain Uploading: What he did in the Nova. He elected for a substantially more analog solution than most, implanting his brain directly into the machine.
• Evil Laugh: When he wins a match.
• Evil Old Folks: He's the oldest character in the game at 103 years old. He's also the leader of WAR and pilots the Nova with his brain inside it.
• Lightning Bruiser: He pilots the Nova, the biggest of the HARs, but can move incredibly fast.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: That bloody right eye is not a heroic trait.
• Red Right Hand: His right eye has a blood-red sclera.

Tournament Mode Characters

• Badass Bookworm: Dr. Lynn Yarr is a medical doctor by profession. She can also run rings around you in HARs designed for speed, like the Jaguar in the North American Open and the Gargoyle in the World Championship.
• Blood Knight: Eva O'Ryan. As she says to you in the Katushai Challenge:
  I don't even want the money. Just the thrill of seeing your face after I stomp on it.
• Child Prodigy: Bethany, a pre-teen secret character in the WAR Invitational and World Championship tournaments who was (probably) modeled on creator Rob Elam's then-infant daughter of the same name. She pilots a Nova in the latter tournament, but admits she's not used to handling it.
  I may be young, but I was trained by the best!
• Combat Medic: Dr. Lynn Yarr, a polite but fierce opponent who often surprises players with better-than-average AI for the tournaments you find her in.
• Creator Cameo: The hidden tournament opponent Iceman is One Must Fall creator Rob Elam (giving his line "Prepare to meet your maker" a double meaning); the regular tournament opponent James is Digital Extremes founder and future Unreal series' developer James Schmalz.
• Deadpan Snarker: Your player character's mechanic, considering the statements he makes to you when you lose a match.
  Trying to keep my boys busy, eh?
  Hey, hey, you better get back out there. There's a few places left on that 'bot that weren't ripped to shreds.
• Face Framed in Shadow: Nicoli, the boss of the WAR Invitational.
• The Faceless: Killian, who wears a white Druid-like hood.
• Fantastic Racism: Steel Claw, apparently, since he refers to people who aren't cyborgs as "purebloods."
• Flat Character: It could be argued that, outside of the Story Mode characters who show up in Tournament Mode, the majority of the opponents you face are this. To be frank, we don't really know much about them outside of their "The Only One Allowed to Defeat You" and "I Shall Taunt You" mentality toward your player character. Even Ian Tavares, the boss of the World Championship circuit, doesn't get a whole lot of depth aside from him commending you on having made it to him. At best, you could make inferences about their personalities based on their character avatar pictures (for example, Jahrod wears a headpiece akin to that worn by a Middle Eastern native, while Killian and Selenna are both mysterious characters whose faces are never revealed).
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Ian Tavares (the World Championship boss) and one of your male avatar choices both wear black jackets presumed to be made of leather.
• Hollywood Cyborg: Steel Claw.
• Lightning Bruiser: Ian Tavares, who pilots the Nova in the World Championship.
  • Your player character can become this as well, if you choose to pilot the Nova for yourself.
  • Same thing for Nicoli and Bethany in the above-specified tournament.
• Ninja: Selenna, who's both a secret challenger (in the Katushai Challenge) and open opponent (WAR Invitational and World Championship). Appropriately, her HAR of choice is the Katana, colored dark blue and purple.
• Not so Fast, Bucko!: On certain difficulty levels, after you beat Ian Tavares and win the World Championship, Nicoli, the final opponent of the WAR Invitational, may challenge you to determine who the real champion is.
• Player Character: As explained on the main page, in Tournament Mode you take on the role of a unique HAR pilot, choosing one of four avatar pictures for your personal look. Each avatar comes with a specific color scheme for his/her HARs, but you can customize the colors as you please. The player avatars themselves consist of a brown-haired man with bangs hanging over his brow, a dark-haired man wearing Cool Shades and a high-collared black jacket, a woman using one hand to tease her long blond hair in a Ms. Fanservice manner, and a woman with long brown hair and wearing a green turtle-neck sweater.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Prince Vassar.
• The Tease: Scarlet flirts with you in the Katushai Challenge tournament.
  • It's also implied that one of your female player-avatar choices is this, as her portrait shows her teasing her blond hair with one hand (and she's implied to be wearing something sleeveless).

H.A.R.s

Universal

• Brain/Computer Interface: The system that allows a HAR to copy human movement. Pilots need to have a shunt installed in their heads allow their motor neurons to affect the HAR and allow it to move its limbs. One downside of this system is that while the pilot can't be directly harmed if the HAR is disabled or destroyed, too much damage to the HAR can cause disruptive feedback to the pilot, represented as the Stun bar.
• Humongous Mecha: All of them. For instance, a Jaguar is about the size of a skyscraper, and one of its weapons weighs 100 tons.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: It's hard to accept that those robots are the size of buildings the first time you see one do a forward flip.
• Improvised Weapon: Save for the Nova, Katana, and Thorn, few of these enormous, powerful robots were designed with straight-up combat in mind. The Jaguar is a security robot, the Pyros is a space station repair robot, the Electra was made for interplanetary exploration, and so on.
• Motion-Capture Mecha: Of a sort; the brain's movement neurons are chemically linked to the HAR, so it moves using the pilot's neural inputs. It's described as feeling like becoming the robot, not just piloting it.
• Real Robot Genre: One of the odder examples, but most everything is explicitly scientific in origin and explanation. Lots of soft science perhaps, but no fantastical magic either. Also, none of the HAR models in game are unique—even the Nova becomes mass-produced by the time of Tournament Mode.

Jaguar

Designed as a security and bodyguard HAR, the Jaguar is built around agility and versatility thanks to its simple design and respectable mix of abilities. It is always the first starting robot that pilots receive when playing Tournament Mode, and the default starting selection in single-player mode.

• Boring, but Practical: Everyone is forced to start with one in Tournament Mode and its moveset is a bit derivative for a fighting game, but it's so well rounded that it can still trounce even more flashy, powerful machines like the Electra or Shadow.
• Chest Insignia: A cat's head.
• Eye Beams: The Concussion Cannon is fired from the Jaguar's eyes.
• Hoist Hero over Head: Its Scrap move. The Destruction version involves jumping off the screen and slamming the victim into the ground hard enough to make them explode.
• Jack of All Stats: Middle of the road in everything—respectable power, good speed, average endurance.
• Shotoclone: A projectile (Concussion Cannon), an anti-air uppercut (Jaguar Leap), and a spin move (Overhead Throw); overall a very balanced character to learn.
• Roundhouse Kick: Jaguar's standing fierce kick. One of its most deadly moves, too, since it's good for both anti-air and smashing opponents in the face.
• Shoryuken: The Jaguar Leap, which goes through projectiles and often nails an opponent in the face.
• Suplex Finisher: Its standard grab throw.

Shadow

A secret project designed to take advantage of hologram technology, the Shadow is the newest robot to appear, making it a relative unknown among competitors. Its special powers involve creading duplicates of itself.

• Animated Armor: Its visual design—a giant suit of Scary Impractical Armor with only a pair of glowing eyes and no face.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Looks badass, and its powers are awesome, but because the Shadow's holograms can themselves be damaged and transmit those injuries to their host, this means that the Shadow is more vulnerable to being damaged (as the holograms cannot block).
• Cycle of Hurting: Turns out the Shadow Slide can be chained into itself; an enemy that doesn't fall down fast enough can be juggled by a series of Shadow Slides.
• Doppelgänger Attack: Its special attacks all involve sending duplicates of itself to attack enemies.
• Giant Arm of Crushing: Its Destruction move, where it summons a giant Shadow Clone to smash its victim to pieces. The game's default resolution is poorly suited for the traditional foot variation, but the effect is the same.
• Hard Light: Its holograms, which are solid enough to both hit opponents as well as be hit.
• Kill It with Ice: Its special Floor Freeze move, which can only be gained in Tournament Mode.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Its Scrap move. It summons two clones to pull its defeated opponent up from the floor just to brutalize them a bit more.
• Roundhouse Kick: A fast foot-to-the-face that deals great damage and will trip up enemies trying to jump in on you.
• Self-Duplication: Its special ability.
• Slide Attack: Its Shadow Slide special move sends a hologram clone sliding across the floor to trip up the enemy.

Thorn

Made to take advantage of monofilament technology, the Thorn is one of a handful of robots that actually seems to have been made with combat in mind. The Thorn's design favors a mixture of brute strength and stabbing attacks.

• Carpet of Virility: Yes, really. It doesn't have a Chest Insignia like the Jaguar, but instead features a giant bushy design that covers its torso and is feathered to resemble thick chest hair.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: In the literal sense. One of its special moves has it dash across the screen, impale foes on its spikes, and throw them clear across to the other side of the screen.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Its Scrap Move, where it throws foes into the air and catches them on its giant spikes. Its Destruction move smashes them into the ground afterwards.
• Mighty Glacier: Slow attack speeds (even with fast characters) but extremely tough and powerful.
• Sharpened to a Single Atom: Its spikes.
• Slice-and-Dice Swordsmanship: Its spikes are made for stabbing due to being shaped like medieval military picks, but the HAR uses a lot of slashing attacks in its moveset.
• Spikes of Villainy: What it's named for. Loses a little something in the villainy department due to the bug-eyed look on its face, though.
• Stout Strength: Short, wide, able to lift things the size of a Nova and hits like a truck covered in spikes.
• Wall Jump: Though not for height, the Thorn can jump against a wall, then bounce off it to launch itself at an enemy spikes-first.
• Wild Man: Its other motif, with its 'shaggy' chest, feral-looking claws, and near-Primal Stance. It looks like an evil mutant gorilla.

Pyros

Made to construct and maintain deep-space stations, the Pyros is able to independently move in space untethered thanks to its directed thruster systems. On Earth, the thrusters serve as fearsome flame weapons instead.

• Dash Attack: Its Super Thrust Attack has the Pyros fly across the screen at opponents with both of its clawed arms outstretched. Anyone it hits will be flattened by the blow.
• Died Standing Up: If its upper half is destroyed, the lower half refuses to fall down, the only machine to do so.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: What it does to opponents it destroys, by exploding their top half.
• Hover Mecha: Due to not having legs, yet still moving as though it did.
• Kill It with Fire: Its most distinct feature is the pair of flame throwers it has instead of legs.
• Spin Attack: A wicked spinning lariat move with its clawed arms and its flamethrowers. Also its Scrap and Destruction moves, where it simply uses this move and keeps bashing/burning victims until their torsos explode.
• Weaponized Exhaust: Its 'legs' are in fact thruster nozzles, and the flames are directed exhaust—best shown in its jump kick, where the exhaust flaring out in front of it actually pushes the Pyros backwards and away from its target.

Electra

Built from extremely rare crystals mined from Jupiter's moon Io, the Electra can resist immense electrical storms that would cripple lesser robots. Unfortunately, it's both fragile and ludicrously expensive as a result.

• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: It's specially made from unique crystals and has a crystalline, heavily faceted appearance quite at odds with the more robotic designs of the other HAR models.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Its play style. A bunch of small, fast moves to gradually wear down an opponent.
• Expy: A particularly unusual appearance, electrical powers, and a rolling attack in a 2D fighting game? Sounds a bit like Blanka...
• Fragile Speedster: One of if not the fastest HAR in the game, but its individual hits are fairly weak and it requires long chains of combos to deal much damage. It's also pretty easy to knock down, too.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In spite of what it says about resisting electrical forces, it's just as vulnerable to electrical damage as any other robot.
• Plot Device: The 'special crystals' are basically a Hand Wave to give a robot the kind of electrical powers seen in the game.
• Roundhouse Kick: One of its few genuinely powerful moves, aided by the fact it's digging its large talons into an opponent when it does so.
• Shock and Awe: Its moveset revolves almost exclusively around this. Its main defenses, Electric Shards and Ball Lightning, are fast electrical projectiles, while its Scrap and Destruction moves involved repeatedly shocking an opponent before firing a giant bolt of lightning into the sky to come back down and destroy them. Even its basic grab simply involves electrocuting its victim.
• Spin Attack: Its Rolling Attack has it fly forward and ricochet off an enemy while knocking them down.

Katana

Designed around a pair of enormous guillotine-blade hands, the Katana is one of the most powerful combat models in the game thanks to its combination of agility, power, and a wide array of potent special attacks.

• Cycle of Hurting: Head Stomp chains into Head Stomp chains into Head Stomp... even if the opponent blocks, it still does a bit of Scratch Damage. If opponents can't get away from the Katana trying to stomp them into scrap metal, they're doomed.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: Its Head Stomp special attack, where it leaps above opponents and bringing its full weight down on their heads. Oh, and it can chain into itself.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Its Scrap and Destruction have it slicing opponents in half at the waist, leaving only a pair of legs or leg-analogues.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Second highest tier in the game. For reasons why, see its Lightning Bruiser entry, below.
• Kill It with Fire: Its unlockable Fireball special, which flings one of the flame blasts from the Fire Pit stage at enemies. Yes, it's that powerful.
• Lightning Bruiser: Holy crap, is it ever. Fast, strong, amazing reach, invicibility frames, the ability to attack efficiently both in the air and on the ground, and, in Tournament Mode, an unlockable projectile.
• Mundane Utility: Its Razor Spin can be attack-canceled to go from slightly awkward aerial special move into Dynamic Entry setup device. Because it retains the speed and low arc of the Razor Spin's windup, this means that you can send the Katana flying across the screen with arm or leg outstretched much faster than normal, or just use it to break away from your opponent for a moment.
• Sharpened to a Single Atom: Its giant blade hands.
• Slide Attack: Its fierce kicks, either standing or crouching.
• Spin Attack: The Razor Spin and Rising Blade. The former is a lightning quick Wall Jump that lets it spin into an opponent, the latter is two to five hit series of tornado-like slashes that completely No-Sell most attacks.

Shredder

A mining robot built to excavate the toughest rock beds, the Shredder's arms, feet, and head all contain hardened rock saws or mining drills. Possibly the most agile of the potential robot choices on the ground.

• Buzzsaw Good: Its head mounted buzz saw is able to carve through rock walls and robots alike. Its extremities are also mining drills shaped like claws.
• Delinquent Hair: Its head saw is exactly shaped like and located where a mohawk would be on a person.
• Difficult, but Awesome: On the base of it, the Shredder is a very standard HAR with little to recommend it over, say, a Jaguar. Once mastered, however, any hit it lands has the potential to explode into dozens of highly damaging combos, since all its special moves synergize with each other as combo material. Summed up thusly by a popular FAQ:
  "Any time Shredder lands a Head Butt, Flip Kick, or jumpkick, the opponent should die."
• Dynamic Entry: The Flip Kick, where it suddenly vaults off its hands, over projectiles, and feet-first into an opponent's face. Often used to start a combo.
• Jack of All Stats: Much like the Jaguar, its stats are very evenly distributed, slightly favoring speed.
• Rocket Punch: More like 'magnetic projection punch' but the concept is the same. The Shredder can use powerful magnets to fire its hands at its opponents and retract them back to hit them on the return trip.
• Roundhouse Kick: Much faster than the Jaguar's or Electra's, and one of its primary combo starters, finishers, and linking moves.
• Selective Magnetism: Only on its hands, in spite of the other robots ostensibly containing some ferrous material.
• Some Dexterity Required: Using a Shredder demands nimble hands to make use of its ludicrous combo ability.
• This Is a Drill: Its hands, again, which are actually curved mining bits resembling claws, constantly rotating. Its Scrap attack involves burying its drill hand into an opponent's chest and messing up its insides.
• Use Your Head: Its Head Butt attack has it turn on its saw and fling itself headfirst into an opponent. Great combo fodder, as with most of its moves.

Flail

Designed with demolitions in mind, the Flail is a gigantic robotic wrecking ball, using its five-ton chains to maximum effect against old buildings, inconvenient walls, and any robot standing too close for their comfort.

• Dash Attack: Its Charging Punch. Who knew such a short robot could get that much speed behind it?
• Epic Flail: It's in the name, what did you expect? The spiked chains are its primary weapons.
• Megaton Punch: Its Charging Punch. Get hit with that and you'll feel it.
• Mighty Glacier: Very slow and very bad in the air, but it has armor for days and a wicked punch.
• Punched Across the Room: Get hit by the Super Charging Punch and you will be flattened on the far wall.
• Slide Attack: Its crouching fierce kick, where it rolls forward like a push-mower.
• Spin Attack: Its Swinging Chains spins the Flail around to smash opponents with the pointy ends of the chains. The Spinning Throw grabs an opponent, whirls them around a few times to build up momentum, then chucks them across the screen.
• Starfish Robots: The weirdest HAR bar none, with no humanoid features save its arms. The rest resembles a combination of monster truck, vampire skull, push-lawnmower, and broken swingset.
• Stout Strength: Shortest of the short, toughest of the tough, still able to throw a Nova if it needs to.
• Telescoping Robot: Its grab attack reveals that it can extend up on the post that serves as its 'body' to reach up further than its normal height allows.

Gargoyle

A reconnaissance machine built around speed and aerial maneuverability, the Gargoyle is small, fast, and uncommonly agile in the air. Few opponents can dare to challenge its superiority when it is airborne.

• Dash Attack: Wing Charge launches it straight forward at high speed. Works in the air too.
• Difficult, but Awesome: A Gargoyle played like any other fighting character is a clipped-wing weakling. Its moves have very short range and middling damage at best. Figure out how to use it in the air, though, and it becomes the game's top-tier beast. The "Triangle Jump" combo of Flying Talon to Wing charge to Diving Claw means that it can spend almost its entire airborne time in an attacking state (one of which is a throw), which few opponents can counter.
• Diving Kick: Diving Claw swoops down to grab opponents and smear them against a wall.
• Fragile Speedster: Smallest, second-fastest HAR and best when airborne, but seriously under-armored and easily knocked down. Justified due to its primary function as an aerial scout, not a combat machine.
• Jump Physics: The only robot able to adjust where it lands after a jump starts due to its wings. It's possible to jump up, fly almost across the screen, and land where you started.
• Shoryuken: Flying Talon, where it rises up into the air from a standing start.
• Some Dexterity Required: Like the Shredder, the Gargoyle relies on its ability to keep moving and constantly performing special moves to apply pressure to an opponent. This requires a series of specific button inputs pretty much every second, so anyone wanting to play one will have to be nimble.

Chronos

Made for a search and rescue role, the Chronos has the special ability to briefly stop time using a Stasis Field Generator. This time-stopping power can be leveraged to 'freeze' enemies in place for attacks as well.

• Confusion Fu: The benefit of its teleportation, since it has four possible places it can end up—in front of its foe, behind them, or on either of the far corners.
• Dynamic Entry: Matter Phasing is a polite way of saying "jumps through walls and puts its foot in the back of its foe's head". It also implies that it somehow got all the way behind an opponent unnoticed from the opposite side of the screen.
• Expy: Freezes opponents? Slide kick? Shoves a hand into opponents' chests and rips things out to kill them? You sure this isn't Sub Zero? The teleporting gives the Chronos a touch of Raiden's moveset as well.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: How it kills opponents with its Scrap and Destruction—it phases partially out of time, shoves its arm through their body, re-phases back in, and blows their upper half apart.
• Intangibility: It can sometimes move through walls (and opponents) like they were nothing.
• Mini-Mecha: The one we see in-game is apparently a 27.5 meter model, but it comes in a human-sized 1.5 meter model as well.
• Plot Device: The Stasis Field Generator does whatever it needs to to give the Chronos its bad-ass powers.
• Slide Attack: Both of its fierce kicks. Standing fierce is a two hit knee and high kick combo, crouching fierce is a classic slide kick with amazing range.
• Teleportation Sickness or Temporal Sickness: Never stated, but one of these two causes enemies to be harmed when they're briefly (and presumably improperly) phased out by the Chronos during its grab attack.
• Tele-Frag: Its destruction move: pushing its arm inside the opponent's chest, then phasing it back to reality, causing the unfortunate enemy bot to explode.
• Time Stands Still: Arguably how it teleports—it freezes time around itself, then walks to where it wants to go.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The effect of its Stasis Field Generator's time freezing mechanic on various things differs widely, depending on how it's used. How does it work? Your guess is as good as ours.

Nova

A purpose-built war machine, the Nova is the largest, heaviest, most fearsome-looking HAR around. The brainchild of Hans Kreissack, this is the eponymous result of the Nova Project that drove the single-player mode's story.

• Arm Cannon: It fires missiles from launchers in its forearms...close enough. It's got an infinite supply of them in there, too.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Huge, powerful, and impressive, but also a gigantic target with slow special moves. In Tournament Mode, it's also freaking expensive, and lacks the option to unlock enhancements either.
• Boring, but Practical: In contrast to all other HARs (save perhaps Jaguar), Nova has no gimmicks. The special moves are downright mundane rockets and grenades. It's "just" a big, fast machine that hurts like a sonovabitch.
• Bottomless Magazines: It can dispense infinite numbers of missiles and grenades.
• Evil Laugh: Nova's victory gesture.
• Grenade Spam: That sphere in its chest is a grenade dispenser with no apparent end to its magazine. It can toss them all day if it wants.
• Ground Pound: Its Chest Slam, a special move that has it flying through the air chest-first and pancaking anyone caught underneath it. As it is considered a special move it will also deal Scratch Damage if blocked.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: How it kills its victims. It lifts them up, punches their robotic guts out, then winds up a gigantic punch and blows up their torso. Also what happens to the Nova itself in the Single Player mode.
• Large and in Charge: Tends to only appear with boss-type characters, like Major Kreissack or Ian Tavares. It will sometimes appear at random in Tournament Mode, belonging to pilots with "any" flagged as their robot of choice.
• Lightning Bruiser: You might think it's slow, but it's really not. It hits hard, moves surprisingly quickly, and most of all has phenomenal reach, to the point that its normal standing punch is nearly as devastating as a power hit from any lesser robot. Its main weakness is that its special attacks have extremely long startup times and ending lag, but you honestly don't need those to win.
• Megaton Punch: Its Scrap and Destruction are a series of powerful punches capped by a massive right hook that makes the victim's upper half explode. Also, its regular punches are nothing to sneeze at either, dealing considerable damage with each blow. It probably says something that Nova's most powerful standing combo includes five consecutive punches to the gut.
• Neck Lift: How it lifts up its victims before it starts punching their electronic guts out.
• Off with His Head!: It's shown on the box art tearing the head off an unlucky Shredder.
• Shockwave Stomp: The Earthquake Smash has a lot of starting frames before it lands and ending lag after it does, but if the opponent is touching the ground at all when it lands, they're going to get hit. It is effectively unblockable and must be dodged instead.