YMMV / Guilty Gear: The Missing Link

• Adaptation Displacement: By being a boss battle theme in Mega Man Next on Newgrounds, the song "Conclusion" is more memorably featured there than in Missing Link itself. It doesn't help that all the sequels to Missing Link are considered far superior to it.
• Common Knowledge: A few of these are addressed in this video:
  • No, Sol can't just win every match just by dash kicking repeatedly. While the move technically combos into itself, it can be teched, so you'll only consistently get an infinite off of it in Training Mode or against the AI, who doesn't tech.
  • Most of the game's more infamous infinites (such as Sol or Ky repeatedly spamming Volcanic Viper or Vapor Thrust, respectively, in the corner) can be escaped via teching.
  • It's sometimes claimed that Chipp had a "normal health bar" in this game, or somehow wasn't a Fragile Speedster. While later games would introduce additional modifiers that ended up increasing his frailty, in Missing Link he's tied with Kliff for the lowest defense modifier, and has the second lowest stun resistance.
• Gameplay Derailment:
  • Charging special moves can be cancelled into like special attacks. If you immediately let go of the Respect button after doing so, almost all of the endlag from whatever you cancelled into charge is removed. This allows you to combo into things that are otherwise impossible to combo into, such as Launcher Moves or even Instant Kills. This also gives the majority of the cast access to incredibly simple infinites, to the point where they're considered the bread-and-butter combos at higher levels of play.
  • The game has a teching mechanic, but no untech time^note A period of time after being hit where you cannot tech or anything resembling hard knockdowns. In other words, any knockdown or launch can immediately be teched, effectively turning it into a Combo Breaker in those situations. Unfortunately, it's so effective that it has a knock-on effect on every character's offense at high level — okizeme is basically nonexistent outside of the occasional tech-chase, and the effectiveness of non-infinite combos is limited, since, aside from the obvious, the chance of your combo suddenly being cut short and punished on hit — likely with an infinite — is simply too high to ignore.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Inputting a forward dash at the same time as any grounded attack, your character will retain all of the momentum from the dash until the attack finishes. This has a number of interesting applications; for example, Ky can dash behind a charged Stun Edge for some unique pressure situations.
  • For some reason, Chipp's damage scaling will reset on the 15th hit of a combo, causing that hit to deal much more damage than it's clearly supposed to. It immediately goes back to normal on the next hit, but it's still weird.
  • In the 2019 re-release, certain variables associated with teching are not checked when you tech with the Respect button. Normally this affects basically nothing, but when playing as Testament, who is unable to tech normally due to shoddy programming, this is the only way they can air tech more than once in a match.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • It is almost an objective statement that Potemkin in Missing Link is not only the worst he has ever been, but the worst iteration of any character in the whole series. Just look at his dustloop wiki page and take a gander at how many of his moves have ten trillion startup frames or weird hitboxes, rendering them almost useless. This means that despite having a powerful command grab as a band-aid for the fact that he can't dash and is as mentioned very slow, he'll almost never be in a position to use the move that is supposed to make up for his disadvantages because he can't safely get close to his opponent using the rest of his moveset. It's summed up succinctly at the end of his list of pros and cons—Potemkin can't.
  • Testament was already considered a weak character, being a fairly unimpressive zoner with no touch-of-death combos, but then it was discovered that they are unable to tech under normal circumstances due to sloppy coding. Normally, you can tech by pressing up and any attack button within a certain amount of time after being launched or knocked down, nullifying hitstun and allowing you to act almost immediately. Since Testament can't do this, they're susceptible to a lot of stuff that the rest of the cast can just break out of and attempt to punish, including infinites and touch-of-death combos.
• Obvious Beta: The scuffed balance, rough implementation of unique mechanics like Instant Kills, and most of the cast being rife with infinites is almost par for the course for first entries of fighting game franchises. That said, there are especially kooky issues that pop up here like Axl being locked out of the Charge mechanic literally because of a single missing semicolon in the code and Justice having no hurtbox while retreating even as a playable character.
• That One Attack:
  • Millia's Chaos Move, Iron Maiden, fires a barrage of hair projectiles that home in on the opponent. That on its own is enough to make it incredibly annoying, but there's more — outside of the homing properties, the projectiles are pretty much identical to fully charged Living Lancers, so they're huge and beat pretty much every other projectile in the game. It gets even worse in Chaos Mode, where Millia can potentially steal the round by spamming it.
  • Ky's Instant Kill, Zwei Voltage, is generally considered to be the best in the game. The initial attack is huge, has a very short recovery period, and shrinks Ky's hurtbox down to around his knees. This makes it fairly strong on its own, but these properties also allow the Ky player to spam it and force the opponent into a checkmate. Some characters^note Baiken, Dr. Baldhead, Chipp, Millia, and Axl can escape this, but the rest of the cast is kind of just screwed, especially if Ky has the life-lead.
  • Justice has two:
    • Imperial Ray fires a laser that sweeps across the entire screen in front of Justice. The range alone is enough to make it overpowered, but there's more — it also combos into itself, can stun after just two uses, and is completely safe on block. It also builds a ridiculous amount of meter on hit, allowing for easy access to...
    • Her Chaos Move, Gamma Ray, is generally considered to be the best in the game by a large margin. While it takes more than a second to start up, when it does come out, it deals a ridiculous amount of damage, and if it gets blocked, the pushback and blockstun are so great that it's actually safe in most situations. If Justice ends up in Chaos Mode, she basically wins the game, since the rest of the cast struggles to contend with even one Gamma Ray, let alone a constant barrage of them.

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