Hugo and Poison both joined the tournament for different reasons. Hugo joined because he really likes the sound of the words meat and also squasher, and he made a move called meat squasher, and he performs it as often as he can and turns people into wall beef.
Originating as a common enemy in the Final Fight series before being adapted into a unique character, Hugo is an all-risk grappler who makes his primary objective getting in, staying in, and forcing you to respect his advantage. As with most versions of Hugo, his defining trait is his 214P special move, Giant Palm, or lovingly known by the community as "claps". Despite their long startup, the heavier versions of claps are extremely useful for forcing respect out of your opponent, with EX Giant Palm being a source of amazing plus frames on-demand. Despite being equipped with three command grabs, Hugo is a good bit different from the rest of Remix's cast of grapplers - his SPD, Moonsault Press, has been changed to a DP motion, and Ultra Throw now acts as one of his main combo tools, tossing the opponent against the wall and allowing him to combo after with multiple wallsplats thanks to the properties of his standing heavy punch.
However, the problems that tend to trouble Hugo in every game are also present here - for one, his damage is ludicrously low. Without the commitment of resources in some way, Hugo on average has some of the lowest meterless damage in the entire game, and while Ultra Throw can be comboed after meterlessly, you can't hitconfirm it unless you spend a bar. Additionally, although his normals are great for their size, they're tremendously slow, and in a game that emphasizes whiff punishing like how Remix does, throwing out a button at a bad time can be a death sentence. Above all, Hugo's greatest weakness may be his unbelievable size - his model is solidly larger than the next biggest character, and he's prone to dozens of unique infinites and instant overhead setups. Hugo demands perfection in order to make do with his weaknesses and make his strengths shine - he's an all-risk character, but the amount of reward he gets for going all-in is questionable, at best.
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Weaknesses
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- High Health: Hugo has the highest pool of health in the entire game, a comfortable 1100. This makes him a good bit harder to kill than the rest of the cast, especially in matchups against characters with low damage.
- Armored Run: Hugo's forward run is fully armored, giving him a bit of room to work with when it comes to approaching.
- Buttons: When they're working, they're really good - Hugo's best buttons, such as st.LP, st.MP, cr.LP, cr.LK and cr.MK are great for controlling space, making a kind of protective forcefield around Hugo.
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- Sluggish: Hugo is just too big and slow for a game like Remix - he's in a unique situation of being forced to deal with a majority of zoning done by other characters, even though his run is armored against fireballs. Additionally, he's the unfortunate victim of a multitude of character-exclusive infinites and fuzzy setups, making it even more difficult for him to deal with offense. Outside of running the opponent down, Hugo is terribly slow, with one of the worst walkspeeds in the entire game, making getting in on characters like Guile and Poison a Sisyphean task.
- Awful Defense: Hugo has no invincible reversal without meter, and if he chooses to spend, his reversals are exclusively command grabs, with very low reward at that. In a game with belligerent reversals that commonly disrespect pressure, Hugo feels behind the bell curve in this regard, considering he has to rely on alpha counter heavily to escape dangerous situations.
- Bad Damage: Hugo's damage output without resources is quite possibly the lowest in the game, and it's not like it gets much better with meter - his most common normals do a surprisingly low amount of damage, and you won't get a confirm worth much unless you get an extremely unrealistic starter.
- Buttons: Even though his light and medium normals are quite useful, half of Hugo's suite of buttons are still completely useless. His HK buttons are almost unusable, and his HP buttons are only slightly better. Due to his limited air mobility, Hugo also can't get much out of any of his jump buttons, with the exception of body splash (j.2HP).
- No Threat of Throw: Despite being a grappler, Hugo's reward on the throw end of his mixup is shockingly below average, with no combo off of his universal throw and SPD. Additionally, Meat Squasher is a candidate for one of the worst special moves in the game, locking Hugo into the animation until it finishes, so a character with three command grabs ends up only having one that he really uses, being Ultra Throw.
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