Story
I'm not overweight. I'm undertall.
The cat who hates Mondays joins the fight by doing the thing he does best, being lazy. Garfield has been in several forms of media including: “Garfield and Friends", "The Garfield Show", two feature films, and it all started with a comic strip that has been running for over 40 years and counting. But no matter where he goes, the show will always be about him! This creation of Jim Davis is ready to sleep on the competition!
Gameplay
Added as the first DLC character on December 7th, 2021. Garfield is a character that can fit almost any playstyle, his normals allow him to be oppressive in offense as well as break combos and be hard to catch on defense. He is very safe on block with a bunch of mix-up potential. You will need to adapt to how your opponent likes to play and counter that playstyle for him to be the most effective.
Just like in the other media, Garfield plays some cheap tricks on his opponents by having them fall for his plans. A lot of Garfield's gameplan revolves around reacting to what your opponent does and calling them out for it. Especially since his K.O. options are very strong with the wrong Directional Influence (DI) while they are also relatively weak with good Directional Influence.
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
Due to Garfield's good animations and up-special he will live for a really long time for his weight value. To the point where he is often compared and called a heavyweight. Next to that as well he has insane mix-ups for getting back to stage as long as he is not forced to go low, which helps him live for a long amount of time.
Garfield is insanely good at pressuring block, his light down-air is super safe on block and can easily allow mix-up opportunities, his other moves are also very hard to punish when spaced and hit well like strong down-air, light neutral air and strong up-air.
Due to Garfield's insane light neutral air he can often escape combos or get hit or trade hits in a weird way where it becomes hard to keep the combo going for your opponent. This in turn allows him to often return to neutral or even put his opponent in disadvantage.
Garfield has safe ways to knock his opponents out of the park, jab and light dash-attack are the 2 best once for this situation. If you hit a light dash-attack you will always be able to follow up with one of your strongs. Jab will allow you to follow up depending on DI and %, and since the move is very fast it can be just what you need but you have to react to your opponent.
Garfield has really good options for keeping his opponent on the ledge, pies are good for calling people out on a lot of situations, down-tilt is very fast when they stay on the ledge for too long, light dash-attack hits below the ledge and will set-up into a down-strong, his light down-air is great for calling out options, Pooky can be positioned where you can cover multiple options and much more. At this spot Garfield can also cover a lot of recovery options while staying on stage by either throwing Pooky off stage or by trying to strong down-air characters on stage since the hit-box of the move goes below the ledge. |
Garfield has a hard time getting a lot of % going compared to the rest of the cast, especially on lighter characters since his moves do relatively little damage. For Garfield to get a lot of damage going you have to be creative and try to read what your opponent is going to do next.
When your opponent is at a higher %, once your set-ups stop working it becomes really hard for Garfield to get the kill, his raw kill moves are not fast, safe or big enough to just throw out without a thought and the only way you can get a reliable kill going is by a light dash-attack, and throws are a good 50/50 whenever possible. On light opponents going for a high % light up-air will work though but it isn’t useful on middleweights or higher.
While it isn’t an impossible task, more than any other character in this game Garfield struggles with getting comebacks. This is due to the fact that unlike most other characters in this game Garfield doesn’t have a move that kills super early in the right spots. With proper DI they will live for a long time and with his low damage output it can take him a while to equalize the game.
Garfield’s only move from the ground that hits high enough to hit someone on a platform is his up-tilt. And while this move is great in speed and the knockback angel is favorable for him, the space that it covers is not much. This means that a lot of the time you have to commit to an aerial in order to cover anything on the platform, this open up a bigger window for your opponent to punish when you miss and since you have to travel up, puts you in a worse position to get hit by either recoveries or options your opponent throws out when they are on the platform.
A lot of Garfield’s options off stage do not send your opponent in a favorable direction when you go off stage with them, together with the fact that unlike every other character you do not have a spiking down-air and your down-strong is relatively slow, it is a lot of the time better to just stick on stage unless you see a good moment when you can just hit them with a strong. Strong down-air is still an amazing call-out option though since it covers a lot of space but due to its start-up and end-lag if you miss it you are usually in a bad spot, but it is definitely worth going for when your opponent is running out of options. |
Notable Players
- TNTBlowzUp
- G4RF
- Jarl Karken
Colors
