Killer Instinct (2013)/Aria/Character Intro

Lore

ARIA, an abbreviation for 'Advanced Robotics Intelligence Architecture', was designed by UltraTech's founder, Ryat Adams, to direct humanity's evolution and ensure its long-term survival. She has since then become the shadowy company's CEO, working behind the scenes to foil our human heroes' plans and as well as putting a stop to Gargos's oncoming invasion. Her view on the world is cold and calculating, and she rarely takes any ethics or moral code into account when devising plans and making decisions in our world's name. Evolve or die - the choice is yours.

Gameplay

ARIA is an enigma within the game's design, being simultaneously incredibly complex and deceptively simple. Instead of having two healthbars that her opponent burns through, she has three, each with less health than usual that adds up to the total of a regular character's two healthbars. However, each healthbar has a specific body effect attached to it, and ARIA can switch between those at will, with the remaining bodies staying behind her as assists - reminiscent of team-tag games such as Marvel vs Capcom. And just like in those games, though ARIA can manage the health of each body, a witty opponent can manage their offense and strike down any careless assist calls to quickly whittle ARIA down of her best tools. Despite this, she makes for an incredibly strong character who, with access to all her assists or her instinct, is without a doubt one of the most oppressive characters of the game at any space on the battlefield. Fly around, abuse your sword's range, then keep the opponent away with an onslaught of projectiles - reminding them that they must evolve their gameplan while you orchestrate your way to a supreme victory.

Character

Strengths

Weaknesses

Stand united: ARIA with all three of her bodies is, no doubt, the best character in Killer Instinct. She can cover any approach, be in whatever space of the screen she likes, and excel everywhere, on top of having some disrespectful neutral options when backed by assists and the strongest mixup and pressure game. Mobile: All three of ARIA's bodies excel in their dedicated parts of mobility - The Booster body can fly, the Blade body has nearly the best walk speed in the game, and the Bass body's dashes are the fastest and zippiest in the game. Adaptable: Being able to swap between her bodies means ARIA can run any gameplan she wants, be it focusing on the zoning, the midrange, or rushing down her opponent. High damage: ARIA's linkers and autodoubles are unusually difficult to break, even for those who know what to look for, and she also gets high damage off of them. Her setup ender is also incredibly damaging, and is the ender used for damage when she doesn't have the Blade body. And this is before we get into drone unbreakables. Damage reduction: When ARIA is in instinct, the damage she takes is split across all three bodies. This includes potential damage, meaning that building ender levels is difficult when ARIA is in instinct. Furthermore, if she has a body that is at 1 health and is in instinct, that body will continue absorbing damage until the main body dies or instinct runs out, meaning that ARIA can potentially take half or even a third of the damage she would usually take. High comeback potential: Because of ARIA's high damage, and the fact that her instinct gives her additional drones based on how many bodies she lost, it is not uncommon for an ARIA player on the backfoot to score a hit, pop instinct and win a round they should have otherwise lost, no matter what body they're in.

Fall divided: ARIA on her own is mediocre. Her buttons are nothing to write home about, even with the disrespectful nature of her medium kicks, her mix relies more on knowing what your opponent is looking for and pressure ends quickly. Furthermore, some bodies become irrelevant in some match-ups, meaning that being stuck alone with that body can be a death sentence. Focused: Although ARIA is incredibly adaptable through her drones and body swaps, each body only ever has access to one unique special move and movement trait outside of instinct. This means that players will have to take the time to learn and adapt to, practically, three different mini-characters with three different playstyles if they want to really excel at playing ARIA. At least her combos are universal. Glass cannon: Although ARIA enjoys damage reduction in instinct, she'll only ever get that twice, maybe thrice in a match. ARIA's healthbars are split into three, and although they make up the same amount of health any other character has, losing a healthbar is easy, and that means losing the tools and drone attached to that healthbar, which can be absolutely harrowing for some match-ups. Furthermore, her drones can be hit for 25% extra damage, meaning that a careless ARIA player can very quickly lose the game. Top tier: People won't be happy with you playing this character (and downplay will be quickly laughed away).