Skullgirls Valentine: What’s all about?

Valentine is one of the playable characters in Skullgirls, having taken the place of Squigly and Umbrella in the initial line-up so that the game could have a playable villain. What’s Skullgirls Valentine?

Skullgirls Valentine

Valentine is the last survivor of the Anti-Skullgirl Lab’s Last Hope, a cadre of elite Anti-Skullgirl Lab agents. The Last Hope worked for the mysterious Lab Zero and performed jobs ranging from spying and sabotage to sophisticated research before meeting their demise at the hands of the Skullgirl.

Valentine’s goal, like everyone else, is to get a hit, convert it into a combo and reset the opponent until they die. What makes Valentine unique, is that she can achieve this safer than anyone in the game, and convert off of assists meterlessly in more situations than anyone in the game and play outside of the effective ranges of everyone in the game while doing so. To put it simply, with the right team composition and the right assists, Valentine does not have to play by anyone’s rules if she doesn’t want to. according to the Steam community.

Valentine can be played as offensively or defensively as you want, but her movement is more suited towards defensive play. However, without proper assist usage, defensive play can quickly turn into just backing yourself into the corner. Offensive play with Valentine is effective without assists, but greatly bolstered with assists since she can position herself around assists better than anyone else in the game.

Valentine also has a suite of fantastic normals for controlling air space. Her ground normals aren’t as fantastic for space control, but are good for pressure, some anti-air use and other situational uses.

Pros:

• Can convert into combos from a large variety of situations
• Best air mobility in the game
• Can travel higher than anyone in the game
• Suite of high-priority air normals
• One of the best throws in the game
• Best assist user in the game
• Has a counter super that comes out in 1 frame
• Very strong capacity for resets
• No known bad matchups yet

Cons:

• No great assists
• Practical air throw confirms cost meter, meterless air throw confirms require character-specific proper spacing from the ground
• Situational level 2/5 supers
• Below average combo damage
• No invincible reversal without spending meter
• Cannot attack out of air backdash
• No air attack that causes red knockdown, so some limited capacity to convert from high air hits
• Has a more difficult time than most surviving without assists

Backstory

Valentine lost an eye in the explosion that obliterated Lab 7. The cross in her remaining eye is the outcome of an experimental drug test conducted by the team, who were not only in charge of the testing but also the test subjects. Prior to the incident, she had a scar on her lips.

Valentine’s “superhuman” abilities may be linked to her ninja abilities, and thanks to Lab 7’s modifications, she is able to surpass some human boundaries. Her counter animation is most likely a body duplicate or an illusion. According to Skullgirls Fandom.

Before the rest of the organization was wiped off, Valentine was the Last Hope’s second-in-command; before to this tragedy, Christmas was the leader. Valentine got along well with the other members of the Last Hope, especially with Hallow, but he had a slight rivalry with Christmas.

Valentine Assists

Throw: Valentine’s throw will give you an easy combo as it crumples the enemy, allowing you to set up your combo starter. You may want to switch sides and start from a heavy move for more damage as the scaling will be very harsh from get-go.

c.MK: Has a decent range and can be used to hit people low while you’re in the air or whenever they’re not expecting you to do a low. It can be a very sneaky move sometimes, especially when they’re on the offense and you get a hit in between the gaps of their attacks.

qcf HK (H Savage Bypass): Pseudo lockdown assist which can force the enemy to block. Due to it’s low profile hitbox it will only really hit people on the ground. Outside of general assist usage, it also has specific uses such as making Big Band’s Brass Knuckles safe (By using Brass Knuckles and then using Savage Bypass to make them block longer) or allowing you to combo off of Cerebella’s Titan Knuckle.

Skullgirls Valentine Story Mode

In order to access Valentine in Story Mode, you must complete the game with the first six characters.