I understand that Max is widely accepted to be the ideal speedrun character; a Dash Attack that doesn't knock down if he hits late, ludicrous amounts of damage-dealing, the jumping throw that causes enemies to despawn quickly...
I was thinking about looking into doing a solo Skate real-time run in the future. Because of copious amounts of RNG and the amount of HP added in Mania mode, most real-time runs appear to be done on Normal. While I doubt that Skate would be faster, I wanted to see if there were any resources here to help with this endeavor. Significant differences I can think of:
Faster movement in general obviously helps. He moves significantly faster than Max while walking "up/down," which helps to get into position faster to use a Dash Attack (especially convenient in a real-time run), and a decent bit in the arcade of Stage 3 and the Jungle area of Stage 6, where you have to walk downward to proceed. Thunder Tackle speeds can be reached without spending health via his dash, but the slow screen-scrolling limits this advantage.
You can buffer certain actions at the beginning of screens where your character walks in. For all characters, that's the hold-Attack combo finisher (which locks you in place and wastes time), but Skate can dash, putting him into place for the start of the scene faster, which might save almost a second every time compared to Max's lumbering walk.
On Normal difficulty, enemies have significantly lower health. Skate's Dash Attack (the diving headbutt) deals 40 damage during the beginning of it and 24 damage on the second half (you only get one or the other; you can't land both on one enemy), significantly higher than Max's slide for 16 damage. Combined with Skate's superior mobility in general, this would likely allow him to mow down most Galsias and Donovans faster in many cases if he's precise with his placement. The hitbox/hurtbox placement seems to give it great priority, too, giving him a reliable high-damage tool to fight Jets with.
Skate is significantly worse with weapons; using a sword against the robot bosses in Stage 7 or Vehelits (the alien robot thing in Stage 3) would likely be less viable, but the Dash Attack does more damage anyway (40 as compared to the sword's 32) with comparable time for opponents to hit the ground. Crowd control is limited, though, since Max has a huge swing on both sides of him and hitting late with Skate's Dash Attack deals noticeably less damage, which would likely cost time against sword-wielding ninjas.
Despite having the best single-hit attack in his Dash Attack, enemies with a large amount of HP become a chore with Skate compared to Max. Though it basically requires excellent spacing with his Dash Attack or a jump-in attack (both dealing 16 damage on their own), the first three hits of Max's basic attack combo deal 64 damage, which can lead into a grab for (knee-knee -> ) a throw. That's well over a full life bar, while Skate struggles to do so much damage in a single string. His jump-in attack deals 24, but the first three hits of his basic attack combo deal 4 HP each. Being able to cancel it into a Dash Attack at any point is nice (if you just need to tack on a tiny bit of damage pre-Dash Attack), but the most efficient string tends to deal about half the damage Max is capable of, which is made much worse by the fact that Max's throw is invincible with a huge hitbox while Skate can be hit out of both the jump-in attack and the Dash Attack.
That said, Skate's jump-in attack -> Dash Attack is quite fast when you have a single high-HP enemy in a loop on wake-up compared to Max's Atomic Drop, so maybe the superior speed per knockdown is worth the lower damage there (that Skate combo does 64 while Max's Atomic Drop does 70).
Skate's Corkscrew Kick doesn't deal nearly as much damage to the blocking bosses as Max's Thunder Tackle in Stage 1 and Stage 3. A full hit deals 64 damage on non-blocking enemies and puts Skate in a knockdown state if a stray enemy decides to hit him. Also, 64 damage is the same amount as jump-in attack -> Dash Attack, so there's no real incentive to use this move, for better or worse. The defensive specials seem largely identical; using them to pass through bosses' invincibility periods post-knockdown works the same, though a Dash Attack follow-up isn't nearly as good as one of Max's grabs.
Anyway, I think there's some potential here to consider, and if nothing else, it'd be a nice change of pace from all the creeping slowness and Atomic Drop spam of Max when he's not Thunder Tackling (though Skate trades the latter for Dash Attack spam, so... :p ).
Does anyone happen to have HP values for enemies so I don't have to gather them manually? Otherwise I guess I'll just play through normally and make my own notes.
Possible Suggested Screenshot perhaps?
