After much playtime we and the dedicated players figured that the only thing that caused Belmont to remain somewhat underpowered is that his subweapons simply weren't up to the yomi setplay standards. Some were too accurate to the source material for their own good.

Problem with that, being accurate to the source material is both the key appeal, and core design philosophy for the character.

As a group we set out to further "Yomi-ify" the subweapons while not destroying their character derived from the source material. I think that we ended up being very successful in this quest.


Daggers easily got the largest overhaul. Maybe not the highest impact overhaul, but the largest for sure.

From the same historical records held in the Belmont library where Belmont learnt the Blade Dash, he's learnt to throw three daggers at once like his prolific ancestor Richter.

Knife Throw is now: Tri-Dagger
(+) Edited and cooler versions of the animation.
(+) Now throws three knives instead of one. Think ninja kunai, but not unparriable. The projectiles are the same one as before after all. A dagger still flies forward at the same angle as the Knife Throw did before. The others are two different diagonal angles.
(+) Has a new F7 hitbox for all versions. If hit canceled, the Daggers won't fire. Has 1 proration like the Dagger projectiles. While not a great combo starter it is a mean combo tool as you can hold on hit to still throw the daggers.
(+) The air version has it's F7 hitbox and it's three knives aimed downwards. Covering angles Belmont didn't have well covered in the air before. This is an even meaner combo button if used right. And plays nice with setup tools.
(=) Bounce Trickshots are over. On contact with your primary weapon, or any other subweapons, Daggers will be imbued with magic. This causes them to spin for a moment (retaining it's hitbox while spinning), before darting automatically at the current opponent's position. The Daggers don't holm after this though. The downside is that you lose the ability to control the speed of knives with DI. The upside is that knives interact with other subweapons much more practically. It retains it's previous interaction with holy water as well. Holy water also putting it into the magical state.
(=) Brandish Toggle on Daggers is retired. It doesn't make sense with the new design really. Instead it's replaced with a "Barrage" toggle unique to Tri-Dagger. Where Belmont snaps his fingers and imbues the Daggers he just threw immediately with magic. This doesn't put you into Brandish. But, it does give you three auto-aimed projectiles.

Knives are much better now and help to mitigate Belmont's weak starting loadout. While also indirectly buffing everything else with more practical setups for interactions between subweapons.

Axe doesn't need to be much more than it is right now but we were planning a simple minor buff for it coincidentally before the quest to improve every subweapon.

(+) Recovery improved from 17 to 15 frames.

Axe is simple yet useful in the grand scheme of things. Tri-Dagger's new angles are very compatible with the arcs Axes take. Is good.

Cross was the weakest subweapon by far. Even with the more recent buffs it was still mediocre at best. We've worked to greatly improve what you can do with Crosses without destroying it's identity as a horizontal projectile that moves back and forth. This is the biggest and most meaningful buff. And gives the cross not only way better setup potential but more interactions with moves. While keeping all of it's previous buffs.

(+) When first throwing a cross, you can throw it at a wide swath of angles in front of you. When it reaches it's range to turn around, it locks it's vertical movement and begins horizontally moving as it would before. This includes both above the caster, and ground level.
(+) Primary Weapon attacks hit Crosses further and faster.
(+) Cross can now be hit in multiple directions. Reverie will hit it upwards diagonally, whereas Decent (down whip), Dive Kick, and airborne Tri-Dagger will launch it downwards. In the air, horizontal Primary Weapon attacks will launch it forward as it did before.

New Move: Recall
(-) When the move is active you can potentially have up to 10 special moves available at once which is one more than 9. Causing tism provoking UI shenanigans that cannot be helped.
(+) Uses the cool finger snap animation that Barrage also uses.
(+) When Crosses are on screen, the button is available. It causes all crosses to stop immediately, and after a delay, fly in the direction of Belmont's location at the time of casting.
(+) During combos the frame data of the move is improved and the delay before crosses begin to close in is shortened significantly.

Crosses are now proper "fluid setup" and much better for combos and especially neutral. Their new interactions make other moves even more useful in the grand scheme of his gameplay. Very warranted, very good.

Holy Water is one of the better subweapons. But we felt it could use small but helpful improvements to make it a bit better.

(+) You can now cast Rondo Holy Water (moving flame wave) at two different speeds. The previous speed was sped up slightly, and the new speed option is much slower. Sometimes you want a really fast projectile, and other times you want something slow.
(+) NES Fire (the stationary pillar) now activates when the vial hits another projectile or the opponent mid air.

Hopefully this lets you use Holy Water to threaten space and setup a bit better.

Adjustments to: Hydro Lash (Holy Water Super)
For: Improved consistency in suppressive effect.
(-) The damage of each individual projectile is reduced to 40, from 60. Chip damage modifier reduced from 2 to 1.8.
(+) The amount of projectiles is doubled.
(+) The projectiles move slower and consequently take up space for longer, improving oki consistency mainly.
(+) The spread of projectiles is wider to improve AOE the move effects.

The Bible was generally considered by most dedicated players to be the overall best subweapon. At least, in it's main orbiting mode. I specifically though wanted spiral to be a bit better. So I made sure that happened :trolling:.

(+) Spiraling Bible Pages look a little cooler.
(+) Spiraling Bible Pages ramp up to full speed much quicker.
(+) They now no longer disappear after taking or inflicting one hit. They now have a lifespan of 5 hits. Effectively making it last until it's natural lifespan depletes. This should make Spiral much better as a setup tool for combos. Which is justified because spiral in combos is sauce.

I hope this makes spiral more considerable, and that it encourages players to do more than just horde the orbiter pages.

Ok this is the one subweapon that needed a nerf. Once you got it, it was obnoxiously overcentralizing. When it's really just meant to be an anti keepaway/camping threat.

(-) Stopwatch Projectile lifetime before "detonating" into the Time Stop increased from 80 to 100 frames.

Should be pretty ploopy now.

But wait, that's not all!


(=) Dive Kick now bounces you upwards when it hits, while sending the opponent downwards. This is a game accuracy change mainly. It looks way cooler in motion now. This bounce also works on Crosses, sending them downwards and bouncing you off of them. Which is cool.

(+) Swinging off of summoned Ceilings with Reverie or the Reverie Summon itself now is interruptible on opponent's turn. Making it much less freakishly unsafe. It's essentially free canceled at no cost now. Which, is justifiable given it costs a bar and can only be swung off of twice, at a specific location no less.

(why the hell is there a character limit for these)

Mainly a series of bug fixes but also some minor changes.

(-) Bible pages now go innactive when you dodge.

(=) Superdash previously caused some prediction errors. We re-made the whole move to remove the ivy jank. It also now has a new snazzy animation.

(+) "Rondo" Holy Water (the one that moves forward like flame wave) now lasts for 90 frames, up from 45.

(+) Fixed more brandish knife jank.

(=) Adjusted the color on Moonshot's afterimage trail effect.

General Consensus was that Cross was easily the worst subweapon. We've worked to improve it.

Last patch we reduced it's cost to 1 heart. In this patch, not only does cross keep that buff, but it also now:
- Gains a period of unparriability from use of the manual return toggle.
- If you are facing the direction it is flying in, you can hit it with your primary weapon to launch it forward and give it unparriable frames.
- The holy water synergy was improved by giving cross a long period of unpariability on contact.
These unparriable periods are all adative to each other.

- Fixed an issue where the spiral toggle could prematurely have it's unpariable frames ended by barrier pages' period of unparriability caused by making the opponent soft block a melee attack.

Alongside the major changes from the previous patch:

- Cross now costs 1 heart.

- A bug with jump that made it only interuptable when landing or durring opponent interupt frames was fixed.

Changes
Sprite overhaul!
New Super move Scavenge
- Spawns a sub weapon pickup of your choice for 2 bar (Can't spawn the watch)
- can spawn whip power up if all other items are collected
duplicate pickups now grant 5 hearts.
Whip crack has reduced forwards movement when flipped
Added tooltips to most ui buttons and such.

Fixed
Brandish knife properly alters speed based on DI.
- increased lifetime of knife 30f -> 50f

no change notes