5 Cheapest Fighting Game Characters That Made Everyone Toss Their Controller

Some Fighting Games have complicated rosters, with characters that are both fun to control and nerve-wracking to face in battle. In the most extreme cases, fighters are an absolute nightmare to play against, either due to their overpowered moves or their oppressive strategies that you may label as “cheap” due to how easy they are to lose to. Many titles have featured incredibly annoying characters, to the point where a few have been outright banned for the frustration they cause others.

Oftentimes, the character you choose to embody in a fighting game influences what other fighters on the roster you hate competing against the most. For example, playing a big body character like Zangief or Marisa in Street Fighter 6 will likely make you dislike JP, a character who uses full screen projectiles to keep you away at all times. Match-ups can determine which fighting game characters are the most challenging for your preferred fighter to beat, but some titles have figures who everyone struggles to take down.

5. Arakune (BlazBlue: Central Fiction)

There are plenty of characters in the BlazBlue series that are frustrating to fight, including the huge hit boxes of Susano’o, the large space control of Nine the Phantom, or the insane amount of projectiles that come from V-No.13-. However, players who run into a good Arakune in BlazBlue: Central Fiction will tell you war stories of having to fight the sentient plague, even if the character seems somewhat harmless at first. Generally a weird character whose movements and attacks are simply unorthodox to the rest of the cast, Arakune only gets good when he activates Curse.

The moment Arakune gets Curse, you are thrown into almost the equivalent of a bullet hell, where insects spawn from everywhere on the screen to hit your character multiple times. These bugs appear in front, above, and behind your character, while Arakune is free to follow-up that pressure with attacks of his own. This creates a one-sided affair where you simply have to find the tiniest window to strike back, or suffer devastating damage from the multitude of stray hits the Curse inflicts. Although difficult to set up, Arakune’s Curse is awful to face.

While games like Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls have few defensive features, Arakune manages to bypass the systems in BlazBlue: Central Fiction meant to protect players from such intense offense. For example, the game has a shield-like Barrier Guard players can activate the push opponents back further. However, this only works against Arakune himself, not the insects he summons during the Curse’s activation time. Some Arakune players will loop one Curse into another, giving you limited chances of ever fighting back in a supposed 1v1 fighting game.

4. Yoda (Soul Calibur 4)

The Star Wars collaboration in Soul Calibur 4 saw the Xbox 360 version of the game get Yoda, while Darth Vader was on the PS3’s roster. On paper, this should have been an exciting, high-stakes collaboration for players to enjoy, but Yoda took the wind out of this crossover’s sails. The 3D combat of Soul Calibur is somewhat lost on Yoda due to the character’s small stature, with standard attacks from other fighters sometime unable to hit the Jedi Master altogether.

Fighting Yoda is more of a “do not” rather than “do,” as the character can invalidate certain characters’ offensive strategies without even blocking or moving around. Players have to adjust their whole combo structure and overall gameplan to fight Yoda, instead of applying other ideas universal to the game’s other fighters. Even tricky characters like Voldo still adhere to the rules of Soul Calibur 4, but Yoda’s diminutive existence led to the character getting banned due to the frustration he causes.

3. General Zod (Injustice: Gods Among Us)

Injustice: Gods Among Us is far from the most balanced fighting game ever made, with its base roster including quite a few characters with terrifying power, like Solomon Grundy and Aquaman. That being said, the DLC fighter General Zod is undoubtedely one of the game’s strongest fighters, solely for the amount of screen control the character can create. Zod’s play style revolves around using projectiles to clutter the battlefield, slowly chipping away at opponents until they lose all their health.

Zod has a quick firing laser, a low-hitting heat vision attack, and a large bubble projectile that travels slowly toward opponents. The bubble in particular is hard to get around, acting as a large attack that you can’t block while in the air or eliminate with one of your character’s projectiles. Injustice isn’t like Street Fighter, where two Hadouken fireballs connecting will cancel each other out. You either dodge one of Zod’s projectiles, try to block it, or get hit by it. Should Zod manage to hit you with the bubble, your character will pop up into the air, allowing him to score a full combo.

The truly aggravating part of Zod’s “zoning” strategy comes when the character naturally builds meter from unleashing these attacks. By burning a bar of meter, Zod can enhance his projectile attacks, summoning multiple bubbles at once or creating heat vision that pushes your character away from him significantly. For bigger fighters like Lex Luthor, Zod is almost untouchable, unless you play perfectly around his zoning tools. Even if you’re playing General Zod yourself, having the character involved will ensure someone is having a bad time.

2. Meta Knight (Super Smash Bros. Brawl)

It’s hard to say anything about Meta Knight from Super Smash Bros. Brawl that hasn’t already been said, as the character is one of the most notoriously broken fighters in the genre. To summarize Meta Knight’s advantages over other characters, here’s a brief rundown of his best traits:

• Excellent mobility through abilities no one else had
• Almost flawless frame data compared to other characters
• Unmatched movement and attack speed
• Favorable recovery systems that dwarfed what others had available
• Transcendent priority on attacks that prevented them from clashing with others
• Multiple aerial jumps using partial flight

Other systems unique to Meta Knight allowed him to dominate, such as his Mach Tornado ability shredding through an opposing character’s shields. The character could almost infinitely stall out another beyond a stage’s ledge, giving Meta Knight the upper hand in areas where other fighters simply couldn’t pursue him. Although future Super Smash Bros. titles normalized the character somewhat, his Brawl version is still the stuff of nightmares for those who remember that game at the height of its popularity.

1. Kabal/Cyrax (Mortal Kombat 9)

Those who’ve played Mortal Kombat (2011), also known as Mortal Kombat 9, will tell you that Cyrax and Kabal basically run that game, and ruin it for everyone else. These two characters exist simultaneously as “top tier” fighters, far beyond the rest of the cast for the wealth of abilities they have at nearly every level of play. Yet, both are strong in different ways, with Kabal’s offensive pressure and Cyrax’s destructive combo tools making two equally infuriating characters to play against.

Kabal’s oppressive nature is due to his gas blast attacks, which are easy to input and create large, almost unavoidable pink projectiles that travel at fast speeds. Kabal can easily do these blasts right off the ground, building a consistent full-screen assault that some characters can struggle to get past. At the same time, Kabal has long-reaching normal strikes with his hook swords, and ways to stun opponents from a distance through his dashing strike that leaves enemies spinning. Kabal also has the ability to cancel this dash early, leading to looping offense where it stays Kabal’s turn for ages.

Meanwhile, Cyrax has unblockable setups through his bombs, which lead into him stunning opponents with his cyber net. Provided that the Cyrax player knows what to do, the character can force players into situations they can’t avoid, leading to 100% damage combos that end a round if Cyrax hits you even once. Unless you have the super meter to break out of one of Cyrax’s combos, he can end the game without you ever getting the chance to attack.

The amount of times I’ve seen someone complain about Cyrax or Kabal is ridiculous, but incredibly justified. Some games in this genre produce universally hated characters, no matter how cool they seem or how fun they are when you’re in control. When it comes to fighting games, the most hated characters are typically ones that invalidate the back-and-forth that makes the genre’s competition so compelling.