2XKO roster should aspire to the weirdness of Skullgirls, Soul Calibur, and others

Many of the starting  2XKO characters feel pretty damn generic. Beefy knight Darius and brooding swordsman Yasuo might bulk out the 2XKO roster, but they don’t bring much excitement. Compared to merit badge-seeking raccoon Teemo, or the friend-shaped pummel-bot Blitzcrank, they just don’t spark the imagination. 

This won’t be an issue for the 2XKO roster for long, as they’ll be picking fighters from the League of Legends champions. Hopefully, it won’t be long until we get more unusual picks like the criminal cyborg Urgot or the Ghibli-esque star traveller Bard. There’s the potential for some truly interesting 2XKO characters. In this spirit, Riot could take lessons from other fighting games and just let its imagination run wild.

✓ VideoGamer Summary

• Right now, the 2XKO roster is too small and too ordinary, but Riot Games can do better.
• There are plenty of lessons to be learned from the stranger fighting game rosters, to inspire new 2XKO characters.
• So long as a game is fun, you can really fill them with any playable characters, cohesion be damned.
• 2XKO has a huge range of potential characters to adapt in League of Legends.
• If there’s any lesson to be had, it’s that throwing in the occasional weird-looking character or crossover would be memorable for 2XKO.

Fight of Gods puts a weapon in the hands of the peaceful

Available on: PC, Switch, PS4

Fight of Gods doesn’t have quite the same variety of godly fighters as the battle arena MOBA Smite. What it lacks in depth and width, however, it certainly makes up for in surprise characterisation. 

It’s easy to put Zeus and Anubis in a fighting game; it feels like they’re made for it, but notorious pacifists Jesus and Buddha are a strange sell. All the same, Fight of Gods put these two into the ring, alongside definitely-not-a-god Santa Claus, to battle out their differences.

If there is a lesson here for the 2XKO roster, it’s this: just because someone isn’t a fighter doesn’t mean you can’t put them in the game anyway. Soraka the Starchild might be far more focused on healing allies and silencing enemies, but Riot shouldn’t be afraid to give her wooden knuckle dusters and let her get into combat.

Awkwardly fits into SoulCalibur 4, Yoda does

Available on: PS3, Xbox 360

The SoulCalibur series loves a guest character. From Link in SoulCalibur 2, through to Geralt in SoulCalibur 6. However, the strangest inclusion has got to be the wise little muppet that is Yoda in SoulCalibur 4. While the PS3 version of the game got Darth Vader, the Xbox 360 came with the strangest and most annoying fighter there ever was.

While he wielded a lightsaber and was capable of using the force to his advantage, what Yoda mostly worked with was being short. For all the gravitas his character might bring to Star Wars, in Soul Calibur, he was a rampaging gremlin, using a lightsaber on people’s shins and being too far down to hit with most normal attacks. 

The 2XKO roster might have Teemo, but I know we can go smaller. Get Yuumi the Magical Cat in the game, and she’d give that same spirit.

Bloody Roar Primal Fury shows the duality of Cronos

Available on: GameCube, Xbox

Bloody Roar Primal Fury was a fighting game where fighters could transform into animals to augment their fighting. In a game with Jenny the Bat and Gado the Lion, though, Cronos stood out. In most of the characters’ stories, Cronos was actually the final boss, likely owing to the intimidating nature of his hyper-form, a muscular humanoid Phoenix.

His normal transformation was into a penguin, and while the rockhoppers’ short stature gave a slight advantage, their little legs made them slow, and their beak had poor reach. Cronos was a master of short bursts of power and tricky moves, which should be kept in mind with the 2XKO roster. 

Annie the Dark Child is a perfect option for this switch-up. She’s just a little girl for most of the fight, but then she builds up to being able to summon her defensive bear, Tibbers, and get a real power boost.

Rivals of Aether won’t let its roster be contained

Available on: PC, Xbox One, Switch

Rivals of Aether feels, in many ways, like a mascot-less mascot fighter. The base game might have its own core roster and then some guest stars in Shovel Knight and Ori, but that’s not why people play. The Steam workshop is a treasure trove of mods and IP-law nightmares, where the only limit is your imagination.

Shuffling straight past more obvious picks like Sans Undertale or the Untitled Goose, you’ve got legendary fighters like Walter White, a hill from the Super Mario games, or Barack Obama. 

Obviously, Riot Games can’t get away with such ideas themselves, and 2XKO isn’t likely to have mod support, but maybe we can open our minds to less obvious possibilities. The added Mel from Arcane into League of Legends, why not give Silco a chance to shine in 2XKO? 

There’s surprising versatility in BCV Battle Construction Vehicles

Available on: PS2

In BCV Battle Construction Vehicles, you battled, well, different construction vehicles. There were fourteen different construction vehicles you could drive and, remarkably, fifteen different drivers to go in them. Most of the combat was, as you might expect, driving a bulldozer directly at a forklift, but with this limited premise, the BCV did a lot.

There was a whole story mode, plenty of special moves to use in combat, and a considerable amount of tongue-in-cheek. If there’s anything to learn here for the 2XKO roster, it’s the versatility you can find in a single member of the roster, with different combinations of fighters and vehicles.

In League of Legends, Kled rides his mount Skaarl, but when Skaarl takes too much damage, Kled is left in the fight by himself. In 2XKO, Kled could have the option to start mounted or unmounted, allowing for different modes for the same fighter.

Skullgirls’ roster revels in the strange

Available on: PS3, Xbox 360, PC, PS4, PS Vita, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

A lot of the appeal in Skullgirls 2nd Encore is in the beautiful 2D animation, and so much of that is helped by the variety of the characters on display. It doesn’t really feel like Skullgirls has a ‘normal’ character, with even the most baseline characters ending up like Filia, with a transforming symbiote on her head, or Annie, a sword-wielding immortal actress. 

There’s no filler in Skullgirls, allowing them to go straight for strange characters like Peacock, with a similar rubberhose style to Cuphead, right off the bat. The 2XKO roster could do with the same treatment.

Let Kog’Maw, Mouth of the Abyss, or Fiddlesticks, the Ancient Fear, in to join the 2XKO characters. Standard humanoids might be easier to animate, but they’re also overrated. 

Give the fans nothing, like Bad Box Art Mega Man

Available on: PS3, Xbox 360, PC, PS Vita

Even though there’s only going to be one new 2XKO character every season, there’s nothing to say you have to give the fans what they want. Back in Street Fighter x Tekken, Capcom certainly didn’t, when they added Bad Box Art Mega Man to the game.

He was based on the original art to Mega Man when it was released in the US, rather than his much more beloved appearance in basically everything else. It was a fun goof and gave an interesting spin on a character you didn’t normally see like this. 

There’s plenty of opportunity to mess around with fans’ expectations of what the 2XKO roster should look like. The least picked League of Legends characters include Skarner, a colossal scorpion, and Ivern, a champion of the trees. Maybe it’s time to give them some love. 

Take a step back, and Super Smash Bros Ultimate is really weird

Available on: Switch

When it comes to video game rosters, it’s hard to compete with Super Smash Bros Ultimate. By the end of the DLC, there were 86 total fighters from all over Nintendo’s pantheon and beyond. However, when you think about it, it really is the most nonsensical collection of characters you’ve ever seen.

The idea of a fighting game where a magical plumber can face off against an electric rat, a canine secretary, and a host of genetically augmented super soldiers is just given as normal because we know who they are. 

The 2XKO roster should take inspiration from this absolute mess. Don’t even try for cohesion; no one wants it! Let no League of Legends stone go unturned in your hunt for 2XKO characters. 

Someone will main the fuzzy inventor Heimerdinger as surely as they’ll main the manic pixie dream weapons expert Jinx. A great fighting game roster is, essentially, a glorified toybox, and 2XKO must be no different. 

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