After some mulling over, some thoughts:
Gameplay:
• She had her spear becomes highlighted both teal and blue(against Tira), and it appears her howling wolf-blast combo ender seems to remove the glow. So does this suggest that this is one way to expend a charge?
• New animation for 2nd hit of C2B (against Nightmare), and I the weapon changing to all teal, which looks different against Tira. Could this merely ..be a soul charge difference, or a lighting difference, or a true mechanic difference?
• I was hoping her SC5 66A+B animation would be her standard A+B, but it looks like its just a SC enhanced string ender
• Her wolf-blast animation at the end of her CE looks like it'll ringout pretty well, I wonder how it'll compare to Talim's gale blast.
• Secondly, with her heavy wolf motif, will this mean Zwei is 100% not coming back, considering how much emphasis the Project Soul has made the improvement on differentiating the roster's motifs and themes? Unless Ein comes back as some gorilla or something, having 2 wolf-motif'd characters would not be good.
• I wonder how her preferred range would be compared to Seong Mina.
• I'm hoping they toned down her step mobility. It was always surprising to me that a small girl in heavy plate armor holding a massive lance/spear would be so mobile.
Aesthetics:
• Her RE animation against heavy low attacks where she does a twirl is really cool.
• Her gold armor would probably look better using her signature silver armor. Going to be the first thing I change
• The gorget with the 3 wolves looks a little low (isn't it supposed to protect her throat)? However, we don't want that to cover her signature mole.
• Her princess tiara looks surprisingly plain. I would have expected some jewels more befitting her standing as a princess.
• The coat is legit badass. The knight armor + regal coat makes her look very distinct from sieg/nightmare.
• She has chainmail underneath her shirt under her armor. There's no way mid-armor break will reveal it.
• Her hair style is the 2nd worse in the series IMO (after helmet-less messy hair SC4 1p). I'm aware you won't be able to fit her princess hair with her new queen coat, but one can dream.
• The 2 chains across her waist to hold the coat looks pretty flimsy. Chains seems to clash with her royal image. While its a small detail, it stands out because it's in the center of her key art (which is amazing as usual).
• Overall, the weakest Hilde design. Really hoping her solid SC4 1p is in. Apparantly her SC4 2p princess dress was a CAS part data mined from Lost Swords, so one can hope.
Animations:
Hilde always had really dope attack animations. I'm hoping for the following animations to return:
SC5 4B, sway back TC long range thrust
SC4 1B / SC5 44B (functions a lot like Mina's 1A).
SC5 1B is also a nice low poke.
SC4 FC C1B
SC4 2A+B K (I always liked the fluidity of this one)
SC4 6B+K looked cool as a leaping spear thrust.
SC4 22B / SC5 33B was a cool TC looking hilt thrust, especially with the BE ender.
Back grab : Her backdrop suplex was pretty nice looking