Carl Clover/Move List

Carl Clover is a character who works in tandem with Nirvana to confuse and pressure the opponent with frame traps, mixups and even unblockables. Once an exploitable opening presents itself, it can and often will lead to lengthy and unbelievably high-damage combos. Carl also has a smaller hitbox, causing characters to use specific combos against Carl.

Carl is the character with the lowest HP in the game (9500). He has the lowest Guard Gauge in the game and very low damage when he fights alone. His Negative Penalty can be gained relatively quickly. None of his supers have any invincibility. He has bad mobility since his dash is a hop with awful recovery. Carl has limited defensive options and poking options due to lack of range/priority/speed. He has risky anti-air options and limited, safe ways to start pressure without Nirvana nearby, and Nirvana is slow and only blocks projectile hits. Though this overall gives Carl one of the more unorthodox neutral footsies games out of the entire cast, as he is very space-dependent.

And to top it all off, Carl has a high learning curve that requires players to know how to use the Negative Edge feature present in many other fighting games. He, despite his high damage potential, has his damage in the form of long combos with Nirvana’s aid; the damage output on his attacks in single bursts (even Nirvana’s damage alone) tends to be in a small amount, so he often relies a lot on long combos to get out his damage capacity, especially with meter available.

Carl’s Drive, Automaton (オートマトン), allows use of the D button and directional inputs independently to control Nirvana, which is fairly complicated to learn. All of Nirvana’s attacks can be performed while Carl is in the air. Most of her attacks are cancelled if she is hit or if Carl is hit/blocks.

His Overdrive is Synchro High Speed (シンクロハイスピード), which powers up Nirvana by making her gauge recover faster, giving her increased walkspeed, less recovery time on her moves and new properties on said moves. Carl as a nod to his Unlimited form in the previous installment(s), also during his Overdrive gains access to his own version of his father’s Vol Tedo attack, the Arpeggio of Oblivion (忘却のアルペジオ), enabling Carl once more to have more powerful combo potential, due to having brand new combo finisher with nice damage.