Style:
Heavy

Difficulty:
Intermediate

Summary:
Tons of throws and big damage attacks with crazy oki and other looped pressure. Limited quick attacks or defensive tools to get him out of trouble.

Description:
The closest to a grappler in Soulcalibur, the big glowy chest golem himself has the biggest model and some of the biggest damage in the game. A broken command grab is universally a +6 frame advantage to the attacker, and Asta has more command grabs than anyone in the game. This means even on throw break he is often in a position to keep up the offense, and one wrong choice from the defender can lead to huge damage as they are scooped up and slammed again and again after getting knocked down once. His tech crouching bull rush allows him to get into throw range, and he has several longer range ax attacks that allow him to challenge enemies further out. Against faster characters that stifle him at close range he will need good defense to break their pressure, as he lacks quick 2A or AA type attacks.

Strengths:

  1. high damage
  2. strong oki
  3. threat of throws constantly discourages enemy from safely blocking

Weaknesses:

  1. very weak block punishment
  2. limited fast attacks
  3. large hitbox

Unique mechanic:
While not necessarily unique to Astaroth, he features many Revenge attacks. These are armored attacks that absorb one hit and power up the Revenge attack after successfully absorbing a hit. The armor will not stop lows, break attacks, multiple hits, or single attacks over a specific damage threshold.

Original text courtesy of: uwucos