My take on the Skull Merchant

Darky77

Overall, I like her. I don't pay much attention to lore, but hers seems cool and interesting, just a ruthless person who learned how to get ahead. It's cool to see a killer that's basically just a person, and I'm always one to say we need more female killers.

That being said, I immediately see a multitude of issues with her power. Mainly, it works fine in practice. But the fact of the matter is, it's just information. She's got nothing for actual pressure. So while you're occupied with one survivor, a few others are being marked. Cool. By the time you finish up and get over there the Exposed will wear off and your drone will be gone, but cool. You know where they were two minutes ago.

You can already see she'll be VERY weak against aggressive Survivors, and incredibly vulnerable to Gen Rushing. Maybe if there was a feature of her being able to teleport to a drone once it spots someone? Or maybe a drone can block Gens after spotting someone? Something to give them actual weight.

Either that or disable the ability to completely remove them, maybe hacking the just disables them for a minute or so. Right now she's lie a lot of other killers, decent power but with WAY too much counterplay. Her strongest aspect is being able to track people, but even that has so many downsides and limits that it's basically useless against Survivors that know how to make distance and evade.

So to wrap it up, she's decent against Survivors that are oblivious or scared of being seen, she's very strong 1v1 and pretty damn difficult to completely get away from, which is a good thing, but against a team of well coordinated survivors? She's basically powerless.

And maybe this is just my nitpicking, but her chase theme is kinda weak. Maybe I just prefer the good old days of "Closing In", but it seems like in recent years the chase themes have been kind of weak, with a couple exceptions (most notably the Resident Evil gang, LOVE Wesker's theme).

I feel like hers especially could be so much better, more rapid sounding percussion, more drone-like electronic sounds, something that gives way more intensity in the feeling of being relentlessly pursued by a machine that can always see where you're going.

Something more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vMKJUg210Q

But that's just my nitpick, I'm a soundtrack guy.

All in all, she's great and a nice addition to the roster, I just foresee her being incredibly weak against even average rank survivors. She's got a LOT of vulnerabilities that completely disable her, which is disappointing. She gives off such a vibe of power, I wanna see her be an unstoppable threat that can dismantle a team of the best survivors, with the right skill of course.