The past few weeks have been busy for the team at Garena as they’ve been hard at work creating new content for Free Fire, their massively popular mobile battle royale. As we mentioned a few weeks back, one of the new elements that were coming to the game was Skyler, a character based on the popular Vietnamese artist and singer, Son Tung M-TP. This addition came hand in hand with a brand new theme song for Free Fire, which was absolutely slapping. Check it out:

Theme song aside, the in-game character himself, which we already briefly mentioned on another occasion, is also very interesting, offering a unique skill set. However, Skyler isn’t the only new character that has landed in Free Fire recently as Shirou is also coming to the game very soon. And in this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at what both of these new characters have to offer.

Skyler – CEO and Superstar

As his real-life counterpart is a very popular singer, Skyler couldn’t be anything but extravagant and exuberant in his demeanor and appearance. Sporting a fancy white suit and dashing looks, and with his keytar in hand, Skyler can rock the battlefield with his powerful music, and we mean that quite literally, as you’ll see in a few moments.

Skyler’s playstyle revolves around the GLOO walls. Specifically, he has skills both to circumvent enemy GLOO walls, as well as others that take advantage of these obstacles. His main ability, Riptide Rhythm, has two components, an active and a passive: When used, this skill unleashes a sonic wave in front of the user that damages up to 5 GLOO walls, even being able to destroy them easily. The passive, however, is much more significant as it provides a flat increase to HP recovery for every GLOO wall the Skyler has deployed, boosting his survivability significantly.

This skill set makes Skyler uniquely suited for aggressive play styles, especially in team settings. While Skyler is great for knocking down GLOO walls in the last few circles, he’s left utterly vulnerable while doing so since the enemy can just burst him down while he’s trying to break their cover. However, with a team to back him up, Skyler can walk to the enemy GLOO walls and knock them down while his team provides covering fire. Afterward, the enemy will be left without cover and scrambling while you pick them off one by one.

How to Acquire Skyler in Free Fire

Sadly, even though he’s already in-game and you can check out his stats, skins, and other details, Skyler still isn’t unlockable as of this moment. We don’t know for sure when the Vietnamese singer and songwriter will be available in the game, but it shouldn’t be very long. 

Regardless, he will probably cost 499 or 599 diamonds to unlock from the store, just like the other characters in the game.

Shirou – The Fastest Delivery Guy Around

The second new character in Free Fire, Shirou, is completely original and is supposed to be designed like a courier. If you’ve ever played the popular freerunning and parkour first-person game, Mirror’s Edge, you’ll find that Shirou’s design is similar to that of the couriers in it. It only takes a quick glance to see how this character is built for speed and for outsmarting his enemies with superior maneuvers. Oddly enough, you’ll find that his skill set doesn’t actually represent his design as it doesn’t have anything to do with mobility.

Shirou is a character that doesn’t really need a team to shine. In fact, his skill only benefits himself and allows him to deal maximum damage with a single, well-placed shot. His ability is called Damage Delivered and makes it so that, whenever an enemy shoots Shirou, they get automatically tagged and highlighted for 6 seconds. While tagged, Shirou’s first shot to the enemy will have +50% armor penetration, allowing him to do much more damage.

The kicker here is that Shirou’s skill, once upgraded to the maximum level can make his first shot penetrate up to 100% of the enemy’s armor—that’s a guaranteed one-shot kill with certain weapons whenever the skill activates! And the best part is that this passive only has 20 seconds of cooldown, which means that you’ll be using it all the time. Even in those situations where you don’t have time to aim a good shot with a sniper or shotgun, you can still deal tons of extra damage with SMGs or AR whenever the passive activates.

However, as we mentioned above, Shirou doesn’t bring anything to the table in terms of support. In other words, in a team setting, he’s only as useful as his user is skilled, unlike other characters like Kapella, for example, who is very powerful even if the user isn’t very skilled, thanks to her active skill and support capabilities. If possible try to use him only in solo play, and use him in duos and squads only when you have proper communication with your teammates via voice chat.

How to Obtain Shirou in Free Fire

Like Skyler, Shirou still isn’t available for unlocking just yet. However, we actually do know his release date, which is this next February 26. And the best part is that everyone will be able to get him for free! To claim your free Shirou, all you have to do is log into the game on Cobra Day (02/26) and simply click on the login reward popup. 

What are your thoughts on these two new Free Fire characters? Are they worth all the hype they’re getting? Which one will you level up first? Leave us your comments in the section below!