Okay, to preface, I played 3 Wii U games on Wednesday and then 4 Wii U games and 2 rounds of Smash Run Saturday. Add it all together and I've played 28 minutes of smash 4 which is really quite a bit, and I watched a ton of stuff go down in person (and had the help of my good friend Junglechief in person to help me figure stuff out). I can confirm a ton of mechanics stuff, tell about basically the entire cast, and also have recorded footage of 26 games, including one that was a kinda informal doubles match (we agreed to treat it like teams as opposed to FFA and had a gentleman's agreement to try to avoid the items which we pretty much succeeded at). I have a lot to both show and tell so let me hop to it.
In general, this game pretty much feels like Brawl on speed with all the dumb stuff taken out and a few new twists. For me, I totally love it; I feel like anyone who enjoyed Brawl tournaments at any point will definitely find this game extremely compelling. I think team Melee will find a lot to love here too, but I'm not really here to sell the game so much as just put this down right now before anyone asks about it.
Due to the truly excessive amount of information I have to post, I'm going to spoiler tag every individual section so you can open them up and read at your leisure. Obviously anything subjective I say (like about how good or bad something is) should be taken as my opinion though I do try to be as well informed as possible so my opinions are not useless. Anything not subjective means that either I tested it, I got a report I consider fully trustworthy, or I witnessed it with my own eyes.
Whew, that was a lot of words. Now let me do the video thing. This is a match that should be interpreted as a doubles match. Amazing Ampharos (Greninja) and Junglechief (Link) versus Two Cool Guys Whose Names I Didn't Catch (Mario and Rosalina). We have a gentleman's agreement not to use the items so we can explore what this game played a little more seriously will feel like; we do our best on that and mostly succeed.
The rest of the playlist can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmHi1rPbj_RqLsgls9WkFVmPrXSO-Zw1I
Of note is that Xion's Sonic can be seen in the last video of the playlist. Otherwise it's just whoever happened to be playing though we are found in some of the day one stuff (but we were struggling a lot more with the game on day one... though I still won 2/3 games!). In total there's footage for 26 matches which I think is an awful lot. I also promised I'd tag Xion when I had it up so... @Xion DarkRose . I hope I did that right.
I'm going to end with a special surprise thing since I'm on the topic of Xion. He only actually has played smash 4 once, but he was going around distributing fliers to promote a tournament at both the Best Buy I was at and at the one in Lee's Summit. With his own eyes at the other one, he watched a little kid pick random and get... Ganondorf! Yeah, apparently random in the demo is buggy and could pull Ganondorf, and this otherwise unknown little kid at one of the least popular Best Buys was the only one who ever found something this fantastic from it. Unfortunately the player who got Ganon was apparently not very strong and just kinda mashed so it was hard to see much of how Ganon was changed, but he was based on his Twilight Princess model like in Brawl. Xion said Ganon had his Melee side special but otherwise seemed a lot like Brawl Ganon though he noted that Ganon seemed really unfinished which means that basically all the gameplay stuff has to be taken with a huge grain of salt in terms of relevance to the final product. I've known Xion for years; I can tell you he's not lying about this. So yeah, Ganon confirmed... if there was any doubt.
I may have just typed a novel on smash 4's demo longer than most actual dissertations, but I have gotten almost a half an hour of total playtime and feel really comfortable talking about the game. If you have any questions that somehow were not addressed above, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
In general, this game pretty much feels like Brawl on speed with all the dumb stuff taken out and a few new twists. For me, I totally love it; I feel like anyone who enjoyed Brawl tournaments at any point will definitely find this game extremely compelling. I think team Melee will find a lot to love here too, but I'm not really here to sell the game so much as just put this down right now before anyone asks about it.
Due to the truly excessive amount of information I have to post, I'm going to spoiler tag every individual section so you can open them up and read at your leisure. Obviously anything subjective I say (like about how good or bad something is) should be taken as my opinion though I do try to be as well informed as possible so my opinions are not useless. Anything not subjective means that either I tested it, I got a report I consider fully trustworthy, or I witnessed it with my own eyes.
Airdodging, as reported elsewhere, now induces a considerable landing lag. It's not as bad as some would make it sound; it seems to generally be about as long as a mid-quality nair's landing lag to me. The mechanics are definitely that it's tied into the actual animation of airdodging; if you airdodge WAY up in the air and land after the animation is well over, you don't get the extra landing lag. If you airdodge and then do an aerial, you get just the aerial's normal landing lag (which for some of the best nairs and uairs is probably an upgrade, may be important down the road). If you grab a ledge or get hit, no, it's not remembered at all. The thing to note is that it seems to apply to the airdodge's entire animation including the IASA frames at the end and the pre-invincible start-up. That first part's implications should be clear, but the second part introduces a bit of awkwardness. If you try to shield just as you land and press it a bit too soon, you'll start up an airdodge (that you might not even spot any animation for if you aren't paying very careful attention) and get the extended landing lag; it actually requires some focus to neutral land shield super fast this time which I think is going to be something we all have to get comfortable with as we learn this game's neutral game.
All the reports about true pivots out of running are real. If you are running in one direction and do a turn around (the animation that lets you pivot grab in Brawl), you can just jab, tilt, or special out of it like you were standing... for the most part. You just can't smash normally. Even if you do a stick input for a smash, you'll just tilt regardless. You can tilt back toward the direction you were running (requires pretty fast fingers), but it will still always come out as ftilt and not fsmash. I don't think you can jab in the direction you were running, but you can jab out of the pivot just by lettting go of the stick (likewise for dtilt). Junglechief reported he was able to, at great difficulty, usmash out of the pivot animation, but I kinda suspect he was just doing a jump cancel. However, if you are on Wii U and use the right stick (c-stick for us old guys), things get different. That does let you smash! C-down just dsmashes facing back toward the direction you came from, and either left or right just fsmashes in that direction. I wasn't able to really apply this in real gameplay since it's a tricky technique, but I experimented a lot with these mechanics (mostly with Luigi in 3DS if it matters, only a bit in Wii U using Wii Fit Trainer) and think that if they remain in the final build (which they may not; they may just be a bug) they could be a huge AT. They also could really divide the two versions since a c-stick is really important to realizing all of your options and 3DS just doesn't have that. Hopefully you can remap the dpad from taunt into a c-stick or use the circle pad pro so 3DS just doesn't get left behind!
Speaking of the c-stick, I can confirm something I consider important. If you jump and hit c-down, you do your dair without fastfalling. If you tap the c-stick down again at that point, you begin fastfalling. This was a minor annoyance in Brawl that has been addressed.
When you run off the edge of a stage, you do a bit of a rolling animation. I can confirm exactly what the deal here is. For one, it's universal; it doesn't matter if it's the stage itself, a platform, a grabbable ledge or not. That animation has no commitment; you can act totally freely out of it at any time. However, you are being kinda pushed away from whatever you ran off. It seems like if you cancel it with airdodge or an aerial at the very first possible moment you go a tiny bit less far, but it's a pretty small effect so I can't be sure. This animation defintiely intrigued me so I'm happy to be able to explain it.
I remain pretty sure that weight has a larger effect on launch resistance in this game. Bowser and DK just seemed to live more than everyone else to a greater extent than in previous games, and characters fly in perfectly straight lines when launched as opposed to the curves of the older smashes (and also fly at lower speeds). I believe the hit dynamics are that being launched puts your character into a special physical state in which only the launch force is considered when calculating your character's velocity (so gravity and hence fall speed is irrelevant). However, after that launch state ends, you seem to keep just a bit of the momentum from the launch, hence you move just a bit more but it seems a bit awkward. Junglechief was playing as Olimar and actually reported that near the end of being launched he could mash Up-B and momentum cancel to extend his survival like G&W did with the bucket in Brawl. Note the mechanics differences here though. It only seems to be pretty close to the end of your flight (after the special launch state ends and you've travelled the vast majority of where you'll go), and you don't have to do a normal aerial or airdodge first to cancel any hitstun you can just hit the special move and get it. Olimar having a very good momentum cancel has its own implications, but the character specific section is next.
The results screen has the stage, mode, and mode count. For instance, Time/2/Battlefield. It's a really nice touch for data recording and will help TOs.
All the reports about true pivots out of running are real. If you are running in one direction and do a turn around (the animation that lets you pivot grab in Brawl), you can just jab, tilt, or special out of it like you were standing... for the most part. You just can't smash normally. Even if you do a stick input for a smash, you'll just tilt regardless. You can tilt back toward the direction you were running (requires pretty fast fingers), but it will still always come out as ftilt and not fsmash. I don't think you can jab in the direction you were running, but you can jab out of the pivot just by lettting go of the stick (likewise for dtilt). Junglechief reported he was able to, at great difficulty, usmash out of the pivot animation, but I kinda suspect he was just doing a jump cancel. However, if you are on Wii U and use the right stick (c-stick for us old guys), things get different. That does let you smash! C-down just dsmashes facing back toward the direction you came from, and either left or right just fsmashes in that direction. I wasn't able to really apply this in real gameplay since it's a tricky technique, but I experimented a lot with these mechanics (mostly with Luigi in 3DS if it matters, only a bit in Wii U using Wii Fit Trainer) and think that if they remain in the final build (which they may not; they may just be a bug) they could be a huge AT. They also could really divide the two versions since a c-stick is really important to realizing all of your options and 3DS just doesn't have that. Hopefully you can remap the dpad from taunt into a c-stick or use the circle pad pro so 3DS just doesn't get left behind!
Speaking of the c-stick, I can confirm something I consider important. If you jump and hit c-down, you do your dair without fastfalling. If you tap the c-stick down again at that point, you begin fastfalling. This was a minor annoyance in Brawl that has been addressed.
When you run off the edge of a stage, you do a bit of a rolling animation. I can confirm exactly what the deal here is. For one, it's universal; it doesn't matter if it's the stage itself, a platform, a grabbable ledge or not. That animation has no commitment; you can act totally freely out of it at any time. However, you are being kinda pushed away from whatever you ran off. It seems like if you cancel it with airdodge or an aerial at the very first possible moment you go a tiny bit less far, but it's a pretty small effect so I can't be sure. This animation defintiely intrigued me so I'm happy to be able to explain it.
I remain pretty sure that weight has a larger effect on launch resistance in this game. Bowser and DK just seemed to live more than everyone else to a greater extent than in previous games, and characters fly in perfectly straight lines when launched as opposed to the curves of the older smashes (and also fly at lower speeds). I believe the hit dynamics are that being launched puts your character into a special physical state in which only the launch force is considered when calculating your character's velocity (so gravity and hence fall speed is irrelevant). However, after that launch state ends, you seem to keep just a bit of the momentum from the launch, hence you move just a bit more but it seems a bit awkward. Junglechief was playing as Olimar and actually reported that near the end of being launched he could mash Up-B and momentum cancel to extend his survival like G&W did with the bucket in Brawl. Note the mechanics differences here though. It only seems to be pretty close to the end of your flight (after the special launch state ends and you've travelled the vast majority of where you'll go), and you don't have to do a normal aerial or airdodge first to cancel any hitstun you can just hit the special move and get it. Olimar having a very good momentum cancel has its own implications, but the character specific section is next.
The results screen has the stage, mode, and mode count. For instance, Time/2/Battlefield. It's a really nice touch for data recording and will help TOs.
I have personally just played as Donkey Kong, Zelda, Mega Man, Wii Fit Trainer, Greninja, Luigi, and Yoshi. However, I conferred at length with Junglechief who has played Marth, Little Mac, Link, Pikachu, Olimar, Sheik, and Toon Link, talked up Xion who played Sonic (and was a really great local Sonic in Brawl and PM), and had experience fighting against or observing in detail pretty much the entire cast so I feel comfortable saying a lot about all of them. Let's get down to business.
Mega Man honestly seems like one of the lesser characters in the demo who was picked a lot but basically only won when he got a big final smash, but I still see promise here. He's just kinda different from what he seemed like from the videos. Leaf Shield is actually a very limited move. It has very long start-up, and while you can move freely the whole time, the hitboxes actually completely suck. I watched a Little Mac just walk up to a MM player and jab to beat out an in-place Leaf Shield; it was ridiculous. Actually using it, it's just overall so slow; it doesn't realy commit MM that much so it's not bad to just put up at a free moment, but it doesn't help you much. Speaking of slow, Crash Bomber and Metal Blade are just so slow as projectiles; even the bad players were easily avoiding the almost no damage anyway (not even KO in sudden death) Metal Blades, and while Crash Bomber was catching people, I could tell looking at it that it's just not going to work out well competitively. On the other hand, fsmash is surprisingly really great. It is faster than it looks; I was able to punish tons of stuff with it pretty easily, and it is pretty safe just to throw out as well so I think it's going to be a big BnB move for MM though if you don't charge it up it seems to be kinda weak for an fsmash.
Most hitboxes in smash 4 seem very faithful to their animations, but i did notice MM's usmash hits a bit further to the sides than the graphic indicates. Dsmash isn't actually that strong, but it controls a lot of space. Fair is another surprise move. Honestly it's incredible; the range is nearly as big as Marth's, and I think it's actually faster and has a nice hit back on it. Bair is surprisingly solid too and just covers tons of space behind MM, but it's not quite as amazing as fair. I didn't use dash attack much, but other MMs had a lot of luck with it (great way to get a kill in Sudden Death). His grab range did seem pretty big, and his fthrow was decently strong. Jab/ftilt/nair are also all that same kinda crummy pea shooter that does so little hitstun opponents can just kinda power through it; it didn't seem all that handy. Utilt hits harder than most utilts, but it doesn't kill like Snake's or anything and in fact MM seems to have kill move problems in general. Dair was disappointing since it's really slow and doesn't actually travel as far as you might like (just disappears), but uair is really fantastic in every way you might hope so that's good. Putting it all together, MM is not especially quick and really lacks power, but he has a lot of moves that have real merit individually and probably can cobble together enough of those viable tools to find a viable gameplan though certainly no one playing the demo found one other than "hope you get a final smash".
I saw pretty little Villager, and when I did see him, he seldom won. So many of his moves have strange properties or hit in strange patterns, and it seems like it kinda comes together to make him weak to just getting rushed while I never really saw any one gimmick that seemed to really give him an abusable angle. That's not to say he doesn't have some good moves and show some real overall promise though; his recovery is slow and gimpable but absurdly huge (like Brawl R.O.B. huge) which is certainly a thing of some merit. The Loid Rocket is a ridiculously good move in general; it's one of the best projectiles in just about every way (very little commitment for Villager, hits well, travels just quickly enough to both let Villager get an advantage from it while not being super easy to just avoid) and when he rides it it's actually a really good recovery move that lets Villager horizontal recover pretty well. It does have a range limit though; one of the guys I was chatting with tested him in Smash Run and discovered that eventually he automatically jumps off. His grab is also pretty great; it's faster than you'd think an overhead net swing would be, but it still does hit just a huge area. Every Villager player also realy seemed to love ftilt (the umbrella) as a poke a whole lot, and that's about all I can say about this guy. He has some tools, but an overall gameplan still doesn't seem obvious for him.
Wii Fit Trainer I used once but was almost never picked by others. She's weird in that her animations are really snappy to the point that she almost animates like G&W. She actually is unusually fast as far as attack speed goes and has good power, but her moves seem to only hit small areas (not bad range but just not covering large areas) and they didn't seem to really stick around either which I think is going to be a big counterbalancing weakness for her obvious statistical strengths. I can't say much more beyond that I found her really hard to play (totally contrary to what I personally want in a character) but that I doubt as she stands that she could be truly bad just because honestly her speed to power ratio is probably second only to Little Mac's and is just great with Sun Salutation being a pretty good projectile for that angle as well.
Rosalina generally did really, really badly almost every time she got picked. To be straight about it, I don't think she seems very good. I know Luma is complicated which seems like it should make her hard to judge, but the reality is that she doesn't seem to have quick or precise control over Luma's movement or really anything resembling it. Outside of synchronization with Luma, she seems slow in every sense of the word; she has the slowest movement in the demo, and her attack speed is pretty thoroughly unimpressive too (her dash attack seems especially bad). She's not especially strong though I wouldn't call her weak either, and while her hitboxes aren't bad, they aren't really a strength either. A few of her moves seem okay and she has a great recovery, but the Luma thing seems harder than we might like in the sense that it's honestly just a lot easier due to the way it works to separate her from Luma than it is to separate Nana from Popo in the other smash games and also less punishing to get hit by Luma when attacking Rosalina than it was to get hit by Nana when attacking Popo. A character like this we definitely can't write off until a thorough exploration, but she's going to need some serious tricks as she stands to pull ahead of the other characters.
Little Mac has had many words said by others, but let me summarize everything simply. Little Mac has the best ground game ever. Melee Fox wishes he has Little Mac's ground game. Little Mac's recovery is arguably the worst in the series; it's approximately in league with Smash 64 Link's recovery which is worse than anything in Melee or Brawl for those unfamiliar. That's pretty horrible and holds him back a lot, but he'd be completely broken with a normal recovery so it's hard to judge him overall. Unlike previously reported elsewhere, Little Mac can use side special to gain distance while recovering, but it doesn't go all that far and does put him into helpless so he's choosing between it and up special to go a small horizontal distance or a small vertical distance but not both. In reality, if you get hit particularly far off-stage, you're in huge trouble with this character, and kinda like with Brawl Olimar, having this kind of recovery just makes jumping scary though contrary to what others have said his air game otherwise doesn't seem that bad. Unlike some other uppercut style moves, his up special still has great priority even in the air and his uair isn't bad either so he can threaten in juggle situations competently and he fast falls pretty fast so he can escape those situations to some extent as well. I also have to stress just how good this ground game is. He runs almost as fast as Sonic. His punches generally have fantastic range and priority and come out at speeds we generally expect from characters like Sheik. He just pours on damage and has fantastic kill power even before factoring in the super strong KO uppercut mechanic. Little Mac was winning a lot even with his massive weakness, and I think a smart player with good stage control and DI to help mitigate the recovery weakness could go very far with him.
I saved the best for last with Greninja. I got to play Greninja three times, and if I was going to play any character that much, I'm glad it was this guy. Greninja is hands down the best newcomer and is definitely one of the better characters in the demo overall. Greninja has fantastic ground speed and one of the best sets of aerials in the series. Uair is this godly move that animates kinda like Samus's but is everything Samus's uair ever wanted to be. It is really long with a kinda wind effect around it that correctly shows a minor disjoint surrounding the move. If combos all the hits super cleanly, and the last hit has real kill power in juggle situations. It starts up really fast too so it's really easy to hit with. Dair is this bounce with which Greninja plunges straight down and meteors on hit, but if he hits something (including a shield), he bounds back up and is totally free to act. If you dair again and hit something again, you don't bounce again, but it's still a really nice option though it's risky off-stage and seems pretty unsafe to whiff so it will probably play out like a better version of Toon Link's dair from Brawl. Fair and bair are both quick limb swings with nice knockback (but not anything special in terms of kill power) and good range. Nair is this water move with a sphere of water around Greninja's mid-section that kinda hits all over his body, but it doesn't actually stay active for as long as you might think (though it's overall a decently quick move). I didn't find the situations that move shines, but I'm pretty sure they exist.
His ground attacks are kinda secondary to his air attacks but not bad at all. Usmash is the gem here; it does 19%, has massive range with the two water swords, is pretty quick all around, and knocks the enemy upward perfectly to either be in a nasty juggle situation at most percentages or just to die outright at higher percentages assuming you haven't just staled this guy out. Fsmash and dsmash are more water sword moves that seem a bit sluggish compared to the rest of Greninja's moves, but they're still not slow by the standards of a typical character and seem perfectly servicable. Ftilt is a long kick that likewise is not slow by other standards but not fast by Greninja standards. Jab on the other hand is super impressive. It's really fast, has great range, and goes into a rapid jab that lets you do damage fast (and rapid jabs are generally good, not bad, in this game since they're safe to hit with and do more damage than other jabs). Greninja also seems to be able to land grabs easily with his general speed and flow, and his throws don't seem to launch as far as most others which is a mixed blessing in that he doesn't seem to kill with throws like others but has some good chases off them. Dthrow in particular was disappointing though; it pops the enemy at a truly wonderful angle right in Greninja's face, but Greninja is kinda laggy after using it which actually makes it hard to exploit. Water Shuriken is an amazing projectile all around as well for reasons well covered elsewhere on the internet, and his recovery is very fast and very huge which certainly doesn't hurt. I love this character.
Mega Man honestly seems like one of the lesser characters in the demo who was picked a lot but basically only won when he got a big final smash, but I still see promise here. He's just kinda different from what he seemed like from the videos. Leaf Shield is actually a very limited move. It has very long start-up, and while you can move freely the whole time, the hitboxes actually completely suck. I watched a Little Mac just walk up to a MM player and jab to beat out an in-place Leaf Shield; it was ridiculous. Actually using it, it's just overall so slow; it doesn't realy commit MM that much so it's not bad to just put up at a free moment, but it doesn't help you much. Speaking of slow, Crash Bomber and Metal Blade are just so slow as projectiles; even the bad players were easily avoiding the almost no damage anyway (not even KO in sudden death) Metal Blades, and while Crash Bomber was catching people, I could tell looking at it that it's just not going to work out well competitively. On the other hand, fsmash is surprisingly really great. It is faster than it looks; I was able to punish tons of stuff with it pretty easily, and it is pretty safe just to throw out as well so I think it's going to be a big BnB move for MM though if you don't charge it up it seems to be kinda weak for an fsmash.
Most hitboxes in smash 4 seem very faithful to their animations, but i did notice MM's usmash hits a bit further to the sides than the graphic indicates. Dsmash isn't actually that strong, but it controls a lot of space. Fair is another surprise move. Honestly it's incredible; the range is nearly as big as Marth's, and I think it's actually faster and has a nice hit back on it. Bair is surprisingly solid too and just covers tons of space behind MM, but it's not quite as amazing as fair. I didn't use dash attack much, but other MMs had a lot of luck with it (great way to get a kill in Sudden Death). His grab range did seem pretty big, and his fthrow was decently strong. Jab/ftilt/nair are also all that same kinda crummy pea shooter that does so little hitstun opponents can just kinda power through it; it didn't seem all that handy. Utilt hits harder than most utilts, but it doesn't kill like Snake's or anything and in fact MM seems to have kill move problems in general. Dair was disappointing since it's really slow and doesn't actually travel as far as you might like (just disappears), but uair is really fantastic in every way you might hope so that's good. Putting it all together, MM is not especially quick and really lacks power, but he has a lot of moves that have real merit individually and probably can cobble together enough of those viable tools to find a viable gameplan though certainly no one playing the demo found one other than "hope you get a final smash".
I saw pretty little Villager, and when I did see him, he seldom won. So many of his moves have strange properties or hit in strange patterns, and it seems like it kinda comes together to make him weak to just getting rushed while I never really saw any one gimmick that seemed to really give him an abusable angle. That's not to say he doesn't have some good moves and show some real overall promise though; his recovery is slow and gimpable but absurdly huge (like Brawl R.O.B. huge) which is certainly a thing of some merit. The Loid Rocket is a ridiculously good move in general; it's one of the best projectiles in just about every way (very little commitment for Villager, hits well, travels just quickly enough to both let Villager get an advantage from it while not being super easy to just avoid) and when he rides it it's actually a really good recovery move that lets Villager horizontal recover pretty well. It does have a range limit though; one of the guys I was chatting with tested him in Smash Run and discovered that eventually he automatically jumps off. His grab is also pretty great; it's faster than you'd think an overhead net swing would be, but it still does hit just a huge area. Every Villager player also realy seemed to love ftilt (the umbrella) as a poke a whole lot, and that's about all I can say about this guy. He has some tools, but an overall gameplan still doesn't seem obvious for him.
Wii Fit Trainer I used once but was almost never picked by others. She's weird in that her animations are really snappy to the point that she almost animates like G&W. She actually is unusually fast as far as attack speed goes and has good power, but her moves seem to only hit small areas (not bad range but just not covering large areas) and they didn't seem to really stick around either which I think is going to be a big counterbalancing weakness for her obvious statistical strengths. I can't say much more beyond that I found her really hard to play (totally contrary to what I personally want in a character) but that I doubt as she stands that she could be truly bad just because honestly her speed to power ratio is probably second only to Little Mac's and is just great with Sun Salutation being a pretty good projectile for that angle as well.
Rosalina generally did really, really badly almost every time she got picked. To be straight about it, I don't think she seems very good. I know Luma is complicated which seems like it should make her hard to judge, but the reality is that she doesn't seem to have quick or precise control over Luma's movement or really anything resembling it. Outside of synchronization with Luma, she seems slow in every sense of the word; she has the slowest movement in the demo, and her attack speed is pretty thoroughly unimpressive too (her dash attack seems especially bad). She's not especially strong though I wouldn't call her weak either, and while her hitboxes aren't bad, they aren't really a strength either. A few of her moves seem okay and she has a great recovery, but the Luma thing seems harder than we might like in the sense that it's honestly just a lot easier due to the way it works to separate her from Luma than it is to separate Nana from Popo in the other smash games and also less punishing to get hit by Luma when attacking Rosalina than it was to get hit by Nana when attacking Popo. A character like this we definitely can't write off until a thorough exploration, but she's going to need some serious tricks as she stands to pull ahead of the other characters.
Little Mac has had many words said by others, but let me summarize everything simply. Little Mac has the best ground game ever. Melee Fox wishes he has Little Mac's ground game. Little Mac's recovery is arguably the worst in the series; it's approximately in league with Smash 64 Link's recovery which is worse than anything in Melee or Brawl for those unfamiliar. That's pretty horrible and holds him back a lot, but he'd be completely broken with a normal recovery so it's hard to judge him overall. Unlike previously reported elsewhere, Little Mac can use side special to gain distance while recovering, but it doesn't go all that far and does put him into helpless so he's choosing between it and up special to go a small horizontal distance or a small vertical distance but not both. In reality, if you get hit particularly far off-stage, you're in huge trouble with this character, and kinda like with Brawl Olimar, having this kind of recovery just makes jumping scary though contrary to what others have said his air game otherwise doesn't seem that bad. Unlike some other uppercut style moves, his up special still has great priority even in the air and his uair isn't bad either so he can threaten in juggle situations competently and he fast falls pretty fast so he can escape those situations to some extent as well. I also have to stress just how good this ground game is. He runs almost as fast as Sonic. His punches generally have fantastic range and priority and come out at speeds we generally expect from characters like Sheik. He just pours on damage and has fantastic kill power even before factoring in the super strong KO uppercut mechanic. Little Mac was winning a lot even with his massive weakness, and I think a smart player with good stage control and DI to help mitigate the recovery weakness could go very far with him.
I saved the best for last with Greninja. I got to play Greninja three times, and if I was going to play any character that much, I'm glad it was this guy. Greninja is hands down the best newcomer and is definitely one of the better characters in the demo overall. Greninja has fantastic ground speed and one of the best sets of aerials in the series. Uair is this godly move that animates kinda like Samus's but is everything Samus's uair ever wanted to be. It is really long with a kinda wind effect around it that correctly shows a minor disjoint surrounding the move. If combos all the hits super cleanly, and the last hit has real kill power in juggle situations. It starts up really fast too so it's really easy to hit with. Dair is this bounce with which Greninja plunges straight down and meteors on hit, but if he hits something (including a shield), he bounds back up and is totally free to act. If you dair again and hit something again, you don't bounce again, but it's still a really nice option though it's risky off-stage and seems pretty unsafe to whiff so it will probably play out like a better version of Toon Link's dair from Brawl. Fair and bair are both quick limb swings with nice knockback (but not anything special in terms of kill power) and good range. Nair is this water move with a sphere of water around Greninja's mid-section that kinda hits all over his body, but it doesn't actually stay active for as long as you might think (though it's overall a decently quick move). I didn't find the situations that move shines, but I'm pretty sure they exist.
His ground attacks are kinda secondary to his air attacks but not bad at all. Usmash is the gem here; it does 19%, has massive range with the two water swords, is pretty quick all around, and knocks the enemy upward perfectly to either be in a nasty juggle situation at most percentages or just to die outright at higher percentages assuming you haven't just staled this guy out. Fsmash and dsmash are more water sword moves that seem a bit sluggish compared to the rest of Greninja's moves, but they're still not slow by the standards of a typical character and seem perfectly servicable. Ftilt is a long kick that likewise is not slow by other standards but not fast by Greninja standards. Jab on the other hand is super impressive. It's really fast, has great range, and goes into a rapid jab that lets you do damage fast (and rapid jabs are generally good, not bad, in this game since they're safe to hit with and do more damage than other jabs). Greninja also seems to be able to land grabs easily with his general speed and flow, and his throws don't seem to launch as far as most others which is a mixed blessing in that he doesn't seem to kill with throws like others but has some good chases off them. Dthrow in particular was disappointing though; it pops the enemy at a truly wonderful angle right in Greninja's face, but Greninja is kinda laggy after using it which actually makes it hard to exploit. Water Shuriken is an amazing projectile all around as well for reasons well covered elsewhere on the internet, and his recovery is very fast and very huge which certainly doesn't hurt. I love this character.
Mario is mostly just a better version of his Brawl self as far as I can tell. His bair in particular is notably good. Sorry, very little else to add on him; he's an oddly unpopular pick.
DK is very similar to his Brawl self in a lot of ways. Ftilt, bthrow, bair, uair, and fsmash are certainly the same old goodness. Fair is still bad, and I didn't get to test out cargos or his new dash attack which is unfortunate. Giant Punch seems to charge slower, but dair stretched his foot longer and Ground Pound just seemed generally a bit better so that kinda compensated. I also think his side special was a bit faster, but it didn't seem improved enough to be a viable move. However, his weight seems to help him more this time, his overall speed/power ratio just felt good, and the general flow of the engine just seemed well suited to DK.
Link is massively improved, and this is clearly the best version of Link in any smash game. Dair is the superstar; it is just faster in every way most obviously with the landing lag (it's like half as much as Brawl), and the bounce on a shield or hit is bigger in a way that's really helpful. In general all of his moves just seem faster and more powerful; ftilt makes it really obvious where Link just decides to control this huge area in front of him in a fast, strong, and really viable way as opposed to the Brawl version that was kinda slow and didn't even hit quite as hard as you hoped it would anyway. Usmash alwasy comboing fully really helps him out; even in sudden death, the first two hits flow into the third like there's no other way this move was supposed to work. With fsmash too, if you get that first hit, flowing into the second is something you can count on instead of pray for. His recovery is so much bigger than his Brawl recovery as well, and having a zair is still a great thing in smash 4 (still lagless).
Samus too is just massively improved from Brawl. Across the board, she's just so much faster and stronger; her roll's animation being just way faster is the most visually obvious point. I did notice Screw Attack failing to kill an opponent over 100% way above Battlefield so I'm not sure what reports of it being a KO move are going on about, but on the other hand, her missiles fly non-trivially faster in this game than in Brawl so even if she's more committed firing them, she still gets something out of it.
Yoshi is massively improved, and this is clearly the best version of Yoshi in any smash game. Yoshi can now jump out of shield, and it's as good as you Yoshi mains probably always imagined it would be. Egg Throw is changed up a lot. It now goes a lot less far, but to compensate, Yoshi has crazy control over the angle. He can throw it at such a low angle that it practically goes horizontally, and he can throw it at such a high angle that it's around 80 degrees above the horizontal so overall Yoshi can hit anything vaguely near him with eggs really easily in this game. Yoshi's jab combo is now three hits, his new up smash seems really great (it's a big flip kick), and overall he just seems to have a lot better speed/power than he's been allowed to have before. His double jump is kinda weird in how it cancels. If you airdodge or aerial during it, you still rise a fair bit but not as much as you would have if you didn't do those actions; you kinda stall a bit instead of continuing to ascend to your peak. I'm sure that particular path will have good uses found for it though...
Fox is one of the characters I saw the least of. He seems to have lost an awful lot of power to the point that he just didn't seem to perform like he used to, but he's still Fox and still has most of those core good moves. I can't say much more about him though Thinkaman told me on Wednesday that Fox can still do the rising fair trick from Brawl but it gets less height.
Kirby honestly seems to have some of the slower mobility in the demo (running speed and air control), but he isn't what I'd call slow regardless. I'm not seeing the power on him I've seen claimed elsewhere; he seemed like a really middle of the road character in terms of both power and attack speed to me, and while the hammer hits really hard, I don't think good players in the long run will be hit by that move since it's even slower than ever. Inhale can still eat Sandbag; that's fun.
Pikachu is great in this demo. His overall mobility is still super high, jumping around spamming Thunder Jolt is about as doable as in Brawl which is great for Pikachu, and he has a few really nice buffs. Thunder is now all around a lot faster; the Melee stormcloud doesn't really counterbalance the really nice speed increase for Pikachu on this. Also, Thunder does not always stop at platforms now. The top parts of the bolt will pass through platforms while the lower parts will be stopped. On Battlefield from the ground, Pikachu can Thunder through the top platform but not the side ones; it takes some getting used to, but it means that no stage can neuter this move anymore. Down smash seems to have a bit less range than before, but with SDIing out of it being gone, it's now reliable. Even better, if you whiff dsmash, Pikachu only does one spin so it's a lot less punishable on whiff than it used to be. Pikachu has a new fsmash animation in which he leands forward on one foot while doing his classic fsmash. It seems faster and all around a bit better, and it's also completely adorable which is definitely very important. I also thought I saw him do a fancy corkscrew style spin on his Skull Bash, but I only saw that move used once.
Luigi is massively improved, and this is clearly the best version of Luigi in any smash game. Luigi's running speed is better as with most characters, but it's super sweet for him since the way multi-hit moves just work in this game also applies to him. His historically worthless dash attack is super good now; if you hit with one hit, it's more or less assured that all of the rest will combo straight through the final blow. Honestly like this I think it's the best dash attack in the game since it's fast and does a lot of damage, and giving that to a character who previously had the single worst one is quite a revolution. His aerials are still really fast and his overall moveset still has a ton of power, and unlike with some other projectiles, his fireballs didn't get nerfed in any way at all (they're about the same as Brawl, probably a bit faster like everything is in this game but not more than the game in general). Up special seems to have a bigger sweetspot to me as well, and that's always fun. The only downside is that Luigi Cyclone's ground mobility is radically reduced; it's only about half of what it used to be, but in light of everything else, that nerf is okay.
Bowser is massively improved, and this is clearly the best version of Bowser in any smash game. Bowser's new jab is a few punches instead of claw swipes, and it just looks stupid fast with great range too. Bowser's new nair is that big spin that seems to be faster than you might think and has fantastic hitboxes on it as well. Bowser's new fsmash is that huge dropkick that is really slow but stupid strong with Ike fsmash level range. His dash attack is way better now as well though it's still not exactly the safest move in the world. Dair now actually connects well, pushes him down, and has a lot less landing lag. Most of his core good moves from before remain; his tilts seem the same as do usmash, Whirling Fortress, and Flying Slam. Fire Breath starts up a lot faster even. He's still Bowser with all that baggage that entails, but they were clearly very serious about improving him.
Zelda seems like the worst character in this demo by far. The biggest issue is that usmash has reduced hitboxes compared to Brawl while her other decent moves (tilts, fsmash) seem about the same. Din's Fire is still too slow to have any use. The Phantom is somehow even slower and worse than Din's Fire. It takes forever to use no matter what, and if you don't charge it, it doesn't hit very far forward. It has no tracking so you have to charge carefully the right amount to hit specific points forward which with the general sloth of the move is an impossible task even in FFA where you won't always be the focus. In singles, this may be the new single worst move in the game. Her grabs are still extremely laggy just like in Brawl. Lightning kicks seem very similar to Brawl as well as do her other two specials. The only actual buffs she seems to have is that dair stretches that foot down further and uair hits a bit bigger area. Yeah, she was already bottom tier in Brawl and got worse; she needs a ton of work if she's going to be a real character in this game.
Sheik is one of the two I didn't play directly, but Junglechief gave me a good report. Ftilt is just combos for days, and fair is a good combo move too that also apparently has massive active frames (he describes hitting all three CPU who were kinda spread out with a single fair just due to it sticking around as he fell toward them). Dsmash seems slower but stronger than before, and fsmash now combos reliably. Bair is now a kill move, and dair can now be air controlled between her falling nearly straight down and at about a 45 degree angle. He mostly just stressed that Sheik will probably be nerfed before release and that she's very top tier in this demo.
This version of Marth does not impress. Marth is still Marth for all the goodness that is, but he's honestly just kinda slow all around. His ground game is less hurt than his air game, but most Marth I saw basically boiled down to relying on the same old reasons Marth has always been good (sweeping, huge hitboxes) but just having less speed to work with. Shield Breaker is just visibly a lot better which is a nice little thing, but otherwise, it's really hard to find buffs to offset the nerfs. Incidentally, I think most people who said landing lag is especially bad in this game versus Brawl must have played Marth. It's definitely very true for him, but he's a slowed down character when everyone else was sped up so he's like the single worst character to judge anything like that.
Pit's upperdash arm is like Captain Falcon's Raptor Boost except with more power and a lot more priority. Pit's uair now has massively more range. His new up special goes really far really fast, but it seems to have awful hitboxes so it's basically recovery only (I did see what looked like it breaking a smashball once; before that, I thought it didn't hit at all).
Olimar is great. Most of why Olimar is good hasn't been changed; the performance may have gone down a bit, but it's not that much (and yeah, fsmash can still go over a platform; Junglechief tested that out explicitly). On the other hand, he replaced his previously awful up special with a crazy good one. It not only is an absolutely huge and pretty fast recovery, but it seems to have momentum cancel properties as well. Having only three pikmin does not seem like a big deal honestly.
Zero Suit Samus is super fantastic, but I think everyone knows that. She has speed, range, power, combos, mobility... I can't add anything of note here other than that impressions elsewhere are not wrong about her.
Toon Link was the other character I only know of from Junglechief's reports. He was really positive about Toon Link as well; apparently Toon Link's sword is generally longer now, and it's especially notable with bair and dtilt. He actually kinda just kept saying how good bair was now; that was basically Junglechief's main point about Toon Link he wanted to drive home. Apparently TL still has pretty low landing lag across the board. His dair was nerfed though; it apparently no longer does that bounce but just hits the victim and keeps going. He does seem to throw bombs faster and further than before with all of his types of throws, and that's a nice thing too.
Sonic is definitely buffed. His general movement including the spin tricks seems about the same, but his KO power is noticably higher which makes a big difference for him (uair is nice, and even Homing Attack now hits way harder). Xion claimed that Sonic felt floatier than even Brawl, but he didn't look that way from my perhaps less trained eye. The changes to multi-hit moves are especially nice for Sonic; uair is quite reliable to hit with both hits, and up smash is now strong instead of poor. Dair has way less landing lag.
DK is very similar to his Brawl self in a lot of ways. Ftilt, bthrow, bair, uair, and fsmash are certainly the same old goodness. Fair is still bad, and I didn't get to test out cargos or his new dash attack which is unfortunate. Giant Punch seems to charge slower, but dair stretched his foot longer and Ground Pound just seemed generally a bit better so that kinda compensated. I also think his side special was a bit faster, but it didn't seem improved enough to be a viable move. However, his weight seems to help him more this time, his overall speed/power ratio just felt good, and the general flow of the engine just seemed well suited to DK.
Link is massively improved, and this is clearly the best version of Link in any smash game. Dair is the superstar; it is just faster in every way most obviously with the landing lag (it's like half as much as Brawl), and the bounce on a shield or hit is bigger in a way that's really helpful. In general all of his moves just seem faster and more powerful; ftilt makes it really obvious where Link just decides to control this huge area in front of him in a fast, strong, and really viable way as opposed to the Brawl version that was kinda slow and didn't even hit quite as hard as you hoped it would anyway. Usmash alwasy comboing fully really helps him out; even in sudden death, the first two hits flow into the third like there's no other way this move was supposed to work. With fsmash too, if you get that first hit, flowing into the second is something you can count on instead of pray for. His recovery is so much bigger than his Brawl recovery as well, and having a zair is still a great thing in smash 4 (still lagless).
Samus too is just massively improved from Brawl. Across the board, she's just so much faster and stronger; her roll's animation being just way faster is the most visually obvious point. I did notice Screw Attack failing to kill an opponent over 100% way above Battlefield so I'm not sure what reports of it being a KO move are going on about, but on the other hand, her missiles fly non-trivially faster in this game than in Brawl so even if she's more committed firing them, she still gets something out of it.
Yoshi is massively improved, and this is clearly the best version of Yoshi in any smash game. Yoshi can now jump out of shield, and it's as good as you Yoshi mains probably always imagined it would be. Egg Throw is changed up a lot. It now goes a lot less far, but to compensate, Yoshi has crazy control over the angle. He can throw it at such a low angle that it practically goes horizontally, and he can throw it at such a high angle that it's around 80 degrees above the horizontal so overall Yoshi can hit anything vaguely near him with eggs really easily in this game. Yoshi's jab combo is now three hits, his new up smash seems really great (it's a big flip kick), and overall he just seems to have a lot better speed/power than he's been allowed to have before. His double jump is kinda weird in how it cancels. If you airdodge or aerial during it, you still rise a fair bit but not as much as you would have if you didn't do those actions; you kinda stall a bit instead of continuing to ascend to your peak. I'm sure that particular path will have good uses found for it though...
Fox is one of the characters I saw the least of. He seems to have lost an awful lot of power to the point that he just didn't seem to perform like he used to, but he's still Fox and still has most of those core good moves. I can't say much more about him though Thinkaman told me on Wednesday that Fox can still do the rising fair trick from Brawl but it gets less height.
Kirby honestly seems to have some of the slower mobility in the demo (running speed and air control), but he isn't what I'd call slow regardless. I'm not seeing the power on him I've seen claimed elsewhere; he seemed like a really middle of the road character in terms of both power and attack speed to me, and while the hammer hits really hard, I don't think good players in the long run will be hit by that move since it's even slower than ever. Inhale can still eat Sandbag; that's fun.
Pikachu is great in this demo. His overall mobility is still super high, jumping around spamming Thunder Jolt is about as doable as in Brawl which is great for Pikachu, and he has a few really nice buffs. Thunder is now all around a lot faster; the Melee stormcloud doesn't really counterbalance the really nice speed increase for Pikachu on this. Also, Thunder does not always stop at platforms now. The top parts of the bolt will pass through platforms while the lower parts will be stopped. On Battlefield from the ground, Pikachu can Thunder through the top platform but not the side ones; it takes some getting used to, but it means that no stage can neuter this move anymore. Down smash seems to have a bit less range than before, but with SDIing out of it being gone, it's now reliable. Even better, if you whiff dsmash, Pikachu only does one spin so it's a lot less punishable on whiff than it used to be. Pikachu has a new fsmash animation in which he leands forward on one foot while doing his classic fsmash. It seems faster and all around a bit better, and it's also completely adorable which is definitely very important. I also thought I saw him do a fancy corkscrew style spin on his Skull Bash, but I only saw that move used once.
Luigi is massively improved, and this is clearly the best version of Luigi in any smash game. Luigi's running speed is better as with most characters, but it's super sweet for him since the way multi-hit moves just work in this game also applies to him. His historically worthless dash attack is super good now; if you hit with one hit, it's more or less assured that all of the rest will combo straight through the final blow. Honestly like this I think it's the best dash attack in the game since it's fast and does a lot of damage, and giving that to a character who previously had the single worst one is quite a revolution. His aerials are still really fast and his overall moveset still has a ton of power, and unlike with some other projectiles, his fireballs didn't get nerfed in any way at all (they're about the same as Brawl, probably a bit faster like everything is in this game but not more than the game in general). Up special seems to have a bigger sweetspot to me as well, and that's always fun. The only downside is that Luigi Cyclone's ground mobility is radically reduced; it's only about half of what it used to be, but in light of everything else, that nerf is okay.
Bowser is massively improved, and this is clearly the best version of Bowser in any smash game. Bowser's new jab is a few punches instead of claw swipes, and it just looks stupid fast with great range too. Bowser's new nair is that big spin that seems to be faster than you might think and has fantastic hitboxes on it as well. Bowser's new fsmash is that huge dropkick that is really slow but stupid strong with Ike fsmash level range. His dash attack is way better now as well though it's still not exactly the safest move in the world. Dair now actually connects well, pushes him down, and has a lot less landing lag. Most of his core good moves from before remain; his tilts seem the same as do usmash, Whirling Fortress, and Flying Slam. Fire Breath starts up a lot faster even. He's still Bowser with all that baggage that entails, but they were clearly very serious about improving him.
Zelda seems like the worst character in this demo by far. The biggest issue is that usmash has reduced hitboxes compared to Brawl while her other decent moves (tilts, fsmash) seem about the same. Din's Fire is still too slow to have any use. The Phantom is somehow even slower and worse than Din's Fire. It takes forever to use no matter what, and if you don't charge it, it doesn't hit very far forward. It has no tracking so you have to charge carefully the right amount to hit specific points forward which with the general sloth of the move is an impossible task even in FFA where you won't always be the focus. In singles, this may be the new single worst move in the game. Her grabs are still extremely laggy just like in Brawl. Lightning kicks seem very similar to Brawl as well as do her other two specials. The only actual buffs she seems to have is that dair stretches that foot down further and uair hits a bit bigger area. Yeah, she was already bottom tier in Brawl and got worse; she needs a ton of work if she's going to be a real character in this game.
Sheik is one of the two I didn't play directly, but Junglechief gave me a good report. Ftilt is just combos for days, and fair is a good combo move too that also apparently has massive active frames (he describes hitting all three CPU who were kinda spread out with a single fair just due to it sticking around as he fell toward them). Dsmash seems slower but stronger than before, and fsmash now combos reliably. Bair is now a kill move, and dair can now be air controlled between her falling nearly straight down and at about a 45 degree angle. He mostly just stressed that Sheik will probably be nerfed before release and that she's very top tier in this demo.
This version of Marth does not impress. Marth is still Marth for all the goodness that is, but he's honestly just kinda slow all around. His ground game is less hurt than his air game, but most Marth I saw basically boiled down to relying on the same old reasons Marth has always been good (sweeping, huge hitboxes) but just having less speed to work with. Shield Breaker is just visibly a lot better which is a nice little thing, but otherwise, it's really hard to find buffs to offset the nerfs. Incidentally, I think most people who said landing lag is especially bad in this game versus Brawl must have played Marth. It's definitely very true for him, but he's a slowed down character when everyone else was sped up so he's like the single worst character to judge anything like that.
Pit's upperdash arm is like Captain Falcon's Raptor Boost except with more power and a lot more priority. Pit's uair now has massively more range. His new up special goes really far really fast, but it seems to have awful hitboxes so it's basically recovery only (I did see what looked like it breaking a smashball once; before that, I thought it didn't hit at all).
Olimar is great. Most of why Olimar is good hasn't been changed; the performance may have gone down a bit, but it's not that much (and yeah, fsmash can still go over a platform; Junglechief tested that out explicitly). On the other hand, he replaced his previously awful up special with a crazy good one. It not only is an absolutely huge and pretty fast recovery, but it seems to have momentum cancel properties as well. Having only three pikmin does not seem like a big deal honestly.
Zero Suit Samus is super fantastic, but I think everyone knows that. She has speed, range, power, combos, mobility... I can't add anything of note here other than that impressions elsewhere are not wrong about her.
Toon Link was the other character I only know of from Junglechief's reports. He was really positive about Toon Link as well; apparently Toon Link's sword is generally longer now, and it's especially notable with bair and dtilt. He actually kinda just kept saying how good bair was now; that was basically Junglechief's main point about Toon Link he wanted to drive home. Apparently TL still has pretty low landing lag across the board. His dair was nerfed though; it apparently no longer does that bounce but just hits the victim and keeps going. He does seem to throw bombs faster and further than before with all of his types of throws, and that's a nice thing too.
Sonic is definitely buffed. His general movement including the spin tricks seems about the same, but his KO power is noticably higher which makes a big difference for him (uair is nice, and even Homing Attack now hits way harder). Xion claimed that Sonic felt floatier than even Brawl, but he didn't look that way from my perhaps less trained eye. The changes to multi-hit moves are especially nice for Sonic; uair is quite reliable to hit with both hits, and up smash is now strong instead of poor. Dair has way less landing lag.
I'm sorry; I couldn't help myself. Forgive me. Tiers are ordered, oftentimes they're very tightly clustered though. Imagine a bunch of disclaimers about day -100+ tier lists being written here.
SS: Zero Suit Samus, Sheik
S: Greninja, Pikachu, Toon Link, Olimar, Luigi, Pit
A: Little Mac, Bowser, DK, Link, Samus, Mario, Wii Fit Trainer
B(more like B+, still very viable): Marth, Yoshi, Kirby, Villager, Sonic, Fox, Mega Man, Rosalina
D: Zelda
SS: Zero Suit Samus, Sheik
S: Greninja, Pikachu, Toon Link, Olimar, Luigi, Pit
A: Little Mac, Bowser, DK, Link, Samus, Mario, Wii Fit Trainer
B(more like B+, still very viable): Marth, Yoshi, Kirby, Villager, Sonic, Fox, Mega Man, Rosalina
D: Zelda
Battlefield is the same old stage, but it has more space off-stage to the sides and beneath.
Town and City is a rarely picked stage that seems very neutral overall, but it plays with the platform layouts as the match progresses. Very strong legal stage.
Mushroom Kingdom U was my favorite stage in the demo. It has a ton of different base forms it can use (I saw a grassland that was large with some platforms, mountain that was a single tilting platform, castle that was two large blocks that very slowly rotate about each other, and a sky that was two main sections of land with a hole in the middle but there are more I'm just not thinking of but none of them very wild at all), but then various little things will happen to tweak those. Sometimes you have the expanding/contracting donut block platforms, other times water spouts come up (which are just normal platforms; the lower parts of the water spout have no interaction with your character), and sometimes but pretty rarely you get the large icicle hazards. The thing is that this stage gives really, really big tells when it's going to do something. Kamek comes out and just sits there for a few seconds before flying over with the magic, and even then, the transitions happen quite gradually. The icicle hazards have a huge tell in that a very large water drop falls from the ceiling well before an icicle will hit that exact spot, the icicles fall slowly anyway, and even if you get hit, you just get frozen (and take some damage but not an unbearable amount) which is still pretty easy to mash out of at any realistic damage before you end up in trouble most of the time. I really, really want to see this stage legal; it's amazing.
Skyloft really is the Delfino of the sky. Most of the forms are actually more tame than Delfino's forms were, but it does have one with a pretty clear loop though it's a small enough loop that just running away for that form will be hard in most match-ups anyway. The platform layouts while flying also seem to usually be more horizontal and less vertical than Delfino was; I think this stage is a strong legal stage.
Pilotwings is actually a very simple stage. you start on the red plane which has some shades of Venom but is much better. It's a biplane with the upper wings being drop-through platforms and the lower wings being solid (but I'm pretty sure you can come up from the bottom, like Halberd etc.). The middle section of the plane is completely solid and divides the bottom. After 46 seconds (the one time I timed it), the yellow plane which is a single large platform comes (though you can stand on two very small little platforms underneath it), and you ride that until 1:55 into the overall stage at which point you go back to the red one. IMO obviously legal here too unless something super nasty is found. I've heard rumors of rock hazards here, but I just haven't seen anything like that so it's either very rare or happens way off-stage.
Wily's Castle is a potential legal candidate. The actual platforms are very interesting, and while the ceiling is pretty high, otherwise, it's a really solid basic stage. The Yellow Devil is the main disruptive point, and honestly he is pretty disruptive but not so bad in another way. He does very poor damage and knockback when he hits; I think the knockback might actually be fixed. He also moves really slowly and predictably. So he's taking up a ton of real estate, but you have tons of time to react to him and he's just so weak that he's really almost more like a wall than a stage hazard (though you can slip past him when necessary; it's not an unreasonable thing to do). His exploding gimmick is almost not a thing. I only saw it once when a Marth player just totally ignored a crazy chunk of the match to pursue YD single-mindedly and YD got hit a lot otherwise; YD's health is just so crazy that I forsee the explosion being crazy rare. When it does happen. it hits like a Smart Bomb centered around YD's eye that is pretty much guaranteed death for anyone other than the person who triggered it in the area (but it expands kinda slowly and never goes *that* far so, if you're not in it right away, you can stay out of the way pretty easily).
The FE Coliseum was rarely played and is kinda large but probably not as large as Eldin. The machinery for platfroms seems really tame but random. The quality of this stage probably depends more on other metagame factors than anything else.
The Boxing Arena is a crazy awful stage. It's huge, the ground lay-out promotes camping like crazy, the lights allow tons of gimmicks and hardcore camping too (I saw a very sad match where someone got up there against Villager and just kept popping his balloons as they passed through the platform to force him back down as he futilely tried to get up to fight up there), and the lights are also a crazy powerful hazard if you weren't convinced by a stage lover like me being so straight out negative about a stage. This stage is a day one ban unless something big changes.
Tortimer's Island is a very basic stage I played on 3DS. The left ledge is grabbable but the right one isn't which is kinda odd, but otherwise it's mostly a flat stage (the water is not swimmable). The two tress are acutally two tiered platforms and are the only platforms on the stage, and I didn't see anything interactive here at all. This is obviously legal for 3DS even if it's a bit large.
Gerudo Valley is very large. Like, really, it's big; I think it's bigger than Eldin. The bridge dropped out on me without a lot of warning as well though there's a lot of stuff down there and it's not likely you'll die. It seems to have a really slow natural pacing to it, and I did see Koume and Kotake, but I didn't even pay attention to what they were doing to be honest as I was exploring Luigi's moveset and had already kinda concluded the stage seemed bad. Sorry.
Rainbow Road I know of from Junglechief's report. He says it's just like Mute City but the cars are like the ones on Mario Circuit and hence move a lot slower. Take that as you will.
Town and City is a rarely picked stage that seems very neutral overall, but it plays with the platform layouts as the match progresses. Very strong legal stage.
Mushroom Kingdom U was my favorite stage in the demo. It has a ton of different base forms it can use (I saw a grassland that was large with some platforms, mountain that was a single tilting platform, castle that was two large blocks that very slowly rotate about each other, and a sky that was two main sections of land with a hole in the middle but there are more I'm just not thinking of but none of them very wild at all), but then various little things will happen to tweak those. Sometimes you have the expanding/contracting donut block platforms, other times water spouts come up (which are just normal platforms; the lower parts of the water spout have no interaction with your character), and sometimes but pretty rarely you get the large icicle hazards. The thing is that this stage gives really, really big tells when it's going to do something. Kamek comes out and just sits there for a few seconds before flying over with the magic, and even then, the transitions happen quite gradually. The icicle hazards have a huge tell in that a very large water drop falls from the ceiling well before an icicle will hit that exact spot, the icicles fall slowly anyway, and even if you get hit, you just get frozen (and take some damage but not an unbearable amount) which is still pretty easy to mash out of at any realistic damage before you end up in trouble most of the time. I really, really want to see this stage legal; it's amazing.
Skyloft really is the Delfino of the sky. Most of the forms are actually more tame than Delfino's forms were, but it does have one with a pretty clear loop though it's a small enough loop that just running away for that form will be hard in most match-ups anyway. The platform layouts while flying also seem to usually be more horizontal and less vertical than Delfino was; I think this stage is a strong legal stage.
Pilotwings is actually a very simple stage. you start on the red plane which has some shades of Venom but is much better. It's a biplane with the upper wings being drop-through platforms and the lower wings being solid (but I'm pretty sure you can come up from the bottom, like Halberd etc.). The middle section of the plane is completely solid and divides the bottom. After 46 seconds (the one time I timed it), the yellow plane which is a single large platform comes (though you can stand on two very small little platforms underneath it), and you ride that until 1:55 into the overall stage at which point you go back to the red one. IMO obviously legal here too unless something super nasty is found. I've heard rumors of rock hazards here, but I just haven't seen anything like that so it's either very rare or happens way off-stage.
Wily's Castle is a potential legal candidate. The actual platforms are very interesting, and while the ceiling is pretty high, otherwise, it's a really solid basic stage. The Yellow Devil is the main disruptive point, and honestly he is pretty disruptive but not so bad in another way. He does very poor damage and knockback when he hits; I think the knockback might actually be fixed. He also moves really slowly and predictably. So he's taking up a ton of real estate, but you have tons of time to react to him and he's just so weak that he's really almost more like a wall than a stage hazard (though you can slip past him when necessary; it's not an unreasonable thing to do). His exploding gimmick is almost not a thing. I only saw it once when a Marth player just totally ignored a crazy chunk of the match to pursue YD single-mindedly and YD got hit a lot otherwise; YD's health is just so crazy that I forsee the explosion being crazy rare. When it does happen. it hits like a Smart Bomb centered around YD's eye that is pretty much guaranteed death for anyone other than the person who triggered it in the area (but it expands kinda slowly and never goes *that* far so, if you're not in it right away, you can stay out of the way pretty easily).
The FE Coliseum was rarely played and is kinda large but probably not as large as Eldin. The machinery for platfroms seems really tame but random. The quality of this stage probably depends more on other metagame factors than anything else.
The Boxing Arena is a crazy awful stage. It's huge, the ground lay-out promotes camping like crazy, the lights allow tons of gimmicks and hardcore camping too (I saw a very sad match where someone got up there against Villager and just kept popping his balloons as they passed through the platform to force him back down as he futilely tried to get up to fight up there), and the lights are also a crazy powerful hazard if you weren't convinced by a stage lover like me being so straight out negative about a stage. This stage is a day one ban unless something big changes.
Tortimer's Island is a very basic stage I played on 3DS. The left ledge is grabbable but the right one isn't which is kinda odd, but otherwise it's mostly a flat stage (the water is not swimmable). The two tress are acutally two tiered platforms and are the only platforms on the stage, and I didn't see anything interactive here at all. This is obviously legal for 3DS even if it's a bit large.
Gerudo Valley is very large. Like, really, it's big; I think it's bigger than Eldin. The bridge dropped out on me without a lot of warning as well though there's a lot of stuff down there and it's not likely you'll die. It seems to have a really slow natural pacing to it, and I did see Koume and Kotake, but I didn't even pay attention to what they were doing to be honest as I was exploring Luigi's moveset and had already kinda concluded the stage seemed bad. Sorry.
Rainbow Road I know of from Junglechief's report. He says it's just like Mute City but the cars are like the ones on Mario Circuit and hence move a lot slower. Take that as you will.
Whew, that was a lot of words. Now let me do the video thing. This is a match that should be interpreted as a doubles match. Amazing Ampharos (Greninja) and Junglechief (Link) versus Two Cool Guys Whose Names I Didn't Catch (Mario and Rosalina). We have a gentleman's agreement not to use the items so we can explore what this game played a little more seriously will feel like; we do our best on that and mostly succeed.
The rest of the playlist can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmHi1rPbj_RqLsgls9WkFVmPrXSO-Zw1I
Of note is that Xion's Sonic can be seen in the last video of the playlist. Otherwise it's just whoever happened to be playing though we are found in some of the day one stuff (but we were struggling a lot more with the game on day one... though I still won 2/3 games!). In total there's footage for 26 matches which I think is an awful lot. I also promised I'd tag Xion when I had it up so... @Xion DarkRose . I hope I did that right.
I'm going to end with a special surprise thing since I'm on the topic of Xion. He only actually has played smash 4 once, but he was going around distributing fliers to promote a tournament at both the Best Buy I was at and at the one in Lee's Summit. With his own eyes at the other one, he watched a little kid pick random and get... Ganondorf! Yeah, apparently random in the demo is buggy and could pull Ganondorf, and this otherwise unknown little kid at one of the least popular Best Buys was the only one who ever found something this fantastic from it. Unfortunately the player who got Ganon was apparently not very strong and just kinda mashed so it was hard to see much of how Ganon was changed, but he was based on his Twilight Princess model like in Brawl. Xion said Ganon had his Melee side special but otherwise seemed a lot like Brawl Ganon though he noted that Ganon seemed really unfinished which means that basically all the gameplay stuff has to be taken with a huge grain of salt in terms of relevance to the final product. I've known Xion for years; I can tell you he's not lying about this. So yeah, Ganon confirmed... if there was any doubt.
I may have just typed a novel on smash 4's demo longer than most actual dissertations, but I have gotten almost a half an hour of total playtime and feel really comfortable talking about the game. If you have any questions that somehow were not addressed above, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
![[TSON]](/data/avatars/l/114/114196.jpg?1360761019){kind=avatar}
