Who is the easiest/hardest character in the game to play?

[Ravengeance]

So I've always personally gravitated to the imo harder to play characters just because it is more fun for me. It got me thinking who in Sm4sh is the easiest character to play and who is the most difficult to play (effectively)? All opinions are welcome and details accepted. No wrong answers (unless you tell me sonic is hard to play).

 

[AreJay25]

Sonic is hard to play. /s
Easiest would probably be Diddy or Mario to me.
Hardest goes to either Peach or Pac-Man.

 

[sogeki]

Easiest is Palutena.
Hardest is Shiek.

 

[Sari]

Easiest: Link
Hardest: Wii Fit Trainer

 

[Zylach]

Easiest to play is probably Diddy in terms of easiest to play and easiest to play at a high level. Easy followups from grabs, easy initiation with banana, His moves are all pretty straighforward with natural-feeling hitboxes, range, and speed. He's also got a projectile and his recovery is amazing.

Hardest to play might be Wii Fit Trainer since her play style isn't straighforward, her hitboxes are awkward and have different properties whether you hit the opponent with the front or back of a move (ftilt for instance). Not to mention, she has to charge a projectile, charge a buff for the projectile, then use the projectile in order to get early-ish kills since her kill potential on a lot of her moves isn't that great and her smashes are slow, have small hitboxes, and have a ton of endlag on them making them unsafe.

Hardest to play at a high level would probably be Robin. You need to know when to use the bronze sword and when to use the Levin sword since the bronze sword has less KB, comboing with it is easier but those combos are only effective until certain percents and all those percents are different for every character. Then you need to keep track of how many uses your spells have so you can catch the book when it's thrown away because utilizing those books is absolutely necessary for high level Robin play. Plus, you need to know the timing on a book's recharge so you don't activate an empty animation. Robin's also got some weird hitboxes on his aerials such as fair and bair which both start from below him and rise up slightly you have to be above the opponent in order to hit with the first hitbox frame. Plus, all of Robin's aerials, if not smashed, will use the last sword Robin used which means keeping track of the last attack you used in order to effectively use the type of aerial you want, especially if that aerial is a bronze sword attack that isn't nair because you have to use a bronze sword attack before doing that otherwise, it'll be a Levin sword. Plus, using nair to reset aerials to use the bronze sword is a thing. Robin is, by far, the most technical character meaning that using him at a high level requires use of all the technical bits about him.

 

[Fathom778]

Honestly, I don't think there's such a thing as easiest and hardest to play. It all depends on the player's play style, knowledge of the game, ect.

Let's say your 5 year old cousin is playing smash. EVERY character is gonna be the hardest for him, as he knows nothing, and doesn't have his own play style yet. Now, your older brother is playing Smash. He's played since the original, and knows about every hitbox, tech, ect. No character is gonna be to hard for him.

In terms of anyone, some people may play Diddy easy, while others have a hard time gripping on to him. Diddy's side special says otherwise but whatever. However, some other people might have snap on to him quick. Same goes for every other character. It all depend on your style, knowledge of the game, ect.

 

[Ze Diglett]

Easiest? Definitely , by a longshot. is a close contender, though.
As for the hardest, is pretty technical and kind of sucks balls on top of that. is pretty technical, too, so s/he (?) deserves a mention as well.

 

[Flor@]

Easiest/least tedious to learn to use in general:
Most difficult to learn/feel proficient with:


Simply tiring to play as, but still good:
Fun, probably full of potential, but hard to master:
I just don't like playing as:
Seem powerful but don't suit my playstyle/tastes:
Those I'm just not quite sure about:

 

[Wintropy]

There's no definitive easiest or hardest character: different people will adapt to different playstyles and may find a certain character fits their preferences intuitively, even if that character is considered to have a steep learning curve.

That said, I think Pit is a very simple character to pick up and play and is as balanced as a character in Smash could ever manage to be; by the same token, Palutena is almost impossible to get to grips with intuitively, and she requires a great deal of patience and focus to realise her full potential.

Funny enough, I main both of them. Says a lot, doesn't it?

 

[>NaCl]

Easiest: Sonic. ;-;
Hardest: Rosaluma

 

[BobEugCox]

I'm not a competitive player, but I've playing for a long time and have introduced many people to this game who've never played before. So if we're talking about Easiest/Hardest for new smashers, the only characters they seem to be able to handle (survive with) are Kirby or Metaknight, simply because of their good recovery.

I would say hardest for a beginner would definitely be Olimar. It's difficult playing with people who say "oh he's cute!" and then trying to explain that he has to have Pikmin available in order to do most of his moves... I usually say "please don't choose him!"

As for ME, who loves playing as all of the characters, I find playing with Shulk & Link the easiest, and that playing with Pit, Dark Pit, Wii Fit Trainer, Donkey Kong and Lucario are the most difficult to do well with. Especially Pit & Dark Pit... their movement seems so unnatural to me... I have a hard time connecting aerial attacks because they fall so quickly from their jumps. I would like them a lot more if they were a bit lighter & quicker. (Or one of them)

To sum it up:
Easy for Beginners:
Difficult for Beginners:
Easy for me personally:
Difficult for me personally:

 

[Goolloom]

The easiest characters are anyone with easy grab follow ups and combos ( , and are the first who come to mind) and other charcers than can do Dthrow Uair easily. is also an (dis)honorable mention on being easy to pick up and feel like you're good with him *cough*For Glory*cough*

The hardest to play and master would be those with more technical and managing things like (Tomes and the swords)
(Pikmin's order and each one's properties) and (Everything that goes with Luma)
Others that are harder to master would probably be the heavyweights more like or due to having laggy moves overall, needing reads to get KO's, being combo food to other characters like Mario or Ness. DK's bad vertical recovery and Ganondorf's bad recovery overall makes them quite easily gimped and they just have too many downsides to just be picked up and be good with them.
requires you to be careful because of having the worst air game and recovery in the game, one simple mistake can mean death with him.
Because of weird hitboxes and unusual playstyle makes him/her harder to get used to.

TL:DR : the ''easy'' charaters don't require as much work and training to be fairly good with them

 

[RobinOnDrugs]

Depends on how you play.

 

[Wanderer from Roseyard]

The hardest characters for a new Smash player would have to be Jigglypuff and Ness - the characters whose up+B don't immediately propel them upward, which is one of the most basic, core maneuvers you learn when new to Smash. It's jarring when your instinct is to up+B to survive and you either fall asleep or shoot out a weird projectile that dissipates if it clips anything. Yoshi used to be like this, but that extra hangtime he gets when throwing an egg actually mitigates the issue a lot for him.

At a high level, Robin. Too much micro managing. I personally find it tedious even in low-level play.

The easiest characters at just about any level are the ones with responsive yet manageable movement like Mario, Marth, Sheik.

 

[Freduardo]

The easiest character to play as is Mario, you're already experienced controlling him in video games, his moves are straightforward, and he's the first guy to select on the character select screen.

The hardest character to play as is Lucas, because he's not in the game yet and you'd have to pay money to play as him.

 

[Raethien]

Shulk is pretty easy.

 

[Narr]

For beginners, I've found that , , , and are all very easy to pick up.

 

[Kamui Nohr]

I've found Link very easy easy to use when I was just picking up him for the Long-Distance Relationships conquest.
I think the hardest character for me to use is Mega Man, because it's highly unusual for me to play as a character who excels just in ranged combat with his projectiles when my usual playstyle involves getting up close.

Easiest:
Hardest:

 

[Diddy Kong]

What I like is that this game doesn't really have a character that is overall easy to learn or master. Even characters who where previously "easy" as and now have some serious debt going on for them. I'd even argue Pikachu is one of the hardest characters to master this time around.

 

[Deleted member]

For me personally, I got used to Marth/Lucina and Link pretty quickly when I first picked them up.
It took me a while to be good with Robin and Duck Hunt, and I'm still not too great with the latter. I still use DH nonetheless.

 

[neohopeSTF]

Mario and Sonic are the easiest to play.

Wii Fit is the hardest.

 

[Kyzael]

Out of my own personal experience, characters like Mario, Link, Kirby(Sorta, takes a bit more skill due to light weight), and Lucina.
Lucina is easy compared to Marth since because the need for spacing isn't required.

Lucario is harder (Not hardest) to play due to having to deal with your percents and your opponent's to figure out what set-ups you'll have to do. (Like for example, at both 0 - 0 %, Lucario can uptilt trap people till around 35%. From there, he can chain with his upsmash, Uair, Fair, or even Utilt. I've managed to get up to 60% on my opponent when I was 0%)
Otherwise, I know on paper Lucario seems easy and "rewarded for losing." This isn't true. I'm being rewarded because you weren't able to kill me early (Meteor, Jigg's wall of pain, Spike) or simply giving no space and making Lucario take no use of his Aura.

The hardest to play IMO is King Dedede (Or Charizard). I've yet to see anything from him and his moves are dangerous because of lag. Throwing the Fsmash gives enough time for a Falcon Punch.
And default Charizard leaves much to be desired. His specials are his weakpoint IMO. Mainly his Side B, due to being dangerous to use.

 

[Mizzy Moe]

easiest: diddy, luma and rosilina
hardest: olimar, robin, wii fit trainer

 

[Altais]

That ultimately depends on the player.

 

[Zerp]

Hardest is whoever is my main. I am obviously the most skilled player in the world, the only reason I haven't jv-500'd M2K is because my character is too hard.

Easiest is whoever is my least favorite match up, obviously my opponent only won because their character is easy and takes no skillz, not because they are better.

(This is completely sarcastic, in case you couldn't tell, it's all down to the player's preference and natural playstyle really)

 

[Pixel_]

I personally don't think that it completely depends on the player. Sure, some characters may be hard for certain players, but there's still characters that are generally hard.

I mean, even if a person is a natural for a hard character, they'll still need to put in an effort to learn everything and practice, while other characters may be easier to be good at.

I actually don't know that much about too many characters, so it's a bit hard for me to say, but:
Easiest: - Everybody seems to say so
- Isn't he MEANT to be easy?

Hardest: - according to this site, made by a guy on the site, so I think it's trustworthy
- takes a lot of thinking while playing

For characters I don't think belong on a certain side:

- he's weird and takes a while to get used to, but I'm pretty sure he's not the hardest
- are definitely not easy (or easiest)
- pretty hard, not sure if he's the easiest, though
- not hardest

I could give reasons, but I can't really right now...

 

[ZeldaMaster]

hardest:

 

[SleuthMechanism]

Hardest: Olimar, Sheik, and Robin. All are extremely technical characters who have a very unforgiving learning curve at hgih level play.easiest: in the current state of the game nobody is really braindead and that's a good thing. Pre-patch it was definitely Diddy though. Easiest character for someone to just pick up and start out with is either Mario or Kirby probably.