Are Spirit Battles too exploitable for their own good?

[Jeremy Smasher]

I want to view Spirit Battles as a cute little spin-off of Event Matches, little fun scenarios representing characters with clever references. But the problem that detractors of the mode have brought up is how they can be trivialised through Spirit combinations that cheese the challenge too much for its own good. An example brought up in this one video was using the Animal Crossing spirit that gives you the Ore Club to make wading through standard Spirit Battles a breeze. I used to think this was somewhat negated through the ability to get more rewards if your Spirit Team power is lesser than that of the opponent's, at the very least giving you a legitimate reason to play through with a less powerful deck at your hands. But you can still use say, that all mighty Club and still have your Spirit Team's power lesser than that of the opponent's.

Does this make Spirits cheesable to the point of worthlessness? Would it have helped if winning with absolutely no Spirits at all netted you even more rewards so you were technically incentivised to complete the battle at that certain difficulty (though that might be a bit against the expected way of being able to play these battles, what with the Stage Conditions and all)? I just want to ask if this criticism of the mode is paramount and not dismissable and if that in turn, devalues the quality and experience of the mode. Because after all, if you've got a powerful tool in a video game, aren't you always going to use it unless incentivised otherwise?

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

You do need to keep in mind that you can't just depend on the Ore Club in every single spirit battle, since there can be conditions that require you to use different spirit abilities.

Take the Gruntilda spirit battle for an example, where you need a spirit that can counter the poison floor hazard. In fact, for that particular spirit battle, having the Madama Butterfly spirit is strongly encouraged.

With that said, while you can cheese certain spirit battles with a strong enough spirit team, there are occasions where strategy is more important than brute force.

 

[Jeremy Smasher]

You do need to keep in mind that you can't just depend on the Ore Club in every single spirit battle, since there can be conditions that require you to use different spirit abilities.

Take the Gruntilda spirit battle for an example, where you need a spirit that can counter the poison floor hazard. In fact, for that particular spirit battle, having the Madama Butterfly spirit is strongly encouraged.

With that said, while you can cheese certain spirit battles with a strong enough spirit team, there are occasions where strategy is more important than brute force.

That's a very good point. I think there was also this one thing about cheesing battles using Chrom's up special, but that's more an exploit of the CPU AI than Spirits itself.

I think also in trying the same battles with different Spirits power levels and no Spirits, maybe the reward slightly increases in the absence of Spirits as well? (Preferably for attempting 1 and 2 star Spirit Battles.) It will totally stop giving you rewards with a strong enough Spirit Team power greater than the opponent's at some point, but it's been kinda hard to tell for me if it fluctuates within the state between "no Spirits" and "most powerful Spirits" depending on the specific Team Power number you have, seeing as the reward types you get shift around a bit. Maybe it doesn't? Also kinda makes me wonder if that's why the autopick will give you Spirit Teams close in power to your opponent so you can get more rewards, when you have much more powerful Spirits at your disposal you think the game would auto-pick instead.

 

[Oddball]

That's part of the appeal of them. You can approach them like a puzzle and choose what specific spirits will work best, you can just do that random autoselect thing, or you can pick something like Giant Sized + Metal and just brute force it.

Or you can fight with no spirits equiped at all. It's only limited by how you want to play.