I think I should get around to saying what I've seen of Link. I've seen a lot of him and used him a lot myself, but I haven't gotten too much quality Link time (I think Thinkaman has though). Ahead of time warning, this turned out about 3x as long as I wanted it to, but Link was a big focus in-development and has seen a lot of play on my end so I have a lot to say.
Link seems good to me. He's powerful and disjointed, and his projectile game is solid. I see him used a lot when I play with a Street Fighter fan who is a friend of him; I compared Link to Sagat and think I had said friend sold on Link (kinda slow except not really that slow with good range, power, and projectile game). Actually, that comparison seems pretty strong to me. Link is Sagat except Sagat never had to worry about recovery while Link does, and his is really very poor. Mobility also matters more in Smash, and that's not a positive point for Link. Then again, Sagat has been top tier in I think literally over half the games he's been in (and high tier in most of the others!) so we don't want to follow that too closely...
To talk in more smash terms I think people probably appreciate more, Link has a lot of options, and most of his moveset is comprised of good moves. First of all, he is one of only three characters with a damaging tether attack (sorry Lucas). It isn't quite as amazing as Samus's, but it is obviously a really good move given that it's super disjointed and completely lagless. The fact that out of a short hop Link has a super disjointed, lagless option is a really big deal that shouldn't be overlooked or downplayed at all; when I start talking about all of his power moves and you think how that could give Link a lack of safe options, remember this move since it's the safest option you could ever ask for.
So, let's talk about how many power moves Link has. Link's forward tilt was one of his best killers in Brawl, and it's even better now. It's actually probably one of the better general purpose killers in the game; it has the speed of a tilt, nice disjointed hitboxes, and a lot of power. Down tilt is mostly just worse than forward tilt, but it can have stage position functional independence (it kills up as opposed to to the side), and it's one of those nice sorts of "extra" kill moves to have. The move doesn't have any real place in Link's damage racking game (unlike forward tilt which can be good to use in non-fatal situations quite frequently) so it's basically guaranteed to be fresh, and that means because of it Link always has a credible kill move ready to use. As an aside, I'm unconvinced of it spiking being good for Link; he's already kinda polarized against fellow poor recoveries thanks to the arrows, and near-ledge gameplay is something he wants to shift the game away from anyway. What it can already do is a neat parlor trick, but I don't think it's important to Link. Anyway, then you have grounded Spin Attack which I feel is being really underrated. For one, this move hits REALLY hard, and even though it doesn't hit that hard if they spotdodge it or roll behind Link, it does linger long enough to hit anyway basically limiting the number of defensive options effective against it (and the ones that counter some of the other stuff Link can do, more later). For two, you can mix up with it effectively due to the charging, and if you actually land a charged one, it can kill at the sort of ridiculously low percentages that win the game in effect right there. I like to use this move a lot; it's not very hard to hit with when you put everything together, and the reward is very far on the side of "worth it".
Link's last grounded kill move deserves its own little paragraph. Link's forward smash is an amazing move that I'm surprised doesn't see more love. For one, fsmash 2 is objectively Link's most powerful kill move; I think fully charged it actually edges out fully charged Spin Attack (both are obscene at full charge though). I know it does more base damage than Spin Attack if nothing else. Fsmash 1 isn't weak either; it can only seem disappointing when compared to the raw death that the second hit is. Of course, then you consider the question of landing Link's fsmash. Well, fsmash 1 by itself is a somewhat disjointed not that slow attack. Just using it like that nets a passable reward. However, what happens if the opponent blocks fsmash 1? What happens is Link gets one of the best on-block mix-ups in this game. Fundamentally, Link has two choices. He can use fsmash 2 or do something else. Fundamentally the opponent has two choices. They can do something OoS to try to punish Link after fsmash 1 or they can keep blocking. Let's look at all four choices.
First of all, if they try to do something OoS and Link uses fsmash 2, they get hit. Fsmash 2, as covered, is a totally ridiculous move on the power scale. This covers 1/4 of this possibility tree, and it's massively in Link's favor.
If they keep blocking and Link uses fsmash 2, fsmash 2 inflicts tons of shield pushback and shieldstun. In fact, they are so far away with enough shieldstun that not even tether grabs can punish Link. Yes, that's right. Fsmash 2 is safe on block, and I think that's new to Balanced Brawl. So, in this case, the outcome is neutral leaning toward Link. After all, he just did massive shield damage and is in a good position. The opponent is "out", and both characters are on the ground. That's what Link wants positionally in general! So this 1/4 is a small net win for Link, and it's the one where the opponent predicted Link correctly.
If they keep blocking and Link doesn't fsmash 2, he can pretty easily grab them or just return to neutral and punish anything they try to do OoS later (shielding against an opponent in neutral is kinda sucky). It's pretty hard to avoid taking damage from Link in this position; this 1/4 is a win for Link.
If they do something OoS and Link doesn't fsmash 2, they probably get him or get away. They do 1/3 to 1/2 what Link would have done if he went the other way and landed fsmash 2. It's a win for them, but it's a medium-sized win like the third possibility. It's also the only 1/4 of the possibility tree that actually is a win for the other side.
So look at it from Link's perspective. He can fsmash 2 on block and be guaranteed some win, even if just a small one. Of course, if he doesn't like always getting a small win, he can sometimes go for the other direction with its medium sized win, and if the opponent ever starts doing things to counter that, his big win is back in play! Link also has the timing mix-up on fsmash 2 (he doesn't have to use it immediately after fsmash 1; he can delay a little bit and then use it) which only gives him more options. If fsmash 1 was charged at all, it does more shieldstun than usual which makes timing everything harder for the opponent but doesn't really change the timing of anything for Link. Everything here lines up in Link's favor; this is really, really good. When fighting against Link, I basically avoid standing in front of him shielding because I just don't want to deal with this. In Brawl, if you can make your opponent scared to rely on blocking, you're making good progress.
I would move on to the other facets of Link's game, but he has yet more killing options in his fair and dair. Fair is a fairly situational killer that is best used after a bunch of tether attacks. It hits in the same direction as the super-safe, spammable move except it's slower, not very safe, and kills. It's not as good of a mix-up as some of Link's other options, but more options really never hurt anyone. Dair is kinda like fsmash in the sense that it's a very powerful move that is actually safe on block (because of the "pogo" effect). It's also really high priority for a few reasons; dair is basically good in any situation where it doesn't whiff. That makes it pretty nice to have, and given that Link is generally a grounded character, having a dair like that puts the risk-reward in "Link is getting juggled" situations much more toward Link's favor than would be otherwise.
Link has three very nice hitbox upward hitting moves in uair, utilt, and usmash. I find he uses all three more defensively than offensively, and they work very well at making the plan of "why don't I go over Link's stuff by attacking from above?" not really work very well.
Link's projectile game is one of the better ones in the game. Link has three different projectiles (on top of the super spammable and disjointed tether attack that in some ways is like a projectile itself!). On hit, the arrows can gimp sometimes and put the opponent on the ground or off-stage decently far from Link all of the time. The Gale Boomerang can be thrown at a wide variety of angles and can really screw up the opponent's spacing. The bombs bounce on shields (making powershielding not a particularly effective answer to them), hit decently hard, can be "cooked" like grenades so they blow up as they reach a target, and as throwable items are generally really diverse in the number of things Link can do with them (for instance, being thrown in any cardinal direction). Link can make effective projectile walls and generally pick at the opponent with projectiles in a really diverse number of ways. So, inbetween his mix-ups and powerhouse antics, Link is constantly barraging the opponent with approach limiting, dangerous, and sometimes difficult to avoid spam. His passive shield is a semi-important advantage if the opponent tried to reply to his spam with spam, just throwing that out there.
Oh yeah, Link's jab, nair, and bair are generally decent too, but I don't have anything specific to say about them. His dsmash is kinda bad, but he can't win them all, right?
That was a very long discussion on Link's positives, but given that Link was generally considered bottom tier in standard Brawl, I wanted to be really, really clear just how much good stuff this character has going for him now (most of it not so much new but better than before). I think his "hard to use" reputation largely stems from just how much stuff this is. With most characters, you don't actually have to keep yourself very busy to be effective. With Link, you have a bunch of mix-ups to be aware of and need to exploit, and thanks to the way his projectiles and tether work, you pretty much always have a choice of rewarding options to pursue which can make finding the best move difficult. On the other hand, his major weakness (terrible off-stage game, specifically terrible when Link is off-stage for any reason) is pretty easy to understand and exploit appropriately, and it makes positioning with Link fairly important.
Match-up wise, I find Link does well against other characters with poor off-stage games (the ditto is hilarious, I think he probably beats Olimar, I don't like fighting Link with DK/Bowser, etc.), though the Star Fox characters are an odd case since their reflectors make his arrows suddenly incredibly risky to use (I think Link does fairly well against them, but he has to be really careful/smart). Link is also a specific pain for Mr. Game & Watch for quite a few reasons, and that's decently valuable. On the other hand, Link probably still loses to someone like Meta Knight who likes to stick to the air, totally outspeeds him on the offense, and has a strong off-stage game, though it's not completely horrible for him like it was in standard Brawl. All around, I think Link has decent matchups with some pluses and some minuses. He seems like a well-balanced character to me.
I don't have much to say about stages. He does a decent job avoiding the stage issues since stages where he can't "hunker down" effectively like Norfair and Rainbow Cruise let him run away and spam better and also make his recovery less of a focus if he plays them right. I will say Link loves Bridge of Eldin and it's very obvious why it's his stage; if you decide to have that one legal, Link will love you longtime. Mario Circuit and Onett being added to the CP list solidly certainly doesn't upset him either!
To be honest, I'm not sure if Link needs to change. He has what he needs to win, he seems legitimately good, but he's not overpowered and not sufficiently polarizing to be a serious concern (if anyone other than Link were the one with those arrows, it might be too unfair to Link but...). I ended up writing way more than I intended to about Link, but I had a lot to say about him.
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As per those Sonic matches, I notice Sonic wasn't being very aggressive off-stage, and I was feeling like the reason he seemed to be totally unable to get any momentum in the overall matches against Yoshi was probably rooted in that. I'm not saying Sonic was going to be gimping Yoshi a lot, but due to the way Yoshi's recovery works, someone like Sonic who can safely chase far off-stage has a very good opportunity to get free damage basically every time Yoshi is off-stage (also a much better chance to score kills than when they are both on-stage). Yoshi was off-stage a whole lot in the games I watched; it just seemed like so many opportunities Sonic was letting slip by. I can see logically why Yoshi might be a pain for Sonic (and it's definitely a matchup that has not been discussed before this), but I think that set might have made things look worse for Sonic than they really were. Sonic did do a good job of showing how he can be just plain obnoxious to someone like Snake though; I've seen some games of standard Brawl that already showed Sonic had some more stuff in that matchup than he tends to get credit for already, and the Balanced Brawl shifts definitely only help there.
