Metaknight clearly is disadvantaged to Olimar in BBrawl. That is probably his worst overall matchup in this game, salvageable through counterpicking, but overall still unfavorable since Olimar does better on neutrals.
As if it wasn't clear enough, Falco beats Metaknight on stages like FD. In fact it's pretty hard for me to say that Falco loses on any neutrals against Metaknight. Because he probably wins the matchup overall.
Wolf doesn't lose to Metaknight in this game, and probably does in fact beat him. He can get in pretty easily on Metaknight, is VERY good at shutting down any aerial approach Metaknight attempts, and kills Metaknight very very early, while his improved recovery guarantees he lives long against Metaknight.
Snake probably beats Metaknight, and is probably Metaknight's most "annoying" matchup for the simple fact that Snake refuses to die.
The above matchups imo are the "clearly uphill" matchups for Metaknight imo. It's unlikely other characters besides those ones have the advantage against him.
I don't think G&W beats Metaknight. In that theoretically, Metaknight still has a better spacing game and more consistent punish options. Oh yeah and Metaknight can in fact edgeguard G&W, and that hasn't changed in the matchup, although G&W in exchange is one of few characters who is able to safely edgeguard Metaknight. What will really help G&W in this matchup however is the increased frame advantage of his Jab, which should make Jab canceling much more reliable and harder to interrupt. I demand more research on that move just to check what options there are for other characters to interrupt G&W's Jab cancel grab. The frame advantage from my experimentation does not exceed +5 as I recall, which is the exact frame advantage necessary to crouch and link back into Jab1.
I think for the most part everyone has a fair chance at winning under a skilled player who knows all the matchups. At a glance, I would say the weaker characters in this game are Bowser, Lucas, Kirby, Sonic, and Ganon.
Bowser's awful recovery is still going to give him a lot of problems and make him a more fragile character than his design begs for. Like Metaknight for example doesn't really need to gimp Bowser. He can just opt to punish a forced on-stage landing with his buffed Down-B.
Lucas still needs a lot of shenanigans to consistently score a kill, since as rPSI keeps telling me, he has some of the worst options in the game for pressuring people who just roll away from him (buffed PK Fire...I guess helps slightly there). The rest of his game is decent enough, although he probably could use more grab reward since none of his throws really do anything extremely remarkable, minus some kills at moderately high percents with D-throw and some okay chip damage from pummels. And his grab is terrible. Starts up slow, and is only active for 1 frame.
Kirby reeeealy doesn't have much on G&W, Marth, and Metaknight who have a lot of options for destroying his recovery for free and outzoning him and his buffs....are mostly pretty situational gimmicks reserved for punishing mistakes. In those matchups, his saving grace is his pokes, which are something that did not get buffed.
Sonic like Lucas requires a lot of shenanigans to score a KO in most matchups.
Ganon well...he's still going to have a lot of problems since he is still very bad at getting grabs and technically doesn't have any safe ground pokes, and he STILL gets screwed by intelligent spotdodges. Fundamentally his entire gameplan is a guessing game that is statistically not in his favor. He does have the best overall grab reward in the game though in terms of raw damage, and that F-air buff is pretty awesomely versatile in all situations where Ganon has his opponent in a disadvantaged position.
I personally think that one of Ganon's worst matchups in this game is actually Mario. Mario has a pretty easy time shutting down Ganon with projectile camping or rushdown especially since Ganon's grab range doesn't pose a threat, and Mario's D-smash pretty much is virtually unpunishable in most situations, and it really isn't simple to just wizkick Mario for doing fullhop fireballs. Mario's Jab game is devastating to Ganon up close especially since Ganon's 7 frame shieldgrab isn't fast enough to grab between hits of Mario's Jab combo. Mario has a lot of options for easily killing Ganon in this game as well, ranging from strong Smashes to easy gimps from N-air/Cape/FLUDD/edgehogging and B-throw at high percents. And on top of that Mario combos Ganon at low percents extremely well. In short, Mario can do pretty much everything gay to Ganon.
Lastly the only thing I think Link needs in order to be a top contender is better grab reward, since probably his biggest problem aside from that recovery is still being pretty limited in terms of setup options. His Jab cancel is okay but kinda slow, and everything else is a lot more situational and bordering on shenanigans. Link as of now however pretty much has by far the worst grab reward in the game. Ike used to have the worst grab reward until that N-air came along (which probably should be toned down while in exchange improving the speed and autocancel window of his B-air slightly).
