After Ultimate, I also have less sympathy for the “plight of the fans” and their frustrations. This entire game was built around honoring fan ideas essentially, pulling a little something from almost every area of criticism to make a new Smash game. When you start breaking it down, that’s what really defines Ultimate as a Smash game. The ideal game built around all of those requests (no cuts, return all characters, include fan requests, single player campaign, better classic, single character stock battles, etc.).
I agree, there’s some legitimate criticism of execution in certain areas and Smash still suffers from Nintendo’s inability to really “get” online play properly.
And then there’s complaining that the limits of reality didn’t stretch enough to meet your specific desires and wants. I’m all for fans supporting their characters with all of the love in the world, I’m all for them having discourse about the game and features, and criticizing when due. But there’s a lot of frustration that needs to be owned by the fan base as opposed to projected on to Sakurai too. And certain criticisms come off as weaker because something like the fourth Marth’s is exactly born out of fan refusal to let Roy go or to let Chrom go. They both remained heavily requested characters. And Sakurai has generally wanted to retain the movsets of characters it seems exactly to not alienate players of certain characters. That doesn’t always work with his tuning, but it’s stuff like that which can sort of come back to the fans.
Tbh, and I don’t mean to imply that you’re arguing this (because you clearly aren’t), but I’ve gotten very tired of the “Ultimate is nearly flawless and we’re completely spoiled!” circlejerk. Its only strengths are the faster gameplay compared to Brawl/Smash 4 and the ridiculously well-balanced and massive roster.
The buffer system is an absolute joke that’s literally at complete odds with the new parry system (your window for buffered inputs is larger than your window to punish after a perfect shield, so you either need to play reservedly on the off-chance you get a perfect shield, or just accept that you won’t be able to capitalize off one 80% of the time)
The level of input lag is higher than most people would ever consider acceptable for a fighting game (playing Melee and then going to Ultimate feels like you’re playing a fighting game on AOL dial-up)
Movement has largely been nerfed in a way not conducive to aiding any specific style of play (the removal of shield-dropping and the generally atrocious platform movement doesn’t incentivize aggressive play or make the game more interesting/fun/strategic, it’s JUST frustrating)
WoL was a glorified Event Mode with less interesting scenarios (save for the final fight), very poor balancing (once you get a Lip’s Stick spirit there’s a clearly optimal form of play, discouraging spirit experimentation, which was basically the point of the mode to begin with) and extremely shallow design
While not Bethesda-levels, the game shipped with an unacceptable number of glitches for a Nintendo game
The online mode is among the WORST EVER for a fighting game. The GSP system actively PUNISHES you for being invested in the game, literally NOTHING about the way matchmaking works makes sense, battle arenas included (you can’t tell me that having to lose your place in line to change characters in a battle arena is anything but pure idiocy), and the online has glaring problems that could easily be solved with the most simple coding changes
The roster, while impressive, is pretty redundant in terms of design the more you look at it. The number of shared moves between, say, Incineroar and K Rool for example, is pretty disappointing.
Luigi may have gotten a decent overhaul, but other characters who have been around for a DECADE, in DESPERATE need of retooling, STILL haven’t been adequately updated. Sonic’s kit is just as uninspired and lame as it was when he was slapped together last second for Brawl (10 YEARS AGO), and the fact that 4 of the FE characters essentially have the same moveset after all this time is just sad
When you look at how much love and attention is put into someone like Joker, and then look at how neglected Ganondorf was for so long, or how neglected Sonic STILL is, you can’t argue that Sakurai’s biases aren’t reflected in how the roster was developed (and I’m not saying it’s an East over West thing, cause K Rool was totally inspired and lovingly crafted)
And you can’t argue that Sakurai can’t overhaul characters due to fan familiarity. The changes to Ganondorf’s kit not only were heavily requested for YEARS, but were UNIVERSALLY praised. 95% of people would MUCH rather their character be made more unique and interesting than kept redundant/uninspired for the sake of familiarity.
As somebody who went to college to learn about animation and cartooning and having an appreciation for all forms and styles of cartoon and animation, I've been subject to the bias of 'all anime looks the same, e.g. boring' in the past, and that's obviously not the case at all, and have made the same arguments towards characters in Smash like Xenoblade, Final Fantasy, Persona, and especially Fire Emblem. And it's all subjective, honestly. I do think the idea/argument that there are too many swordsmen and JRPG 'anime' characters is a bit ridiculous in this particular game that, while it may have been a bit more so in the past, now has a roster consisting of up to 70+ characters, the vast majority of which are much more diverse in style and personality. There's a much better balance in the roster than in past games. There's a style or character for everyone. I just hope that's reflected in the Fighter Pass.
But I'm of the same mindset as you, I see characters like Mario, Sonic, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, and Banjo-Kazooie and I see personality and color and style, all of whom look unique and different and behave differently. And same as well with Pokemon, it's the only RPG I've ever been able to get into and enjoy.
I think the issue is that, again, there’s more variety between the non-anime characters than there is among the anime characters.
How many moves do Mario, Sonic, Yoshi, Pac-Man, Mega Man, Kirby, Peach, and Little Mac share?
Meanwhile Marth, Roy, Ike, Chrom, Lucina, Corrin, Bayonetta, and now Joker ALL have counters for their down specials. Counter fatigue is a SERIOUS thing, and for good reason.
I don’t think the issue is the design or look of the characters necessarily (though that certainly doesn’t help), as you’ll notice that people rarely ***** about Cloud’s inclusion even though he fits a similar mold (“anime” design, sword user).
The difference is that’s Cloud feels unique, he doesn’t play the same as seemingly a quarter of the roster the way many of the swordies do, and he feels like serious thought was put into making him feel special.
I think people have an aversion to more “anime characters” because it’s far more likely/viable from a design standpoint to just make them play similarly to a pre-existing character, where that isn’t the case for other kinds of characters. You couldn’t put Crash, Spyro, Banjo or Geno and realistically say “they could play similarly to _______”
I’m starting to get the feeling banjo is an e3 reveal and they’re brave
Do we have confirmation about that “Brave is shorter than Mario” thing I mentioned before?
![[Maple]](/data/avatars/l/410/410915.jpg?1575327283){kind=avatar}
