• Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!

    You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!

Birds of a feather flock together - Falco Smash Switch speculation thread

Laniv

Smash Lord
Joined
Apr 20, 2014
Messages
1,959
Falco's probably sticking around, and he'll probably have his Zero design too.

I just hope he gets to be in the air this time.
 

AlphaSSB

Bring Back Star Fox
Joined
Jun 19, 2014
Messages
2,751
Location
United States
3DS FC
0018-1370-8449
Switch FC
0691-1639-9303
The only way I can really see Falco not returning is if Sakurai decides to downsize the roster, or because he deems that Star Fox has under-performed recently, and isn't deserving of more than one character.

I doubt either one of those is going to be the case.

As for changes, hopefully he'll become further from Fox in terms of moveset, and get a new Final Smash. Arwing strafe run? Walker-form Arwing?
 

AncientArk

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jul 11, 2012
Messages
184
Location
London
The only way I can really see Falco not returning is if Sakurai decides to downsize the roster, or because he deems that Star Fox has under-performed recently, and isn't deserving of more than one character.

I doubt either one of those is going to be the case.

As for changes, hopefully he'll become further from Fox in terms of moveset, and get a new Final Smash. Arwing strafe run? Walker-form Arwing?
I kind of hope that they give him the walker just so that they could give him a new recording of "Personally, I prefer the air" but with an audible sigh at the end.
 

Ghirahilda

♥Smash Beauty♥
Joined
Aug 6, 2012
Messages
1,197
Location
Sorocaba
NNID
Marcelinho21
The more Luigified he gets the better! Still, he needs arwing as a Final Smash
 

PF9

Smash Lord
Joined
Apr 13, 2010
Messages
1,065
Location
America
Bring back his New York accent from Brawl please. I didn't like his voice in SSB4 very much.
 

FunAtParties

PM me ur character ideas girl
Joined
May 21, 2015
Messages
3,880
Location
Illinois
NNID
ZestyÑ
Switch FC
SW-8404-4905-2993
I kind of hope that they give him the walker just so that they could give him a new recording of "Personally, I prefer the air" but with an audible sigh at the end.
Lol this would be perfect.

I really hope he gets that full body fair, juggle shine, and autocancel lasers back. Honestly they can redesign the rest of his moveset as long as I have those three things.
 

Grizzexploder

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Mar 26, 2018
Messages
148
Tf when you get Luigified, but end up worse than when you were a clone

he's coming back though, maayyybee with a new Arwing Final Smash
 

Mario & Sonic Guy

Old rivalries live on!
Joined
Sep 18, 2007
Messages
22,423
Location
Mushroom Kingdom
NNID
TPitch5
3DS FC
5327-1637-5096
Falco will need to see some adjustments to his moveset, since the nerfs he got in Smash 3DS / Wii U were a bit too much. Sure, some people wanted him nerfed, but I don't think they wanted the nerfs to be too drastic.
 

Redrix

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jan 17, 2010
Messages
18
Location
Seville (Spain)
Well, Falco indeed, in case he appears again (which is highly probable), will need a huge overhaul. In Smash 4, his blaster is almost useless, whereas in Melee and Brawl, one of the basis of his spacing and zoning were the lasers. The rest of his specials are fine, or even improved (up B). Another movement that must be repaired is the down-air, a tetraplegic movement for God's sake. In Melee and Brawl, down-air served as a combo tool. At least, those are the main two changes that I want to see: improved down-air and improved blaster, those two adjustments can transform Falco into a high/top tier character again.
 
Last edited:

PF9

Smash Lord
Joined
Apr 13, 2010
Messages
1,065
Location
America
Who else wants Falco's Brawl voice back or something similar (any kind of New York Italian accent, which was an integral part of him in Brawl)?

Brawl Falco was someone you did not want to mess with. SSB4 Falco with his new voice was something of a joke.
 
Last edited:

Wyoming

Connery, Sean
Joined
Jun 27, 2013
Messages
3,810
Switch FC
7748-5364-3982
Well, Falco indeed, in case he appears again (which is highly probable), will need a huge overhaul. In Smash 4, his blaster is almost useless, whereas in Melee and Brawl, one of the basis of his spacing and zoning were the lasers. The rest of his specials are fine, or even improved (up B). Another movement that must be repaired is the down-air, a tetraplegic movement for God's sake. In Melee and Brawl, down-air served as a combo tool. At least, those are the main two changes that I want to see: improved down-air and improved blaster, those two adjustments can transform Falco into a high/top tier character again.
That ending lag on his blasters make me weep. Useless on stage and made Falco too much into a close range fighter.

And the fact shields are very safe means you cannot pressure anyone effectively either.

It has a very niche use off stage when they are somewhat far away from the stage to stun them a bit.

Otherwise he is not too bad. Aerials have their uses although his old dair would be nice. Ftilt could be changed. Smash attacks arent his forte in Smash 4 but pack a punch. Just need a safer way to use them properly. Reducing the effectiveness of shields would help here too.
 

Nohbl

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jul 20, 2017
Messages
357
Location
Chicago, Illinois
Melee Falco: thinking face.png → Brawl Falco: face with tears of joy.png → tr4sh Falco: weary face.png

>forum doesn't support Unicode emoji

Falco has been my favorite character to play in SSB since I was a pre-teen, and it's hard to see that changing even in this next game. So, naturally, I'm completely against cutting him, especially after his godawful nerfing in tr4sh.

I want the option to play both Brawl Falco and Melee Falco (in terms of movesets). It could either be discrete (separate characters), or a mixture in one character---for example, Melee Reflector tapped, Brawl Reflector held. I furthermore believe that the PM alts should be a thing in Smash 5. I want customs to return in this game, and I want their custom moves to be way better this time around; giving Falco a Fox laser wasn't a bad idea, but poorly executed. We need the option to shorten again, but I also want the option to drift or fall flat after using side b (that is, to have SSBB and SSBM side-b ending mechanics available).

I want them to include a remix of "The Loner, Falco Lombardi" from Star Fox Command. Give Fox and Falco their Melee Japanese voices and go back in the direction of the Brawl voices for English.

SSB4 black falco costume, SSBB blue falco costume, SSBM red falco costume, necessarily. This matter of colors is highly important and needs to be discussed more. As a matter of fact, I would love if they gave us costume customization like in Capcom vs SNK 2.

I started with Brawl Falco but I prefer Melee Falco now. Ideally, I would have Brawl Falco's appearance with Melee Falco's moveset, but it would be glorious if players were given an actual choice on both matters in-game. There are few things redeeming tr4sh Falco: Wolf's bair, the BS'ery associated with fair, the gigantic up-smash, and the Black costume. That's it. Everything else can get the axe.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Zoneyboi

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jul 3, 2018
Messages
20
I seriously hope Falco isn't painful to play like in 4. Remember how slow his his laser was before it got a buff? Legitimately Warlock Punch-tier for a 3%. It was still painfully slow after that and its "faster in the air" gimmick was worthless because the speed buff just meant he could put a laser way above the opponent's head and then hit the ground again. And that's just the laser, the rest of his frame data was also pitiful, especially considering characters like Luigi had a more substantial projectile and got the dair spike out in record time. Falco felt almost intentionally gimped in 4 somehow.

It seems that everyone is getting better frames in Ultimate but sadly we didn't get to see Falco in action very much anyway.
 

cooopercrisp

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jun 25, 2016
Messages
2
After juggling the other Star Fox characters in Brawl, I settled on Falco as my so-called main (I don’t play competitively so that’s a loose use of the term). I’ve tried him in the 3DS version and found him to be way too slow. There’s no comparison to him in Melee or even in Brawl.

For Ultimate, I would like him to more closely resemble his Brawl appearance, but with the ridiculous Fair from 4 that was his only somewhat decent move. Honestly, though, as long as they buff him to be competitive again I would appreciate it.
 

Ffamran

The Smooth Devil Mod
Joined
Aug 25, 2014
Messages
14,629
Remember how slow his his laser was before it got a buff? Legitimately Warlock Punch-tier for a 3%. It was still painfully slow after that and its "faster in the air" gimmick was worthless because the speed buff just meant he could put a laser way above the opponent's head and then hit the ground again.
I don't remember what it was like in pre-1.0.4 and there wasn't any concrete numbers recorded to tell us what changed for Falco's Blaster. What I do know, however, is that in each game, the developers kept increasing its total frames, therefore, increasing its recovery frames which makes no sense because the reason why Falco's Blaster and other projectiles had little recovery was because you could auto-cancel them, so increasing its ground recovery does nothing when Falco's Blaster is rarely ever used on the ground outside of laser locking.

The other thing is that Falco sitting around firing lasers does nothing, but being an idiot. It's annoying, especially for new players -- think people who never played any game before. It doesn't really do anything on stages with platforms and walls where you can use them to avoid the lasers. Fox has a reason when his lasers can't cause his stun, so he needs all the damage he can get and in free-for-all, the lack of hit stun lets him kill steal since he can tag people off-stage and who are about to die with laser. Falco can't do that since he'd just reset their recovery moves and give them another shot to getting back onto the stage. Bayonetta also has a reason since she can extend her moves and Bullet Arts has substantial knockback unlike Falco's Blaster which has set knockback.

Thing is this scenario is Falco just sitting around and spamming lasers which I wonder if that's what the developers legitimately thought people would do as Falco or any character with a projectile. That would explain why many projectiles in Smash 4 have high recovery relative to other games, but at the same time, it begs the question of how they think people play Smash. Zoning, camping, effective spamming, whatever you want to call it, however, is something a lot of players struggle with in fighting games, but once again, Brawl and Smash 4's increase to Falco's Blaster recovery seemed a little excessive.

Here's what happened to Falco's Blaster from Melee to 1.0.4 Smash 4 which was the last patch to touch his Blaster. Ground and aerial versions. Startup includes the time it takes, in frames, to fire another laser. Brawl's, unfortunately, is the only one without known frames for when Blaster can fire again. These numbers were compiled from preexisting frame data threads and websites in the case of Melee for knockback and hit angles not listed here.
Ground Blaster|Melee|Brawl|Smash 4 (launch)|Smash 4 (1.0.4)
Startup|23, (+24)|12, (+?)|11, (+>40?)|11, (+40)
Active|99|98|33|33
Recovery|35|45|48|48
Total|57|56|58|58

Aerial Blaster|Melee|Brawl|Smash 4 (launch)|Smash 4 (1.0.4)
Startup|13, (+16)|10, (+?)|9 (+>33?)| 9, (+33)
Active|99|98|33|33
Recovery|30|32|41|41
Total|42|41|49|49
Auto-cancel|On-landing|On-landing frames 1-41; hop airtime|Removed|Removed

To summarize, Brawl is the reason why Smash 4 Blaster had such high recovery. It lowered Blaster's ground startup, but did nothing about its total frames leaving it to have much higher recovery than in Melee. Smash 4 just made it worse for aerial Blaster and by removing auto-cancel, but not realizing auto-cancel was the reason why Blaster had low recovery. Without it and if everyone else didn't have auto-cancel for their projectiles in the other games, Falco's Blaster would probably have been the worst projectile in Brawl and probably Melee. At least Melee Blaster had reasonable recovery.

The only changes I agree with Blaster is the reduced range shown by its lower active frames in Smash 4 and the removal of auto-canceling. It should be noted that the numbers don't really tell the whole story since projectiles can travel at different speeds and one projectile's 33 active frames can travel only a third of Final Destination while another projectile's 33 active frames travels from one end to another. Falco and Fox's Blaster used to be able to travel past Final Destination. So, effectively full screen coverage when most other, non-chargeable projectiles cover two-thirds or less. By Smash 4, Fox's can only reach the end of Final Destination? while Falco's reaches two-thirds of it. I think that's reasonable, but the stupid recovery increase they did in each game overshadowed the let's balance Falco's Blaster range.

With regards to auto-cancel, it's like a band-aid on a gaping wound where subsequent treatments are more like pouring acid over it instead of actually treating it. You don't need auto-cancel to have low recovery on moves. For example, Greninja's Water Shuriken, Lucas's PK Fire, Luigi's Fireball, Wolf's Blaster, and ironically enough, Falco's Melee Blaster if it was in another game, mainly Smash 4.

especially considering characters like Luigi had a more substantial projectile and got the dair spike out in record time.
Projectiles were a hit or miss in Smash 4 with most of them being miss. The characters who had good projectiles definitely had good projectiles while the characters who had bad projectiles, definitely had bad projectiles. Falco's Blaster was on the extreme end of bad projectiles because of what they kept doing to it in each game as explained above.

Dairs spikes were also a problem in Smash 4. Many of them were slow and I want to say generic in the sense of it feeling like anything around +14 frames was just the startup for almost all Dair spikes regardless of their power. Captain Falcon and Ganondorf's 16 frame stomp works because their Dairs have power and in Captain Falcon's case, he has his ground speed to get to whatever he wants to spike. But then you have characters like Wii Fit Trainer who has a frame 20 Dair spike and it not being that powerful relative to its speed because why not. The characters who didn't have Dair spikes like Fox, Mario, and Peach definitely had an edge since they didn't have to deal with a slow, situational move. And the characters who had Dair spikes, but had lower startup or something special to theirs also had an edge. Cloud and Rosalina come to mind as extreme examples where Cloud's is frame 11 on startup and a disjoint close to and covering his body while Rosalina's was a disjoint with vertical reach, had high active frames, and, of course, had Luma to help out.

Falco felt almost intentionally gimped in 4 somehow.
That's exactly what happened---it was completely intentional.
I'd like to add in that it looks like they have no idea what they're doing with him. In a very negative and generalized statement, Smash 4 can be argued as making everything mediocre. Inevitably, those who aren't mediocre end up being noticeably really good. Falco was given that and cranked up to eleven while carrying old problems from Melee. Yes, Melee. They screwed up Falco since Melee and Melee Falco was good. Brawl would be a mess of balancing since it was said that Sakurai was the primary balancer of that game which inevitably would lead to failure for the game and for his health. One person trying to do everything is not a good thing. You need feedback which a team can do even if it's just them, but it would be better if they had Q&A and the public to give their ideas on the game as well. 64 and Melee were unbalanced, but they were fun because it felt like you could do a lot of things with most of the characters.

Melee had Down Smash and Uair's dumb sour-spots.

The hitboxes on Falco's thighs for Down Smash send people flying up, but because Down Smash's knockback isn't good for vertical knockback, people don't get launched that far away. The lower damage doesn't help either. This is still in Smash 4 and I would not be surprised if it's still in Ultimate. You rarely if ever hit with these hitboxes, but why they're there in the first place is something I don't understand. Nobody else has a sour-spot like this on their Down Smash. Fox and Sonic in Smash 4 have sour-spots on their Down Smashes, but they still launch people horizontally.

Uair's sour-spot was the body hitbox which basically had knockback worse than Zelda's sour-spot lightning kicks, but if she could kind of take advantage of it in some games by using it as a hit confirm. I have no idea why this exists and why they gave it to his Uair. With other moves with sweet-spots and sour-spots of which I guess you could compare Marth's Uair to this, at least they have similar knockback and hit angles? They kept this until 1.0.8 Smash 4 and that patch butchered his Uair if you can believe it.

Melee also had Dair, but this is more of his Dair is really good while others are okay. If everyone else had a Dair comparable to his, then whatever. Brawl kind of toned it down with how spikes and meteors work in that game while Smash 4 made it into a generic, slow Dair spike which sucks since Dair spikes and spikes in general are fun and they made spikes bad.

Brawl had Dtilt, Fair, and Fire Bird. First off, Brawl is the game where Sakurai stated he had the most hands-on balancing, however, I am still going to put the weight of it all on the development team. It will not be Sakurai's fault, but the development team's fault as a whole, especially in the next game where some of these things were carried over.

Remember Melee Dtilt? It had consistent hitboxes and good knockback. Yeah, Brawl lowered its damage to 12% from Melee's 13%, gave it a 9% sour-spot on the tip of his tail, and murdered its knockback. It didn't reduce its knockback to work with Brawl introducing gravity affecting vertical knockback, but straight-up killed it. Dtilt went from 25 base and 125 growth to 25 base and 90 growth. 125 growth was probably a lot for Brawl, but 90 was too low for it of which the 1% damage decrease made it worse. Smash 4 went back and forth with Dtilt by introducing another sour-spot on his tail that did 11% making the sweet-spot the base of his tail, but it also increased the overall knockback. The sweet-spot had 50 growth and 90 base while the sour-spots had 35 base and 88 growth. So, it could kill if you sweet-spot it and it worked better as a launcher for a follow-up, but it wasn't consistent like in Melee or even Brawl. Smash 4 also gave it a disjoint that gave it about a third more range than it shows which is great for Falco, but kind of bad for everyone else since it's a frame 7, 27 recovery frames, disjoint -- Falco's tail is treated as a disjoint -- sweep. Meanwhile, Fox's Dtilt doesn't even cover the tip of his tail, so it just brushes people. I would very much prefer that it goes back to Melee's style where it had consistent hitboxes.

Fair was as much of a product of the new at the time autolink angles not working right for all multi-hit moves using it, but also a what were they even thinking. Fair had 33 frames of landing lag in Brawl which was reduced by 1 in launch Smash 4 to 32 frames. What are you even doing with Fair that necessitates such landing lag? Brawl Fox's Fair had 18 frames of landing lag, down from Melee's 22, and that **** flew. It also did 23% if all hits connected and it had way less trouble doing so than Fair which only does 11% if you manage to connect every hit. It's like they took Melee Fair and made it inexplicably worse for Falco, but made it inexplicably good for Fox.

Fire Bird went from being 64 Fox's Fire Fox which didn't have charging hits and traveled less than Melee Fox's Fire Fox, but hit harder. Brawl changed it by giving it charging hits and made it a multi-hit move. Problem: Fire Fox and Wolf was introduced and had Fire Wolf. Fire Fox now was the stronger move since it's the one with the strong hit at the start of its launch while Fire Bird's new multi-hits didn't connect well and the last hit wasn't strong in knockback. Fire Fox also travels faster and further than Fire Bird which launches at the same 43 frame as Fire Fox. Fire Wolf has the same travel distance as Fire Bird, but launches at half the frames it takes Fire Bird at the cost of not having charging hitboxes. Now, Fire Bird's effectively worse than both moves and it goes unchanged in Smash 4. Clone moves, probably even Pichu's, and derived, semi-clone moves are different, but not effectively worse, so I have no idea what went wrong with Fire Bird that it ended being worse than Fox and Wolf's Up Specials. In Ultimate, Ridley's Up Special hits on and maybe launches on frame 40 and does 18.9% according to their boards. In a way, you could say it's 64 Fire Fox, but if it could only launch in four directions. Falco's screwed if Fire Bird remains unchanged again.

Smash 4 has jab, 1.0.8 Uair, Fair, and Falco Phantasm.

Before Bayonetta was introduced, Falco's rapid jab did the lowest damage per hit out of all the rapid jabs in Smash 4. It did 0.4% per hit to Bayonetta's 0.3%. It also has the highest SDI modifier at x1.2 to Greninja's x1.1 because why not. Why the hell not. Meanwhile, Duck Hunt and Fox had the lowest SDI modifier on their rapid jabs at x0.4. In general, Jab also had some issues with the speed of how it connects move to move. There's a reason why Falco's rapid jab was easy to escape and why characters with fast and/or invincible moves like Luigi's Nair or Marth's Dolphin Slash can interrupt or even kill him if he uses jab. Here's the thread on Smash 4's rapid jabs: https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...ive-impressions.429826/page-595#post-21389906.

At launch, Uair was the same as Brawl's except for its damage being 11% instead of 10%, so it still had the body sour-spot. 1.0.8 changed that and made it a normal hit, but it also lowered its damage to 10%, lowered the overall knockback from 27 base and 100 growth to 35 base and 90 growth, and gave it different hit angles, 65, 75, and 85 degrees, depending on where he hit with Uair instead of only having a 68 degree hit angle from its old normal hit. The base knockback is 8 higher, but it doing 1% less and having 10 less knockback growth made it much weaker as a kill move. Its combo and juggle utility was mainly from its lowered startup from frame 10 to 7 because before, Uair still was a combo move and still worked as a juggle, but it also killed more reliably than 1.0.8 Uair. They tried to give Falco a Uair like Captain Falcon, Mario, and ZSS, but Falco's much slower moving horizontally than them and his Uair is a frontflip, so it hits behind first instead of in front like their backflips. If it was much faster like Pikachu's frame 4 frontflip Uair, then sure, but Pikachu's also much faster than Falco. In a way, they tried to homogenize Falco when it wouldn't have worked for him without other changes.

Fair in Smash 4 connected properly unlike in Brawl, but at launch, they doubled the startup from Brawl, from frame 6 to frame 12, and kept its high landing lag where it had 32 landing frames at launch. It also introduced a landing hit which I think is only there to cover for its high landing lag when they should have just lowered the damn thing to 1.0.8 Fair's landing lag of 25 frames or Melee's 22 from the beginning. The landing hit was moved forward in 1.0.4?, so you had this massive, frame 1 disjoint in front of him and the landing animation gives no indication of him hitting at all unlike with Mario's Dair or the divekicks on Captain Falcon, Ganondorf, Sheik, and ZSS. That said, landing hits for some moves are stupid like Fox's makes no sense either. Sure, I'll twist on the ground and you'll get sent flying.

Falco Phantasm lost half its hitbox at the end of its travel. It was never mentioned anywhere in the game like a tip saying "Falco Phantasm doesn't hit as far as Fox Illusion." Nope, you just had to learn the hard way that Falco is vulnerable at the last half of its travel. It also travels slower than in the previous games. I think it does. Anyway, while I don't agree with Falco Phantasm being the largest horizontal spike in the series and in each game without others which is my own personal thing, the way they went with nerfing it was bad. If it lost half its travel distance, but kept a full hitbox, then sure, whatever, Falco Phantasm doesn't travel as far as Fox Illusion, but it spikes airborne targets and is still safe. This, however, puts Falco in a more dangerous spot than other forward moving Side Specials which have a hitbox for all its travel or activate when they get close to someone like Captain Falcon's Raptor Boost. At times, Fox can clank with Fox Illusion and keep going, but with Falco, you just need to put a hitbox in front of him and he'll get hit, especially if it's at the end of Falco Phantasm's travel.

The worst part is that this doesn't happen to anyone else. Not even Pichu who's basically Pikachu, but weaker. You don't find random stuff on them that you can't explain like Kirby's Fair doesn't do no knockback if you hit too close with it, Marth's Utilt doesn't send people flying down because of an odd hitbox on him, or Dr. Mario doesn't suddenly return with Super Jump Punch being inferior to Mario's and Luigi's. Luigi's you can argue as being bad, but for what it does and when you sweet-spot it, at least it hits hard even though it's not consistent like Doc's and Mario's. Characters like Palutena in Smash 4 and Zelda who have awkward kits still do not have weird crap sporadically placed on their moves or have moves that are straight-up worse than others. That said, they're not based on anyone or have anyone as clones of them. Zelda's Nair and Down Smash are similar to Ness and Peach's Nair and Rosalina's Down Smash, but hers function differently. Her Nair is a multi-hit while Ness and Peach's are a single-hit where Ness's has low landing lag and Peach has float to supplement her aerials while Rosalina has Luma to help make Down Smash connect its hits while Zelda is a quick, single hit. Falco's Fire Bird is just inferior to Fox's Fire Fox, Wolf's Fire Wolf, and possibly Ridley's Up Special if Fire Bird remains unchanged which it probably will be. Just give the damn thing armor if you're not going to make it faster on launch.

It seems that everyone is getting better frames in Ultimate but sadly we didn't get to see Falco in action very much anyway.
The few footage of action he's shown doing do give us a hint to some things, but whenever Falco shows up in the other character trailers, he's always shown doing the same moves or move since I think he shows up in two other character trailers doing Falco Phantasm only to get punished to showcase the trailer character's moves. Granted, some other characters like Captain Falcon aren't shown doing much in the footage we have, but others like Wii Fit Trainer you can see almost every move. The only moves WFT isn't shown using are Up Smash, Down Smash, Dair, dash grab, pivot grab, U-throw, F-throw, B-throw, and miscellaneous moves like get-up attack.

I did a frame count early on and updated it a bit for his character trailer in the general discussion thread: https://smashboards.com/threads/ultimate-falco-gameplay-general-discussion.455401/#post-22118813. The only substantial things are that Fair is frame 8, 2 frames faster than 1.0.8 Smash 4, Dair is frame 10 now, the same as Luigi's Dair, and ground Blaster has around 31 recovery frames. On the downside, his new rapid jab finisher has more total frames at around 47 to 50 frames compared to his Smash 4 one which had 39. Everything else outside of animation changes, is mostly the same on startup while other stuff like total frames and landing lag for Fair, can't be confirmed because the scenes showing them end before we can see them or they aren't shown like Falco uses Fair and disappears off-screen in the Smash Ultimate E3 Direct video let alone the moves he's never shown using in the current videos.

This goes back to the statement about the developers not knowing what to do about Falco: Falco not being shown much is concerning. They have shown the same moves in his appearances or safe and inconsequential moves like dash attack is filler at this point, Dair being faster on startup is a yay, but we don't know how impactful that will be and it's not frame 5, murder stuff Dair like in Melee and Brawl, and jab combo working is like showing us something that should have worked in the first place and, sadly enough, did work in Brawl outside of it not having a finisher in that game. Ground Blaster's reduced recovery is the most significant thing, but that still leaves out Utilt, Ftilt, Dtilt, Up Smash, Side Smash, Nair, Uair, Bair, Fire Bird, and his throws since we don't know if they're going to change them again or he's keeping his Smash 4 throws. Some of it is just something to see like are they different, what do they look like, or are they still in. For example, Smash 4's Up Smash is an amazing move, especially as an anti-air with its high active and invincibility frames, after the patches, so I hope it returns. Animation-wise, it's also Street Fighter Alpha Charlie Nash's Somersault Shell which contrasts well with Fox's looking like Guile's Flash Kick, so that's cool.

In a way, it makes Falco look like he's even more incomplete than veterans like the Ice Climbers, Pichu, Wolf, and young Link who skipped a game or two and are looking like they're getting reworked or new characters like the Inkling and Ridley. The latter two make sense since you'd want to showcase new characters along with someone like Snake and the other third-party guest characters, but Falco's in this spot of cool, he's getting new animations, but what about the important stuff? Thing is that there are a lot of characters in Ultimate, so you can't show everyone off all at once and there's a lot of work on. Still, Falco's the one character who I feel is one of the most problematic characters in the series and not showing him is concerning. That is to say, "Welp, they ****ed up Falco again and they're hiding him until the game's released", which is perplexing since it looks like they're going out of their way to get people to play the demo and give feedback of which the demo specifically features characters people have been saying are overpowered or broken like Bayonetta and Cloud or characters who are kind of wonky or awkward like Samus, Shulk, and Zelda. Although, Samus was fine in the other games, but weirdly changed in Smash 4. The only thing I can think of and hope for is that future demos rotate in characters. If they don't, then I'm expecting Falco to inexplicably end up worse than in Smash 4. Man, can you imagine that? Dude comes in with a better projectile in pure frame data except for auto-canceling not existing compared to the other games, but somehow manages to become bottom tier? "Look, Falco can zone and... he's dead."
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom