"This roster is fantastic! Stop whining!!!"
"This roster sucks! it doesn't have X, Y, or Z!!!"
People on Smashboards are funny. The debates will only get more intense from here around the forums.
In my own, subjective opinion, this roster is...solid? It's fairly decent, with many good choices, but is also riddled with question design choices as well.
You have heavy hitters like Megaman, Pac-Man, Palutena, Little Mac and Villager. While I may have some grievances with some of their so-called "unique" movesets (like Palutena) I'm not going to deny that I feel that every single one of these characters had merit as characters alone and I am glad they are in here. They are
great choices imo.
Then you have the likes of Robin, Shulk, and Rosalina. I don't feel these characters are quite on the level of the characters previously mentioned, but they have proven to be of merit. Rosalina, while I'm still iffy on her inclusion, gives a proper puppeteer fighter; Shulk I believe merits the attention considering his game Xenoblade Chronicles (and I'm glad to see new franchises), and Robin, probably the best thing to happen to break out the mediocrity the Fire Emblem franchise character choices.
But then you have Wii Fit Trainer, Mii Fighters, Greninja...character choices that I simply cannot fathom or agree with. Wii Fit Trainer made me laugh during the showing, and I was looking forward to her; but from what I can tell she is not only largely uninspired, but just seems to be an excuse for Sakurai to have "lol yoga jokes" in the game. I will go as far as to say that I would happy for her to be on the chopping block for the next game; her inclusion doesn't seem warranted or unnecessary, unless you want to pull out the "muh sales" argument on her Wii Fit game. Mii Fighters once more takes 3 largely derivative movesets and slaps them together. Their inclusion was even
worse then I ever imagined; and am convinced that they were a waste of development time. Greninja is a baffling choice for a Pokemon: yes, he's the most popular 6th Gen Pokemon, but that's the equivalent of saying Waluigi is more popular then Petey Pirahna or Queen Bee. While Greninja will get Lucario tier popular once Smash 4 is released, prior to it he was beat out by the Kanto Starters, Mewtwo, Lucario, Blaziken, and Sceptile all in popularity. Doesn't help the fact that Gen 6 offered some relatively unimpressive Pokemon and starters in general, so him being more popular then them I don't find to be a huge feat.
We get some new franchises as well, like an Animal Crossing character (much needed), Xenoblade Character, and a Punch-Out character. All are great choices.
Yet, Mario gets 2 characters (3 if you count the Doc), Kid Icarus gets another character (2 if count Dark Pit/Pittoo), Fire Emblem gets 2 characters, Pokemon gets 1 character, yet Kirby, F-Zero, Starfox, Metroid, and Donkey Kong get ignored. Kirby is understandable, but the rest I can't fathom: No Metroid, Starfox
loses a character, F-Zero could have provided a work around to the Falcondorf problem, and the Big Ape Donkey Kong himself, ripe with potential characters, just gets flat out shafted in content, even outside of characters.
Usually in a good crossover game, even if you have mega-franchises participating (like Mario, Pokemon) you still want to make sure they don't dominate over everything else. Of course, the mega-characters will be the face of marketing and such, and some franchises naturally allocate better character and content potential then others, but still, you usually want to be careful to make sure there isn't such a heavy slant.
Yet, this game is now starting to show that compared to most franchises 2 or 3, Mario Universe will have 5 characters,
6 if you count Bowser Jr.,
7 if you count the Doc,
10 if you count Yoshi, Wario, and Donkey Kong, and let's not even count all separate Koopaling alts. It shows a dangerous precedent of current Nintendo: of how recently, they have been relying far too much on the Mario name and his friends while other franchises seemingly collect dust. Mario is even pulling ahead of Zelda, assuming Zelda doesn't get a new character.
And I don't think I should even explain why Kid Icarus, after one successful game gets 3 characters under it's belt, while other far more successful franchises overall (*cough* Donkey Kong *cough*) still just sit there with no new characters.
Bowser, the King Koopa, gets a much needed overhaul. His moveset is now a lot less uninspired, and he fights more like how King Koopa would. This was a
fantastic design choice from Sakurai, and gave me a slither of hope for this game. He actually looks badass, even though I generally don't play slow characters I want to use him badly.
Yet, the King of Evil, Ganondorf, whom not only is based off of Falcon (a character not even from the same franchise) but has always had problematic matchup with the other characters, still remains the same.
Why?
With the transition from Melee to Brawl, we didn't lose much in terms of characters. Roy, Dr. Mario and Pichu were cut because they were unnecessary derivatives, Young Link was re-imagined into Toon Link, and Falco, the only
really well designed clone out the group, was kept to live on. Mewtwo was the only real blunder of the cuts in Brawl.
But in Smash 4, we're not just losing derivative, uninspired movesets.
Every character cut so far from Brawl at the very least was more then just an uninspired Melee clone; I won't go as far as to say some of these character cuts were "unique", per se, but I don't think they were chumps either: Squirtle, Ivysaur,
Snake,
Ice Climbers, Lucas, and
Wolf are all on the chopping block. The bolded characters in particular are characters that I feel either have merit as characters alone, or losing their unique moveset and playstyle is a
damn shame.
Ganondorf is still a derivative of Falcon, Toon Link seems to show just as much similarities to Link as before and Dr. Mario, Lucina, and Dark Pit are joining the fray. Despite focusing on "uniqueness", characters that are obviously less unique stay or get added yet characters far more unique are low priority and are getting cut.
I'll say it again: the minimal of development time spent on the Doc, Girl Marth, and Pit with Black clothes was a waste and was probably best allocated elsewhere.
I'm not sure how I feel about Duck Hunt. This may largely be because the novelty of "retros" for me wore off
ages ago.
In Melee, we got the completely unexpected Mr. Game & Watch, AKA the best and most unique character addition Sakurai has ever done IMO. While not always the best character in the meta-game, I thank Sakurai for Mr. Game & Watch; I found him to be the very definition of
clever. Of course, there was the Ice Clibmers too, whom were "retro" as well but G&W was where it was at.
Theeeeen there was R.O.B....*sigh*, I don't know what beef I have with R.O.B. Prior to his inclusion I knew who he was, what he had done for the industry, and why he had merit. I got it.
But R.O.B. to me felt...cheap. A cash-in on the whole "retro" thing; Game & Watch was clever, but R.O.B. I felt was lazy and uninspired. To me, this was where I grew tired of the "Retro Rep."
Yet, here we are with Duck Hunt. I'm torn. He's not a necessarily bad choice, but I don't find him to be the most ideal either. He will probably offer some interesting gameplay, but some of the descriptions offered from the leakers about him leave me disappointed as well. I guess with him, we just have to wait and see him in action.
---
Many of the character additions in this game are great. Yet, I find many of them to be questionable. Some of the cuts I can understand; yet some of them boggle my mind or could have been avoided. Overall though, despite my grievances (I'm not even getting into the lack of Mewtwo, Ridley, K. Rool or Dixie) I think that the newcomers overall is... balanced out. I don't think this roster is AmAzInG, but it's not completely terrible either. Just...Okay? Maybe a little bit more then "okay", actually.
All in All, I give this roster a solid
Sakurai/10. Yup, this is a Sakurai roster alright.
For better
and for worse.
