Charizard mains' thoughts on Ridley

[kendikong]

I am wondering specifically what zard mains feel about ridley.

Watching a lot of ridley vids I see that he plays very similarly to charizard which makes me very excited to play him. I tend to like playing heavyweights in general. I can see myself making him one of my secondaries or even my main if I'm not feeling the new pokemon trainer mechanics.

 

[IsmaR]

PT was my secondary in Brawl, and I spent a lot of time on Zard in 4.

I feel like Ridley excels in racking up damage, with a lot of his normals having disjoints (anything involving his tail has a tipper mechanic) and remains versatile with deceptively good mobility (4 jumps, fast dash, decent air speed/etc.) and a fair amount of moves that put you in disadvantageous states (fully charged fireballs from a distance, side B to get you off stage, down B for getting back on stage and on large characters in general).

Despite the size, however, Ridley remains a bit lighter than most of similar frame, meaning he's both combo fodder against faster characters and dies earlier than most other heavyweights/tall characters. His specials each have their own quirk (neutral B can blow up in your face, side B and down B have a lot of start up/aren't safe if you whiff, up B has limited trajectories) and he can sometimes struggle getting KOs (only his command throw KOs anytime early, and his best KO options usually aren't fast/safe outside of maybe up air which has a similar disjoint to Charizard's up tilt), and he only suffers against things like rage.

I think Charizard has some overall differences that will make playing the two of them much different. It's too early to tell how impactful things like Charizard having a kill throw, being able to switch out to faster/smaller characters (Squirtle will be a nightmare for Ridley, IMO), and in general having some much harder hitting moves (F-air and B-air look super good this time around), but I'm not too worried that Charizard will be completely overshadowed by Ridley to the point that there's no point in playing him this time.

All in all I'm excited for both characters. Charizard in particular was my favorite reveal from Brawl (and PT in general was my favorite veteran reveal for Ultimate), while Ridley is my fav newcomer this time around. All the years of "Ridley would just be a Charizard clone" memes aside, seeing them actually fight in game is still such a surreal yet glorious thing.