Well aside from this current debate, does anyone here feel that the spirit of Smash Bros has lost its way over the years?
Personally I feel Smash is stronger than ever in this department. I'm not sure what the problem is, so maybe someone can better explain. Everyone is back, so many returning and new stages, tons of franchises represented old and new, a unique story mode. What's not to like?
I don't know either, but until Melee I was under the impression that the series had a more coherent and focused vision, while later the series became more and more random, a collection of as much stuff as possible without much thought behind.
Like stages for example, in the old games there was one song for each stage (+ secret song with rare chance of happening in Melee), now you have a selection of hundred of songs and they aren't even stage specific anymore.
The more the merrier right? It's a lot better to have more content rather than less? I don't think so. I'd prefer having stages designed to have a stronger identity and to match an overall identity of the game in a coherent way, rather than having stages that are model imports from other games and random ost. The identity is completely lost.Not to mention that the stage selection has big problems, such as, there are several versions of the typical Mario first level, but there isn't even a Bowser's Castle stage, and Pac-Man can't even have the location it's famous for.
This is just an example, in a game as big as Smash Bros, there are many things that changed in favor of quantity over consistency. The way how they managed to make all those different art styles and stuff coexist in the same game and look good is impressive, there's a lot of work behind that, I know, but I personally prefer a different approach to the overall concept of the game as a whole.
It's not even just that, even the way how the gameplay is done... and movesets... the game is still too much bound to its roots, it isn't evolving, it's just refining the gameplay of Brawl all over again (that anyway was very based on Melee already). We never got another jump like 64 to Melee, where they added many new moves and features to the core gameplay. Some veterans could be completely redesigned to have a moveset that matches their more recent appearances, but we're still stuck with their old movesets for the sake of not alienating the old mains of those characters (rarely they modify a veteran's moveset, and when they do it's usually just a few moves at best). Why doesn't Young Link use the ocarina and the masks? Why isn't Samus' moveset redesigned around her more agile version from Other M and Samus' Return? etc etc.
tldr:
I see the new direction of Smash as taking as much stuff as possible and sticking it all together with some tape, and I don't like this. At this point I'm hoping for a reboot and I don't even care if it cuts 90% of the content.