So yesterday I decided to finally do something I've been trying to for a few months now: I turned on my Wii again and replayed all of SSE for the first time in over 10 years.
I wanted to do it just because I started having doubts about whether or not I was being blinded by nostalgia goggles. Now I can safely say that it's not the case. As far as I'm concerned, The Subspace Emissary is the best single player experience to ever grace Smash.
Firstly, it's far shorter than I remembered - to the point where I think a seasoned payer can clear it all in one sitting. Secondly, I felt that the "beat'em'up-esque" sections were never boring and the ambushes rarely overstayed their welcome. Though I do have a problem with some moving sections. But overall, walking through levels was a very fun experience. There's a bunch of interesting mechanics and puzzles too, which I feel bring some variety to the table.
I can see why it ate so much dev time - and because of that, I kinda wished Sakurai and the team had reused more stuff from the existing stages and more enemies from existing series rather than try to make so much from scratch. Would have given the world more personality too - very few areas seem actually inspired by Nintendo worlds, like Skyworld and the Ice Climbers area.
As for the setpieces and the story, it's amazing how they managed to create some interesting moments out of a crossover story where pretty much no one talks. Plenty of great moments, like Lucas' mini character arc, Meta Knight and Marth fighting back to back, Captain Falcon accidentally killing like a dozen Pikmin while landing from a midair Falcon Punch... there are some things that go unexplained unless you read Sakurai's blog posts, but otherwise it's very solid.
I really wish the Smash team didn't focus so much on people uploading cutscenes from the internet and tried to give a similar experience in 4 and Ultimate. Smash Run is close, but it's not a substitute, and WoL seemed more and more flawed with every run I made. I wish they saw that watching the SSE cutscenes is not a substitute for the mode. It's some of the best times I've had with a single player mode in Smash, and I'm sad to see this great concept for a mode go like that.