Yeah, Kirby's design is a mess:
- Inhale is Kirby's most important move from a representational standpoint, so it should be pretty good, but it's too slow to reasonably expect to land in a real match.
- The Copy Abilities take about (currently) 78 moves, slap them on a fighter they weren't designed for, and force the character to be able to use them all without becoming majorly unbalanced.
- I imagine this lead to the rest of the moveset being kind of mediocre.
- Hammer Flip is pretty useless outside of the casual setting.
- Stone has a very niche use outside of the casual setting.
- In the casual setting, it is the single best move in the game.
- Final Cutter is an "eh" recovery move picked because he has so many jumps, and currently sits at this awkward in-between of a Dragon Punch and a projectile attack.
Thing is though, a lot of Kirby's moves are iconic, so it's difficult to say how he could be fixed.
I do have a couple ideas, although those might be wonky from one aspect to another:
* When it comes to Inhale, it's worth noting that it was buffed in Ultimate: Sakurai and co added the 1.2X damage multiplier to the copied ability. The intent was likely to make people a bit more cautious and not get too close to Kirby. It's not that slow anymore (Frame 10), its issue IMHO is that it's kinda difficult to connect reliably. A slight shift forward during the animation could help. The trade off would be that Kirby's easier to hit, true, but the copy abilities are intended to be something to contend with. Not a full jump like that one Custom move - then again, that Custom move lead to one of the best failures in Smash history:
* Hammer Flip could be reworked a bit to more resemble how it functions in the Kirby games. Faster, but much weaker raw damage output than currently. My intent is to give him a semi-potent set up tool - it doesn't need to have huge range, but Kirby could still benefit from a start-up option that isn't D-Tilt (which is reliant on randomly tripping opponents in order to get a stronger window of opportunity, which makes it unreliable) or Forward Throw.
* Stone is going to be extremely difficult, no doubt. I'm tempted to leave it be, but maybe there should be a reason to use it on the ground? I'm thinking slight AoE damage (but no knockback) and likewise slight temporary knockback reduction for Kirby when it's used on the ground. My idea is to give Kirby a way to prolong his stock just a tad at high %, without making it even more obnoxious in a casual setting.
* Final Cutter... Difficult to say. Tempted to leave it as it is.
Like, it wasn't a mask or anything, it was a fully animated Waluigi head on top of Shovel Knight's body.
Ngl, part of me would have liked this more than Byleth.
In other words, you figured out Shovel Knight's true identity?
Edit: Oh **** the implications...
