Pros:
* The visuals in this game are stunning, they gave stages like The Great Cave Offensive such detail when you wouldn't see most of it in normal gameplay. The colors are bright, characters expressive, and some of the stages look gorgeous.
* The new music (what of it we got) is really good, if not a bit repetitive. The Super Mario World medley, Mii Channel, Super Mario Bros 3 Medley, and pretty much all of the Animal Crossing stuff is probably some of my favorite stuff from the series yet.
* 8 Player Smash. I cannot emphasize how fun this mode is. Not only does it take the 4-players-at-a-time restriction from pretty much every multiplayer game out there out of the equation, but it really gives battles a sense of freshness and good chaos that a 4 player battle can't give, even with 1 human and 7 CPUs.
*Special Orders are a surprisingly fun way to grind for rewards even if CDs hardly ever show up and I'd personally count as the true "main" exclusive mode of the game.
Cons:
* Sooo much is re-used from Brawl. Sound effects, voice clips, victory fanfares, hell even a good amount of the stages (we got 3 more new stages than Melee had), and even the general layout of the menus. I wasn't a fan of how Brawl's menus were layed out and much preferred how 64 and Melee handled things. It doesn't help that the control stick is super sensitive on the menus, which is just frustrating.
* Stage hazards make two stages completely unplayable
* Not enough new music (in that 50-Fact thing they were so proud of the amount of music in the game but only a fraction of it was new. I'm not saying this is terrible but it was a bit disappointing)
* Even though the game hasn't even been out two months, I can safely say Smash Tour is probably the single worst mode in any of the four (five?) Smash games. It goes way too fast, is not explained well at all, the between-round battles are way too short, and honestly the only interesting part was the final battle where each of your stocks are a different character (which should be its own thing in the next game). When we heard it was a board game mode sooo many people (myself included) were expecting something similar to Mario Party (well the good ones, anyway) but with Smash, but the two aren't comparable in the slightest. And considering this is presented as this game's answer to Adventure Mode and The Subspace Emissary (it even has it's own space on the main menu) it's all the more disappointing.
* Trophy-viewing was messed up, zooming in and out goes too fast so it's hard to be precise, and you can't look at the top or bottom of a trophy without it instantly snapping back to a front-view. Which kind of makes collecting trophies less rewarding because it's way harder to enjoy looking at them now.
* The intro movie was terrible
* Some characters (Peach) got the shaft in the alternate costume department. So many characters got cool references to past games in their respective franchises, some really obscure (NES Open Golf??) and only two of hers are references, Daisy and NES/Fire Peach, both of them just being half-hearted palette swaps. And she had so much material to work with too (SMB sprite, Melee dress, something from Mario Party 2, Shadow Queen, Sunshine dress, etc).
* All the time battles in Master Orders are way too short. 1 minute isn't nearly enough and matches usually end in Sudden Death (which is a terrible way to end ties but whatever). There were so many times when I probably would have won but I ran out of time.
* I love 8 Player Smash to death but I'm disappointed with the restrictions on which stages we can pick. Hopefully next time we have more of a selection.
*No Target Smash, instead some weird Angry Birds game. Nobody would have minded if we had both but apparently the team liked Target Blast better?
I know a ton of people rag on the 3DS version, even calling it a demo or whatever, but I truly believe it damaged the Wii U version. We already know it caused the Ice Climbers to be cut, and I feel like the new stages were split between the two versions. Had there been one version, none of the franchises would have gone without having a new stage on one of the versions (I actually made a list of what stages we would have, albeit with different returning ones, and it would have been way better than either version). Plus since all of the development power would have been devoted to one game, there'd probably have been an actual new 1P mode that was good (I'm still on the fence about considering Special Orders Event Mode with a fresh coat of paint or not).
I do like this game a lot (I think it has the best speed in the entire series), but I feel like, along with Mario Kart 8, it's light on content and just begging for DLC. However we probably won't get (not counting already-announced stuff) more than some new stages, maybe a new character or two and maaaybe new costumes. I don't expect any new modes and that's too bad because that's one of the biggest areas this game is lacking in right now.