I love the idea for this character, and the way he fights is unique to him besides his copy pasted sword aerials and dash attack. The only real issue I have with this character (it is a pretty big one) is his Down Special, Command Selection. I feel as if one of the Hero's most unique moves was also his most poorly created move. Don't get me wrong, I like the RNG factor and choices that have to be made from a list of four spells, but there are two major flaws with this move that ultimately complicate things.
The first flaw and less notable of the two is that the system of selecting a spell is way too clunky. When committing to Command Selection, a menu pops up which allows the player to select a desired spell. This menu for selecting a spell is way too far out of the way. There are certain spots on the map where it just seems impossible to focus both on reading the spell list and checking your character's surroundings at the same time. It should defiantly be closer to the character you're controlling instead of above your damage percent. One's peripheral vision being in sight of stuff happening around the character they're controlling can make a huge difference. The other big thing making this UI a difficult one to handle is the fact that you have to scroll up and down to get to your desired spell. I don’t know Dragon Quest, so it might work well in that game, but those extra inputs make it hard to use. All of this in combination with the fact that the menu is different each time you pull it up makes for a very hard move to use all because of a poorly designed system of selecting spells. I like to compare the current Command Selection to Shulk's Monado Arts from Smash 4. In that game, Shulk had to repeatedly hit buttons to access certain arts. It left Shulk somewhat vulnerable when changing to the Buster or Smash art, and if something interrupted them, the Shulk player may get stuck with the wrong art. The added accessibility in Smash Ultimate helps when playing characters like Shulk because the Monado selection is quick and easy. Why could they not do that to the Hero?
The other flaw and defiantly the bigger one is the fact that all the spells are listed only in words. This fact alone isn't a big problem, and it probably won't be in most situations, but the issues of having to work around the game’s language are extremely problematic. Imagine for a second that we see two Hero mains at a major tournament go head to head. Both can speak English, but only one of the two can read it because the other person has a different primary language, and there is no language both players can read. This alone could put one player at a major disadvantage if they use Command Selection often because they can't read what spell they're about to use. Take this other situation that happened to me earlier this morning. One person in my primary friend group is a Marth maining weaboo who plays the game in Japanese for the Japanese voice actor. He got the Hero, invited us over to play some Smash Bros, and after one match where we all played as the Hero, I stuck with him, but I couldn't read the command selection. This is all something that can be changed in the settings by the way. Changing the language is essentially "[COLOR=3366CC]How to f*ck with a Hero main 101[/COLOR]". I recommended the possibility of using icons alongside the words which are universal regardless of language, but I don't know if that is going to happen at this point. This type of stuff seriously needs to be accounted for in tournaments by the way, because without either a ban on the Hero or consistency in the language used, people will be able to exploit this to their heart's content, and Hero mains could suffer greatly.
