!Boom!
Smash Journeyman
Actually I've won FFA's more with Olimar than any other character over the last several days. At first, he seemed to suck. Then, I spent an hour with him in training mode learning the properties of his moves. After that, I would win more often than not with him (which is more than I can say for other characters - I generally lost, which was pretty embarrassing since in the past I won the most in my group in Melee - having trouble adapting I guess).
Overall, I'd say Olimar is one of the best characters once you figure him out. Just don't use his Side+B too much since its very easy for someone to just do an attack and kill the Pikmin that are on them. If a Pikmin is following Olimar it is invincible to attacks. Only when thrown by a Side-B, side smash attack, or after Olimar is hit hard and some Pikmin are knocked away from him can they be hurt. The Side+B should only be used on an opponent that can't attack easily, like Falcon during his recovery move or something. Oh, and the purple pikmin do not latch on with the side-b, they just fly through their opponent. The side-B can be blocked too, which oddly makes the Pikmin fly right past the blocking opponent.
One nice use of Pikmin is that they can be used as projectile to diffuse bombs and Snake's mines and such, although you lose the Pikmin. I tend to not sacrifice Pikmin often though, because I prefer them to grow to full blossom and reach high power. However, you can really play him 2 ways - heavy use of side+B to rack up damage but losing Pikmin often, or save the Pikmin and get them to full power and use them for smash attacks. Fortunately, he plucks Pikmin VERY fast so them dying isn't a big deal for having a number of Pikmin to use - its only a problem if you get hit right after sacrificing a bunch and have no rope to use to recover. Thus its fine to sacrifice them with little risk other than the fact that your smashes won't be as powerful because they don't grow into full blossom.
His Down+B is great - it immediately warps all living Pikmin to him no matter where they are - often I am knocked away and need to recover, so I Down+B and get all my Pikmin immediately, then Up+B with a full length Pikmin rope. Speaking of which, the rope is actually a pretty good attack, does surprising amount of knockback and good for hitting the Smash Ball with.
His side smash is very powerful and has huge range for a smash attack, since he throws a Pikmin, but it does leave the Pikmin vulnerable to getting attacked after. Also, the pikmin will come back automatically unlike the side+b, if they live. His Down Smash shoots a Pikmin out on both sides of him which is pretty effective, but not as ranged as the forward - but they pikmin are not left vulnerable.
Hit Up Tilt is a very effective multi-hitting attack with high priority. So is his neutral air which is similar. Niether require Pikmin.
His Up Smash is also quite powerful and doesn't leave a Pikmin vulnerable.
His grab game is great - he sends a Pikmin out in front of him, which grabs someone and brings them back. Then for his A while grabbing, the Pikmin that did the grab beats on the enemy rather than Olimar himself. His throws are powerful too, and different depending on the Pikmin you grabbed with.
His air attacks are sick with the pikmin. He swings them like a bat with his forward and back and does good damage. His DAir is a spike and hits hard. His UAir tosses a Pikmin above his head a bit, which twirls around in the air then returns to him. Its multi-hitting and very damaging and can be a good kill move for a star KO.
Olimar is kinda like Marth - he plays a good spacing game. He's an excellent survivor - he seems to be much heavier than his size would indicate, and has great DI. I've survived many attacks I was sure would kill me, and his recovery being a tether recovery is hard to guard against. Useful to just hang on the rope during some FS's to avoid taking damage. He's pretty vulnerable to edge hogging though.
If you play with them on, his FS is a contender for best in the game. Its the only one I know of that is 100% unavoidable for taking damage from. Even Kirby's you can get away from if you get far enough away, but Olimar's automatically damages everyone no matter what, and is more effective on FFA than in 1v1. Also, when the ship crashes it has a huge damage radius and is very hard to avoid because you can't see where you are until just before the ship hits, and if it hits someone they are almost guaranteed to die. I usually get at least 2 KO's when I use it. I'd actually say its overpowered to be honest.
His Up Tilt has him hop in the air and spin in place like a top. No Pikmin used. Multi hitting and high priority. His nuetral air is also him spinning in place like a top and is also high priority.
I don't remember his jabs and D and FTilt very well, sorry (my friend is gone for the weekend so I can't go check). I know one of them, I think his DTilt, has him headbutt low to the ground and kind of scoot forward, and you can keep scooting forward across the stage with it. I do know that his jabs and tilts do not require a Pikmin to use though, only his smashes. Also his Up+B does make him hop up a little bit if he has no Pikmin, and he does do an animation when using a non-nuetral air attack without Pikmin, but I'm not sure it actually does any damage. His Nuetral air of course works without pikmin.
I know there's a distinction between Spikes and Meteor Smashes but I forget to specify, I refer to them both as spikes. Sorry. I don't know if its a Spike or Meteor, in fact I'm not sure if Brawl even has non-meteor spikes or not. I found most info while playing myself for 4 hours while my friend had to do some work, but once others are there no one really want to take the time to test out details when they could just play VS or co-op modes. I just know his DAir has killed more than one person by spiking them downwards, however, no one in my group has managed a meteor cancel on any move yet - the controls still feel so weird to us and there's enough chaos and new moves no one is familiar enough with to realize it will spike them that I think everyone just forgot to try cancelling it before it was too late.
I think the major point about Olimar though is that no one can really tell what he is doing. This is a disadvantage to many of the new players you see in videos playing as him, because they can't really tell what is working or not. However, its a huge advantage he has once you understand his moves, because your opponent has a very difficult time reading him. He's got Pikmin all over the place and none of his own motions are very telegraphed, so its just really hard to see what he is doing. He just looks like he is jumping around with Pikmin moving every which way around him.
I think this is one reason I've done well with him - eventually my friends become scared of him and try to avoid him, because whenever they got remotely near they'd get hit with something and not know what it was half the time. They could be grabbed or hit with a forward smash and it looks so similar, they don't know if they should block or not because it could be a grab or it could be an FSmash. I use this to my advantage to basically snipe people with FSmashes and his powerful air attacks, doing safe ranged grabs and throws (his back throw kills), occasional long-reaching Up+B, or sometimes throwing caution to the wind and just pelting people with side+B thrown pikmin to wrack up damage. The thing is he's not really a combo'ing character like Mario, he's a sniper character with powerful attacks and unpredictability.
Oh, his FSmash is a killer edge guard by the way, although you lose a pikmin to do it, the pikmin flies out and falls and has a very good chance of hitting someone trying to recover and will likely kill them. Particually yellow pikmin I've noticed, they send them at a kind of downward trajectory like Falcon's knee it seems.
Edit: one interesting property I found in training mode. His side-b, as you know, latches the pikmin on to something it hits and they pelt them for a while, doing damage but not interrupting moves, although they can be killed by an attack (also, if the opponent blocks, it does block the damage from attached Pikmin, but the attacks will drain their shield very quickly). However, one thing I did notice is the Pikmin attach and pelt the enemy for a while then automatically stop and return to Olimar if they are not killed. BUT, the time they are attached is different depending on how damaged the player is. And, oddly, its the reverse of most moves. A player at 0 percent will have the pikmin stay attached and beat on them for a long time before detatching, but a player at 100% will have the pikmin only hit them once or twice then stop. Also, of course, the whistle immediately detatches them and they fly back to you, so if you are quick, just like in the actual Pikmin game, you can toss some on then whistle to get them back before they are killed by an attack.
One other interesting thing - thrown pikmin with side+b count as a projectile and can be reflected (throwing them with the FSmash though can not be reflected, it counts as just a long range physical attack). When they are reflected, they can actually attach to Olimar himself and will start pelting him instead! However, if you whistle they will immediately detatch, so if a pikmin is reflected back at you, whistle to get them not to attack you.
I have had success with him but it is way too early to tell anything close to a tier list. I'm not sure he'd be top tier or not, but I doubt he'll be super popular given the reaction many have had to him. I think he'll possibly end up like Ice Climbers - high tier but only a small number of players will know how to use him well enough to win tournaments. This is just my opinion though.
Zauron has said just about it all - Olimar is a pimp, and is definitely above average in the tier. Rest assured, though, he's not exactly user-friendly, so I doubt we'll see too many people overwhelmingly preferring him in tournaments over more traditionally good characters.
I'll do my best to address the other questions I've seen come up in response to Zauron and HeroXL's posts, as I was able to get 3 hours of surprise Brawl in today (I had no idea I'd be playing it this early!).
Matt: I checked out all his taunts, and nothing in particular caught my eye. As a result, I invented my own taunt. If you turn around when you have Pikmin following you, they go through you in single file and line up on the other side. If you are completely against the edge, and then turn around, the Pikmin run to the edge and then jump STRAIGHT up instead of jumping off. If you keep pivoting back and forth like this, the result is a mesmerizing, undulating Pikmin wall on the edge of the stage (the Pikmin jump to about the height of a short hop).
I didn't pay much attention to his victory music or poses, so whatever. But I was curious as to the mechanics of his grabs, and was very pleased / intrigued with what I found out.
With normal attacks, the Pikmin that Olimar is using goes to the end of the queue afterwards, and the second Pikmin becomes the next. After Olimar's throws, this is not the case. I wasn't able to discern any sort of underlying pattern beneath the reordering, but this was probably due to everyone being too excited about playing the game and not letting me write down my Pikmin orders... Anyways, the opponent takes damage and is sent in a direction corresponding to the type of Pikmin used. This is an exciting property, because it would make it nearly impossible to DI correctly against a very skilled Olimar player! This could also lead to creatively complex chaingrabbing cycles (lol at alliteration) by professional players - using a function of certain throws and certain Pikmin to calculate their resultant trajectory and follow up with a chaingrab or a combo. GOD I sound like a nerd but I'm so stoked.
Amazingly enough, though, the best part of Olimar's throws is initiating them! Olimar has the best grab mechanic that I have seen thus far in any smash game! He has a ranged grab - sending Pikmin out to grab them - which is as fast as a melee grab! If you "miss" your grab, you aren't helpless like Link or Samus (or even Yoshi), you can attack, run, or even grab again! When I played earlier today, I was machinegunning his Pikmin out for grabs as fast as any character can grab at the air! This definitely was one of his best points in my book. It gives him a good shield grab game as well as a nice ranged grab for mindgames (combined with his ranged forward smash and his Pikmin toss for Mental ****!).
His up throw involved a Pikmin grabbing the enemy, jumping a short distance, then slamming it down. The enemy is sent up and out. His down throw sends them a short ways up and out. His forward and back throw send the opponent where you'd expect. The back throw was his farthest, while his down would be the most suitable for chaingrabbing or comboing. Sorry, I don't remember what many of them look like. They were'nt very visually impressive, but that's okay. Olimar doesn't need to compromise for ANYTHING!
IllidR: I was really happy with his tilts. Their most notable property, besides being Pikmin-less, is that they all involve significant movement on Olimar's behalf for the attack. His up tilt, as previously described, has him jumping a short distance off the ground (a few feet) and spinning, with good priority and damage. His down tilt has him sliding across the ground in short, headbutt bursts. His side tilt is the fastest of the three, and has him lunge out a short distance (Ness' bat's range) with his feet, before falling on the ground. The move is quick, moderately strong, and has surprising range. The drawback is that you are vulnerable on the ground for a short time afterwards. I'd say it's worth the tradeoff, but it's a move that should be used sparingly. The up tilt sends enemies up - the forward tilt sends them forward, and the down tilt sends them back and up (if memory serves, maybe I just made that up though). I think these three attacks are excellent additions to his arsenal even when he has Pikmin, as they represent more erratic speed and position changes to further confuse your opponent.
His d-air had good priority and, because it involved Pikmin, a disjointed hitbox and decent range. I had no problems connecting with it. Still unsure as to it's Spike or Meteor Smash nature, though.
I know exactly why you're wary about Olimar being related to Marth. I hate playing by the tier, and switched from Peach to Pikachu for that reason in Melee. At the very least, it shows how much potential he has. But believe me, Olimar's potential is much different than the generally noob-friendly Marth. Mindgames are going to be a huge facet of Olimar's play, and advanced situational awareness will only help his cause. Besides, his projectiles are unpredictable - making them challenging and fun to implement effectively for the player. When I played Olimar, I definitely felt more of a "Peach (turnips) / Pikachu (short, fast, throws self at opponent with melee attacks) / Ice Climbers (immensely technical, and partner related) / Marth (lol F-smash)" vibe, and at least 3 of those characters are fun to play! With most simple desynchs sorely missing, Olimar might be the new "Ice Climbers" - amazingly good in the right hands, but often underrepresented.
Me: Woah, my turn. So, the one thing that I checked for that I haven't seen many people worrying about is the speed of Olimar's sidestep. I main Pikachu in Melee, so I'm used to an insanely quick sidestep getting me past many of my troubles... His sidestep checks out in my book. Though it's more on the average side, I think he's earned some "so-so" moves. His sidestep seems to have average speed - it's not clunky or ridiculously fast, which probably comes as no surprise to most of you. Well SCREW YOU. I'll miss my sidestep, but I suppose it's time to move on to better things.
Alright, that's pretty much it. Unfortunately, my ability to play the game today was more of a fluke than anything, and I won't get access to the game again for another week. I will mull over any questions you have for me, but I won't be able to definitively respond until we have our UW brawl tournament in a week.
Kudos to Zauron and those who contributed to this wonderful information.
