I will first start by saying that brawl is in no way a BAD game. It is different. I have a close friend with a japanese copy of brawl and a japanese wii. i have logged well over fourty hours of playtime in the game. I play against Korean DJ, Omega Black Mage, and other tournament calibur players. I also play at my college's gaming club, where casual gaming is emphasized. I have not played any of the single player, as I do not speak or read japanese, therefore I will not comment on that. I also have not used the WiFi settings, as all of my friends who are interested in brawl go to the same school as me.
I have some legitimate complaints, and praises regarding brawl. I apologize if I am repeating things that have already been said. Even though they may not be original, these are my observations about the game. I am not the final authority on the game by any means, nor am I trying to appear so. Rather I am giving my opinion. Please don't flame me.
There is a much stronger emphasis on casual gaming, which reflects Nintendo’s general migration towards party games. The technical skills that separated tournament players from a casual gamer are now gone. You can no longer L cancel (which leads to no shuffling or wave dashing). I do admit that casual gaming can be very fun. Many gamers don't like competitive games, and just want to relax with their friends. This is fine. However, the fact that technical moves exist does not take away from casual gaming. You DON'T have to use them. I consider myself a competitive gamer, but when I played with my friends who weren't I would hold back. In melee I would play bowser and mewtwo against my casual gamer friends and it worked fine. By removing the technical aspects of a game, you don't enhance the casual game. You only remove the potential for people to play competitively. As I (as a competitive gamer) acknowledge the fun of just chilling with your friends, playing a videogame, casual gamers must acknowledge that there can be (and for many people is) a great deal of fun in mastering a game through working out the technical aspects and playing competitively. This is my main criticism of brawl.
Along the same line of thought, I do not like the difficulty of edge guarding in brawl. Everyone's recovery is SO good that it is nearly impossible. I remember hitting a luigi five times, while he was hovering around the edge, and he still managed to recover successfully after I ran out of jumps (i was playing Kirby at the time). The game discourages me from working hard, and I personally find that aggravating.
There are many things that I like about brawl. Mainly the character selection. With the exception of Lucas and ness (and the recycling of some final smashes, eg the landmaster) There are no clones in brawl. Marth plays NOTHING like Ike. CFalc is not the same as gannondorf at all. The space animals (fox, wolf, and falco) have distinctive move sets and feels. Lucardio is mewtwo 2.0, but with the absence of mewtwo, that is not an issue. Also the addition of fresh characters is very welcome. There is something for everybody. Also, I have found that the characters are much more balanced in terms of priority vs speed vs power. It is much more difficult to define tiers (as reading many threads in the brawl character discussion further prove). I view this as a good thing. I was tired of facing only 4 characters at my local tournaments. I believe that these newly balanced characters will add more variety to the game's tournament scene which will help remedy the lack of technical moves.
Also, most of the stages are well designed. In general, your platforms are stable. The stage rarely kills you, which was one of my biggest pet peeves in melee. I especially love the Wario Ware stage, which is really fun when you can’t read the instructions on the minigames. The only stages I don’t like are the Mother stage (which is WAYYY too big), the new Final Destination (which traps you against the side of the stage with most characters’ recovery), the new DK stage (which resembles the ice climbers stage with pointy death spikes placed on various spots) and the 8bit DK stage (you can’t fall through the platforms, and the springs and original DK kill you way too easily).
Gald to see that you agree.
