There's a good reason Link wields the triforce of courage rather than power or wisdom. You need to be suicidally brave to play Link in any serious manner.
It's simply due to how much more work it takes for him to do anything useful compared to
who can practically shut Link down with fundamental "walk forward, shield projectiles, grab d-throw, U-air ad infinitum, punish landing at kill % (u-smash usually)" while Link has like two lame options that don't work well to attempt not to get blown up. (Soft bombs, and bombs held exploding to alter his midair flight path)
destroys Link in CQ, reflects projectiles even better than ever before (bombs
) and moves/jumps/recovers/combos better in every way making him the penultimate counter to Link in ever game.
can get in faster than we can hope to zone, combo and punish Link's hyrule tier weight to death until he has the stock lead. Then he can stall out the rest of the match with ease.
Link is the perfect weight for
's combo game, making it easy for her to get three confirmed throws a stock to rack the damage needed for Up-B to kill off the third string. Link has to PRAY he has a bomb in hand to alter his flight path mid-combo (which ZSS can react to and nullify with good tracking anyway)
effectively takes all of Link's projectile game away (THREE MOVES) with one, and has sufficient zoning with Luma to prevent Link from doing any real damage in CQ what with all of her moves being faster, safer, and infuriatingly more disjointed on U-tilt, U-air, and D-air...
is too fast for Link to zone, combos so well and can punish any attempt to escape Falcon basically has a 50/50 chance of taking your stock with one good string.
&
shut Link down in early % with combos up to 50% EASILY off a grab that comes out at least 2x faster than ours. Mario's fireballs are just as efficient for zoning as most of Link's combined arsenal, and Luigi's can be used to force a grab mix up that (at proper %) lead to an easy mashed Down-B confirm off the ceiling.
eats Link for breakfast... Nuff said. This matchup is soo loaded I don't need to describe it. Find a good Sheik and feel for yourself how garbage it is.
Fun Fact... MUs we should probably win are easy to lose if you aren't trying twice as hard as your opponent.
Needs exactly three good reads to put you down a stock.
can carefully avoid our zoning and lay on small % until she can force you into a landing situation and BOOM fully charged shot has you offstage, soft missle hits and all your momentum on Up-B is dead = you die.
can wait until Link selects an option and teleport into him on reaction. She can use phantom to stuff zoning momentarily, has an easy reflector, can recover from further, has better kill moves in air...
And that is all the simple things that Link gets shafted on. The complicated mess of things Link loses out on is a soul-sucking pit of how pathetic the character can be in anything less than a master's hands. If you want to win, don't play Link. If you want to take it easy and play lightly without to much struggle, don't play Link.
If you want someone to think "wow that's a pretty good player", you have to win with Link at a level where he is almost designed to lose consistently.
That all aside however, He's my favorite character, the one I feel the most relaxed playing, the one I probably play the best of the cast, the only character I've ever gone in tournament, and the only character I'll likely ever use in tournament save for one exception in Brawl.
I played a tough match in 2008 against a pretty scrubby
that was able to gimp me pretty hard due to my then inability to recover low properly. I CP
and three stock him the next two rounds as a point, and that is the only time I have picked anyone other than Link in tourney.