I got my first video recordings in smash last week at a small tournament (15 people, placed 3rd) and I'm looking for some general feedback on how I might be able to improve.
Fair warning, I don't sugar coat things when i review. Just remember that none of this is to hurt your feelings or create argument, only to point out what I see.
Ok, First vod: (I looked at WNDY one first)
I could tell you had some nerves going into it because your game was ridiculously stiff in the first match. The stiffness never really went away, but it lessened with each match. Tournament experience will grow on you and nerves will be less and less of an issue.
Your neutral is very stiff, and very focused on killing the 'impatient' player. What I mean by this is, when I watch your match, I see you going for reads and punishes all the time that involves the opponent being impatient. Lots of charged smashes and tilts and option coverage against an opponent that's too far away to care.
Your aerial game in the fist game didn't exist and it came out more and more with play, but this is what I still mean about being stiff. Yoshi is basically what I call a liquid character, constantly moving, flowing, attacking from every angle and making strings weave together from dynamic movement. Work more aerial movement into your neutral.
Your mental game is, for the most part, very shallow. It's very clear for an opponent to see what you want because of how you position yourself and/or how you spam the move a few times to azen them into approaching. This goes hand in hand with your current style geared towards impatient, unthinking players. Put more thought and purpose behind your moves so you can deepen you mental. Want a grab? don't run around the base of the stage and grab everywhere while the opponent is chilling out on the top platform. Instead chase them up, or empty hop into their range and drop back down so they push the fake pressure you gave them. Then you get your pivot grab and do whatever. Your followups are also a little shallow, you do a little too much watching and not enough acting in this case. Dthrow leads to IMMEDIATE punishes, Utilt is only one of them on spacies. You have to go for the gusto and get the followup as soon as you can. This means making a read on DI sometimes, it'll mean missing sometimes. But that's ok, it's part of learning and thinking faster.
Last point to this, you were making me cry with the first match, you had such an easy victory slip by because you didn't know how to jab reset. If Fox (or any character) is prone on the ground because of a missed tech, you can jab them to force them to stand up. Then you get a FREE ANYTHING. You had at least 10 stock-ending opportunities off of jab reset that you decided to uptilt instead.
Second vod: (round 2)
You seem to be playing better, than in finals (granted it is less stress and it is a match that happened before the other vod)
but upon closer inspection, your opponent just wasn't good. Harsh, but I saw that any time your opponent showed a shed of patience, he won the trade or outright stuffed you. You were playing the game relatively automatically and not really thinking.
As an example, first game you were wavedashing back and forth with pretty solid ground movement to trick your opponent up, then You GOT him to mess up and he whiffed a grab. At that point, you go in and wreck his ****, but you just kept wavedashing and let the opportunity die. I don't know if you weren't paying attention, or if you didn't feel confident in getting the punish?
The confidence thing is actually the next point I need to bring across, You need more of it. Both vods, getting followups aand punishes seemed to be a major issue, even though the setups and opportunities were open and free. In friendlies, I recommend just going ham and seeing what you can get away with. Once you have those options down, start to look at what you can do to set yourself up for those punishes or reads or whatever. You can break it down to little parts that allows to cover all options down to eventually covering the exact options that your opponent will chose.
As a final point, just think as you play, don't second guess yourself, and put purpose behind every button press. If you're going to do something, know the next 3-4 steps you will take in any situation. It takes time, it takes practice, but you'll get there if you want it
