I only care to re-iterate the point I’ve made about Bandana Dee in the past, which is that Bandana Dee is a victim of his moveset potential having missed the boat. Bandana’s intiial Smash 4 appeal was that, by the virtue of Kirby’s controls, his moveset in Return to Dreamland was a shoo-in for Smash and being easily mappable to the Smash control scheme. He had the distinction of his innate powerset being both unique and fitting in Smash.
For Ultimate, however, and whatever’s beyond that, this natural potential has been exhausted. Between the inception of Dee and Smash Ultimate, a full race-to-the-bottom has occurred when it comes to the distance-demon-department: Shulk was usurped by Corrin, who was usurped by Belmonts who were usurped by Byleth, Sepiroth and Min Min. Long story short, if you were to drop his Return to Dreamland set into Smash, you’d get an underwhelming set, when the exact same set would’ve been mighty fresh in Smash 4.
Now, Bandana’s golden moveset potential reaches a ceiling that I personally find it hard to extrapolate more from: Outside of his weapon of choice, Bandana Dee doesn’t have a really natural expansion of his powerset, as being Kirby‘s Player Four doesn’t grant him too much authority over the unique mechanics Kirby brings to the table.
Of course, one can settle for the RtDL set and make him a more basic moveset, or one can add to his potential with Parasol and Beam powers, but the initial “his playable appearance is a shoo-in for Smash” sweetspot is gone. Obviously, it‘s very much debateable how bad that is exactly, as the latter two are perfectly fine options. “Too little moveset potential” is not the argument here, but rather a call to reassess whether Bandana Dee’s natural potential still fits as well as it initially did.
This is where the contrast between Dee and the likes of Magolor and Marx becomes apparent, as the latter two don’t suffer from having to reach that much outside their basic power set to make for an intriguing set. Their Star Allies/Kirby Fighters 2 moveset now becomes the easy-mappable-to-Smash.
Horde (x6)
