I think it's a 10/10 game, since 10/10 to me doesn't mean "perfect" but only "awesome in every way." In spite of that, though, oh man, the number of complaints I have... Might as well get them all out of the way in one gargantuan post.
Art complaints
Alternate costumes. Where are they?
The team had time to model 544 trophies, but they couldn't get two costumes per character? Misguided focus there.
Just a few of the awesome outfits that could have been:
Mario - Dr. Mario, Sunshine sleeves, Shadow Mario
Link - Farmhand, Ocarina of Time clothes
Pikachu - Female tail design, party hat
Samus - The real Fusion suit, default Power Suit (no huge shoulders)
Zelda - A Link to the Past dress, Marin, Zelda 1 dress, Malon, Oracle Nayru
Bowser - Mario Strikers armor
Yoshi - Boshi
Peach - Sunshine outfit, Tennis or Golf outfit, Mario Strikers uniform, Shadow Queen, real Daisy, Rosalina (well, I know there was no Mario Galaxy stuff in, so maybe not that)
Luigi - Mr. L, Cosmic Luigi
Zero Suit Samus - Chozo training clothes, Fusion ending clothes, Zero Mission ending clothes, Justin Bailey outfit
Pokemon Trainer (trainer) - Leaf Green girl, Pearl girl, Team Aqua/Galactic/Magma/Rocket Grunt
Pokemon Trainer (Pokemon) - Black and white Game Boy homage
Sheik - Ocarina of Time clothes
Ness - Ninten
Captain Falcon - Berserker
Ganondorf - Ocarina of Time clothes , Wind Waker design
Jigglypuff - Ninja headband
Music complaints
The soundtrack is really phenomenal. Amazing. Stupendous. Fantastic. Excellent. Every positive word can be applied to this soundtrack. And that's exactly why it's such a shame that so many wonderful themes are stuck on stages that nobody wants to play. (Or sometimes nobody except me. I'd play Port Town Aero Dive, but I'm basically the only one.) Route 209 is lost to the ages by being stuck on Spear Pillar. Mona Pizza and Ashley's Song are trapped in WarioWare. Flat Zone 2 is, of course, locked in the lion cage of Flat Zone 2. Awesome freaking music that I'll never hear because nobody plays those stages.
My Music was one of the greatest ideas they had for this game, period, but I think they stopped a little too short. Every song from a series should have been playable on every stage from that series. What I wouldn't give to rip Humoresque of a Little Dog and the Mother 3 Love Theme out of Non-Playable City and dump them in Onett. To get Bramble Blast and King K. Rool and practically everything out of Rumble Falls and into--well, Jungle Japes, I guess. (JJ still sucks, though, but it's not nearly as bad as Rumble Falls or 75m.)
And even stages that I like are still hogging music that I wish they weren't. I'd love to play Pokemon Center on Pokemon Stadium 1. Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1 on Delfino Plaza. One of the two Star Wolf themes on Corneria. Or how about at least being able to play Corneria on Corneria?
I understand, very much, that for the most part the creators picked themes specifically for each stage. I get that Tetris Type A makes infinitely more sense for Luigi's Mansion than it would for Delfino Plaza, and I get that Tal Tal Heights makes infinitely more sense for Pirate Ship than it would for Bridge of Eldin. But I still think the options should have been there. The Melee stages would especially have benefitted from being able to play all of the music from their series.
Also, they really should have put in Lyn's theme. But that's more of a personal nitpick.
Stage complaints
First of all, the lack of Dreamland 64 or anything remotely like Dreamland 64.
Second, the lost potential with Stage Builder hurts me.
Not like I'm asking that much by saying that they could have at least made the Subspace Emissary backgrounds useable. Why aren't they useable? They're already programmed into the game. They're already there. I'm not saying "They should have spent another few weeks making more backgrounds just for Stage Builder." I'm saying "They should have spent one or two days making the backgrounds
that they already created useable in Stage Builder." Should have been easy. Shouldn't it?
Third, the need for a stage hazard switch has become more noticeable now than ever before. I'd play Rumble Falls if I could flip a switch to keep it at its slow pace the entire time. I'm sure other people would play Port Town Aero Dive with me if I could go into the options menu and tone down the power of the cars. Spear Pillar would be okay if Dialga was the only one who ever appeared. If health recovery was the only reward in WarioWare, I'd play there pretty often. Flat Zone 2 would be about thirteen times better without those chair people.
Sure, there's no real way to save Non-Playable City, Hyrule Cample, or 75m unless you play in Mega Brawl mode, but I realize that you can't win 'em all. I'm just saying that a stage hazard switch would improve a lot of stages enormously.
Character complaints
Well, saving the biggest for the last... I'm not going to complain about characters who didn't make it in--because, honestly, the only one I would really really really have wanted (Colette from Tales of Symphonia) never had even the slightest chance--but just about the balance of the ones who did. While overall I think they got the balance much better than in Melee, and I commend that, I also truly don't understand some of the design decisions they made with the characters. (Feel free to correct me if I'm factually wrong on anything below, but these are my observations so far.)
Take
Mario vs. Luigi. How did they look at these two characters and not notice that Luigi does practically everything better, except for not reflecting projectiles and having a lame dash attack? Luigi has longer limbs, so he's got slightly better reach. His down air and down special are infinitely, infinitely more helpful than Mario's. He jumps higher. His up tilt seems to have less lag. His up special has about five times more potential due to the sweet spot. Luigi's recovery is miles better due to the tornado.
Or take
Samus vs. Zero Suit Samus. ZSS is faster, has much better melee range, and doesn't actually have any reduced power compared to Samus. Her back air and side special are as good at KOing at as anything Samus has to offer, and ZSS has faster attacks in general. ZSS is lighter, sure, but that's hardly compensation for all the things that happened to nerf Samus. How did they not notice that during development?
Then there's
Yoshi, who 1) is the only character who can't jump out of a shield, and 2) has sucked in every single Smash game. Again, I just don't see how they didn't notice that Yoshi's never been good and buff him up accordingly. They certainly did enough to improve Zelda.
Peach is a great example of a nerfed character who didn't need to be nerfed. (Although I would say her up tilt and side special are much, much better than before.) Her second jump gets such little height I'm not even sure it can be called a jump. Now, this would be okay if nobody else got much height either, but in a game where Kirby and Jigglypuff are still flying around
and now there's Meta Knight along with Pit, R.O.B., and King Dedede (the three masters of the "Never Say Die" motto), Melee Peach's jump height wouldn't be out of place at all. Considering that she's lighter than Pit, R.O.B., and Dedede anyway, it would even make a lot of sense for her to still have that excellent recovery.
Jigglypuff is... Yeah, I don't even want to think about what they did to Jigglypuff. :/ With everybody having multiple air dodges and less hit stun now, aerial prowess doesn't mean nearly as much as it did before. The old power of Rest is sorely needed, but even that wouldn't make up for how outmoded Jiggs is in the Brawl world--and she's always been my favorite Smash character. They could have at least done something like buffing Sing to a hitbox the size of Din's Fire, to make it even vaguely compare to much better stunning moves such as ZSS' down smash and neutral special. Blah.
Captain Falcon needed the old knee. Actually, he needed a lot of old stuff. I can't even figure out what's wrong with him in Brawl, but this is the only version of Falcon that I can't use effectively in the least.
Then we've got the Captain Falcon clone,
Ganondorf. The worst character in the game, almost unmistakably. He's so bad I'm almost certain that if every one of his attacks did 7 more damage than it does, he'd still be awful just because he has no way at all to approach anybody with a projectile or a sword--which is practically the entire cast. His dash attack got lag that it didn't need, his down special seems to have a smaller hitbox. His recovery is very possibly the worst in the entire game. His fantastic jab is now awful.
For yet more insult, he has absolutely nothing on the other heavyweights or power characters. Bowser is heavier, has faster attacks, has much better recovery, and can suicide kill more effectively than Ganon. King Dedede is heavier, has faster attacks, has infinitely better recovery, has longer melee reach, and has an excellent projectile. Ike moves faster, has faster attacks, has stronger attacks, has better recovery, has much more range, and has access to super armor attacks. Donkey Kong is heavier, has faster attacks, has longer melee range, and has better recovery.
How did the Smash team make an oversight of this caliber? How did nobody look at these characters and notice that Ganondorf lagged behind all of them in every way that could or would ever matter? This isn't like my Mario vs. Luigi mini-rant where I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong. I'm almost certain I'm not wrong about Ganondorf. Bowser could have no moves other than his up special, jab combo, forward tilt, and forward air and he'd probably still be better than Ganondorf. King Dedede could have nothing but Waddle Dees, grabs, and an up tilt. (Not even his up special.) Donkey Kong could live with one tilt, one aerial, and his up special. Ike could have his jab combo and back air only and I think he'd outclass Ganon by far.
Look, I don't know how game programming works, but I know that a place like Smashboards was able to take Melee and figure out the priority for every move, the number of frames it took to connect, etc., so I'd imagine that Brawl's creators could also do these things. And if that's so, I would think someone would have noticed that, for example, Ganondorf's fastest attack is slower than DK's slowest. (It's just a hypothetical; I'm not sure if that's true, but it sure seems like it.) Can companies make that kind of cross-character comparison? If not, it would certainly explain a lot about why there's historically always been great imbalance in fighting games, but that doesn't make sense to me considering that fighting game
communities can make these statistical breakdowns all the time.
Anyway, off of that tangent and off of Ganondorf. How about Snake? Why does he have disjointed hitboxes for his arms and limbs? Why do his tilts have the power of most characters' smashes while still having the speed of tilts? On top of all of this, his recovery is among the best in the game and he's not light in the least. Again, if they could just compare the statistics of the characters, the disparity in power should have been noticed...
Lastly,
R.O.B. Somehow and some way, it seems like nobody had the passing thought that a medium-weight character with the best recovery in the game, the best down smash in the game, two of the best projectiles, the ability to reflect projectiles, a forward tilt with incredible range, and incredible speed for his forward air, up air, and down tilt just might have been a cut above most of the rest. I'm not saying it's wrong that R.O.B. is excellent in all of these ways, but shouldn't they have seen just how bad most other characters end up looking by comparison?
Yeah, if you can't tell, I'm just really at a loss to explain how some things were handled. Again, the overall balance feels much better to me than before, yet a lot of the low-end characters seem like they're just damaged beyond recognition.
