Eh, I see 4 being dragged down more than Brawl these days competitive wise. Or at least that was the case when scrolling through smash Twitter around smash con. I can't really say much about my competitive perspective but the content was definitely lacking in 4.
Imo 4 has the better gameplay, but I'm not really going to be back playing 4 or Brawl for gameplay since Melee and Ultimate are my main games that are absolutely fun to play matches all day. At least with Brawl it had subspace and boss battles as its exclusive modes. 4 lacked new modes that were good and absolutely made some existing modes worse like Classic and Targets.
I loved 4 and I'd argue it's structurally the better game, but man I can't help but feel the times I got bored because there isn't much to do especially now.
Yeah, I preffer the gameplay of Smash 4 in comparison to Brawl, but Smash 4 is totally "empty" in content to me. It has the core game, but when you are alone and tired of play online and want something to do that is not fight with enemy AI, to explore, to waste your time, it has nothing really interesting to do that you cant have if you download a mobile game in your phone. In comparison, Brawl at least had Subspace, that is a mode that I still wait to see a sequel with more quality.
Thank god Smash Ultimate introduced something to do for singleplayer, that is far better than what we had in Smash 4. And.. I can only say that it is better than Brawl too because Brawl Subspace while interesting is not really polished or super fun, it was pretty poor, a good idea not very well implemented. But Smash Ultimate singleplayer modes are just Ok to me. They are not really impressive, cause they all feel the same and they are all very repetitive.
Spirits, Spirit Board and Classic mode are all the same thing with small tweaks to make them appear to be different modes, but they are very similar.
Spirits and Spirit Board are actually the same thing.. With the difference that in Spirits when you are not fighting you are walking through a map and in Spirit Board you just select a random match directly. But when you are really playing, fighting, you are basically doing the same thing, you have the same feeling in both modes.
The same thing happens to Classic mode. It doesnt have spirits, but every battle of Classic Mode can easily fit in a Spirit battle. It's just a new name for another mode of quick battles with random properties, in this case not with spirits, but the effect and the feeling is the same too...
The only difference between these modes are the interface between battles, in one is a map, in the other is a bunch of cards, and in the other the battles have a different distribution for each fighter...
At the end of the day, if you dont appreciate the quick battles with different properties they provide for single player, you will probably not like all the big 3 main singleplayer modes of Smash. And this is the problem with the single player of this game to me. It has 3 main big modes, pretty huge, but they are all the same, with different interfaces and small tweaks. If you want to play some good singleplayer level, and you are tired of quick battles, where do you go in the game? From Spirits to Spirit Board? To Classic? It's the same thing.. you will not even feel you changed the game mode. It is just small quick battles everywhere..
I like the Spirit/Classic mode battles, but I think it works better as an extra to a campaign mode that I expect to see in a future game.