After playing around a little more, I've been playing Mega Man a whole lot more lately, and I'm having difficulty deciding on whether I want him or Sonic as my sidekick. Both characters are really enjoyable for me to play, and I'm being real indecisive on who I like better.
has been my second since the game was out on 3DS in October and is one of my favorite gaming heroes. I started out incredibly bad and reckless with him, but I've gotten noticeably better with him now and have become a somewhat well respected player in my region with him and Greninja in just a few months, starting to make my mark in December. What I like about Sonic is his bait and punish playstyle and the many options he has out of his spin dashes and spin charges. When I use it, I get to mess with my opponents heads and force them to do something stupid and then I can go in and punish them brutally, and Sonic's just a very unpredictable character and annoying for most to fight because of it. Sonic's damage output is easily among the best in the game with spectacular spindash combos, and he has a much easier time killing opponents than Greninja and Mega Man do. Sonic himself is also a somewhat bad matchup for Greninja too, so that says something. My problem with Sonic though, are that his approach options are sooooooooo bad, and he has no real safe way of getting in without being punished (no projectile, no aerial safe on shield, not too many answers to projectiles). Sonic suffers from the same weakness as Meta Knight: they are both over-reliant on fake approaches and can only really go in once the opponent makes a mistake, their options for real approaches are incredibly poor and are only really doable in mixups. Greninja can approach with Forward Air, Back Air, and Shurikens and he's at least safe if he spaces them, and Sonic doesn't really get any of those luxuries and is too dependent on his spindash mixups and being unpredictable.Even though he has a lot options from his spin dash and spin charge, pretty much all of them can easily be stuffed or punished if your opponent knows what you are about to do; and you constantly have to change the way you're going to approach to even get a few hits in. Sonic and Greninja also have terrible landing options from the air, and their defenses against people directly below them are all very unreliable, and someone like Fox can practically
destroy both of them the moment they go airborne. Sonic's speed, combo game, and versatility all make Sonic a really fun character for me to play, and killing with spring to Uairs feels more rewarding than anything Mega Man can do. But when you're a character who's only form of approach is basically pretending to approach, playing Sonic can also be just as frustrating as its fun, sometimes even draining. A lot of people hate Sonic and like to complain about him, but he's not nearly as easy to use as he seems.
He was my 2nd favorite characer in the 3DS demo behind Pikachu (who I no longer enjoy much at all)I only started playing
in November, and I have only recently got into his games like last summer a little after his announcement in Smash. I did however, know who he was and have played some online fan games of him and played him in Marvel vs Capcom, and I always thought of him as a little cool character even though I haven't played his games. What makes Mega Man so amazing is that he is viable in multiple playstyles: You can play him as a a zoning, campy character, or an aggressive semi-rushdown character. Sonic and Greninja don't really get this luxury: neither character is really the best at approaching and they can't really zone opponents because Greninja's projectile has some endlag on it and is punishable with poor out of shield options, and Sonic has literally no projectile at all (or at least not a
good projectile); you can't really be too offensive or too defensive with either character. With proper spacing of his lemons/mega buster its very hard to get in on Mega Man as long as he keeps moving while shooting and shooting, and he can use the buster to approach himself if he chooses to and interrupt smash attacks while the opponent is still animating before their hitboxes even come out. His Metal Blades are a stupdendous projectile that are multi-purposely useful: its useful for edgeguarding, comboing, spacing, can be z-dropped, and can lead into a grab. Lea Shield is one of my favorite moves in the game: It not only gives you a high priority projectile; but also an active hitbox while shielding, jumping, spotdodging, grabbing; and is useful for its infamous footstool gimps. His recovery isn't as strong as Sonic's or Greninja's, but is still above average and can be mixed up with ways to protect himself. Rush can even save him from being meteor smashed! Mega Man's aerials are no joke either: Uair is a projectile that can push opponents upward and pressure those above you, Fair is a great anti air, Bair is a fine approach option and a very good kill move, and Dair isn't great but is a projectile meteor smash and the only one in the game. Mega's combo game is pretty limited though, and he barely has any combos outside of metal blade strings and Dthrow followups. Other than that, there is pretty much no such thing as combos with Mega Man and isn't nearly as good it as Sonic or Greninja, although his one string: Metal Blades into Utilt/Mega Upper is pretty sacred and devastating. Being a fast faller and a semi-heavyweight, Mega Man is fairly susceptible to being combo'd and juggled himself, and he doesn't have any great 'get off me' moves or combo breakers. Mega Man also has a lot of trouble killing, his best finishers are all pretty situational and very unsafe to use in the neutral with few guaranteed kill setups, and given how much of his moveset consists of projectiles (even some of his normals are projectiles!), reflectors are quite an annoyance for him to put up with.
Both of them have pretty high learning curves (despite Sonic's controversy and unpopularity) and are really complicated to play too, and I'd make an argument that Greninja is fairly technical too since after 1.04. When I play Greninja; I find that his main weaknesses are mediocre approaches, slow grab, issues with KOing, and most importantly his terrible out of shield options. Not sure who I'd define his worst matchups are and I don't think I'm adequate enough yet to judge, but in my experience I personally tend to have the most trouble against the following characters in my scene (mosty speedy characters who have less commitment than he does):
. Rosalina is a pain to deal with as Sonic; and Ness, Sheik, and Fox are fairly annoying too but I find the rest of them to be doable, and I even think he has a somehwat favorable matchup against Diddy. Ness, Sheik, Rosa, and Fox are no fun to fight as Mega, but the others are not so bad. I always have trouble fighting Wario no matter who I play, but I just have trouble dealing with him in general.
I wonder if Rosalina would work great with Greninja.... I've been liking her a bit more lately.
