I just posted a wall of text in the BBR. Since OS and I went to play Smash 4 together I will post that WOT here too.
It seems like Brawl at first, but then you realize it's more grounded and that there are major differences.
I think Mac will be good at first and then eventually more like a glass canon when people start playing against him like he's the ICs. Depending on his super armor, characters like Marth could give him trouble. Mac dittos will be interesting as the person that takes the first stock will have a punch while the other one has to reset his super meter. A combo/ hard read or two and the Mac that takes the first stock could be up two stocks very quickly.
Rosalina seems like a character that many will try at first, get frustrated with, and then abandon. Later in Smash 4's life, I expect her to have surprising results as a sleeper character (like ZSS in Brawl). She is really slow up close, but the whole point of her character is to use luma to zone people at a certain distance. She will probably end up with an infinite. Either Luma-Rosalina multi hit infinite (especially if there is no smash DI) or something like a footstool infinite could be possible maybe.
Greninja will at least be in a usable tier. Fast characters are always at least usable and he has a lot of tools. He will be a Bair-heavy character but there's tons of things yet to be unseen about his over B and whatnot. I tried to over B off the ledge for ledge-hogging and whatnot, but it stops at the edge. Also of note, his dair doesn't have lag on shield or when it hits. He bounces off the opponent and resets to neutral air pose.
Many people were disappointed in Megaman, but I feel he will be fine. He has a really good recovery (I was blasted away to the upper-left hand magnifying glass and recovered no problem), projectiles, smashes that will be good for hardreads/ air dodge reads (usmash and Dsmash are good for this), and other potential shenanigans with metal blade/ leaf shield. He could become a bad character later on, but he feels usable at this point. I'll play him at least a bit as a potential main.
Sonic seemed just like Brawl. His uair was a little bit better, but everything else seemed similar. Sonic's main problems in Brawl were how slow he was in close range paired with not having fast/ good hitboxes to deal with close ranged combat. Also he couldn't kill in Brawl, but I don't think Uair or Bair were buffed enough to give him a reliable kill. I heard his fsmash came out faster now, but it didn't seem too much faster, and its hitbox was always a problem. I see Sonic being the same.
Marth seemed weird to me. I've mained marth in melee and Brawl, but I don't think I'll want to play him this time. he seems just like Brawl marth, but without the early percent combos/ follow ups. His Uthrow, Fthrow, and B throw all pushed people too far away for follow ups. Only reads can earn a hit after these throws. Overswarm told me his B-throw is better for early percent follow-ups and that it's changed it trajectory from the last couple games, but I haven't seen that. His main attack still seems to be rising fair. He might have a little more range in comparison to brawl, but this will all be relative to the other characters.
Villager was interesting. The character has every recovery option in the world. Over B goes all the way across the world and the balloons are also very good at recovering horizontal. His bowling ball is slow to come out, but hits hard. Tree has little use other than MAYBE edge guarding/ hard reads. Given his recovery, he should die early in comparison to the rest of the cast.
Overswarm was going on a little bit about how shiek was improved and that pivot canceling dashes into ftilt could be super useful. Her grenade over B pulls people toward her. Sorry, i don't have much on her.
Couple random things I noticed:
edge hugging is a little bit different. You cannot dash and hit down to grab the ledge really quick anymore. However, you can still snipe the edge really quick if you are really close to the ledge. In order to grab the ledge reliably I would do what Isai used to do in Melee/ 64 and roll to the ledge while the opponent was recovering. From that position I was able to grab the ledge.
Some people reported that if you were on a ledge and someone else is near it that they take it from you, but I never had that happen. I am assuming that since 14/16 people at the invitational were melee kids that maybe they didn't understand how edge hogging worked in Brawl. If you try to roll in smash 4 while grabbing the ledge, the opponent will grab the ledge as soon as you start the animation (just like in brawl). However, I never noticed anyone taking the edge from me while I was on it.
HOWEVER, the new ledge invincibility mechanic is awesome. Absolutely no planking. if you grab the ledge once and then drop down and regrab it, you have no invincibility. Overswarm got gigabowser once and I instinctively went to plank with marth. On my first time dropping from the ledge and up Bing, he dtilted me and killed me. That was a huge "oh yeahhhhh" moment. This will be good for the game. Especially if no one has a glide (which pit and charizard don't at this point I hear)
I think i'll stop now because this is already TL;DR material, but I'm super stoked about this game. Even the 3DS version will be awesome to have at fests/ on the way to tournaments in cars/ airports/ planes. I cannot wait and I'm just super sad I have to go another half a year of my life without this game.
I think Overswarm and i got to play the game much more than most people, so if anyone has any questions or noticed something different than what I posted above, let me know and I'll tell you what I think. I can also ask overswarm if you'd like.
