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Smash 4 Analysis from a guy who loves camping

Ralph Cecil

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Another OS thread that is great. :D Posting just so I can lurk and maybe ask questions later myself. Also didn't know Cosmo was MW(?) that's pretty hype. Hope to get a chance to play him when Smash 4 comes out. ^_^
 

MrPanic

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Just like others said, great read. I tbh never had doubts about its competitive viability, I'm just glad to hear more about this game's mechanics, especially since there aren't any demo's here.

Weird question for ya. Did you notice any core changes between the 3ds and the Wiiu version. From all the footage that I saw, I always got a weird feeling that the 3ds version was a bit further along than the Wiiu one. Did you notice any weird changes between the two versions? Like certain combo's working only on one of the versions or maybe certain things that were more effective like DI or things maybe being floatier on one version or different hitboxes, basically anything that made the two versions feel different.
 

Mamp

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I've heard that its more difficult to follow up from throws in this game, can you verify?
 
D

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Interesting read.

One question though, why is it relevant that you love campy play (in the thread title)? I didn't quite understand how that tied in to things.
 

Overswarm

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Just like others said, great read. I tbh never had doubts about its competitive viability, I'm just glad to hear more about this game's mechanics, especially since there aren't any demo's here.

Weird question for ya. Did you notice any core changes between the 3ds and the Wiiu version. From all the footage that I saw, I always got a weird feeling that the 3ds version was a bit further along than the Wiiu one. Did you notice any weird changes between the two versions? Like certain combo's working only on one of the versions or maybe certain things that were more effective like DI or things maybe being floatier on one version or different hitboxes, basically anything that made the two versions feel different.
I noticed no changes, but didn't get much overlap in character choices.

I've heard that its more difficult to follow up from throws in this game, can you verify?
Yes.


Interesting read.

One question though, why is it relevant that you love campy play (in the thread title)? I didn't quite understand how that tied in to things.
Because most people talk about smash as a "HOLD FORWARD TOWARDS OPPONENT AND PRESS BUTTONS, ALL ELSE IS TRASH" game. They have dumb absolutes like "No l-canceling? Game is awful." and "I just want an AGGRESSIVE game :( " and don't really like the main pillars of smash.

I, on the other hand, like winning. I find the easiest, cheapest, most effective way to win and I do it until it doesn't work anymore. That's why when I see things like "oh, you can chain 5 tilts in a row" I don't say "that's dumb", I say "I'm going to tilt 5 times in a row". It's all about perspective.

Plus, it got you to click. :B
 

ChillySundance

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Doesn't the title imply that you personally enjoy camping as opposed to simply choosing to camp because you feel it's an effective strategy?
 

Mr.Random

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Mario

Mario is still capable of Super Cape (Brawl AT)
Mario is still capable of Cape Dash (Brawl AT)
Firballs are more laggy. (Have to FH and throw one at the peak height to be able to DJ Fireball)
Mario is unable SH Dair to DJ Uair
FLUDD is the same in terms of properties
Bair is less laggy
Uair is less laggy
Fair has the same properties as Brawl
Utilt can still combo at low percentages
Dthrow to Utilt is unreliable now
So he sucks still? Well that's a real shame :'(. I always mained Mario and Fox in all games. This game SUXXXX, I'm going to play Melee since they don't suck there. LOL jk, if Mario is underwhelming I'm sure they'll fix it once the real game comes out. Speaking of which, how did he feel to the rest of the characters? I want to main him and Fox again. I only got to try Fox on my turn playing and he's not that good. Only his his recovery is god like since you can Side B to Up B. His Up smash which was his only reliable kill move got nerfed (again).
 

Black Mantis

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Because most people talk about smash as a "HOLD FORWARD TOWARDS OPPONENT AND PRESS BUTTONS, ALL ELSE IS TRASH" game. They have dumb absolutes like "No l-canceling? Game is awful." and "I just want an AGGRESSIVE game :( " and don't really like the main pillars of smash.

I, on the other hand, like winning. I find the easiest, cheapest, most effective way to win and I do it until it doesn't work anymore. That's why when I see things like "oh, you can chain 5 tilts in a row" I don't say "that's dumb", I say "I'm going to tilt 5 times in a row". It's all about perspective.
 

Nstinct

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Because most people talk about smash as a "HOLD FORWARD TOWARDS OPPONENT AND PRESS BUTTONS, ALL ELSE IS TRASH" game. They have dumb absolutes like "No l-canceling? Game is awful." and "I just want an AGGRESSIVE game :( " and don't really like the main pillars of smash.

I, on the other hand, like winning. I find the easiest, cheapest, most effective way to win and I do it until it doesn't work anymore. That's why when I see things like "oh, you can chain 5 tilts in a row" I don't say "that's dumb", I say "I'm going to tilt 5 times in a row". It's all about perspective.
What do you view as the main pillar of smash? Not trying to fire shots at you, but I've never seen any videos of you win any big tournaments in either Melee or Brawl, nor have I really seen anyone win because of camping in Melee. So I question how effective camping is in the high level Melee, I know it would be good in Brawl since Brawl is inherently slower and more defensive. But I know most camping can be flown over if you choose the right characters or broken through if the opponent was a smart balance-headed opponent that analyze openings.

Also don't most casuals and even Sakurai find L-canceling and Wavedashing as a cheap tactic because of how effective it is? xD
 

Overswarm

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The main pillars of smash are zoning and feinting. It's what everything else revolves around.
 

Une

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Yeah zoning and feinting and running away for 8 minutes with half the matches going to timeout because you have no combos/reward off of most of your hits, tons of ways to get invincibility, weak ass edgeguarding/gimping, running away and fighting at range is promoted because of such low shieldstun sounds like a really fun game.
 

ChillySundance

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I think it's pretty true. Even melee's hyper offensive play involves zoning and feinting. In other fighting games, we would refer to this as 'footsies' or even 'yomi' though that's a much more broad term.

Combos are just what happens when you successfully zone and feint in Melee. Pokes are what happen when you successfully zone and feint in Brawl, but all fighting games by design do ultimately hinge on spatial control, recognition/reaction, and training your opponent to make a mistake first.

More accurately though, unlike a traditional fighting game, Smash doesn't have blocking systems that encourage 'lock down' style gameplay. You don't push someone to a corner and then try to make them guess high or low in Smash. You strike their shield, back away, then try to do it again from a safe angle because there aren't a lot of things you can do to continue to pressure safely other than maybe commit to a grab. For that reason, feinting or catching an opponent mid-attack or outright beating their attack with yours is way more important in Smash because you can't force someone to block wrong.
 
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Emblem Lord

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Marth changes make me sad. I guess Marth will be mostly ground game now.

Mechanic changes to stop ledge camp tactics makes me happy. Makes the game more legit. Less arbitrary rules to limit certain tactics as the meta develops.

Meh. If Marth sucks I will just switch to ZSS or Pit.
 

ChillySundance

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btw, the new ledge mechanics are also a secret buff to characters like Ness and Lucario who really, really need to be able to grab the ledge.
 

NoiseHERO

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Marth changes make me sad. I guess Marth will be mostly ground game now.

Mechanic changes to stop ledge camp tactics makes me happy. Makes the game more legit. Less arbitrary rules to limit certain tactics as the meta develops.

Meh. If Marth sucks I will just switch to ZSS or Pit.
But dude... you already chose the name emblem lord...

There's no turning back from that.

Man up! Lucina did it to main Marth and she was a woman! (man this is like my 20th c wut i did there joke today)

I actually came to post that your marth guide that's probably 10 years old was pretty cool OP, but youtube vid was potato quality, but don't worry I got the point and I now know that I'm a pretty ****ty marth.
 

Ogre_Deity_Link

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Yeah zoning and feinting and running away for 8 minutes with half the matches going to timeout because you have no combos/reward off of most of your hits, tons of ways to get invincibility, weak *** edgeguarding/gimping, running away and fighting at range is promoted because of such low shieldstun sounds like a really fun game.
Well. Someone's awfully pissy. Why don't you calm your **** and come back when you have an actual argument.
 

Emblem Lord

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I like Marth. But I Iike winning with effective and powerful characters even more.

I have nothing to prove. I have been playing games competitively for nearly a decade. I play to win. If Marth isnt strong, I will use whoever is.
 

Famous

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So he sucks still? Well that's a real shame :'(. I always mained Mario and Fox in all games. This game SUXXXX, I'm going to play Melee since they don't suck there. LOL jk, if Mario is underwhelming I'm sure they'll fix it once the real game comes out. Speaking of which, how did he feel to the rest of the characters? I want to main him and Fox again. I only got to try Fox on my turn playing and he's not that good. Only his his recovery is god like since you can Side B to Up B. His Up smash which was his only reliable kill move got nerfed (again).
Actually, he currently feels stronger than his brawl counterpart. I mean, a few of his standard bnbs are gone but Marios current frame data in the demo allowed a few true comboes such as sh double uair at low percents. You could do it in brawl but it wasn't true combo...His tilts are faster as well which is a plus.
 

Emblem Lord

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Just saw a vid of Marth hitting a Pikachu with u-tilt and getting punished during his recovery.

He HIT Pikachu and was PUNISHED during RECOVERY FRAMES.

Punished for attacking correctly.

lol **** Marth
 

courte

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Name a single 0-death in melee that isn't DI dependent. Even Wobbling needs a setup to get to 30% or so from 0%. It's a false choice. You've never been in a situation where you "can't do anything" during a combo.
You right tho
 

Emblem Lord

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It is completely different. One is an exploit. The other is poor game design.

Both are stupid.
 

κomıc

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I'm just curious- how do you know about the banana mechanics? Is it more of you putting things together to come to that conclusion?

Because if what you said is true, I'd be thrilled that Diddy's annoying set ups will be gimped and require far more strategic skill than being overly aggressive and abusing the fact that your opponent can still trip even if they have a shield up. Someone showed be a great counter to Diddy which has helped me with the match-up but I still have trouble against him when using someone like Kirby.
 

LancerStaff

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I'm just curious- how do you know about the banana mechanics? Is it more of you putting things together to come to that conclusion?

Because if what you said is true, I'd be thrilled that Diddy's annoying set ups will be gimped and require far more strategic skill than being overly aggressive and abusing the fact that your opponent can still trip even if they have a shield up. Someone showed be a great counter to Diddy which has helped me with the match-up but I still have trouble against him when using someone like Kirby.
I'll vouch for the new banana mechanics. But they could just be improperly programed at this point.
 

gameprodigy12

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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.
Do you think Rosalina will be high tiered at least and top tier at most? I've been wanting to main her since her reveal and finally return to the competitive scene. I play since tournaments began until I retired after a year of Brawls scene.
 

Kel

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It's way too early to even guess at tiers. This is all basic information gleaned from FFA with items. However, I think many people will want to play Rosalina at first, get frustrated by how different/ slow she is, and then move to a different character. It will be the people that stick with her that bring out her true potential later as the meta-game evolves.

If you want Rosalina to be good the best thing you can do is stick with her and try to look at everything objectively. She could still end up being a weak character though. New games are kind of like character roulette because everyone picks their favorite and that has no real effect of how good the character is in the grand scheme of things. She could be under balanced, or she could be broken, it's impossible to say at this time.
 

gameprodigy12

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It's way too early to even guess at tiers. This is all basic information gleaned from FFA with items. However, I think many people will want to play Rosalina at first, get frustrated by how different/ slow she is, and then move to a different character. It will be the people that stick with her that bring out her true potential later as the meta-game evolves.

If you want Rosalina to be good the best thing you can do is stick with her and try to look at everything objectively. She could still end up being a weak character though. New games are kind of like character roulette because everyone picks their favorite and that has no real effect of how good the character is in the grand scheme of things. She could be under balanced, or she could be broken, it's impossible to say at this time.
True, true. Thanks for the reply. She's been the character I've been wanting since I wanted to play IC but couldn't desync at all. That was hard in tournaments in beginning of melee and a year of brawl scene. Regardless of what tier she's the play style I've been asking for. I'll main others, but she's my go to.
 

Neoleo21

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I got my chance to play Smash 4 this Wednesday with some other competitive smashers and got see into a small window of what the game currently represents. For those of you who don't know me, I have a fairly unique perspective. I thought I'd share it with you!

I've been playing since Smash 64 and have been part of the Melee community since near the start; I was an okay player (top 32 to top 8), but never dominant. I mostly did things like creating video guides; they're so old they were used by PPMD to learn Falco!

I moved onto Brawl and enjoyed it just as much as Melee. Much to my opponent's chagrin in both games, my preferred strategy was run away and camp. When I started Melee I lacked the technical expertise to just "out tech" people, so I focused on learning unique stages and abusing character mobility. I had 8 minutes on the timer and I used it.

Here's an example from Melee in a goofy friendly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrZ4-C5Ad0I

An infamous match from the beginning of Brawl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxgOkRyG3ho

To save yourself some time, a 'combo' video of Brawl showcasing how I typically played:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZlLImDgQMo


I used "scrooging" and 'planking" with Meta Knight before there were terms for the activities and I timed people out with Fox before Jigglypuff was even considered a top character. I did it all to win in the easiest way possible and didn't care about being "flashy" or "cool". I'd time people out, camp, chain grab, laser spam, etc., and it'd be a ton of fun for me. Winning is fun.


So what about Smash 4?

Planking, edgehogging
Near impossible to do. Not only can you attack people on the ledge fairly quickly, but you can steal the ledge from them even while they are invincible. This works as long as you aren't in a free-fall animation. This is a large change! When you edgehog, they simply take the ledge from you and then YOU are off stage. You don't want this to happen to you.

Which means you WANT it to happen to your opponent. On more than one occasion I was able to jump above the ledge, then use my double jump before my opponent up+b'd and fast fall quickly to grab the ledge from them. This forces them to kind of hop backwards off the stage. I wasn't able to effectively edgeguard in this manner without more time to practice, but it seems like it will be an incredibly effective way of edgeguarding. You don't have to prevent them from getting to the ledge... you punish them for grabbing it!

What does that mean?

It means that what makes a recovery "good" is different. In Melee, it was "can you get back to the ledge effectively" and "can you stall off stage and/or mixup between going for the stage/ledge" to prevent a player from simply grabbing the edge and rolling. In Brawl it was "can you prevent an offstage edgeguard" and "can you get back after the offstage edgeguard"; most could get back to the stage, but the real trick was can you ultimately prevent an offstage edgeguard. Characters like Snake suffered tremendously because they got hit multiple times when recovering, but the recovery was ultimately fine because you had many attempts to make it back. Lucario or Ness and the like were easily edgeguarded while characters like Meta Knight could typically avoid being hit in the first place.

In Smash 4, due to the new ledge mechanics, there's now 3 specific aspects of recovery.

  1. Can you get to the ledge even if hit
  2. If you do grab the ledge, are you able to get back on stage without much invincibility
  3. Can you bypass the ledge altogether and get on the stage (without a ton of lag)
What's going to happen to many characters is they will take the typical recovery of go low and "sweetspot" the ledge. The ledge will immediately be taken by the opponent before you can get off the ledge. This bumps you off, and you'll almost certainly be hit. Can you make it back at this point?

If you get the ledge and they don't take it from you, but instead wait by the ledge for you to act, can you make it back before Marth d-tilts you? This is most commonly the kind of edgeguarding that occurred in Brawl. It could be frustrating at times, but certain characters (like Meta Knight, again) had abilities like tornado that allowed you to bypass unprepared opponents almost instantly.

But more importantly, are you a character like Villager who can over-b a great distance, thus removing the ledge from the equation altogether? Those will be the best recoveries.

Ask those three questions when picking your smash mains. Characters like Bowser and DK are going to have bad recoveries. Characters like Marth and Megaman will have some definite ability to grab the ledge, but have difficulty safely bypassing it. Characters like Villager will have superb recoveries with his over-b and up+b options. (assuming no changes)

Chaingrabs, jab-locks, infinites, and annoying chains

These were always really boring to watch.

I didn't have an opportunity to test grab releases, chaingrabs, or grab release infinites with a doubles partner. If someone else wants to confirm, go for it. I could follow up from a few grabs with hits, but never another grab. That said footstool out of throw exists as a doubles concept, so at the very least that'll be the new 2v1 infinite unless i'm missing something huge (I only saw one iteration of this occur).

Jab-locks seem to be in, to what regard I don't know. All I know is that if you hit the ground without a tech you can be hit more than once in succession, similar to jab-locks. Other reports seem to confirm this.

Infinites seem to be possible, but I know of none to be discovered yet other than grab -> footstool 2v1 infinites that I know that seem to exist.

Annoying chains, now THOSE I saw a lot of. Fox's U-tilt x5 combo was showcased by PPMD during the invitational; fast fall unfinished dair to u-tilt a bunch. Instant combo.

The biggest indicator that these might be a 'problem' for some people wasn't on the Wii U at all, but rather the 3DS only: Sheik!

Sheik could f-tilt most characters repeatedly at 0%. Due to an apparent lack of Smash DI, I could f-tilt to around 30%, short hop fair, dash attack as they hit the ground, and then hit them with another fair. It felt a lot like Melee sheik but with way more "repeat the same move" over again. What's crazy is that you can do this AGAIN after you've done it the first time! Fair and f-tilt have such low knockback that you can do the same combo immediately afterwards. It was a true "bread-and-butter" combo.

What does this mean?

It means that a lot of early % combos are going to occur out of low-knockback moves. If someone said "pick a character this is going to win", I'd pick someone with a low knockback tilt and just spam it on them when they were at low %.

This will be annoying to watch for most people and at the very beginning of Smash 4 the majority of "winning strategies" is going to be "roll + tilt" or dash-away pivot tilt, mark my words. This will be G&W spamming his turtle all over again. It won't be "good", but people will do it because the reward seems to consistently be about 50%, much higher than anything else I saw.

Port Priority

Unknown, but we did see a simultaneous death that appeared to "give it" to player 4. Watch for this!


Ultimately, the game will test mostly the same skills Brawl had. Zoning and Feinting (that's staying just out of your opponents range, using attacks the appear to leave you vulnerable and punishing their attempts to punish) are going to be huge. If you were good at Brawl, you'll prolly be good at Smash 4. If you couldn't get the hang of it, it might take some getting used to. Hitting shields is a bad thing, although you can break shields pretty easy in this game.

Speaking of, thoughts on characters:

Bowser
He'll be fun, but not particularly good I don't think. His shield break properties rivaled Smash 4. You can break a fully charged shield with one down+b! His down-air is an amazing spike, so expect the Bowsercide to be a thing. He can kill at surprisingly low % with an edgeguard, but isn't very comfortable off stage.

DK
DK could actually be really good. He killed Rosalina at 80% with a back-air from on-stage! He has some serious combos, surprisingly enough. Dair -> u-tilt -> u-air was legitimate at lower percentages, as was fast fall weak bair to u-tilt. His aerials had a surprisingly small amount of lag if they didn't auto-cancel and his KO power on stage will make him a threat early in the games life. His recovery is pretty bad.

Megaman
Megaman might be a good trap character in 1v1, but he has serious zoning issues. He can't play keep-away particularly well due to his awful dair and low-knockback fair being almost entirely unthreatening. Hitting someone with over-b and comboing off it was fun, but it pretty quickly became a game of "keep away from the sticky bomb" due to it being possible to put it back on megaman. His leaf shield is great except you can't do anything but throw it, meaning the counter has been known since Megaman 2. Jump over, punish during lag.

Without the ability to properly zone, I can't forsee Megaman being a serious threat in the long term unless people discover some radical ways to play him.

Marth

He's Marth. Unfortunately there was no "dancing blade mixup" that I saw, as you had more vulnerability by stopping the dancing blade than using the whole thing. Fair seemed bad, nair seemed good. I see Marth's back-air being his new love, especially off stage. Marth is a toss-up.

Sheik

She gonna be good. Real good. Her new "bomb" move? It drags the enemy TOWARDS sheik. This means that Sheik can throw a bomb and f-tilt chain you out of the ensuing explosion, starting her annoying combo.

Greninja
His counter actually works as a KO move. That's pretty big in of itself, but added to it is his ability to fast-fall with his dair, making it difficult to effectively chase Greninja aerially. I had trouble controlling Greninja, but he seemed solid enough. His smash attacks seemed about as easy to land as Lucario's in Brawl, which is to say "not particularly easy", but his bair was amazing.

Fox
u-tilt chain was good. Past that I had trouble landing things with him. His recovery was improved, but I dunno about him otherwise.

ZSS
ZSS was good enough to where I think she'll be nerfed prior to release. We've all seen what she can do at this point.

Didn't play others enough to comment.

Will this game be competitively viable?

Yes.
Love this analysis to death, it's amazing. I liked Brawl a lot, because it was less technical than melee (but I could so stuff like wave dash and l-cancel consistently), and I could get straight on practicing predicting and meta games rather than practicing a technical barrier all over again. Personally, the game in this early build is fine, also pivot smashes are possible and maybe able to be reversed in the pivot essentially producing dash-cancelled smash. I would love it even more since the game looks a lot like a mix between 64 and brawl is if they lower end lag more and increase hitstun, those are the only major complaints I have.
 

Venks

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 3, 2007
Messages
375
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VenksUSA
Looks like you were a bit off with saying Bowser wasn't going to be good. Bowser destroyed at SDCC. Sure not enough people brought their A-game, but Bowser's buffed speed, damage dealing, and knock back are all just amazing buffs. I'm not sure if that Shiek was doing it wrong, but I didn't see her tilt more than two times consecutively against Bowser. This is a huge buff from Brawl. Bowser used to live inside of Sheik's tilts for days.

I was calling out shields breaking earlier in this game myself so it was nice to see my words shine to light in the Finals. Shield breaking, super armor, and very generous auto-cancels. Bowser is looking tough. I highly doubt top tier, but he's up there.
 

MajorMajora

Smash Ace
Joined
Jul 15, 2014
Messages
709
I like the number of combos in this game. The reason is that, as you can see from the comic-con event, heavy characters got buffed a lot. However, they do lack combos, so we won't be seeing any bowser only no items final destination, hopefully.
 
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