Vs melee... Ill rattle off everything I know since I dont see it anywhere else really.
Samus is now floatier than she was in melee (but I think that was a given), she is apparently taller but its not something I actually noticed myself.
B Attacks -
Screw Attack - I think that this has a bit more height than it use to, which is good considering the hit to Samus' recovery that brawl brought.
Super (Smash) Missiles - Well, we all know about this one. Time to shoot a missile has increased, damage has decreased (to about 10%) knockback has decreased (although, I usually got more forward knockback out of them than I saw at e for all and they *can* kill in sudden death!!!), and of course you cant missile cancel. You can just barely short hop missile, and I guess you can 'spam' missiles on the ground for some damage....if you can land them. Naturally, they dont go through anything more than they did in melee.
As I just remembered, it was hard for me to fire smash missiles initially, I am not entirely sure why...but everything about these missiles takes getting used to.
Homing Missiles - I didnt actually use these a ton, but they seemed about the same.
Bomb - People said you cant bomb jump...and I say dont do it. You can, but unlike in Melee where you can pop out of bomb form with a nair or whatever... in Brawl, you cant. I have died a few times to a stray bomb giving me a second of 'free Samus in morph ball form' lag. You literally have to stay in morph ball form the entire time after jumping unless it releases itself. Its terrible. Your opponents have it better than that imo. Besides, its not like Samus needs help with her horizontal recovery game...but her vertical.
oh, but if you want to, its not really that hard. Just give yourself a couple minutes to get the sensitivity in ball form right and you are fine. Bombs arent too bad when you are off the side trying to avoid the edge guard (5 jumps + up b ultra recovery characters added to brawl will have no problem using.)
Edit: After playing today, I also found out that that it looks like the bombs have a preset explosion timer. They wont explode on your opponents anymore if they run into them.
Grapple Beam - Along with the bombs this is my biggest gripe with samus. Atleast the missile were in fact in need of some sort of hit (though, not that one). The grapple seems maybe slightly shorter than it once was.
Edit: after further testing, the range has definitely decreased slightly.
Nothing terrible...but the way tether recovery works makes it not much more than a pretty effect for Samus. No longer can you grapple walls. Only edges. What this means is that if your grapple is out of range of the sweet spot on a ledge, the beam will hit the wall in front of you, wont stick, and you will fall to your doom cursing the new mechanics of Brawl. My experience was that this was overshadowed by up b in most situations for recovery, but it did look neat since most ledges can be grabbed now.
Also, something worth noting is that along with being able to air dodge multiple times, you can also grapple as much as you want mid air, which could leave to some creative ledge stalls with grapple.
Aerials -
u-air: Looks similar, it has more knockback than it once did, and its still fast on the recovery on the ground. I was able to perform a u-air to u-smash when messing around. I was hoping it would be a kill move, but it really isnt. It just sends them farther so that you cant combo at high %s (not that you could before anyway).
n-air: Ugh. I was so disappointed in this. I got into sudden death once. They jump, so of course I nair them in the face. Nothing. NOTHING. 7% damage and he like hits the ledge. Atleast a missile finished the job. This is currently filed under my do not use category.
f-air: This is an overall improved move. I use it just like I did in classic. Good for spacing, nice damage...prolly can find a combo out of it somewhere...somehow. Overall, its even better than it was (yay).
d-air: Same startup, same lag it looks. But, as with all spikes in Brawl, they fall much much faster... I didnt see anyone pull off a meteor cancel in time, but I am sure you still can. So that is good news.
b-air: Fun times. This thing does some wicked knockback. Easily Samus' best (only?) kill move. Unfortunately, its alot harder to combo into now. Down air and down tilts dont seem to send them the right direction for that at all. Its possible, but very very unlikely at high %s where the kill comes. It seems that samus is going to need alot of finesse to land any kills in this game.
Ground moves-
Smashes -
Forward - Looks the same to me honestly.
Down - I think its a bit slower, and the knockback has changed to some serious wierdness, but its not bad. Its nowhere near as good as it was once (for me anyway
), because of the change to her spot dodge.
Up - weee. This move tends to hold them in more, leading to actual usefulness. But, its still pretty hard to land. I did manage u-air to Up-smash once. That was neat. If you get all the hits, the damage is nice, but you wont land this a ton.
Tilts -
Forward - Looks better imo. More knockback anyway. Without wavedashing though, I dont think tilting is going to have alot of use...but hey, its still got all that nice range and speed, so why not.
Down - Almost as good as before. But the knockback is awful. It always sent them the wrong way to continue a combo. I didnt land a single d-tilt to b-air the entire time. The distance is no worse on the kb, but the trajectory is.
Edit: after taking a tip from my friend, I found that down-tilt is actually up there in Samusy kill moves. It takes a high percent, but its pretty fast and does kill.
Up - Looked the same to me. Lost almost all of its use due to the new auto-sweetspot, but you can get ike with it (maybe? I didnt try) and any snakes that get too close to the ledge since they cant sweetspot up-b
. It still works for a random move to throw out and combo into. But once again, wavedashing was what made these tilts really good, so dont expect to use this much.
Jab - Looked about the same. No thunders combo as we all know, but you can still jab stuff for fun. I rarely did, but when wiffing an aerial (Samus is still fast in the air even without l-cancel) a jab can come in handy...then roll away or something, because at that point you are stuck.
Dash Attack - Windmill of fury confirmed for brawl. What else do you need?
I didnt really pay attention to numbers more of the time, and these are really just rough impressions I got. I didnt do much 1v1 so I cant comment on that game either (unfortunately). Maybe in the future.
Overall, writing this made me sad for the future of Samus. I hadnt really thought about everything that has changed with her, but this is a pretty daunting list. Almost entirely nerfs to a character that was just hanging on to her position on the tier list. Ill still play her because shes fun, but I think the new recommended strat for Samus will include holding R after character select. It only takes 1 match with Zero Suit to realize how good she is.
