Well, that was something, huh? I'm back, like I said, from a fairly long day and just caught up on all the posts that happened. Like a possibility I mentioned, disappointment mostly with a hint of confusion and frustration. It's not my first rodeo for sure. I played GS when it released and I've wanted him in every Smash game starting with Brawl, so I have at least some tempered emotions regarding all of this. I'm glad I didn't take off work to see the Direct because I would probably be brooding most of the day, but instead I got to get my mind off a lot of it after catching most of the first half of the direct initially.
After getting home, I watched it again with more focus and I can safely say what I said before: this is Smash Penultimate.
I agree with Billybo10K; they really need a better marketing director. Seeing Ken and Incineroar did what we basically all thought it would do; really sap everything of its hype. You don't save those as the last reveals, it's unfair to the characters to even attempt to hold that ceiling up.
I am really not a fan of Ken in the context of Smash. With Ryu, I thought it was a cool reference and callback; basically a gimmick that worked with itself. When you add Ken too, you lose a lot of the original intent. I understand the 'first echo' and 'how it makes so much sense', but it's a firm shoulder shrug to me. I even prefer Ken over Ryu when I'm playing Street Fighter; he's one of my favorite characters in that series. It's just a zero sum in this spot; doesn't add anything or subtract anything.
Incineroar.... well what hasn't been said about it by now? After seeing the character, I am reaffirming my belief that it will be a truly forgettable character mixed in with a sea of other Pokemon. It gets another patented Sakurai counter, but even worse; it's a two part one. To me, that demarcates a point in these newer characters where Sakurai has run out of ideas with them and just puts in *something*. It was novel when it was just Marth and Roy. Now, it's just the norm. Incineroar is another pass for me, unfortunately. Like I was afraid of, there's nothing special about the character that I'm particularly seeing. And I say this as a huge fan of Pokemon. Like others have said, maybe I wouldn't care so much if this was the final thing we ended up seeing. But it is what it is.
As we flip over to the true introduction to Spirits mode, it's very clear to see why there are so few new characters this time. This along with World of Light must have been an absolute time sink. Something I think people are forgetting is that this is the same team as the one that made two games at once. If they wanted to focus on just adding characters, they could have done it if they really wanted to. However, I think it's probably because the characters themselves are proposed and handled by Sora itself leaving large chunks like spirits mode to Bandai-Namco. At this point in time, I really don't know how I feel about it still. The very first time through I had no clue what Sakurai was talking about as it felt needlessly complicated.
The second watching of the Direct and I think I get the basic premise and it's very, very Sakurai. Reminds me of KI: Uprising to some extent and other things he did in Sm4sh. It could be fun and the basic idea sounds fun, but I fear it's going to get old very quickly. From what I'm seeing right now, the only incentive to play it is based on collecting characters and leveling them up. Hopefully Sakurai sees the problem right away like I do? Pokemon has a similar sounding premise, with the only difference being that you are doing it to defeat gym leaders, difficult trainers, the elite four and eventually online opponents. I didn't see anything to indicate that there's some kind of ladder you climb further on, just more and more challenges until you get sick of it. I hope that's not the case because that would be a lot of time invested in creating a mode for a hamster wheel.
Well, those aren't reasons for being Penultimate though. Isaac being an AT again is; I've been clear about that in my past posting history. As soon as I saw the boxing ring, I knew the rest was history. I can see both sides to this argument of being at least an AT. On the positive side, that means actually seeing him again in a game at all. It's nice to see. Negatively, it just gives me horrible flashbacks of Brawl. Every time I see him on screen is just another time I'll ask myself, why didn't they make you playable? Especially now, since most of the humanoid ATs have full movesets going on.
Seeing what Isaac was doing as an AT was clarifying to me. It was all in the hands. Personally, that was slightly disturbing. Maybe I read too much into things like that, but I feel like screaming out, "He can do more, you know!" And you know they had to research into his character, but they basically stopped half-ass and put the low-effort hands, hands, hands (HEY DID YOU KNOW ISAAC CAN PROJECT HANDS?) into everything. Is that all that a Golden Sun character amounts to in the Smash teams' eyes? We haven't seen everything he can do, so we don't know. Did those hands also just look weird as hell to anyone else? They looked just terrible to me, maybe I just need to see them more. Just something I'd point out.
While Sakurai can break any fan-rule he wants and upgrade ATs in the same development cycle, I really doubt he will. It still amazes me that they actually took all of the time and effort to touch him again after a game of nothing to becoming only an AT. I suppose that would be our ballot talking. It feels so dirty coming up a minute late and a dollar short after all of this, and I sincerely think we didn't do all that bad. Once again, there was a list of priorities and Isaac just missed it. Feels like a constant theme. I suppose the main feeling I have behind not liking him being an AT again is the resentment of it really feeling like a consolation prize, a participation trophy. I could accept it if Isaac was 3rd party or didn't have any success or wasn't too popular or didn't have any Nintendo significance. Instead it just feels like a raw deal.
I know it's not, it just human nature to think like that.
And Piranha Plants certainly don't help to detract from that line of thinking. I'm actually a big fan of the little guy. He looks fun and is a great addition. I think even better than Ken and Incineroar. I think he's just wrong place, wrong time for us and for others like Shadow who were slaughtered. It's an unintended consequence of Sakurai's fervor to give us content. I'm grateful to the man and I will support his game because they always turn out to be a great time.
As for the 5 DLC characters? I don't really know and it's hard to be hopeful of anything to come out of it, really. I do want you to know that you'll have my full support for anything this community decides to do. I'm in it for the love of Golden Sun and the real goal for me is reviving this amazing franchise. It would be nice to be known as the Venus Adept instead of the creepy hand guy by new people. I think Rex is probably the most likely. Dixie? Banjo? Geno? Chorus Kids? Who knows. Probably mostly 3rd party considering the music tracks stuff, so maybe Rayman.
Overall, the newcomers to this roster fall just short this time around. It's going to have to be amended by DLC at this point. The echo characters only really work for me as an accompaniment cast to a solid list of originals. If there were one or two more solid choices here, it would have been okay. We started off strong with Ridley, Simon and K. Rool, it just didn't follow through. Because of that, the echoes feel lackluster and extraneous by themselves. Almost as if they could only come up with a decent sized cast by spreading the butter thin.
Thanks for the chance to vent, I haven't done it on a forum the past two times so it feels great to get ideas off my mind and recorded at least somewhere.
