Unpopular Smash Opinions (BE CIVIL)

[UserKev]

We're still really lacking on a ground base fighter that Mr. Resetti or Knuckles could greatly fill the niche. I also hear suggesting of Muddy Mole tho.

 

[fogbadge]

We're still really lacking on a ground base fighter that Mr. Resetti or Knuckles could greatly fill the niche. I also hear suggesting of Muddy Mole tho.

or indeed any ground type pokemon

 

[UserKev]

or indeed any ground type pokemon

Nah. A ground Pokemon in Smash would make the gimmick unbearable. It should still be essentially natural.

 

[fogbadge]

Nah. A ground Pokemon in Smash would make the gimmick unbearable. It should still be essentially natural.

alright then

what about dig dug?

 

[UserKev]

alright then

what about dig dug?

Would be infinitely better than (insert Ground type Pokemon here) into Smash Bros.

 

[Perkilator]

I think the first Fighters Pass should've also gotten a sixth character. doesn't even have to be Cash Banooca

 

[StrangeKitten]

We're still really lacking on a ground base fighter that Mr. Resetti or Knuckles could greatly fill the niche. I also hear suggesting of Muddy Mole tho.

I concur! I hadn't thought about it until reading your post, but a character who digs underground and comes back up would make for a cool gimmick, so long as it was balanced well. We wouldn't want much camping/stalling possible on such a character or they'd be a slog to fight, but I'm sure there are ways to prevent that.

 

[Diddy Kong]

If Smash Ultimate would be the end of Smash and gets DLC every once in a while, and gets ported to every new Nintendo system, I would be alright with that honestly.

And maybe every once in a while, they make a total different Smash game, actual reboots maybe, or a 3D Smash, a more traditional fighter type of Smash, you name it, but Ultimate is forever being kept alive.

 

[Ze Diglett]

If Smash Ultimate would be the end of Smash and gets DLC every once in a while, and gets ported to every new Nintendo system, I would be alright with that honestly.

And maybe every once in a while, they make a total different Smash game, actual reboots maybe, or a 3D Smash, a more traditional fighter type of Smash, you name it, but Ultimate is forever being kept alive.

Really, I'd just like to avoid a Mario Kart 8 situation where one game ends up being the current one for upwards of 10 years, leaving people who are tired of it and wanted something new completely in the dust.
Yes, I am bitter about that.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

Really, I'd just like to avoid a Mario Kart 8 situation where one game ends up being the current one for upwards of 10 years, leaving people who are tired of it and wanted something new completely in the dust.
Yes, I am bitter about that.

See like... I'm exactly the opposite. I don't want to lose what we already have.

 

[Ze Diglett]

See like... I'm exactly the opposite. I don't want to lose what we already have.

I can't imagine wanting to pay $60 for the same game every 4-6 years. Even if I did like Ultimate, I don't think I'd wanna do that, especially given Nintendo's track record with ports in recent years.

 

[Diddy Kong]

If Ultimate stays fresh enough with new characters, new additional movesets for veterans, adds new modes as say a new Adventure Mode every installation, it will seriously stay alive for a very long time

Just look as games as say, World of Warcraft, am not knowledgeable about it but that game is at least 20 years old now I think ? And still constantly upgraded.

Only reason I didn't got Mario Kart was cause Diddy isn't playable, am petty for Mario games like that yeah, but it's my sole reason. I'd be okay with these games continuing like this, provided each port / installation gets new content that's worth the price.

Sometimes, it's just best to play safe when you reached some sort of "peak".

 

[Wario Wario Wario]

I'll just quote dump some of my posts from the Critique thread here. Warning: a lot of negativity towards Ultimate - also a lot of fanboyish worship of, and unfavourable comparisons to, Nick All-Stars

Spoiler

Sakurai needs to either make his mind up between turning Smash into Mario Party or making a proper competitive platform fighter, or go about making a multi-purpose game differently - Ultimate is a mess of different game design philosophies that don't mesh in an attempt to "close the gap between casual and competitive", which defeats the very purpose of competitive play. Slowing down gameplay to appeal to casuals is an extremely questionable choice - surely the Mario Kart audience would want a faster, more frantic game? As a competitive game Ultimate is leagues behind almost every other platform fighter on the market, and as a casual game it's way too fundamentally complex for little bro to pick up on a dime like you would the average Mario multiplayer or Mii game. Hell, even a lot of the aforementioned more competitive platform fighters have more easily accessible control schemes for casuals - it's standard practice in games like Rivals and Nickelodeon at this point to have light and strong attacks with dedicated buttons, which is way easier to understand than flinging a C-stick for a Smash attack or lightly pressing the left stick while doing an attack to do a tilt

Calling Smash Ultimate a "celebration of gaming history" is kind of insulting when its roster primarily consists of Nintendo characters - not just that, but I don't even think that's what Smash fans want - if even a small portion of your fandom is upset because Sephiroth was chosen as the Square Enix rep over Geno of all characters, or is cheering on Banjo & Kazooie in an imaginary war against the protagonist of the best selling game ever made, or say "literally who?" in the face of Terry Bogard (which even I am guilty of) you should seriously reconsider the idea of a big gaming mega-crossover. This also applies if you want to (or are being forced to) add characters from recent Nintendo games to promote unproven characters - because then it comes off like you're revising history before it happens, ensuring Pyra or Min Min are recognised as gaming legends though they'll likely be forgotten to the sands of time that took Muddy Mole and Jill Dozer outside of Smash's context.

A lack of consideration for gaming tastes is a huge issue too when it comes to Smash, I think the scrimblo bimblo discourse points out, unintentionally or otherwise, that there really isn't a major overlap between Persona fans and Banjo-Kazooie fans; or Xenoblade 2 fans and Tekken fans, and that should've been on Sakurai's mind when planning the content of DLC and how it's distributed. Tonally segregated passes would've been the best option IMO - buy the "toon pass" for Waluigi and Crash; buy the "gritty pass" for CJ and Doomguy; buy the "fantasy pass" for Crono and Lloyd - but just having a better balance of tones in the existing fighters passes would've been enough. (Though the very nature of mystery season passes would still be a problem, and of course not every Doom fan would be a GTA fan and so on)

I've been over this before, but like... why does Smash feel the need to take itself so seriously? The theme songs, the story modes, the logos, the original stages, the menus - they all just refuse to embrace the inherent silliness of Smash and it's bland at best; but at worst outright funnier than if Smash continued to have the Smash 64 slapstick aesthetic. Look at this logo:

Who gives their damn multiplayer party fighting game that's name is a derivative of "Super Mario Bros." a serif logo? Does this look like the logo of a game where Bowser Jr. can fight Solid Snake in Green Hill Zone? Getting back to the "Smash director can't make up their mind" point, if the Smash director wants their game to be a wacky party game, why do they continually and consistently choose the least fitting aesthetics for such a game? Real mixed messages there. Hell, it doesn't even fit a competitive fighter that well - even tradfighters have some semblence of fun, colour, and personality to them. In this EVO line up, SSBU sticks out like a sore thumb - not for its genre or reputation, but because of how bland its logo is, even Soul Calibur and Samurai Shodown, which have greatly simplified their logos, still have texture and theming.

Hell, Smash can't even do its own aesthetic right, SSBU's menus are devoid of any personality - including the serious melodramatic gladiator personality Smash wants to take!

To me the problem with Smash character representation isn't that characters don't do the things from their games - I'm a "characters are functions" guy, if a barrel toss doesn't work for DK's playstyle, don't give him a barrel toss - rather the problem is that they don't act like they do in their games. You don't have to change DK or Bowser's moveset to make them feel like DK or Bowser, you just need to make them act and sound like DK and Bowser.

Yet again going more in depth into what I posted on the last page:

One of, if not, my biggest disappointments with SSBU is the lack of a truly obscure newcomer - even before my "holy crap this game is poorly designed" awakening thanks to poor DLC and a certain much better game, I was kinda pissed every newcomer was either a popular fan pick; from a recent game; or from a significant franchise. As a kid, the thing that drew me to Smash wasn't seeing Mario; Sonic; and Pikachu in the same place, it was learning about bizarre and obscure characters from past generations - that was 100% of Smash's appeal to me, the surprising and ludicrously obscure characters nobody has given a passing thought to since the early 90s at most. I was huge into Pokémon and WarioWare as a kid but my P1 token rarely grazed Wario and Pikachu's CSS icons in Brawl because Mr. Game & Watch was who I was there for - now it feels like Smash is shying away from those "literal who?" picks in favour of being an MCU-esque "wow! they actually did it!" pipe dream people pleaser with the only hope for retros being popularity like with K. Rool, which - as glad as I am K. Rool made the cut - takes away from the whole appeal of retros (and by proxy the whole appeal of Smash to me) in the first place. It's so weird, and sad, in hindsight to think that there was once a time I thought Mole Mania appearing as anything more than a .PNG or a footnote on a bundled Wikipedia list was a remote possibility, or that Excitebiker was an obvious, inevitable lock for a playable spot. My pipe dream Smash character who actually got in was Duck Hunt, and I probably got the pooch in the knick of time, as it seems that he most certainly got in at his last chance - and he isn't even obscure! In fact, the "wacky obscure character" of SSBU was a mainstay of the best selling game franchise of all time who the Smash director justified specifically because people know who he is! I mean, I guess that obscure characters don't sell game copies and especially not DLC, but Smash gets more popular with every passing entry and if anything being too big to fail should be the justification for including obscure characters, not for becoming more and more of a people pleaser.

Anyway, I'll be back to my game with a character who only appeared in 6 episodes out of a 52 episode series, most of which were in brief parody adverts.

Hoo boy, I'm back at this again.

Maybe I'm alone on this, but my experiences with Smash hype weren't really excitement as much as... anxiety. Like, I think I internalised it as "that tingly feeling of hype!" but in retrospect... no, it was anxiety. Fear. Anticipating the worst. Not a remotely positive emotion. The night before a Smash reveal would always feel like death row, and the test screen countdown on Nintendo streams were devistating. The long-winded CGI cutscenes (especially the ones with darker subject matter) didn't help either. The Smash Ultimate reveal I probably enjoyed the most - not was the most happy about, but just had the best state of mind around - was easily Sephiroth, and that's just because I went to sleep before it was announced Smash would be at TGA, woke up, saw the news and just giggled "hey, Sephiroth's in! Hehehe silly puppet man is gone". I was MUCH happier about K. Rool and Daisy, but I wasn't in a positive state of mind at their reveals because of the sheer sensory overload. It's really sad to look back at just how much and what kind of control Smash had over me during Ultimate's lifespan - my sleep schedule is wonky as is, midnight Nintendo Directs filled with anime games I don't care about don't help. I want to really think ugly booba ladies for giving me that much needed punch of disillusionment and snapping me out of Smash hype once and for all. If I wasn't distracted by Spunch Bop wavedashing in the objectively superior game, who knows what the lead up to Sora could've done to me.

This isn't just about the dissapointing reveals either, the happy reveals took a bit of a toll on me too, possibly even more - I was in a constant caffine-rush-like borderline-euphoria state for days after K. Rool's reveal. NOT GOOD. ****ING AWFUL. The second worst emotional reaction I've ever felt, (first being the times I was put in solitary confinement when I was 14) struggling to think about anything that wasn't evil cartoon crocodiles or feel any emotion other than blissful joy for almost a week. I was also very excited over my favourite retro characters returning as Spirits - there's settling for less, and then there's screeching like a banshee while ascending to a higher plane of reality over transparent PNGs that disable lava floors. Please, if any unsupervised kids are reading this - I beg you, do not end up like teen me and wake up your neighbours over ****ing tumblr_drill_dozer_jill_artwork_fullres (1).webp, no matter how unlikely it may have seemed beforehand that Nintendo would copy and paste old stock artwork from DK: King of Swing into a new game.

The ugly truth about Namco era Smash is that it's an experience, not a game; and, while many people eat that up, I'm not in the target audience anymore - Smash is drifting away from emphasising gameplay and more and more towards hype. I like gameplay and dislike hype, and hype is now the entire Smash brand.

Namco-era Smash's attempts to appeal to a competitive audience, while usually well-intentioned, often feel like they're based directly on negative fandom stereotypes and not legitimate research. For Glory was literally Final Destination only (a stage associated with competitive play by outsiders but controversial within it), Omega/Battlefield forms don't account for the many other stages played competitively, there's no option to choose Smashville, PS2, Kalos, or other such stages specifically on Quickplay - only FD and BF - and Hazards Off removes completely fine and generally non-controversial elements like Randall and the movement of Smashville's platform.

I'm gonna keep this one brief since it's not a topic I'm that professed in, but I feel that Namco Smash doesn't really want to have platforming fighting characters if that makes sense? HAL era Smash - including Brawl - was more on the side of "find the best traits and abilities from these characters, cut out the gimmicky BS and unadaptable game mechanics to make a proper, expressive platform fighting character" but nowadays it seems like they're aiming more for "play Kingdom Hearts to fight someone who's playing Mega Man". Generally I find NPCs, villains, pacifist, and early-8-bit characters have adapted way better to Smash nowadays than protags of action games because creative liberties need to be taken and junk needs to be cut out. A lot of characters I'd otherwise really want in Smash have kinda been tarnished by this approach IMO - Crash Bandicoot is one of my favourite game series of all time, but I don't really want Crash in Smash because they'd just port over his boring powers from Crash 3 and call it a day instead of creating original stuff and taking from more obscure games.

Sorry to bring QUBE Every-Sun Scuffle into this again, but the fact that NASB's characters are all made to be watched instead of played - combined with the fact that very few are known for fighting or having powers - really draws me to it because it means what gimmicks there will be if any will be 100% intended for gameplay first like Rivals' characters and not hollow fanservice.

 

[chocolatejr9]

I'll just quote dump some of my posts from the Critique thread here. Warning: a lot of negativity towards Ultimate - also a lot of fanboyish worship of, and unfavourable comparisons to, Nick All-Stars

I feel the fact you genuinely believe Nick All-Stars of all things is better than Smash is a suitable enough "unpopular opinion"...

 

[Wario Wario Wario]

I feel the fact you genuinely believe Nick All-Stars of all things is better than Smash is a suitable enough "unpopular opinion"...

I value gameplay infinitely more than content and polish in a platform fighter, so I honeslty see no value in a game that's all about the content and fanservice but not the gameplay - voice acting, alt costumes, and super moves be damned

 

[Diddy Kong]

This one ought to be unpopular: Sakurai is a hardworking creative genius and definitely cares about the fans of Smash Bros., he's the best possible director for Smash Bros., and the Smash Bros. fan base is highly critical, entitled, and sometimes outright disrespectful and ungrateful even. Nintendo needs to officially hire him, so they are sure to keep him around, cause I know Sony or Microsoft would pay him more if they could get him to switch over to their side.

 

[Wario Wario Wario]

This one ought to be unpopular: Sakurai is a hardworking creative genius and definitely cares about the fans of Smash Bros., he's the best possible director for Smash Bros., and the Smash Bros. fan base is highly critical, entitled, and sometimes outright disrespectful and ungrateful even. Nintendo needs to officially hire him, so they are sure to keep him around, cause I know Sony or Microsoft would pay him more if they could get him to switch over to their side.

Unfortunately, that is the least controversial opinion you could possibly say about this series - except maybe "putting Bowser in Melee was a good call". I feel that if you went into an average (casual) Smash Reddit or Discord you'd see the same sentiment passed around more often.

 

[Ze Diglett]

If Ultimate stays fresh enough with new characters, new additional movesets for veterans, adds new modes as say a new Adventure Mode every installation, it will seriously stay alive for a very long time

Just look as games as say, World of Warcraft, am not knowledgeable about it but that game is at least 20 years old now I think ? And still constantly upgraded.

Only reason I didn't got Mario Kart was cause Diddy isn't playable, am petty for Mario games like that yeah, but it's my sole reason. I'd be okay with these games continuing like this, provided each port / installation gets new content that's worth the price.

Sometimes, it's just best to play safe when you reached some sort of "peak".

Honestly, the main reason I'd like for the next Smash to have a new director is specifically so we can get revamped movesets and new modes and stuff like that. Maybe it's just me, but if you want big, sweeping changes, at that point, wouldn't a new game be preferable to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Deluxe HD Pro Edition: The New Challengers? As for WoW, that game was designed as a continuous service from the beginning. Smash clearly isn't that and Nintendo's notoriously not very good about post-launch support anyway. I wouldn't expect something like that out of them anytime soon.

I feel the fact you genuinely believe Nick All-Stars of all things is better than Smash is a suitable enough "unpopular opinion"...

One that I share, in that case

Unfortunately, that is the least controversial opinion you could possibly say about this series - except maybe "putting Bowser in Melee was a good call". I feel that if you went into an average (casual) Smash Reddit or Discord you'd see the same sentiment passed around more often.

In all my time as a resident of The Internets™, I've never seen a fanbase that woobifies a creator as much as the Smash fanbase does Sakurai. It's kind of disturbing and I worry what's going to become of it when Sakurai inevitably steps down as director.

 

[Lenidem]

This one ought to be unpopular: Sakurai is a hardworking creative genius and definitely cares about the fans of Smash Bros., he's the best possible director for Smash Bros., and the Smash Bros. fan base is highly critical, entitled, and sometimes outright disrespectful and ungrateful even. Nintendo needs to officially hire him, so they are sure to keep him around, cause I know Sony or Microsoft would pay him more if they could get him to switch over to their side.

Ah yes, "Sakurai is the hero we do not deserve, ungrateful lot that we are". Never read that before...

 

[Perkilator]

I think if SSBU ever got an updated rerelease, it should go lighter on the new characters added; as in, completely from the ground up and not part of either DLC pass, as those characters would be added naturally.

Here’s a more accurate description of what I mean.

 

[fogbadge]

This one ought to be unpopular: Sakurai is a hardworking creative genius and definitely cares about the fans of Smash Bros., he's the best possible director for Smash Bros., and the Smash Bros. fan base is highly critical, entitled, and sometimes outright disrespectful and ungrateful even. Nintendo needs to officially hire him, so they are sure to keep him around, cause I know Sony or Microsoft would pay him more if they could get him to switch over to their side.

i almost agree

 

[Pupp135]

This sounds weird, but I’m more currently more interested in what’s going to happen for the fangames (SSF/Crusade) and mods (Smash Remix and Smash 1) than the sequel to Ultimate in terms if content.

 

[chocolatejr9]

This sounds weird, but I’m more currently more interested in what’s going to happen for the fangames (SSF/Crusade) and mods (Smash Remix and Smash 1) than the sequel to Ultimate in terms if content.

For what it's worth, the fangames are guaranteed to keep getting updates, unlike Ultimate.

 

[fogbadge]

personally i prefer smash as a game about nintendo all stars. i do like a lot of the 3rd parties but i am a nintendo gamer at heart

 

[Diddy Kong]

personally i prefer smash as a game about nintendo all stars. i do like a lot of the 3rd parties but i am a nintendo gamer at heart

This too. I'll agree that most third party picks are good fits, and I've even opened up to quite some of the franchises included in Smash, as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, but I prefer they keep most of the focus on Nintendo newcomers. Unless the connection to Nintendo is just strong, and in that case, I rather have they add new third party characters from the same franchises or companies that are already included in Smash, than expand it even further.

 

[Wario Wario Wario]

I feel Smash should just make its mind up - execute a massive roster purge so it can be a proper celebration of gaming history with Crash and Doomguy, or give the third parties the axe as a whole to be a proper Nintendo celebration with Isaac and Excitebiker.

 

[WeirdChillFever]

I feel Smash should just make its mind up - execute a massive roster purge so it can be a proper celebration of gaming history with Crash and Doomguy, or give the third parties the axe as a whole to be a proper Nintendo celebration with Isaac and Excitebiker.

I wouldn’t agree if it weren’t for the fact that the difference in approach to third parties and first parties is so dang different. Nintendo series are well-established, with often multiple characters and very few series that only have one character despite having unique options to pull from. First parties series have multiple stages usually, Assist Trophies and items and enemies for a story mode if applicable.

Third parties are muuuch more dip-and-drop. The (challenger) packs revolve around a singular character and a singular stage and yet attempt to capture an entire series in said pack, before moving on to the next company or IP to include in the credits section. This means characters needs to be maximally representative of their series, rather than their character (Joker Persona 5 is just kind of Persona 5: The Joker in Smash), leading to characters feeling like X-Game-Simulators.
Space is sparce, so movesets become ways to express a series, since otherwise only a stage is left to do so (which leads to the Green Hill Zone syndrome of taking the most iconic location rather than having the time and space to explore other locales). It’s such a bizarre tonal shift from the first party half of the game that it’s an entirely different beast when it comes to the processes used to adapt a source series and yeah, I feel Smash needs to make its mind up on whether it wants to flesh out series by giving it multiple characters, stages and other content or to dip in the IP with a singular, maximally concentrated character before moving on to the next, never to look back.

 

[fogbadge]

I feel Smash should just make its mind up - execute a massive roster purge so it can be a proper celebration of gaming history with Crash and Doomguy, or give the third parties the axe as a whole to be a proper Nintendo celebration with Isaac and Excitebiker.

well if you want it to be a celebration of gaming history then surely we shouldnt purge the roster at all as theyre all parts of gaming history? if you mean just the really important parts then thats gonna cost us most of the roster

 

[Wario Wario Wario]

well if you want it to be a celebration of gaming history then surely we shouldnt purge the roster at all as theyre all parts of gaming history? if you mean just the really important parts then thats gonna cost us most of the roster

Yeah, I mean purge most of the roster. A majority of the first parties + Banjo basically.

 

[Perkilator]

well if you want it to be a celebration of gaming history then surely we shouldnt purge the roster at all as theyre all parts of gaming history? if you mean just the really important parts then thats gonna cost us most of the roster

I personally feel like every Smash character in the roster is part of gaming history. Yes, even some of the clones.

That being said, if this was the roster, I think it might expand our scope a little. Cause like it or not characters like Ayumi and Arle are very much part of gaming history

 

[fogbadge]

Yeah, I mean purge most of the roster. A majority of the first parties + Banjo basically.

I’m not sure many of the 3rd parties would survive the reasoning either. I saw the other day you say you couldn’t justify samus so you can’t justify the Belmonts either. All the fighting game characters bar ryu and all the jrpg characters bar either cloud or hero so we’d probably end up with about five 3rd parties

I personally feel like every Smash character in the roster is part of gaming history. Yes, even some of the clones.

That being said, if this was the roster, I think it might expand our scope a little. Cause like it or not characters like Ayumi and Arle are very much part of gaming history

only if you mean just the major parts of history

 

[UserKev]

Octorock is overlooked as a Zelda newcomer. Non of us really discuss it, but its a Zelda enemy that would fill all the niches. Its iconic to Zelda and its gimmick has all the versatility for a creative and original moveset.

 

[Lenidem]

Octorock is overlooked as a Zelda newcomer. Non of us really discuss it, but its a Zelda enemy that would fill all the niches. Its iconic to Zelda and its gimmick has all the versatility for a creative and original moveset.

Oh god, please no more mooks.

 

[UserKev]

Oh god, please no more mooks.

No more mooks? How bout no more sword wielders? But no seriously. Octorok is tragically overlooked and would be amazing. It could use its suction cups to lift items, imitate a balloon for its recovery, etc.

I understand that Skull Kid, Ghirahim or Midna would be great, but they simply aren't reccuring enough. I'm starting to realize this.

 

[PeridotGX]

please no more mooks.

No, more mooks! Though I would prefer a BOTW Guardian as the Zelda rep.

 

[Oddball]

Oh god, please no more mooks.

ahem

BE CIVIL (It's right there in the topic title.)

Come on, dude. Play nice. Responding with "Oh God No" to somebody's opinion isn't exactly civil. You might as well have just come out and said "What the heck is wrong with you? Why are you such an idiot? Why must you have an opinion different than mine?"

 

[UserKev]

ahem

BE CIVIL (It's right there in the topic title.)

Come on, dude. Play nice. Responding with "Oh God No" to somebody's opinion isn't exactly civil. You might as well have just come out and said "What the heck is wrong with you? Why are you such an idiot? Why must you have an opinion different than mine?"

Its ok. Lenidem is actually a really chill dude.

 

[fogbadge]

Octorock is overlooked as a Zelda newcomer. Non of us really discuss it, but its a Zelda enemy that would fill all the niches. Its iconic to Zelda and its gimmick has all the versatility for a creative and original moveset.

youll never hear me object to a zelda character

well maybe revalli

 

[chocolatejr9]

youll never hear me object to a zelda character

well maybe revalli

Even Morshu?

 

[fogbadge]

Even Morshu?

not a real Zelda character