Zelda is back. When I woke up this morning and hit refresh on the Dojo, Lo and behold, there she was donning her new Twilight Princess regalia. Just the previous night, I was commenting on how the only reason Zelda should return for Brawl is because she’s a girl (Melee had a shortage of girl characters). If I were judging on her move-set alone, I would have thrown her to the wayside. What can we learn from Zelda and the other poorly designed characters?
<p align="center"><a href="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/zeldalink.jpg" title="zeldalink.jpg"><img src="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/zeldalink.jpg" alt="zeldalink.jpg" /></a></p>
<a href="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/zeldalink.jpg" title="zeldalink.jpg"><!--more--></a>
Zelda is one of the worst designed characters in the game. It should come as no surprise that she’s at the bottom of the tier list. It doesn’t matter if you believe in the tier list or not. It’s easy to see that Zelda, Pichu, Bowser, and Mewtwo are bad characters. They don’t have enough power, or abilities to pull off the win in any general situation.
If you think that this only applies to competitive smash players, consider this. Because Melee is a fighting game, a large part of the fun comes from winning. If it didn’t, people wouldn’t get so bent out of shape from wavesliding or other advanced techniques. When your chances of winning have dropped well below 10% the game becomes more frustrating and less fun. The characters that are too weak to win, are less fun to play. The strong characters naturally bring more success and more fun. This is evenident when looking at which characters casual players generally play. The casual players don’t play any of the characters from the bottom or low tiers.
It’s a design issue. If Sakurai made all the characters with near equal chances of winning, then everyone would simply pick the character they liked the most, and the world would be a better place. Some believe that it is futile to try and balance out the game like this, but I believe it is simpler than it seems.
Melee is built around a single fighting style. Hit your opponents, and try to keep hitting them before they can recover. This is the essence of a combo. Because combos are hard to pull off, the next best thing to do is to keep attacking to keep your opponent off balance. This is the essence of momentum. The faster a character is, the easier it is for them to catch up to their stunned opponents. The more stun the opponents receive, the easier it is for you to set up another attack. The more range you have, the easier it is to hit them when they can’t hit you. All of these ideas are very simple.
So now we have Zelda. Horribly designed Zelda. The princess clearly has no martial art skills or fighting ability. It seems like Sakurai simply made up some excuse about having magical attacks just to give her something to fight with. It’s obvious that Zelda has poor moving capabilities. Sakurai admitted to this himself in the Dojo. If your character can’t move well, then they need to have moves with more stun and range to make up the difference. Did they give Zelda these things. Of course not. That’s why she’s at the bottom of the tier list.
Zelda’s moves are slow, not too powerful, and they don’t have a lot of range. What’s worse is, because they’re made with the same magical sparkles as Ness’s dash attack and Samus’ up+B, Zelda’s attacks are full of holes that make her moves unpredictable and in many cases useless. In the end, she a sitting duck that can’t follow up an attack to save her life.
Zelda’s recovery is also quite pathetic. Though her teleportation travels far, it’s not an offensive recovery move. This means using it won’t hurt any opponent practically giving them the “ok” to try an attack you without consequences. This makes her susceptible to attacks at the beginning or the end of her recovery. And because Zelda continues to float around when it’s activated, aiming it becomes more difficult than it needs to be. Also, because this moves doesn’t curve around the sides of the stage, Zelda often gets stuck against walls and falls to her death.
There is no excuse for designing characters as poorly as the bottom and low tier characters. We know Sakurai and team had the ability to designed awesome characters because Fox, Falco, Shiek, Marth, Peach, and Samus are all designed extremely well. It’s almost as if they ignored the bad characters as some kind of joke. Remember the five points of power (Speed, Strength, Priority, Range, and Duration)? To balance the game, you can’t give any one character too many of them. Likewise, you can’t give some characters none.
To finish, I present a small list of things every character needs in order to be decent.
<strong>1) </strong><strong>A kill move.</strong> A kill move is a move that kills at around 100% damage by sending the opponent up and out. It can be a throw, a projectile, a ground attack, or an air attack. Melee is all about knocking opponents out and off the stage. If a character can’t do it, they’re extremly limited in how they can get rid of opponents. The more versatile the kill move, the more dangerous a character becomes. If the move is a projectile, how big it is, how fast it travels, and on what trajectory makes all the difference. If the move is an attack, how much range, priority, and speed the move/character has makes the difference.
<strong>2) A Move move. </strong>Every character needs a move that moves or positions the opponent to specific <u>areas</u>. This may seem like a given, but the <u>area </u>needs to be one that the character can interact in. This means, for a high jumping character like Falco, he can play around at high altitudes. So when his moves hit enemies up there, it’s no problem for him. But for characters that take to the air slowly, they need moves that don’t send their opponents so high that they’re out of reach. All of Kirby’s moves (except his up tilt) move the opponents is ways that make it nearly impossible for Kirby to pursue. Once again, being able to catch up to opponents is how the game was built
<strong>3) A variety of throws.</strong> Skaurai designed and balanced Melee around a medly of defensive moves. Shields flow into sheild grabs, which flow into throws, which (for good characters) flow into a complete offensive reversal. What good is a throw that can’t kill at reasonable damages? What good is a throw and that doesn’t move opponents into positions that can be followed up? The opponents just end up landing somewhere safe and away from you. All of Kirby’s throws are poorly designed like this. Not only is Kirby not fast enough to catch up to his opponents afterwards in most situations, but the opponent can break free of the Kirby’s forward and back throw by simply touching the control stick. I’ve had little kids break free of my throws when they barely knew what was going on in the game. You can practically drop your controller and successfully escape. This makes it more difficult for a low tier character like Kirby to do a complete offensive reversal. It’s part of the reason why Kirby is so poorly designed.
<strong>4) A Spike/Meteor.</strong> These are special terms given to moves that shoot opponents down. Meteor strikes can be canceled by hitting up or up+B at the right moment. Spikes cannot be canceled. In general, when you get hit by a spike off the edge, you’re dead. These moves become essential for defeating opponents on the edge of stages, especially when these opponents have good recoveries. Also, some stages have pits instead of edges. The only way to dunk an opponent down a pit is with a move that hits them downward. Sakurai tried to give every character a spike or a meteor strike in Melee. Unfortunately, most of the spikes are “hidden” inside of moves, or they’re just to difficult to pull off. Falco and Kirby has it easy. Their spikes are on their down+airs and they last quite a while. But have you every spiked with Luigi, or Roy? These are extremely hard to pull off. Why would Sakurai make them so difficult to use when other characters have it so easy? And why didn’t he make the more difficult moves to execute Spikes so that when they’re successfully executed, they can’t be canceled? Falco’s down+air cannot be canceled making him the most dangerous spiker in the game. Kirby’s can be canceled. He’s not nearly as dangerous. Clearly, this is a design flaw, and Falco’s strength was <u>pal</u>liated (reduced) in the <u>PAL</u> version of Melee.
<strong>5)Compatible dodges/defenses.</strong> The bigger you are the harder you fall. The bigger you are in Melee, the harder is is to defense yourself. Even if your moves have more range (DonkeyKong) you generally have a lot more “back” to be stabbed in. This is always an inherent problem with big characters. Also, the bigger the character the slower they move. This is already sounding like a very bad situation to be in. If you can’t move, and you can be hit more easily, then what are you going to do defensively? That’s a very important question, and once again everything falls under design. If you’re a sitting duck, then it would be good to use your wings every now and then. How quickly a roll activates, how far you roll, and how long the invisibility time lasts gives a character “wings.” Marth and Mewtwo have very big rolls. They can get out of danger very easily. Kirby doesn’t have as big of a roll, but the time he’s vulnerable is very small, so he can roll into dangers more safely than other characters. A character must be able to move around. Melee is half a platforming game after all.
Beyond this, a little creativity could go along way in making the less “kung-fu” fast flying characters usable. Remember my ideas about elemental effects like continual burn accumulation from fire attacks, or how ice attacks can slow down opponents movement? What if Zelda’s magic had more long lasting interesting effects on her opponents? This would be a great way to make Zelda unique.
<p align="center"><a href="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/zeldalink.jpg" title="zeldalink.jpg"><img src="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/zeldalink.jpg" alt="zeldalink.jpg" /></a></p>
<a href="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/zeldalink.jpg" title="zeldalink.jpg"><!--more--></a>
Zelda is one of the worst designed characters in the game. It should come as no surprise that she’s at the bottom of the tier list. It doesn’t matter if you believe in the tier list or not. It’s easy to see that Zelda, Pichu, Bowser, and Mewtwo are bad characters. They don’t have enough power, or abilities to pull off the win in any general situation.
If you think that this only applies to competitive smash players, consider this. Because Melee is a fighting game, a large part of the fun comes from winning. If it didn’t, people wouldn’t get so bent out of shape from wavesliding or other advanced techniques. When your chances of winning have dropped well below 10% the game becomes more frustrating and less fun. The characters that are too weak to win, are less fun to play. The strong characters naturally bring more success and more fun. This is evenident when looking at which characters casual players generally play. The casual players don’t play any of the characters from the bottom or low tiers.
It’s a design issue. If Sakurai made all the characters with near equal chances of winning, then everyone would simply pick the character they liked the most, and the world would be a better place. Some believe that it is futile to try and balance out the game like this, but I believe it is simpler than it seems.
Melee is built around a single fighting style. Hit your opponents, and try to keep hitting them before they can recover. This is the essence of a combo. Because combos are hard to pull off, the next best thing to do is to keep attacking to keep your opponent off balance. This is the essence of momentum. The faster a character is, the easier it is for them to catch up to their stunned opponents. The more stun the opponents receive, the easier it is for you to set up another attack. The more range you have, the easier it is to hit them when they can’t hit you. All of these ideas are very simple.
So now we have Zelda. Horribly designed Zelda. The princess clearly has no martial art skills or fighting ability. It seems like Sakurai simply made up some excuse about having magical attacks just to give her something to fight with. It’s obvious that Zelda has poor moving capabilities. Sakurai admitted to this himself in the Dojo. If your character can’t move well, then they need to have moves with more stun and range to make up the difference. Did they give Zelda these things. Of course not. That’s why she’s at the bottom of the tier list.
Zelda’s moves are slow, not too powerful, and they don’t have a lot of range. What’s worse is, because they’re made with the same magical sparkles as Ness’s dash attack and Samus’ up+B, Zelda’s attacks are full of holes that make her moves unpredictable and in many cases useless. In the end, she a sitting duck that can’t follow up an attack to save her life.
Zelda’s recovery is also quite pathetic. Though her teleportation travels far, it’s not an offensive recovery move. This means using it won’t hurt any opponent practically giving them the “ok” to try an attack you without consequences. This makes her susceptible to attacks at the beginning or the end of her recovery. And because Zelda continues to float around when it’s activated, aiming it becomes more difficult than it needs to be. Also, because this moves doesn’t curve around the sides of the stage, Zelda often gets stuck against walls and falls to her death.
There is no excuse for designing characters as poorly as the bottom and low tier characters. We know Sakurai and team had the ability to designed awesome characters because Fox, Falco, Shiek, Marth, Peach, and Samus are all designed extremely well. It’s almost as if they ignored the bad characters as some kind of joke. Remember the five points of power (Speed, Strength, Priority, Range, and Duration)? To balance the game, you can’t give any one character too many of them. Likewise, you can’t give some characters none.
To finish, I present a small list of things every character needs in order to be decent.
<strong>1) </strong><strong>A kill move.</strong> A kill move is a move that kills at around 100% damage by sending the opponent up and out. It can be a throw, a projectile, a ground attack, or an air attack. Melee is all about knocking opponents out and off the stage. If a character can’t do it, they’re extremly limited in how they can get rid of opponents. The more versatile the kill move, the more dangerous a character becomes. If the move is a projectile, how big it is, how fast it travels, and on what trajectory makes all the difference. If the move is an attack, how much range, priority, and speed the move/character has makes the difference.
<strong>2) A Move move. </strong>Every character needs a move that moves or positions the opponent to specific <u>areas</u>. This may seem like a given, but the <u>area </u>needs to be one that the character can interact in. This means, for a high jumping character like Falco, he can play around at high altitudes. So when his moves hit enemies up there, it’s no problem for him. But for characters that take to the air slowly, they need moves that don’t send their opponents so high that they’re out of reach. All of Kirby’s moves (except his up tilt) move the opponents is ways that make it nearly impossible for Kirby to pursue. Once again, being able to catch up to opponents is how the game was built
<strong>3) A variety of throws.</strong> Skaurai designed and balanced Melee around a medly of defensive moves. Shields flow into sheild grabs, which flow into throws, which (for good characters) flow into a complete offensive reversal. What good is a throw that can’t kill at reasonable damages? What good is a throw and that doesn’t move opponents into positions that can be followed up? The opponents just end up landing somewhere safe and away from you. All of Kirby’s throws are poorly designed like this. Not only is Kirby not fast enough to catch up to his opponents afterwards in most situations, but the opponent can break free of the Kirby’s forward and back throw by simply touching the control stick. I’ve had little kids break free of my throws when they barely knew what was going on in the game. You can practically drop your controller and successfully escape. This makes it more difficult for a low tier character like Kirby to do a complete offensive reversal. It’s part of the reason why Kirby is so poorly designed.
<strong>4) A Spike/Meteor.</strong> These are special terms given to moves that shoot opponents down. Meteor strikes can be canceled by hitting up or up+B at the right moment. Spikes cannot be canceled. In general, when you get hit by a spike off the edge, you’re dead. These moves become essential for defeating opponents on the edge of stages, especially when these opponents have good recoveries. Also, some stages have pits instead of edges. The only way to dunk an opponent down a pit is with a move that hits them downward. Sakurai tried to give every character a spike or a meteor strike in Melee. Unfortunately, most of the spikes are “hidden” inside of moves, or they’re just to difficult to pull off. Falco and Kirby has it easy. Their spikes are on their down+airs and they last quite a while. But have you every spiked with Luigi, or Roy? These are extremely hard to pull off. Why would Sakurai make them so difficult to use when other characters have it so easy? And why didn’t he make the more difficult moves to execute Spikes so that when they’re successfully executed, they can’t be canceled? Falco’s down+air cannot be canceled making him the most dangerous spiker in the game. Kirby’s can be canceled. He’s not nearly as dangerous. Clearly, this is a design flaw, and Falco’s strength was <u>pal</u>liated (reduced) in the <u>PAL</u> version of Melee.
<strong>5)Compatible dodges/defenses.</strong> The bigger you are the harder you fall. The bigger you are in Melee, the harder is is to defense yourself. Even if your moves have more range (DonkeyKong) you generally have a lot more “back” to be stabbed in. This is always an inherent problem with big characters. Also, the bigger the character the slower they move. This is already sounding like a very bad situation to be in. If you can’t move, and you can be hit more easily, then what are you going to do defensively? That’s a very important question, and once again everything falls under design. If you’re a sitting duck, then it would be good to use your wings every now and then. How quickly a roll activates, how far you roll, and how long the invisibility time lasts gives a character “wings.” Marth and Mewtwo have very big rolls. They can get out of danger very easily. Kirby doesn’t have as big of a roll, but the time he’s vulnerable is very small, so he can roll into dangers more safely than other characters. A character must be able to move around. Melee is half a platforming game after all.
Beyond this, a little creativity could go along way in making the less “kung-fu” fast flying characters usable. Remember my ideas about elemental effects like continual burn accumulation from fire attacks, or how ice attacks can slow down opponents movement? What if Zelda’s magic had more long lasting interesting effects on her opponents? This would be a great way to make Zelda unique.
