That's good to hear. ^_^Sabu, you make me want to buy Brawl again to have gaming parties, sure it's not fun, but it certainly can be entertaining, yay for FFAs.
But otherwise I love melee
I'm pretty much the same way. I have some friends that are casual players and don't really care about ATs, so just playing some FFA Brawl matches with them is a lot of fun. If you're playing to do an awesome combo on somebody or use lots of ATs, Brawl isn't the game to play. But if you're playing an all G&W match with Side-B only or trying to make funny suicide kills (ie. playing Brawl like the party game it is), the lack of combos and ATs isn't all that important.
For me Melee is fun for competition, but both Melee and Brawl are fun for casuals. Although I still prefer Melee for that too XD