I'm extremely hopefully that the game will have more viable characters for tournament play. Just from personal experience in the past games, there were characters who were extremely fun but lacked the tools needed to rise higher in the rankings. In Melee Roy could get some kills but overall his combo potential was very limited. Same went for characters like Mewtwo, Toon Link, Zelda, and a few others. Melee started to become a select five characters out of a pretty healthy cast. Just recently there has begun to be a surge in different characters being played.
Since Sonic was mentioned I'll explain with him. Overall the character was a unique addition to the roster. Being the fastest character in the game he could easily catch opponents and play a pressure game. Having two Spin Dashes may have seemed like a waste of specials but you could cancel both of them into shield making for a great mix up. However the down side was that he lacked KO power. Literally took ages to land a kill. Yes that sounds like a fair trade but when you only have one or two moves to get the kill with it becomes quite obnoxious. Peach also could not get the kill compared to her Melee counterpart who had her Down Smash, Forward Throw, Up Smash, Nair, Bair, and Fair. When you look at it this it became a hassle for some of the cast when going against titans like Meta Knight, Snake, DeDeDe, Falco, and Ice Climbers.
From what I've seen and tested in the new game many veterans have received updates and the tools needed. Once again taking Sonic as an example. Adjusting the Spin dashes to make them faster and more fluid helps with comboing and in fact the moves link together way easier. He now has a new Down Smash that works the same as Fox and Falco (it is a splits just in case no one knew). His overall KO power has been adjusted. From the demo alone I saw Up Air, Down Smash, Fully Charged Up Smash, Forward Smash, Bair, and Dair kill. Comparing that to Brawl that's a huge upgrade in my opinion. Of course he could get KO'd really easily.
It is these type of balances that Namco Bandai is helping with which will make the game in my opinion way more fun. The whole cast looks like they could be viable in tournament at the moment. If there is something extremely game breaking with a single character, which I highly doubt, I'm hopeful that it will be patched. Bottom line is that the entire cast looks great. With 40+ characters available we should not see a single character winning all the tournaments for quite some time, if ever.
TL;DR Smash 4 looks like it'll have the most viable cast in Smash history. Also Sonic couldn't kill in Brawl and now he can.
