WoL WoL story is a vastly watered down rip-off

[1FC0]

The Heroes stand united before their greatest foe. They are about to make their final stand. But then the foe unleashes a powerful attack that takes almost everyone out. The few who managed to escape from the attack's full consequences —which includes Kirby— are tasked with saving those who did not.

After the above mentioned rescue operation the heroes stand united again against their greatest foe, but this time someone else interferes and prevents the great foe from using his super attack on the heroes again. Thanks to that the Heroes can beat their great foe. The end.


Multiple choice question: Which story did I describe?
1. The story of WoL
2. the final part of the SSE story

Spoiler: Answer

The correct answers are 1 and 2.

WoL's entire story is a rip-off from a small part of the SSE story but stretched to fill an entire story, and made significantly worse. The major difference between the two is that the SSE ending was actually good because it was built up to. The player knew who the characters were, how they united, why they fought. E.g. they knew of R.O.B.'s final stand against the one who destroyed his people and home, They knew how Lucas got brave enought o fight Tabuu, they knew why Ganondorf was desperate enough to fight alongside Link and Zelda, etc. The players had followed those characters through their trials and had had time to build up a connection with them and understand their perspective and where they were coming from. The player had seen enough to be invested in the story and in it's conclusion. Whether the player emphatised with R.O.B.'s sadness, Ganondorf's desperation, Fox's dutifulness, Pikachu's gratitude, Lucas's newfound courage, or anything else, the story portrayed real emotion and the ending was a great conclusion where all those stories came together.


What does WoL have? Galeem bad, Galeem strong, fight Galeem. That's all. There is no story to build this up or make the player get invested in the story. Why is the Fox the leader? How did everyone meet? Why do they want to fight Galeem? Who is Galeem? How did Ganondorf get desperate enough to fight with Link and Zelda? How did they manage to recruit Mewtwo, who lives very isolated?

In short: Why should the player care about this random assemblage of characters who they know nothing about?


You may object that we do know the character from their canon. But nothing in WoL actually ties in to any character's canon. Some character's their canon even make it unlikely that they would be in such a situation. Would Villager really want to fight Galeem? How did they recruit Mewtwo? Why does Wolf accept Fox as the group's leader? These are giant plot holes created by the friction between their canons and the WoL story. WoL talks about the characters many stories and them coming together, but what it DOES is completely negate those stories and reduce the characters to just a bunch of empty vessels.

At least SSE started many characters off in a position that could be explained by their canon. DK and Diddy protecting their banana's again, Fox being send on another dog fighting mission, Pokemon Trainer just starting his journey with his starter Pokemon trying to catch more Pokemon, Samus and Snake being send to infiltrate some base, etc. We have an idea why those characters started were they started, because they started in a situation that's typical for them. It also made the characters seem more like themselves. It is true that not every character had this favour done to them. E.g. Mario and Kirby had a very weird introduction which does not tie into their canon at all. But it's tough to make a story where the cast is set in stone and cannot be changed to suit each other or the story, so I think that SSE did a good job with this. And SSE certainly did this significantly better than WoL did.


So in conclusion, SSE had a great story and WoL's story is just a rip-off of a small part of SSE's story but with all the emotion and intrigue taken out of it by a lack of context. I was hoping for another masterpiece story like the SSE was. But alas.

 

[Sebas22]

I agree. Subspace Emissary had a better story than World of Light. However, there a few things that I'd like to point out.

1) The answer to the story you describe is only number 2. In SSE, one hero interferes super evil attack, now everyone can defeat the big bad guy. In WoL, big bad guy 1 gets attacked by big bad guy 2, 1 retreats, heroes go after 2, 2 retreats, heroes go after both, the end. The "story" is different. Not by much, but still.

2) At some point, you mention that Kirby and Mario introduction in SSE didn't fit their canon. First of all, Kirby has participated in various fighting competitions (Megaton Punch, The Arena and True Arena in many Kirby games). It's not really that weird for him.
Second, even without mentioning previous point, everything makes sense since the Smash story mode has it's own canon. I mean, all the characters are located in the same world, the World of Trophies.

3) And lastly, Subspace Emissary story is kinda meh. The cutscenes are great, but the story...: character find character, they fight bad guys, they win, they nod each other, they move on. That's 90% of the full SSE story. But as I said before, the cutscenes are so good that we don't mind how empty the whole plot is.

And that's why WoL stinks. They made only one real cutscene.

 

[1FC0]

1) The answer to the story you describe is only number 2. In SSE, one hero interferes super evil attack, now everyone can defeat the big bad guy. In WoL, big bad guy 1 gets attacked by big bad guy 2, 1 retreats, heroes go after 2, 2 retreats, heroes go after both, the end. The "story" is different. Not by much, but still.

I think that Dharkon is handled slightly better than Sonic, but Dharkon, Galeem, and their conflict is extremely boring and uninteresting. Galeem and Dharkon hate each other because the former is light and the latter is dark. So they fight. The end. For examples of interesting conflicts, just take for example those between Lucas and Wario, or Ganondorf/Tabuu and R.O.B. in SSE.

At some point, you mention that Kirby and Mario introduction in SSE didn't fit their canon. First of all, Kirby has participated in various fighting competitions (Megaton Punch, The Arena and True Arena in many Kirby games). It's not really that weird for him.

I admit, I'm not that familiar with Kirby. Maybe Kirby does enjoy fighting for amusement. However I'm pretty familiar with Mario and I'm pretty sure that him fighting for anyone's amusement is pretty weird.

Second, even without mentioning previous point, everything makes sense since the Smash story mode has it's own canon. I mean, all the characters are located in the same world, the World of Trophies.

Smash certainly does have it's own canon, but it's charm is being a cross-over between different characters and the more they tie in to those characters' canon the more it seems like those characters are actually there. E.g., would you prefer Mario being a coward and Luigi pulling out a Beam Sword while Peach is some aggressive brute and Ness is a main villain? If they did that, then what's the point of even using those characters?

3) And lastly, Subspace Emissary story is kinda meh. The cutscenes are great, but the story...: character find character, they fight bad guys, they win, they nod each other, they move on. That's 90% of the full SSE story. But as I said before, the cutscenes are so good that we don't mind how empty the whole plot is.

I think that you raise valid criticisms here. But I'm willing to cut SSE some slack since the cast was too big and the team had little freedom since the characters were already defined before the story was made. So some characters had to be shoehorned in. However they still managed to give a few characters good story arcs.

R.O.B. is probably the best example of a good story arc in the SSE. They decided to throw away his canon completely and instead build his character around the SSE and it resulted in him having one of the best and most memorable arcs. Though I'm personally a bit disappointed that R.O.B.'s canon background was ignored completely, I think it was a good move since it gave them the opportunity to make a good story around R.O.B. to serve as an important thread throughout the whole SSE. R.O.B.'s canon is pretty bare bones with few people being a true fan of it anyway.

For WoL there are no excuses. It disregards the canon of every character yet still gives each of them a very underwhelming story. It combines the worst of both worlds.


So I think that SSE has a great story when taking into consideration the limits it had due to having to use an existing cast, but an OK or meh story when holding it to the standards of a story that's allowed to build characters around the story. Smash will probably never be really story driven, but I really appreciate SSE quality of stories in Smash.

 

[Ryu Myuutsu]

For WoL there are no excuses. It disregards the canon of every character yet still gives each of them a very underwhelming story. It combines the worst of both worlds.

There actually is though. Story wasn't a main focus of the game at all, and we know where their priorities were this time.

A campaign of the scope of SSE was time and resource consuming, and we actually saw how that effected Brawl negatively in other areas, which is why they opted to not do that this time around. Expecting a repeat of that in Ultimate would have been silly and delusional when the idea wasn't to adhere to the characters' canon or give them personal plots. Charactes in this game don't need a canon related reasons to fight each other as stories in most fighting games are just excuse plots.

And as fun as the story in SSE was, it was mode that you played and cleared only once, then you would go to rewatch the cutscenes on Youtube later rather than touching it again.

I would prefer if they did the campaign and added it later as DLC or do a series of animated shorts involving the characters themselves like they did with Kid Icarus, Sonic Mania and Pokemon Generations.

 

[1FC0]

There actually is though. Story wasn't a main focus of the game at all, and we know where their priorities were this time.

I meant excuses to defend the story. I'm not criticising SSBU, just the story of WoL. But I agree with your defence of the game here.

and we actually saw how that effected Brawl negatively in other areas

Can you name some examples?

And as fun as the story in SSE was, it was mode that you played and cleared only once, then you would go to rewatch the cutscenes on Youtube later rather than touching it again.

The SSE had replay value. I remember replaying some stages. There are many things to do on a replay e.g. catch more trophies, clear stages on higher difficulty, unlock the extra characters, do co-op, or play stages with characters who could not play it in the first run through. In fact, if there was an easy way for me to replay SSE now then I probably would.

 

[xzx]

Not only was Subspace better than WoL story-wise, but also gameplay-wise. Subspace was an action-platformer beat 'em up (fitting for Smash) while WoL was just... event matches?

Subspace was dynamic and fun, with tons of collectibles and customisation and whatnot. WoL lacked any of that. You just went from event fight to event fight 665 times with some bosses tuckered in. (Which Subspace still had.) That's it. Sure, there was some customisations with the spirits, but it was in no way as expansive as it was with SSE's stickers.

To me WoL was a big failure, and I give it the lowest possible score. Subspace was great. Not perfect, but just the great thing you'd expect from a singleplayer mode in a Smash game.

 

[AC!D!C]

Was the SSE's story really great? Or are you just nostalgic for Brawl? Neither of these two stories are that great of a story mode and both really were just vessels moving barely along enough to introduce the roster at a steady pace. Ultimately because of how the game is set up you know there are no stakes to the story. No one dies in the end but Tabuu. Same goes for Galeem and Darkhon with the exception that in the bad endings they wipe out the universe in a cutscene --- which isn't that emotionally compelling anyway.

 

[1FC0]

Ultimately because of how the game is set up you know there are no stakes to the story. No one dies in the end but Tabuu.

Spoiler: Major SSE spoiler

SSE has a tragic ending where every R.O.B. except for the playable one dies and R.O.B.'s homeland gets completely destroyed.

 

[Door Key Pig]

Not only was Subspace better than WoL story-wise, but also gameplay-wise. Subspace was an action-platformer beat 'em up (fitting for Smash) while WoL was just... event matches?

Subspace was dynamic and fun, with tons of collectibles and customisation and whatnot. WoL lacked any of that. You just went from event fight to event fight 665 times with some bosses tuckered in. (Which Subspace still had.) That's it. Sure, there was some customisations with the spirits, but it was in no way as expansive as it was with SSE's stickers.

To me WoL was a big failure, and I give it the lowest possible score. Subspace was great. Not perfect, but just the great thing you'd expect from a singleplayer mode in a Smash game.

Huh, really? How'd ya figure? At the very least Brawl's stickers weren't required of you to beat the game/certain matches and may have not had effects like "start off the match with this item" or have an extra mid-air jump or what have you (correct me if I'm wrong there). What made Stickers specifically so much better than Spirits?

 

[Ryu Myuutsu]

Can you name some examples?

Balance in Brawl was pretty bad and most veterans felt very ineffective to play as. I don't have any solid evidence of correlation, but writing, directing and animating a bunch of cutscenes that follow a plot is a substantial amount of work. And the workload has to be shared with the gameplay as well. It can be assumed that balance testing took a hit because of this and the fact that they only had four playtesters on board.

The SSE had replay value. I remember replaying some stages. There are many things to do on a replay e.g. catch more trophies, clear stages on higher difficulty, unlock the extra characters, do co-op, or play stages with characters who could not play it in the first run through. In fact, if there was an easy way for me to replay SSE now then I probably would.

I see. I'm probably the opposite; I have no interest in playing SSE again but I like rewatching the cutscenes on the internet and find myself replaying WoL instead.
Now, IF they happen to add some story focused DLC, I'll be interested.

Not only was Subspace better than WoL story-wise, but also gameplay-wise. Subspace was an action-platformer beat 'em up (fitting for Smash) while WoL was just... event matches?

Subspace was dynamic and fun, with tons of collectibles and customisation and whatnot. WoL lacked any of that. You just went from event fight to event fight 665 times with some bosses tuckered in. (Which Subspace still had.) That's it. Sure, there was some customisations with the spirits, but it was in no way as expansive as it was with SSE's stickers.

Here are several examples of crazy stuff you can do with Spirits that aren't simply possible with Stickers:

To me WoL was a big failure, and I give it the lowest possible score. Subspace was great. Not perfect, but just the great thing you'd expect from a singleplayer mode in a Smash game.

I feel that you are extremely overrating SSE's sticker system and not everyone was on board with it's side scrolling focused gameplay. Even at normal difficulties, you would get swarmed by enemies on screen while moving forward which could make the platforming sections tedious. Cheap deaths were pretty much a norm in that mode.

And you are saying that the stickers were more expansive despite the spirits having more customization? ...How does that logic even work? If Spirits offer more customization, then that makes them more expansive by default. Stickers were merely stat boosters that affected how much damage you dealt and received, nothing else and nothing more. Spirits do that and more, as they can allow you to add attributes like armor, mid air jumps, status conditions like giant, reflect or metal, double final smash, items, charge attack dashes, etc. The system allows for plenty of experimentation and weird combinations, like giving characters with ladder combos extra jumps for cheesy ceiling kills, or making a One Punch Mac set, or a Giant Ridley set with special move boosts to deal massive damage on his Down B. You may like Stickers more for whatever reason, but objectively they are less expansive and don't offer the same level of utility that Spirits do.

Here are examples of crazy stuff you can do with Spirits that simply isn't possible with Stickers:

Also, "WoL was just...event matches?", you make it sound like that's a bad thing. Event matches have been part of the lifeblood of single player content since Melee and WoL simply took that existing concept and built upon it. The battles in those modes also make a plethora of video game references to the original source material.

"You just went from event fight to event fight 665 times with some bosses tuckered in", well, this is a fighting game, and fighting to advance to the next stage is pretty much a requisite in every game of this genre. Why is this a bad thing again? There was a lot of fighting in SSE too during the platforming sections and in checkpoints. It doesn't make it look like you have point, it makes you look jaded for no reason.

Granted, everyone who plays Smash likes different things, but it takes a tremendous amount of mental gymnastics to tell me that SSE was more dynamic and customizable than WoL, when the latter offered custom battles like a Giant ROB who shot lasers like a Sheikah Guardian, or a ZSS recreating the final boss battle from MGS3 in a poison field, or eight Megamen posing as Wily's Robots with Dr. Mario posing as Wily himself in the end, or a giant fire breathing Duck Hunt pretending to be Twinbellows, or even entire maps recreating areas from certain games like the Street Fighter II one where every match emulates the rules and gameplay from that series.

When you consider WoL a big failure despite of this and praise stickers for being more expansive than spirits (objectively false), I can't help but think that the criteria used is kind of arbitrary.

Was the SSE's story really great? Or are you just nostalgic for Brawl? Neither of these two stories are that great of a story mode and both really were just vessels moving barely along enough to introduce the roster at a steady pace. Ultimately because of how the game is set up you know there are no stakes to the story. No one dies in the end but Tabuu. Same goes for Galeem and Darkhon with the exception that in the bad endings they wipe out the universe in a cutscene --- which isn't that emotionally compelling anyway.

The story is good. Not great but good nonetheless. You don't need George Martin levels of writing to make a serviceable attempt at a crossover story event; so long as the plot is non-horrible and the characters get the necessary focus, you are good to go. Not having dialogue was also a good idea and the interaction between the fighters is pretty much it's main selling point; for example, the scene were the Halbered and the Great Fox are having a fire fight is awesome, Pikachu saving Samus from Ridley always gives me chills, DK and Diddy making their entrance is badass as hell, Lucario and Meta Knight discovering Snake is funny, and the part where Ganon forces the ROBs to activate the bombs is a tear jerker.

Similar to the character reveal trailers from Smash 4 and Ultimate, it's just the good kind of fanservice.

Damn, brb, going to rewatch SSE on Youtube.

 

[xzx]

Huh, really? How'd ya figure? At the very least Brawl's stickers weren't required of you to beat the game/certain matches and may have not had effects like "start off the match with this item" or have an extra mid-air jump or what have you (correct me if I'm wrong there). What made Stickers specifically so much better than Spirits?

Yes, Brawl had stickers with "start with this item" effects. What I meant with "Stickers are more customisable than Spirits" was not the effects themselves, but rather how you apply them. Every character has an equally large trophy base for you to put stickers on, and optimally, you have to put stickers with benefitial effects on every individual character, taking shape, size and effects into account. For example, Fox primarly attacks using his legs, thus finding the sticker with the largest boost to leg attacks is not a dumb idea. But that sticker takes up a lot of space, so do you go all in and have relatively little space for other stuff or do you put on smaller stickers to give smaller boosts in other areas, but have room for more? And since you have to take the stickers's size and shape/form into account, you also have to take into account where to place them on the trophy stand in conjunction with the other stickers. So there was a puzzle element to it all too. That's what I meant with customisation.

 

[xzx]

Balance in Brawl was pretty bad and most veterans felt very ineffective to play as. I don't have any solid evidence of correlation, but writing, directing and animating a bunch of cutscenes that follow a plot is a substantial amount of work. And the workload has to be shared with the gameplay as well. It can be assumed that balance testing took a hit because of this and the fact that they only had four playtesters on board.



I see. I'm probably the opposite; I have no interest in playing SSE again but I like rewatching the cutscenes on the internet and find myself replaying WoL instead.
Now, IF they happen to add some story focused DLC, I'll be interested.



I feel that you are extremely overrating SSE's sticker system and not everyone was on board with it's side scrolling focused gameplay. Even at normal difficulties, you would get swarmed by enemies on screen while moving forward which could make the platforming sections tedious. Cheap deaths were pretty much a norm in that mode.

And you are saying that the stickers were more expansive despite the spirits having more customization? ...How does that logic even work? If Spirits offer more customization, then that makes them more expansive by default. Stickers were merely stat boosters that affected how much damage you dealt and received, nothing else and nothing more. Spirits do that and more, as they can allow you to add attributes like armor, mid air jumps, status conditions like giant, reflect or metal, double final smash, items, charge attack dashes, etc. The system allows for plenty of experimentation and weird combinations, like giving characters with ladder combos extra jumps for cheesy ceiling kills, or making a One Punch Mac set, or a Giant Ridley set with special move boosts to deal massive damage on his Down B. You may like Stickers more for whatever reason, but objectively they are less expansive and don't offer the same level of utility that Spirits do.

Here are examples of crazy stuff you can do with Spirits that simply isn't possible with Stickers:

Also, "WoL was just...event matches?", you make it sound like that's a bad thing. Event matches have been part of the lifeblood of single player content since Melee and WoL simply took that existing concept and built upon it. The battles in those modes also make a plethora of video game references to the original source material.

"You just went from event fight to event fight 665 times with some bosses tuckered in", well, this is a fighting game, and fighting to advance to the next stage is pretty much a requisite in every game of this genre. Why is this a bad thing again? There was a lot of fighting in SSE too during the platforming sections and in checkpoints. It doesn't make it look like you have point, it makes you look jaded for no reason.

Granted, everyone who plays Smash likes different things, but it takes a tremendous amount of mental gymnastics to tell me that SSE was more dynamic and customizable than WoL, when the latter offered custom battles like a Giant ROB who shot lasers like a Sheikah Guardian, or a ZSS recreating the final boss battle from MGS3 in a poison field, or eight Megamen posing as Wily's Robots with Dr. Mario posing as Wily himself in the end, or a giant fire breathing Duck Hunt pretending to be Twinbellows, or even entire maps recreating areas from certain games like the Street Fighter II one where every match emulates the rules and gameplay from that series.

When you consider WoL a big failure despite of this and praise stickers for being more expansive than spirits (objectively false), I can't help but think that the criteria used is kind of arbitrary.



The story is good. Not great but good nonetheless. You don't need George Martin levels of writing to make a serviceable attempt at a crossover story event; so long as the plot is non-horrible and the characters get the necessary focus, you are good to go. Not having dialogue was also a good idea and the interaction between the fighters is pretty much it's main selling point; for example, the scene were the Halbered and the Great Fox are having a fire fight is awesome, Pikachu saving Samus from Ridley always gives me chills, DK and Diddy making their entrance is badass as hell, Lucario and Meta Knight discovering Snake is funny, and the part where Ganon forces the ROBs to activate the bombs is a tear jerker.

Similar to the character reveal trailers from Smash 4 and Ultimate, it's just the good kind of fanservice.

Damn, brb, going to rewatch SSE on Youtube.

First off, I didn't find any part of Subspace that hard, so uhh, sorry if you did. But since that is subjective, I will move on.

For your second paragraph I will answer with the same answer I gave Door Key Pig, so see that comment if you wish.

For your third and fourth paragraph: Yeah, I talk about having event matches as the story mode is a bad thing, which I exactly think. Now this is purely subjective, as to if you prefer event matches as the story mode gameplay or an action-platformer beat 'em up instead, so I feel there isn't much to discuss here, but what I find funny is that you say that event matches is a staple in the Smash series, which, funnily, they removed in Ultimate. Sure, it was replaced with WoL, but they could've just made event matches and have the story mode be an action-platformer beat 'em up you know. So technically they removed event matches and replaced it with more event matches and made them the story mode. So we kinda lost the story mode lol...

If you don't think fighting ("having") 665 event matches is a bit too much and boring and repetitive then good for you. But having the campaign draw out for so long just made it worse, at least for me. Not even The Great Maze (which isn't as bad as people make it out to be) was that long and tedious. But again, this is subjective if you feel 665 event matches are too much or not.

Makes me wonder if you would be happy if they did event matches just like in Brawl and Melee and expanded on SSE or not...

Your last paragraphs feels like you enjoy references to characters more than the actual fights and that you enjoyed WoL more than SSE, which again is subjective and not necessarily a bad thing, so I don't feel like there are enough "mental gymnastics" for me to type anything productive here. Good on you I guess? We prefer different things after all.

Let's say Sakurai would do another Smash game and another story mode for it. I think the community would be more excited if he expanded on the SSE concept than the WoL one. And granted, Sakurai even said that if he were to make another Smash game and another story mode, he would not use the concept of WoL and Spirits again. (But I guess he could please the WoL fans by introducing Event matches again, right? That would suffice for you, right?)

Subjectively for me, having event matches 665 times and call that the story mode is disappointing and boring, which it was for me. WoL was a failure in every aspect for me. SSE on the other hand is everything you would expect from a Smash story mode campaign. I enjoyed it, even if it wasn't perfect. But it was good enough. Let's hope the next Smash game expands on this, rather than event matches, if there ever will be a new Smash game.

No hard feelings btw.

 

[Door Key Pig]

We totally could have gotten more platforming stages in WoL had they not focused their attention on getting back like a hundred old stages and stuff, as said by Sakurai himself.
https://nintendoeverything.com/saku...ltimate-how-it-came-to-be-lack-of-story-more/

 

[Deleted member]

Spirits and Stickers are two similar features, but their purposes are different. Stickers is a basic upgrade system, chuck on a few upgrades for a character and play the game. The game discouraged experimentation, as you could only change stickers outside of levels, and stickers were permanently gone if you removed them from a character. It wasn't about experimenting and coming up with the right combinations of abilities for the right situation, stickers were about slapping some power-ups on a character and calling it a day.

Spirits on the other hand are all about strategy, you need spend time to deciding which spirit is correct for which match, and if your plan doesn't work you can back to the drawing board without any punishment. This isn't just a one time thing either, you have do this for each match, meaning that WoL isn't just about fighting the spirits, it's about planning how to beat them using your own spirits. Stickers were an afterthought, Spirits are the main feature.

Makes me wonder if you would be happy if they did event matches just like in Brawl and Melee and expanded on SSE or not...

[...]

(But I guess he could please the WoL fans by introducing Event matches again, right? That would suffice for you, right?)

As someone who enjoyed WoL, I did not like Event Matches. WoL not only improves on them by adding a strategy to them as mentioned above, but it also gives them a purpose. Alongside that Spirits were clear in what they wanted you to do, as they had consistent rules, gimmicks, and actually told you everything about the match rather then being an incredibly vague description.

 

[1FC0]

The game discouraged experimentation, as you could only change stickers outside of levels, and stickers were permanently gone if you removed them from a character.

Spirits on the other hand are all about strategy, you need spend time to deciding which spirit is correct for which match, and if your plan doesn't work you can back to the drawing board without any punishment.

You seem to imply here that with spirits you need to think your strategy out before hand because if your strategy does not work then you can apply trial-and-error to find a good strategy regardless, while with stickers you do not need to strategise beforehand because if your strategy does not work then you lose your stickers and thus there is a cost to failing.

Personally I think the opposite is true—i.e. spirits allow trial and error and thus there is less need to strategise because the right combination can often be found by simply experimenting a lot. Stickers on the other hand require careful planning because there is a cost to using them and trial-and-error is therefore less viable.

Stickers is a basic upgrade system, chuck on a few upgrades for a character and play the game.

That's exactly how spirits work. Chuck a few on your character and play the game. The lack of cost for using them does not make it more advanced IMO.

It wasn't about experimenting and coming up with the right combinations of abilities for the right situation,

It was about planning beforehand and coming up with the right combinations of abilities.

I do not have a strong opinion on stickers, though. I beat SSE without ever using them. Spirits are at least necessary. However spirits are still not really strategic. It's more like equipping metal killer for a battle against metals, more stamina for stamina battles, lava immunity for battles on lava, etc.

As someone who enjoyed WoL, I did not like Event Matches. WoL not only improves on them by adding a strategy to them as mentioned above, but it also gives them a purpose. Alongside that Spirits were clear in what they wanted you to do, as they had consistent rules, gimmicks, and actually told you everything about the match rather then being an incredibly vague description.

I have the opposite opinion. Spirit battles are often just characters spamming their moves. Some are fun, but most are just something like Kirby spamming vB and easily beatable without any spirits or real strategy at all.

 

[Ryu Myuutsu]

First off, I didn't find any part of Subspace that hard, so uhh, sorry if you did. But since that is subjective, I will move on.

Yeah, not buying it. Even if you are competent, there is no sure way to avoid getting bull****'d occasionally when you the game throws you several types of strong enemies together in enclosed spaces. Fake difficulty isn't subjective.

But feel free to record yourself breezing through the enemies on harder difficulties and post the video here to see if your claim holds, buddy.

For your second paragraph I will answer with the same answer I gave Door Key Pig, so see that comment if you wish.

I can see how the trophy stand creates the illusion of customization to you but they are still a step below Spirits in that department. Said customization is merely going back to stacking up more boosting effects on your character. The process of applying upgrades was streamlined in Smash 4 and Ultimate so you didn't have to add spirits for every single body part there is. You still get spirits that affect legs and arms though but without having to assign to head, bites, etc.

And that's without getting into the attributes that Spirits bring to the table where you can even make a couple of videos showcasing how combinations can affect the fighters in different ways.

For your third and fourth paragraph: Yeah, I talk about having event matches as the story mode is a bad thing, which I exactly think. Now this is purely subjective, as to if you prefer event matches as the story mode gameplay or an action-platformer beat 'em up instead, so I feel there isn't much to discuss here, but what I find funny is that you say that event matches is a staple in the Smash series, which, funnily, they removed in Ultimate. Sure, it was replaced with WoL, but they could've just made event matches and have the story mode be an action-platformer beat 'em up you know. So technically they removed event matches and replaced it with more event matches and made them the story mode. So we kinda lost the story mode lol...

True, that part is subjective, can't disagree with that. You are about Event Matches though. They are now essentially World of Light and Spirit Board. It's the exact same concept but expanded upon, so they still remain a staple of the Smash series. You can pretend that they aren't, but that doesn't make it less true.

And the reasoning for why a cutscene-heavy story with large platforming sections weren't prioritized this time around was already discussed here, so feel free to read above if you wish. Feel free as well to pat yourself on the back for making suggestions that were very likely discussed already by the Smash team in their development room but without the burden of logistics. Every idea sounds great when you don't have to back it up with action.

If you don't think fighting ("having") 665 event matches is a bit too much and boring and repetitive then good for you. But having the campaign draw out for so long just made it worse, at least for me. Not even The Great Maze (which isn't as bad as people make it out to be) was that long and tedious. But again, this is subjective if you feel 665 event matches are too much or not.

Which is why I didn't finish it in one sitting, you know you can do that, right? SSE is also long and if you decide to play from start to finish in one go, you would end up bored of it. Even the best games can make you sick if you play them for too long, which is why you have to space your gaming sessions. If you eat three pizzas in a row, you wouldn't enjoy them and you wouldn't want to eat another in a long while.

Not all fights were mandatory to reach the final boss either.

If you felt that that was too long for you, then that's fine, but it also tells me that you probably forgot you could pause, save and quit.

Let's say Sakurai would do another Smash game and another story mode for it. I think the community would be more excited if he expanded on the SSE concept than the WoL one. And granted, Sakurai even said that if he were to make another Smash game and another story mode, he would not use the concept of WoL and Spirits again. (But I guess he could please the WoL fans by introducing Event matches again, right? That would suffice for you, right?)

Very perceptive of you, I wonder if the fact that I showed interest in the idea in my posts from before clued you in.

I also talked a little bit before about how most fighting games focus on gameplay over story. The former is obviously more important than the latter because this genre thrives on its replayability found in PvP and the options it gives the players in the form of characters and stages. The story serves merely as an excuse plot to have a succession of fights until you reach the final boss. The gameplay in Ultimate is better off thanks to the decisions they made at the time of development, and I wouldn't have it any other way. So to answer your question, yes, a mode similar to WoL or even Melee's adventure would suffice to me. I was never expecting another SSE after seeing how they worked in other areas of the game.

But I also liked the fanservice found in SSE, just not a big fan of the mode's gameplay. So perhaps a story expansion DLC or a series of CG/animated shorts following a plot with Smash characters would be better for me.

No hard feelings btw. XOXO

 

[JiggyNinja]

The Heroes stand united before their greatest foe. They are about to make their final stand. But then the foe unleashes a powerful attack that takes almost everyone out. The few who managed to escape from the attack's full consequences —which includes Kirby— are tasked with saving those who did not.

After the above mentioned rescue operation the heroes stand united again against their greatest foe, but this time someone else interferes and prevents the great foe from using his super attack on the heroes again. Thanks to that the Heroes can beat their great foe. The end.

Remove the explicit Kirby reference and you just described a very standard and generic action-fantasy movie formula. Like right off the top of my head I can see Infinity War and Endgame in that description, and I didn't even watch those movies.

Can you really say it ripped off Subspace Emissary specifically when it's just an extremely common dramatic formula?

 

[1FC0]

Remove the explicit Kirby reference and you just described a very standard and generic action-fantasy movie formula. Like right off the top of my head I can see Infinity War and Endgame in that description, and I didn't even watch those movies.

Can you really say it ripped off Subspace Emissary specifically when it's just an extremely common dramatic formula?

No, it's a rip-off of many stories. SSE in particular because that's the story that preceded it in the same franchise.

It is a rip-off though because unlike stories like even the SSE's story that actually add details which makes the formula interesting and makes it stand out a bit, WoL's story is just the general description with almost nothing added to it.

 

[meleebrawler]

I've played big crossover games with fairly elaborate stories (Project X Zone). They also have zero PvP and their gameplay is very simplistic.

Barring infinite time and resources, it's always going to be like this: large content, great story, deep, engaging gameplay. Pick two.

I do miss beating up enemies, but feel that Smash Run delivered that better. You didn't need context to grab enemies for that mode. Problem with stages is the vast difference in character mobility. They have to be simple enough for slow Ganondorf to clear, making them trivial for others without a bunch of enemies. Imagine Jump Shulk or Acceleratle Hero just vaulting over half the stage, stopped only by canned encounters.

 

[1FC0]

Problem with stages is the vast difference in character mobility. They have to be simple enough for slow Ganondorf to clear, making them trivial for others without a bunch of enemies. Imagine Jump Shulk or Acceleratle Hero just vaulting over half the stage, stopped only by canned encounters.

Msybe they should make stages for specific groups of characters. That would solve this issue. Just ban every character that cannot complete the stage from the stage.

 

[meleebrawler]

Msybe they should make stages for specific groups of characters. That would solve this issue. Just ban every character that cannot complete the stage from the stage.

That still doesn't change the fact some characters are just straight up better than others at platforming. Look at Ganondorf's Target stage in Melee, notice how it's small and you don't need to move too much to get most of the targets flying your way? How do you make a full, engaging stage for someone like him, let alone justify in a story why he or someone like Little Mac are the only ones who can tackle a particular challenge?

 

[1FC0]

That still doesn't change the fact some characters are just straight up better than others at platforming. Look at Ganondorf's Target stage in Melee, notice how it's small and you don't need to move too much to get most of the targets flying your way? How do you make a full, engaging stage for someone like him, let alone justify in a story why he or someone like Little Mac are the only ones who can tackle a particular challenge?

Make fighting enemies the focus. Make the stage like a beat 'em up with little platforming but loads of enemies.

It does not have to be balanced though, maybe Ganondorf and Little Mac would have less stages. In SSE some characters joined later than others and were a smaller part of the story. That's fine IMO. Still, with hordes of enemies and some kind of timer Ganondorf's and Little Mac's strengths can come in handy. Little Mac is also fast on the ground so maybe he could have stages where's the player is chased.

 

[NonSpecificGuy]

I mean, yeah I think Subspace Emissary was vastly superior but I wouldn't necessarily say it was the story. It was more the interactions between the characters, as small as they were that kept me going. I wanted to see what would happen with Link and Yoshi because they were Link and Yoshi. I wanted to see what happened between Samus and Pikachu because they were Samus and Pikachu. I wanted to see what happened between Captain Olimar and Captain Falcon because they were Olimar and Falcon.

The story never kept me going. It was the interactions, and yes I can see where you're coming from with that. Seeing Ness and Lucas unite only for Lucas to solemnly leave Ness and team up with Pokemon trainer to follow up with a revenge arc is awesome fan service but it isn't at all a "good story". I think the problem is that there aren't any cutscenes. Not really. To be honest the cinematic reveal trailers from Smash For up to Ultimate are some of the best interactions between characters we've ever gotten in Smash and THAT'S what we want to see more of. It's one of the big problems I have with the non-cinematic trailers like Terry's or Isabelle's. They don't give you the sense of a giant crossover like the game is, it just gives you the idea of here's a new character get hype! Contrast those with something like Simon's where Luigi gets his soul ripped out by Death or Hero's where Meta Knight and Marth are facing down with Link before getting destroyed by Hero or my personal favorite when Bowser gets Backslashed by Shulk and then has to fend off Marth and Link and who can forget Captain Falcon almost breaking the sound barrier on Lucina's face.

THAT'S what Subspace did well. THAT'S why people love it. It's just cool to see Link and Mario chasing down the ancient minister, it's just like how we lost it when EVERYONE showed up in Endgame. We just want more interaction between the characters, and yes, agreed, World of Light is seriously devoid of that besides one, admittedly amazing, cutscene. But those Cutscenes cost a money... lots of it, and that kind of budget for the Single player just ain't there for Smash.

 

[Deleted member]

In all fairness, the shortening was because people were taking cutscenes from Subspace and putting them online shortly before the games were officially released.

It might sound stupid since that's what everyone does, but what Sakurai says, goes.

 

[Eremurus]

WoL is a huge piece of giant **** and they gatekept a bunch of stuff behind it because Nintendo also understood how garbage this mode was, and knew nobody would bother otherwise.