I'm thinking Zelda will always be a bad character in Smash. She also has been, the only time she wasn't outright garbage was in Melee where she was sitting just out of the border of Bottom Tier; but now I don't think she'll even leave Bottom Tier. :V
I am super curious on what they'll reveal at the Invitational too. I would like to see if the Ice Climbers and Wolf return, and possibly see some newcomers aside from the Inklings; I am hoping for Rex and/or Pyra, but we could see Spring Man too.
Eh, you could tweak some things about Zelda and she'd be decent at worst. That's just saying something, though, since in practice, you might have to reanimate, create, and definitely test things out to make sure she didn't get even worse or became pretty busted. Case in point: I have no idea how Falco's Dair and Falco Phantasm made it past QA in Melee. They're cool moves, but when put into context of the other characters, almost nobody had anything close to those moves. If they did, then whatever, but they didn't. The closest was Marth's Dair, but his did not last as long as Falco's and nobody, absolutely nobody and to this day has the horizontal range of Falco Phantasm for a spike. Anyway, I'm beginning to rant again.
Zelda's in a share situation where I feel like most if not all Smash characters are stuck in. The developers want them to be unique, but that's pretty difficult to do when some characters don't have source material for moves and there's only roughly 20 moves for each character; jab/neutral combo, 3 tilts, 3 smashes, 4 specials, 4 aerials, 4 throws, and a Final Smash, in addition to miscellaneous stuff like getup attacks. Compare this with Street Fighter V which does not have proximity-based normals: 6 standing normals, 6 crouching normals, 6 aerials, 2 standing throws, at least 2 specials, and at least 1 command normal, 1 V-Skill, 2 V-Triggers as of Season 2, and a Super. That's 27 moves and of which normals, standing, crouching, and aerials, make up 18. This isn't about quantity over quality or vice versa, but the importance that each move and each attribute for that matter have for a Smash character. For example, Zelda's Bair doesn't really have to be "good". It can be situational or a very high risk, high reward type of deal, but what does that mean for the rest of her moves? If she has Bair, but also Fair as essentially the same move, then she has reduced options compared to someone else who has different moves like say, Captain Falcon, Cloud, and kind of Ganondorf who have a reverse situation where their Fairs are more situational, but their Bairs are more flexible in use. Or perhaps the Robins and Toon Link whose Fair and Bair are interchangeable at times, but they're flexible moves in general. At the same time, you also have someone like Falco whose Nair and Fair are interchangeable, but that creates an issue of he has two similar forward-hitting, multi-hitting attacks at the cost of a more central Nair or more powerful or more forward-reaching Fair.
I'd also like to talk about the intention of moves like what is the purpose of Din's Fire and in relation to other moves, but I don't want to go on a lecture about Smash. Essentially, I feel like the developers should examine the characters more and fine-tune them and/or change them if necessary. That's a lot of work considering there's 58 characters from Smash 4, give or take a couple and once again, I get that the developers want to make everyone unique and the game to be fun and accessible, but there are some characters I feel like have to change.
Again, bias, but Falco's on my top list, especially if Wolf returns. Falco's already in a situation of Fire Bird is a slower Fire Wolf and shorter-traveling and free-fall momentum-locking Fire Fox, Falco's Blaster is probably going to be much less practical than Wolf's Blaster, Bair's pretty much stolen, but tweaked on a character who doesn't really have the mobility to abuse it, and ditto with Up Smash which at this point is really good move, but Wolf's Up Smash will leave a lot to be desired if all it gains is invincibility since it would be slower and I'll need to check, but weaker than Falco's. This is in addition to his issues of what even is rapid jab's frame data, why does Dtilt have a massive disjoint, why did Uair become a weak juggle Uair on a slow-moving character instead of just losing its sourspot, why does Down Smash still have an 80 degree sourspot from Melee, Falco Phantasm is a ridiculously broken concept, and among other things if stupid stuff keep getting carried over and over from each game or even created like Brawl Dtilt's nerf and Smash 4's Dtilt disjoint. Melee Dtilt was fine, so why change it other than lowering its damage a bit?
O L I V E R as it should be :^)
