Editor’s Note: The following is part two of a series of articles on various playable characters from the fourth installment of the popular video game “Super Smash Bros.,” available on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. It is intended for competitive and semi-competitive players of the game.
The Smasher that is vs. the Smasher that could have been
For this week’s article, I wanted to take a moment to compare two Smashers that are similar in a few aspects, but boast dramatically different play styles. I’m talking about the Legendary Hero King Marth, and everybody’s favorite boy, Roy. People typically compare and contrast the dramatic differences between Captain Falcon and Marth, but because Roy is played similarly to Captain Falcon and is, like Marth, a sword user from “Fire Emblem,” I’m going to use Roy instead. To be clear, this article is not necessarily a compare and contrast; it’s mostly an article about why Marth is a near top tier superstar in this game, while Roy lies amongst the game’s forgotten trash heap characters, to never be seen in high levels of play.
Having said that, let’s look at the basics, the stuff most of you probably already know. Marth has the tipper, and the mechanics of his blade have it where the closer you strike an opponent with the tipper, the more damage you deal. In other words, the damage scales with how close to the tip of the blade you can get, with it being at it’s minimum power when the very base of the blade itself hits you. As we know, Roy operates the exact opposite. The closer to the base of the blade you get, the more lethal Roy is. The closer to the tip of the blade, the less threatening he is. Marth wants some distance between you and him. Roy wants to be right up close and personal. The two characters have matching run speed, Marth has a bit faster of a walk, Roy falls much, much faster, and their attacks are nearly identical in terms of how fast they come out.
So why then, is Roy so bad while Marth is debatably top 10 in the entire game?
Well, as far as Roy goes, with respect to how the Smash 4 meta is typically played, he is fundamentally flawed. Very fundamentally flawed. As previously mentioned, Roy thrives when you’re close to him, but is typically bottled up from farther away. This, combined with his movement speed, would be fine, but there are some critical issues here. First, Roy’s approach game is extremely subpar at best. He has good dash and workable walk speeds, but that’s it. His dash attack is slow and bad. His grab game is iffy, no real reason to fear it after about 25 percent. His speed may be great, but one deficiency he has when compared to Marth is that his range he gets from his sword is significantly worse. When you combine this with how fast Roy falls (second fastest faller in the game, tied with Greninja and only falls slower than Fox), Roy cannot boast the same aerial game Marth has.
This makes Roy significantly less threatening: while it’s still difficult for characters lacking a sword or other long range weapon themselves to challenge Roy in the air, characters with a weapon can do so a lot easier than they could with Marth. Even if they don’t have a weapon, Roy’s aerial mobility is much poorer than Marth’s, so it’s really easy to just wait out whatever aerial Roy throws out and punish him upon landing. With Marth, especially if he hits you with the tipper, his aerials are often impossible to punish if he spaces them correctly (hits you with the tipper of the aerial). What’s more, Roy cannot pressure shields the same way Marth can. This is because Roy’s neutral B is significantly less useful than Marth’s shieldbreaking Neutral B. Because of this, if a character has a healthy shield, they can often just shield through anything Roy throws at them without any fear, and can punish his mistake. With Marth, he can always pull out his shieldbreaker for his neutral B. The threat of giving Marth a free fully charged tipper Forward Smash (kills most characters at >40 percent near the edge!) will make other characters think twice before blindly holding shield against what Marth does in a similar way. This means that Marth’s neutral game is significantly better than Roy’s, as Marth just has so much more you have to respect and account for than Roy does.
In theory, it would seem that Roy has a better ground game than Marth. Being only slightly slower at the expense of having a better close quarters game creates that illusion, right? Think again. Marth actually has an exponentially easier time killing than Roy does, due to one trick in Marth’s arsenal on the ground. The aforementioned shieldbreaker does a good job opening up opportunities, but even if Marth cannot find the opportunity to land this, he still has one thing Roy will never have: a reliable kill confirm. If you’re at roughly 90 percent (give or take depending on how heavy the character is) and you get hit by a non tippered Marth jab, he can jab you again and get a free tippered F Smash out of it. Roy has nothing that even comes close to that, as Roy’s jab is very difficult to make use of, given its low range. If you’re really struggling to close the stock with Marth, his tippered Forward Tilt has decent power and is fast. It will usually kill from mid stage at about 120 percent.
Adding insult to injury, Marth’s recovery is way better than Roy’s is. They look the same, and Roy can boast that he can use his Up B as an early percent combo tool, but Marth’s Dolphin Slash has much better vertical range, meaning Marth can not only recover a lot easier with the added range and added protection of Dolphin Slash’s better properties, but it also means Marth can afford to go deeper offstage if needed to secure an offstage kill, an advantage further by Marth’s significantly lighter fall speed.
Last but not least, Roy’s matchup spread is very, very bad. Characters that Roy would in theory have an advantage against, such as Ganondorf, King Dedede, or Jigglypuff, all either instead hold advantage against him, in Ganondorf and Dedede’s case, or go even with him, in Jigglypuff’s case. Even the worst characters in the game such as the aforementioned three have at least a couple niche matchups that they can surprise people in. Ganondorf can give Fox or Meta Knight trouble. Dedede can also give Meta Knight issues, but can also contend with other higher up characters such as Corrin and, ironically, Marth trouble. Finally, Jigglypuff outright holds advantage on Captain Falcon and arguably goes even with the game’s best character, Bayonetta. Roy? Roy isn’t an intriguing counterpick. Simply put, you either main this character, or you don’t use him, period, if you’re aligning yourself optimally. Roy doesn’t really have any notable interesting matchups with any of the game’s better characters, something which is actually unfortunately unique to himself.
So there you have it. At the end of the day, to put it bluntly, Roy sucks. Roy is very easily bottom ten in the game. You want someone who’s meant to get up close and do some damage? Pick Captain Falcon, Meta Knight, maybe Fox, or really, anybody with a fast enough jab, and possibly an out of shield option or two (both of which Roy lacks) like maybe Bowser. Want a sword user? Clearly Marth is a superior choice, but if you’re tired of him you could always try Cloud, Lucina, Corrin, Meta Knight, Ike… Or really, someone else. Just about anybody else. Unfortunately, the metagame isn’t too kind to Roy.