We’re coming up on the month and a half mark for the release of “Smash Ultimate.” Yet, gameplay of many characters, including an invitational tournament and some exclusive demo releases, have been given out, and it’s brought up a lot of character based questions. How viable will this character be? Does this combo still work? Is this strategy still useful? I wanted to highlight five more of the most interesting characters, and forecast how they will impact (and be impacted on) by the new iteration of Smash.
1) Link
Boy, oh boy did Link get a nice set of buffs from Nintendo. Link is one of the original 12 characters from Smash 64. That’s kind of like being one of the original hockey teams around when the NHL formed. Yet, through all of that, Link has pretty consistently sucked; he sucked in 64, sucked in Melee, sucked to no end in Brawl and was still in the lower echelon of characters in Smash 4. In Ultimate, though, Link is no doubt better than he’s ever been before. Now being able to pick up his arrows and use them as throwable items makes his neutral B useful. Having remote detonated bombs for a Down B no doubt makes this move deadlier. Having the same boomerang he’s had since Brawl came out helps as well. On paper, it would seem that the faster paced style of play making campy play worse would hinder Link. While this is true for those who prefer to play a particularly campy Link, Link’s new tools now shed some light on a unique, robustly more offensive Link than what we’ve seen. His combo potential is definitely better than it ever has been. He has great range on many of his attacks, decent enough frame data, a useful set of projectiles, a great deal of power and a kill confirm. Somehow, all of this has largely flown under the radar. I’m calling Link a dark horse candidate for amongst the Top 10 best characters in the game. At absolute worst, he should be in the Top 20. He doesn’t have anything overbearing, but everything he’s had that’s been decidedly average has been upgraded. There’s actually going to be so much “good” or “great” stuff about Link to account for, that he will absolutely be pretty good, without a doubt viable at the game’s highest levels of play.
2) Corrin
Corrin is an interesting character. It’s fair to say they are predominantly defensive, or at least have been in Smash 4. The adjustment to more offensive play in Ultimate is not good for Corrin; Corrin does not deal with pressure very well, has a very poor disadvantage state, and has a number of slow, laggy moves which can mostly be punished, minus a tipper from the Pin. The introduction of more characters that Corrin will have a difficult time closing stock on, such as Snake and King K. Rool, doesn’t help. However, the nerfing to air dodge which will make Pin a much better edgeguard tool will help immensely. That said, closing stock in general will be a challenge for Corrin; survivability has been buffed indirectly with Directional Input getting better and easier to use. This means that Pin will pretty much exclusively be the go-to kill option for Corrin, as their grab at very late % is a lackluster option which, if solely leaned on, will result in the player losing lots and lots of lengthy games. This means that Corrin will struggle immensely with characters who still will have viable defensive kits, such as Rosalina and Luma, Sonic, Wario, possibly Cloud, maybe other characters like Samus or even Link. I believe Corrin’s days as a top 20 are probably over. A combination of better competition and mechanics of the game making Corrin harder to learn, and definitely not as worth learning as in Smash 4, will also lead to Corrin being less splashable and more of a rarity on the competitive scene. Having a horrible disadvantage state in a game where having a bad disadvantage is worse than almost ever certainly doesn’t help. Corrin will still be viable of course, but think of them as a more middle of the pack character in Ultimate than one enough positive traits to be definitely “good.”
3) Ridley
The heavily requested Metroid antagonist finally joins the fight, to the delight of Nintendo fans everywhere. We have seen plenty of gameplay of Ridley in demos and at the invitational, more so than almost any other character in the game. Unfortunately, it was a whole lot of bad players picking Ridley and getting their asses kicked in front of millions and millions of viewers. So that was unfortunate. I suppose it’s appropriate to premise this by urging you to take that awful play with a grain of salt. BUT I don’t think Ridley will be very good in this game. First off, Ridley is really, really big, and will dethrone Bowser and King Dedede as the single heaviest character in the game. Well, that’s great, but what can Ridley do? I’ll give him one thing: he has a devastating down air, capable of doing over 50% damage in a single blow. That would be great, but the move only functions properly if you hit the tipper. Because of how slow the start up is, your opponent would have to be playing beyond stupid to actually get hit by the attack. Of course, Ridley doesn’t seem to have a kill confirm, and he seems to be quite slow. Thankfully, he isn’t at much risk of being “lamed out” as he would be in Smash 4 thanks to the faster paced playstyle that Ultimate promises. But I also don’t see anything particularly appealing about Ridley. If that down air is all he has, then he’ll be bottom tier garbage. Even if that isn’t the case, I cannot find a compelling reason to want to use Ridley over fellow heavies Bowser and Donkey Kong, who just look so much better. The combination of being outclassed, being a heavy without too much in general to appeal to a competitive gamer (lackluster combo game, no kill confirm, massive hurtbox) leads me to believe Ridley will be in the lower echelon of characters in the game, and it honestly wouldn’t surprise me to see him fall in the trash heap of characters like Zelda, Ganondorf and King Dedede. My opinion on this will change if anyone can answer this: why would I use Ridley if I’m trying to win a game? Usually not a question you want to ask about a character you want to win an entire tournament with.
4) Sheik
Let it be known that I am absolutely blown away at how incredible Sheik looks in Ultimate. Sheik has utterly perfect frame data as always, but the new mechanics of the upcoming game benefit them more than any other character, hands down. Forget struggling to kill anymore—all Sheik has to do to kill is pretty much get the opponent off stage, and if they don’t have multiple jumps, didn’t happen to be right next to the edge, or have an all-encompassing recovery (like Bayonetta or Charizard’s Up B) or one which literally would need to make the character briefly untouchable (Mewtwo or Palutena’s Up B) then they’re dead. Air dodging getting nerfed is a godsend for Sheik, whose opponents will no longer be able to mindlessly spam air dodge to avoid getting gimped, killed by Sheik’s Bouncing Fish off stage or easily dodge getting juggled by their amazing up air. Sheik is a perfect candidate to benefit from offensive play getting better, as they are seriously fast, have excellent frame data, have a stellar combo game and can utilize all of this to resist offensive pressure, fighting fire with fire better than any other character in the game can possibly hope to do. Yep, we are looking at the new king (queen? Not really sure what gender Sheik actually is, that part of their character is rather conspicuous in the “Legend of Zelda” games) of Smash Ultimate, the best character in the game. My favorite part about Sheik is that, while Sheik will more than likely be the best character in the game for a long time, barring an unexpected nerf or buff to a competitor, they won’t be so good that they end up being oppressive or splashable like previous bests in the game (Bayonetta in Smash 4, Meta Knight in Brawl) have been. Sheik is a respectable character; they don’t carry players, because they have always demanded a good amount of player skill to effectively use. This doesn’t figure to change in Smash Ultimate, and that will make the metagame as a whole much better than it has been. Looking past that, though, Sheik is sure to be the best in the game. Count on it.
5) Pokemon Trainer
One of the more surprising re-entries to the game, we have the Pokemon Trainer. He sucked badly in Brawl, not just because of the mechanics of the game itself, but because of the character. Thankfully, a lot of the things that made Pokemon Trainer suck in Brawl have been loosened; the debilitating fatigue mechanics with each of his Pokemon are gone, and the horrendously awful switch-out mechanics of transitioning between Pokemon have not only been toned down, but are now actually a strangely useful part of what helps Pokemon Trainer competitively. The way in which this move was nerfed is quite unlike Nintendo. In mainstream “Pokemon” games, when you switch a Pokemon out, you are giving your opponent a free turn to do anything, such as attack your Pokemon as they enter the battlefield. This element is pretty much gone in Smash Ultimate, which I find to be quite odd, as Nintendo has basically taken away a mainstream aspect of the character, something they’re usually staunchly against. That said, these two elements of the character are what will keep him from being utterly abysmal in Smash Ultimate. The new and improved Down B will essentially act as a “Smash 4 Air Dodge” for Pokemon Trainer, meaning that the new air dodge mechanics will be ignored by him and give him a head up on the competition. What isn’t so good, though, are his three Pokemon—Ivysaur and Charizard will be absolutely terrible, with Squirtle being mediocre at best. It seems that Nintendo wanted Squirtle to fill the “fast attacker with poor kill power” trope, Charizard to be the “slow attacker with lots of kill power” type and Ivysaur was apparently supposed to inherit some middleman type crap that Nintendo should know damn well doesn’t work. Nintendo should also know that Charizard’s trope doesn’t work without a kill confirm, straight up, that they haven’t given to Charizard. Squirtle’s trope doesn’t really work without a combo game that it doesn’t really seem to have. Conceptually, Pokemon Trainer should be a high tier character, possibly even fringe top 10, but because of how lazily and illogically his three Pokemon were made, there just isn’t much hope for Pokemon Trainer. It’s really unfortunate, but the three supposed tropes the Pokemon were made to fill, and the accompanying situations they should be meant to deal with, just don’t work with the (lack of) tools they’ve been given to actually fill them. Squirtle sort of sucks, Ivysaur looks really, really bad (if it weren’t for being in this awkward threesome, Ivysaur would be the worst character in the game without question) and Charizard looks bad, too. Don’t count on this messed up Siamese twin concept to make any splashes in the competitive meta game. I’d call lower echelon (bottom 20ish) in the game, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if bottom 10 in the game was achieved too.
As weeks roll on, I will continue to write these spotlight articles up until the game comes out!