Conclusion?
And here we are again! Welcome to the third annual recap of Smash Ultimate, the game that just doesn’t let up. Well, I say that, but as I write this there are no further updates planned for Smash Ultimate, including balance patches. That’s right! Smash Ultimate’s development is complete, and it’s now up to the community to keep it going for however many years. It’s bittersweet, but it had to come to this at some point. And besides, it’s hard to be sad considering we now have flipping Sora in Smash. I know the “never ask me for anything ever again” meme kind of bugs Sakurai, but like, seriously, never ask him for anything ever again. We got Ridley, K. Rool, Sora, Mega Man, Snake, Sonic, Mario, and a freaking plant all fighting together in the same game.
Given last year’s, er, unpleasant events, this third year had a quite a bit to make up for. Fortunately, this year for Smash was significantly better thanks to awesome character reveals, the return of offline competitive Smash, and considerably fewer creeps. Like all of the previous Ultimate recap blogs, we’ll divide this up into a handful of sections. We’ll start with what’s cooking over in the competitive scene, at least from a casual enjoyer’s perspective. I’ll then drop a few thoughts on the game’s final patch and the state of Ultimate’s balance, then list off some of the best and worst stages in the whole game. Finally, we talk about the new characters and stages that have come to Smash Ultimate, and do a ranking of the DLC content. Should be fun! Let’s get started.
Competitive Smash
As mentioned before, offline competitive Smash has returned after a year of online only Smash, brought about thanks to COVID-19. Unfortunately, perhaps thanks to last year’s events, I haven’t paid nearly as much attention to what’s happening in the competitive world. However, I’ve made a few observations. For starters, now that offline is back, some of the usual suspects (talking characters) in competitive Smash have started to return. Pikachu, Wario, Zero Suit Samus, Pac-Man, Joker…all the characters you think of when you think “competitive Smash”, those fast moving, combo focused, kill confirm loaded characters. Of course, we’ve gotten a few newcomers too, with Pyra/Mythra being the most prominent. I’ll get more into detail when I talk about the newcomers to Smash, but the short version is that between Mythra’s speed and combo ability and Pyra’s ability to finish a stock with one of her many busted moves, it’s not hard to see why they so quickly became a regular character seen within competitive Smash.
Still, there’s been a few surprises in terms of character variety. MKLeo, the one who refuses to lose, has continued playing as Byleth even after making the return to offline Smash. Of course, this doesn’t mean there’s no more Joker. I’ve seen a couple sets where the phantom thief comes out to cover a matchup Byleth is particularly weak against, and I’ve heard he’s used Pyra/Mythra but have not seen a set with him playing as them myself. Beyond that, most of what I’ve seen of MKLeo is his Byleth. This is perhaps the biggest surprise in my eyes, considering I and seemingly everyone else all thought Byleth was a mid-tier character at best who works well within online’s constraints, but doesn’t do so well offline. Is it because there’s some still some online habits carrying over into offline? Probably. But I think when all is said and done, MKLeo just proves that anyone can win with any character they want if they’re good enough.
Case in point? Peanut’s Little Mac. Now granted, part of Little Mac’s small rise in prominence is due to a secret tech that was discovered in the character about halfway through the year. If you time it right, you can use Little Mac’s down air attack to gain some extra horizontal distance in your recovery, which is a godsend for a character with famously terrible recovery. Between this and Peanut’s own skill, Little Mac has taken a few names and caught a lot of people by surprise. Will it be enough to finally move Mac out of “worst character” status? Perhaps, but it’s probably too early to tell. The fact is, Mac has remained bottom tier for plenty of reasons, namely his non-existent aerials, linear gameplan, and the aforementioned recovery holding him back a lot. You can win with the character, but it takes more effort compared to Lucina or Wolf.
There’s been another major development in the world of Smash Ultimate, one that I’m very pleasantly surprised to see. Smash Ultimate and Melee are both getting official tournaments from Nintendo themselves in a partnership with Panda Global. Yes, you read that right, including the Melee part. Assuming this plays out as well as hoped, this will be huge for the Smash competitive scene. Since competitive Smash’s inception with Melee, it’s always felt like there’s been some fighting between the community and Nintendo over Smash’s competitive nature. Historically, Nintendo has shied away from it, even trying to outright cancel tournaments. Recall what happened last year with the #FreeMelee movement, where Nintendo shut down a tournament over what they perceived as an emulation issue. So to see them (seemingly) finally embrace Smash’s competitive side, and even set up a circuit for Melee alongside Ultimate is a refreshing change of pace. Of course, the circuits themselves have not started yet, as events don’t begin until 2022. We’ll have to wait and see what comes of it, but I look forward to it.
The Last Balance Patch
As I write this, the 13.0.1 balance patch for Smash Ultimate has only been released for a few days, thus bringing the final round of buffs and nerfs. For me personally, the patch was an overall win as Piranha Plant finally got some much needed buffs, namely to his down air attack. There’s been several other notable buffs and nerfs too, such as Cloud’s buffs to his Finishing Touch move or Pyra’s Side B, Blazing End, receiving a nerf. I’d say it’s an overall fine patch, but I really wish it wasn’t the last one. There’s still a few DLC characters that haven’t been out long enough for balance patches to properly assess, namely Sora and Kazuya. I’m not saying they need buffs or nerfs, but they’ve only been in the game for a short time so it’s honestly hard to say if they need anything. I have no doubt that the team responsible for game balance very carefully considered both these characters balance considering there would only be one other patch after Sora, but I don’t believe four months is enough time for the community to properly explore Kazuya, let alone Sora’s one and a half months.
It seems pointless to come up with a balance wishlist now, but it can be fun to think of what could have been. In my version of the ideal world, balance patches would have continued for one more year. I recognize that Nintendo is not the sort of company that patches games forever, unlike most AAA developers. Their games have definite end points, which I generally appreciate. But some of their games could probably stand to have longer balance periods than others, and Smash is definitely one of them. During this year, we could see some final adjustments to remaining DLC fighters who haven’t had any significant changes (assuming they need any), and the remaining low or mid tier fighters would receive their remaining buffs while overbearing top tiers get their nerfs. The fighters I feel most obviously needed buffs include Ganondorf, Little Mac, and of course my boys Ridley and King K. Rool. Of course, the trouble with all these fighters is that they still have to be balanced for casual play, and in this regard these characters often dominate. It’s a struggle for the balance team, no doubt.
It’s hard to say what I’d buff exactly. Most of the fighters mentioned would practically require redesigns to make them good. In Ridley’s case, using the moveset he already has, I would buff his down air attack. It doesn’t need as much end lag as it does when you land, so I would reduce that to make it a more useful move. K. Rool is hard, but my gut (heh) tells me to at least consider making him weigh as much as Bowser. The only other thing I can think of beyond that is giving him better movement speed, either on the ground or in the air, but that becomes dangerous. He’s designed to be slow to make up for his moves hitting hard. At the same time, have you seen crocodiles? Those things can move quick. Yeah, he’s a bit…big…but I imagine he can get moving in a pinch. There’s plenty others I can think of for characters I don’t regularly play, such as upping Kirby’s air speed (again, dangerous), letting Robin start matches with a Levin sword instead of having to wait for it, upping the speed of Byleth’s attacks and/or ground movement (not too much if you do both), and doing something, anything, to make Mii Brawler more satisfying to play.
I’m less inclined to call out nerfs because people absolutely hate nerfs on principle, but sometimes nerfs are necessary. Pikachu is the first to come to my mind when it comes to nerfs. The rat has a spammable projectile, excellent recovery, great combos, strong kill moves, is fast, and can literally just duck under some attacks (pancake, as it’s referred to in the community). Were it up to me, I would personally give him a touch more endlag on his neutral B, Thunderjolt, and maybe even reduce the overall strength of his forward smash. Certainly start with the Thunderjolt nerf, let people play him a bit, then see if a nerf to the forward smash is necessary then. Another easy nerf is Pyra’s Up B, most likely on its knockback. It doesn’t need to be as good of a move as it currently is. Sure, it’s her only recovery move, but at the same time Pyra can just as easily swap to Mythra and recover more effectively that way, so I’m not too worried about nerfing Pyra’s recovery specifically. And besides, I’m not asking we adjust its distance.
Then there’s Mr. Game and Watch nerfs, which is purely a “me” thing. I find the lack of endlag on his smash attacks disturbing. It means he can just throw them out willy-nilly and suffer no consequences for it. I always thought smash attacks were meant to be a risk vs reward deal, but not with the flat man apparently. If I can only nerf one of the smash attacks, it would definitely be his down smash. That animation lies, and I’ve been caught by that move many times despite not looking like it touched me. Plus, it buries, which is basically a guaranteed KO in Smash. Another wish is for more endlag on Young Link’s arrows. This one is simple…he can spam these pretty easily, creating a trail of deadly arrows. Young Link hits you with one of these at the right distance, you’re either gonna eat damage or straight up lose your stock to spam. Unless you have a reflector, this isn’t fun. Give that move more endlag, or reduce how far the arrows go. Your call. My final nerf suggestions don’t effect competitive smash, but instead focus on casual smash. Zelda’s Final Smash is way too good. Only God could escape this move, and even then there would be a struggle. Bring that thing’s range down, and we’re good.
To wrap up this section, I feel I should stress that the balance here is already pretty good. As I said in the competitive section, any player can win with any character if they’re good enough. While some characters get the win more easily than others, it’s absolutely possible to see a Ganondorf win games he shouldn’t win on paper. We’ve seen as much happen! Hours before writing this paragraph, I watched a K. Rool player come dangerously close to winning a match against a Peach player, something I don’t think many people expected in the moment. I talked about Peanut’s Little Mac and MKLeo’s Byleth, and that’s before I mention those times about a year ago when Brood, a Piranha Plant player, was taking names. Anyone worried about Ultimate having its own Brawl Meta Knight or Smash 4 Bayonetta need not worry. I don’t think that’s going to happen. The roster in its current state is overall a pretty balanced game, which is impressive considering its massive roster. More time for additional balance patches would be nice, but what’s here is good.
The Top and Bottom 10 Stages
Earlier this year, I had set out to decide for myself what the best and worst stages in Smash Ultimate were. I had planned on making the topic its own blog post, but kept putting it off. So I’m now shoehorning it into this one! Besides, now that three years have passed, I think we can definitely say the best and worst stages in the game. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the last few DLC stages were making it in either list, so I feel okay with the list I have. So, I’ll rattle off the stages, but first let me explain my criteria. Really, it’s the same as how I ranked the DLC stages in my year two recap as well as the incoming ranking in this very blog. I look at the layout, the aesthetic, and any gimmicks or other moving parts, and decide if those things make a fun stage or not. To put it more simply, do I like playing on this stage, to the point where I could probably play on this stage many times and not get bored? The opposite goes for the bottom ten stages, where they’re ranked based on how annoying and frustrating they are, making me want to avoid those stages at all costs. It’s also worth noting that I intentionally banned the Battlefields and Final Destination from these rankings, as well as any stages too similar to them. So, as an example, Fountain of Dreams won’t quality either because it’s too much like Battlefield.
With that, here’s my top ten Smash Ultimate stages, in order:
- WarioWare Inc.
- Norfair
- Big Blue
- Shadow Moses Island
- Pokemon Stadium
- Mementos
- Dracula’s Castle
- Town and City
- Boxing Ring
- Kongo Jungle
Honorable mentions: Mushroomy Kingdom, Unova Pokemon League, Minecraft World
So, time for some explanation. WarioWare Inc. was a pretty easy #1 pick. It has easily the most fun gimmick of all stages in Smash, and it’s got a great layout on top of it. Norfair comes second largely thanks to its layout and intense but fun lava wave hazards. The rest could probably shift around on a whim, but Big Blue and Shadow Moses Island are always fun, and Pokemon Stadium is competitively an important (and fun) stage. Mementos has been discussed before, but it brings a good layout with a great aesthetic and entertaining hazards. Dracula’s Castle is honestly on this list largely for aesthetic, but it has a good layout too. Town and City is another competitive stage that is a personal favorite of mine, while Boxing Ring is a nice casual arena with an entertaining atmosphere. And finally, Kongo Jungle rounds out the list at #10, as it’s my personal favorite stage of the Smash 64 selection.
I tried to find a selection of stages that encompassed all the different Smash games for this, and I think I did alright. As far as numbers go, Brawl wins out with three stages, but all the other games except 64 have two, with Smash 64 having just one. To be fair to 64, there aren’t many stages both in its original game and here in Smash Ultimate, so I consider myself pretty happy with having even one on the list. When starting this little project, I wasn’t sure which Smash game would have the most amazing stages, but evidently they’re all pretty even when it comes to great Smash stages. There’s a few from each game you can look at and think “that one’s great”.
Now, for the fun one. The bottom ten stages, listed from worst to slightly less worse:
- 75 M
- Balloon Fight
- Pac-Land
- Brinstar Depths
- Yoshi’s Island (Melee)
- Skyworld
- Suzaku Castle
- Great Cave Offensive
- Gamer
- Mushroom Kingdom
Dishonorable mentions: Find Mii, Moray Towers, Palutena’s Temple
Once again, picking the #1 of this list was easy. 75 M is infamous among Smash players as being, well…it. It’s a recreation of the Donkey Kong arcade level of the same name, complete with all its hazards. But what works for an arcade game from the 80s does not apply so well to Smash. Even jumping is awkward here between the odd height differences in platforms and the ladders. The next few stages, Balloon Fight, Pac-Land, and Brinstar Depths are here because they’re simply unplayable, thought not as badly as 75 M. In regards to Pac-Land specifically, I don’t know why this stage made it over the far superior Pac-Maze stage in Smash 4 on 3DS. It’s ugly, the hazards are annoying, and the camera is way too zoomed making the stage feel crowded. Yoshi’s Island (Melee) is personally infamous within my circle of influence as “the stage where you can never die” thanks to its slopes preventing all deaths. Skyworld’s breakable everything is awkward, and Suzaku Castle has a very bizarre stage layout that doesn’t feel good to play on.
Great Cave Offensive is admittedly built with eight player Smash in mind, but even then it’s just too large. Palutena’s Temple almost took Great Cave Offensive’s spot, but I find Cave slightly more, heh heh, offensive. And at that point, it didn’t make sense to me to have two overly large stages make the bottom ten. Finally, Gamer and Mushroom Kingdom, with the former having having an annoying hazard and the latter having an awkward layout. They’re definitely the most tolerable of the ten, but I prefer to not play on them if I can help it. What was interesting to me was how stages from Smash 4 took half the spots, but I think that can be attributed to it simply having the most stage representation of all the Smash games. Thus, there’s more chances for a Smash 4 stage to make this list. Still, it’s telling that only two Smash 4 stages made top ten as opposed to five stages from that game making the bottom ten. You’ll also notice that a lot of “retro” stages make the cut, which should tell you that literally making a Smash stage 1 to 1 with its arcade/NES/whatever counterpart is a bad idea. The only version of this idea I like is Mushroomy Kingdom, which just speaks to how well designed that original 1-1 level in Super Mario Bros. is.
New Characters and Stages
For the last time, let’s talk new characters and stages! This year marks the completion of Smash Ultimate’s DLC cycle that started all the way back with Piranha Plant. Yes, I said Plant. I know he’s not officially part of any Fighter’s Pass, but he was the first character to drop post-Ultimate release. He’s the first. Anyway…while I would love to skip straight to Sora, we simply have to cover all new fighters. And besides, I can’t say this year didn’t start out strong.
First up is Sephiroth, the popular villain from the popular Final Fantasy game that I don’t like. But don’t worry, Sephiroth is actually a lot of fun. Obviously, I welcome any new villains to the roster. There’s just something about them that makes them really fun to play. Sephiroth has a similar playstyle to Byleth, in that he has many long range, powerful attacks but is rather slow moving. Unlike Byleth, however, I like Sephiroth a lot more. I think it’s a combination of greater movement speed and more flexibility in how to play him. I like to feel like I can get a little creative with the characters I play, and while Sephiroth is still somewhat strict, it’s not nearly as strict as Byleth’s playstyle. When you do land your hits, Sephiroth just feels powerful. His neutral B, the flare attacks, create an unnecessarily massive explosion, and sword attacks sting in a way no other character has.
Alongside Sephiroth came a potential new legal stage and, at last, some music from Final Fantasy VII. And it wasn’t just a measly two tracks either. We got full remixes with this character and of course the One Winged Angel theme, an iconic piece of music. The remixes in particular were done very well, with Aerith’s theme probably being my favorite of the bunch. I can say what I want about the game it’s from (and I have), but the music is genuinely good and what Smash has done to Aerith’s theme honestly gives me chills now and again. Sephiroth’s stage, Northern Cave, gives a little less to write home about. It’s great that Smash has another option for tournament legal stages, but that background is very distracting. But then again, so is Final Destination’s background, and I got used to that. So maybe over time I’ll get use to all the colors and chaos that is Northern Cave’s background, but for the moment I find it a little too distracting.
Next comes a Nintendo first party character, or rather two characters. Pyra and Mythra (or Pythra, as some people call them), brings the 2 in 1 fighter that hasn’t been present since Brawl’s Zelda/Shiek combination. While not entirely a new idea since Pokemon Trainer is already in the game, it’s still fun to see these 2 in 1s pop up now and again. Pyra is your hard hitter, with long attacks that hit like a truck, and Mythra is your speedy, combo focused character. It’s said you can solo main either one of them if you want, but I think you’re missing out on a lot of utility by only sticking to one. They’re designed to be played together.
But, I must confess, I’m not crazy about these characters. It’s not that they’re not fun, I just have never opened Smash and thought “I really want to play Pyra/Mythra”. And replaying them for this blog, I can see why. Mythra is a little too fast and precise for my liking, and Pyra is the opposite, being too slow and unwieldy. But perhaps more than that, I think online play has soured my perception of the characters, specifically Pyra. Every Pyra player plays the same – spam Up B and Side B until they win. And it works, at least for now. Up B in particular is crazy strong, huge, reasonably quick, and feels like it lasts forever. I don’t know why they made this move so good. Side B is more tolerable, but players love to spam it and getting caught in it almost feels as bad as getting caught in PK Fire. All this and I feel weird playing characters that look like…that. I must apologize to female Byleth for calling her design goofy, because Pyra/Mythra takes it to a whole new level. Mythra is fine, but Pyra…what is going on with this outfit? And the, er…items? And you’re telling me these are censored, so it’s actually worse? For that matter, what is happening with all of Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s characters? Who came up with these character designs? I’m not gonna mince words here, they’re pretty bad.
Rant aside, the additional content is…there. One of the troubles of adding a character from a franchise already represented in Smash is the new music is less noticed. I couldn’t name or even hum a single Xenoblade Chronicles 2 song. But that may be because I’m rarely on Pyra/Mythra’s stage, Cloud Sea of Alrest. It’s a pretty stage, but it’s small. I can’t imagine doing an eight player Smash on this stage, it would be far too crowded. It’s small enough as is with just four players. If not for its small size, I could actually see myself liking the stage a lot more. It doesn’t have much going on, but its layout is good and it has some fun fanservice for those familiar with the source material.
Another villain newcomer (at least I think he’s a villain, Tekken lore is a bit unclear to me) is Kazuya Mishima, bringing his Mishima Style Fighting Karate to Smash Ultimate. This was a pretty welcome surprise as Tekken was another one of those “impossible” Smash representations, not because they couldn’t get the character, but rather because adapting Tekken to Smash seemed a very difficult task. The two fighting game styles don’t seem very compatible, and Kazuya would likely see a lot of changes. And he certainly did see changes, but I think overall the developers managed to recreate the feel of Tekken with this character very well. It all comes down to his special inputs, which mirror the Tekken style in that every direction and button combination is tied to some kind of attack. All eight directions plus “A” performs some unique move, and there’s even a handful of quarter circle inputs for additional moves using both “A” and “B” buttons, and even the grab button. Kazuya might just have the most moves of any character, with only Hero contesting him off the top of my head.
With those extra moves comes a lot of added complexity, as one would expect of a fighting game character. As fighting game characters in Smash go, Terry is still my favorite of the bunch, but Kazuya definitely takes second place.He’s a character I think I’ll always be able to go back to thanks to the many layers he has. Every time I see someone play him, I feel like I’m seeing something new. He’s an exciting character in that regard. However, with all this complexity and all these layers comes one problem – this character is really easy to do misinputs with. This will almost certainly go away as I get more familiar with the character, but for the time being he can be a little frustrating due to how easily I perform an attack I wasn’t expecting. This is even more true online, where “misinputs” (or rather, bad interpretations of inputs) already happen on the regular with the entire cast. As for casual play, I’m sorry, but he just doesn’t fit in there. All the fighting game characters have this problem (except Min-Min, if you want to count her), where the things that make them unique become less useful and harder to use, if not unusable. Kazuya could potentially be the worst fighting game character in this regard, as the extra directional inputs he’s looking for causes you to do moves that you had no intention of doing in free for alls, resulting in untimely deaths. In the end, he’s definitely a character made for one on one battles, so players who just want to turn on items and go to every stage imaginable likely won’t get much out of Kazuya.
As far as the stage and other content goes, Kazuya brings a lot with him. The Mishima Dojo stage is one of Smash’s most atmospheric stages, and it has a similar gimmick to King of Fighters Stadium where you can break down the walls of the dojo. This is a fun little homage to wall breaks in Tekken, where you would normally use this to extend your combos further. Here, it just creates a temporary blastzone on the left, right, and top sides of the stage. It’s here where I wish the stage was just a little wider, because the space between the dojo and the blastzone is tiny, which makes recovering a little harder than it needs to be. I don’t want my recovery messed up because I couldn’t see where I was, you know what I mean? But it’s a minor issue, because if you’re being launched out there then you’re probably already dead anyway. Additionally, we got a lot of music from the Tekken series, a little over thirty nine in fact, which is always welcome. In fact, I believe it was this fighter that brought the song count past one thousand songs in Smash Ultimate. I have an easy favorite from the bunch, if you’re interested. If you haven’t yet heard “Yodeling in Meadow Hill”, I strongly encourage you to listen to that work of art.
And last, but definitely not least, we have Sora, hailing from the Kingdom Hearts games. Where do I begin with this? This was the pipe dream for Smash. It was impossible! But once again, Smash decides that nothing is impossible and puts in the character that, turns out, won the Smash 4 ballot several years ago. For those unaware of what I’m talking about, the Smash 4 ballot was a chance for players to decide who the final fighter would be for Smash 4, with the key phrase being “out of realizable characters”. At the time, we ended up getting Bayonetta as the supposed winner of the ballot. Turns out, in terms of number of votes, Sora was the winner of the ballot, but Bayonetta was the highest ranked character that could actually be done at the time. Now, several years later, we got freaking Sora in Super Smash Bros., complete with a Mickey Mouse emblem on his keychain, which itself is surprising. No Donald or Goofy present, but Duck Hunt will make a fine stand-in for them while Sora is out fighting.
And oh, does Sora fit in so well with Smash! He naturally brings in his combo heavy, floaty playstyle from Kingdom Hearts 1 along with the spells Firaga, Thundaga, and Blizzaga, each having unique properties and uses in battle. What I think I like most about Sora is how approachable he is, and yet has a ton of depth to his moves, making him an ideal Smash fighter. Anyone can reasonably pick up Sora and have fun with the character, and those who really love him will have a lot to explore. His spells in particular give him a lot of flexibility in playstyle. You can use them to play aggressively or defensively, to start combos or end them, and to rack up damage or finish a stock. Dude can also recover from literally anywhere thanks to his high double jump and ability to perform Side B after an Up B. This might be the most “broken” part about him, but in the short time I’ve played the character I don’t think it’s strong enough to negatively impact the game’s meta going forward. People will undoubtedly learn the counter play to his strong recovery over time. In terms of his physics, he’s not too fast, but not too slow either. Some may take issue with his floatiness, but my Kingdom Hearts instincts make said floatiness feel natural to me. I find Sora is a very aerial fighter, which I enjoy as aerial combat is a strong part of Smash Bros. games. So, the floatiness ends up enhancing that aerial combat that much more, and of course makes it feel like you’re actually playing Sora from Kingdom Hearts, and not just a Smash version of him. It’s far too early to tell, but I think there’s a strong possibility of Sora becoming my new main.
A lot of the additional content that came with Sora is great too. Of course, Kingdom Hearts music is just good, no matter which track we’re talking about. His stage, Hollow Bastion, is a lovely stage bringing the nostalgic back to that time they had to brave Hollow Bastion in the original game. The layout is great for competitive Smash, as it’s allowed the stage to already make appearances in tournaments. I also love how the stage transitions to Dive to the Heart, which is funny because I would’ve originally guessed that, Traverse Town, or Twilight Town to be the stage Sora gets. It doesn’t change the stage layout at all, but we get a cool visual to accommodate a match’s end. However, I do have some critiques. For starters, while I love what music is there, it feels like we could have gotten more. I understand not wanting to do anything directly tied to Disney, but at the same time Sora has an outfit that lets him take on his Timeless River appearance (which is my favorite Kingdom Hearts world, by the way), so it feels weird that we don’t get the Timeless River theme with it. There’s plenty of other songs I would’ve loved too, like the Organization theme or Lingering Will. Additionally, while I generally don’t care about DLC spirits, there’s some notable missing spirits here. There’s no spirit for Ansem (the bad one), Xehanort, or Dark Riku, which just feels weird. Like, come on, leveling up the regular Riku spirit to get Dark Riku is so obvious! But these are definitely nitpicks and not worth getting worked up over. After all, it’s a miracle that Sora is here at all.
So, now that I’ve said my piece about each character, it’s time to rank all the Smash Ultimate DLC fighters! This wasn’t easy, I can assure you. Of course, this is all a matter of preference. All these characters are fun in their own way, I just find some more fun than others. If you’ll allow me to copy some words from my recap blog last year:
“For reference, the kinds of characters I tend to like have average or above average speed (but not too fast) with a decent amount of range to their attacks, but are not necessarily zoners. I also like to feel like I have flexibility in what I can do with a character. It’s not fun feeling like you can only play a character one way, after all. If the character has a strong gimmick, that will be considered but it will not determine the rankings. Things I don’t like in a character include slow speed or feeling like I can’t do anything with the character without risking a meaty smash attack to the kisser.”
Sora being #1 is perhaps the safest pick one can make, but I like what I like, so Sora it is. For what it’s worth, I spent a long time debating between Terry and Sora. I like them both pretty equally, but Sora won out due to being slightly more fun in party matches, with items and multiple players. Steve is in the top half, which is quite a jump considering I wasn’t sure about him at first. He’s grown on me since his arrival, though my critiques of the character still stands. I’m pretty confident in my top six, but it’s the latter half that I feel is likely to change in future. In particular, I could actually see Hero and Pyra/Mythra swapping places, because that spell menu is just too funny. Kazuya also probably needs more time before I can definitively place him in the rankings, but for right now I’m comfortable with where he’s at.
Next comes the stage rankings, which will probably be less offensive overall to your average player. Like with the fighters, this is all down to preference, so your list will likely look a bit different to mine. Once again copying text from last year’s recap blog, here’s how I think about stage rankings:
“If I like the overall layout, think it has some fun hazards and other gimmicks, and looks nice, then it’ll shoot up the ranks. And of course, if it lacks those things or I don’t enjoy its layout or gimmicks very much, it falls down the ranks. Pretty straightforward, yes?”
Indeed it is, me from the past! Here are my stage rankings!
Mementos and Minecraft World maintain their first and second place rankings respectively, King of Fighters Stadium moves up along with Spiral Mountain, and poor Garreg Mach remains in last place. Like I said last year, it just brings very little to Smash Ultimate’s stage selection in my eyes. Hollow Bastion takes fourth based primarily on it having a good, tournament legal layout and aesthetic. Some of the harder stages to decide on was Mishima Dojo and Northern Cave. Mishima Dojo has a very similar layout and gimmick to King of Fighters Stadium, making it less unique overall. Northern Cave has a good layout, but a distracting background. In the end, I placed Mishima Dojo above Northern Cave, and Northern Cave just above Spiral Mountain but that could easily change. For that matter, many of these rankings could change as time goes on. Spiral Mountain went up in overall rank, and I wasn’t expecting that considering my initial complaints of dizziness. I could see Northern Cave performing a similar feat, but we’ll give it some time.
Because of how young some of these stages and characters are, I am opting to do one more of these recap blogs next year if for nothing else than to finalize rankings. I’d like to see how another year treats these various characters and stages, and see how my perspective changes over that year. So we’ll definitely be back for one more round before these blogs say goodbye.
Conclusion
And so, we close another chapter on Smash Ultimate. In fact, from a development standpoint, it’s the final chapter. But in another the way, Ultimate is really only just beginning. If my memory serves me correctly, when Sora was released he was brought in with a message saying “now everyone is here”. That not only pulls at my heart strings, but it also sends a message. Smash Ultimate the game is complete, but Smash Ultimate the story goes on. It’s now up to the players to take this celebration of gaming into the future. Who will become the Smash champion? What whacky interactions between specific matchups remain to be seen? Does Shared Content have unseen creative minds coming up with cool stages, videos, or screenshots? Will Little Mac finally reach low tier status? Let’s find out!
The two ranking images are mine, using assets created by others. These assets belong to their respective owners.
All other images belong to their respective owners. I claim only my words.
Prof Smash Blog Thing 