Super Smash Bros, for the uninitiated, is a series of Fighting Games with a relatively simple premise. Take a bunch of beloved video game icons, throw in some more obscure characters for good measure, and make them fight each other in gladiatorial combat. Unlike most Fighting Games, which are infamous for their steep learning curve and in some cases requiring impossibly good dexterity just to pull off basic combos, Smash Bros has a much simpler, more beginner friendly combat system, making it more enjoyable for people who aren't good at Fighting Games. Plus, seeing Bowser and Ganondorf team up against Sonic the Hedgehog and Kirby is an inherently awesome concept, and it's not uncommon for non-Fighting Game fans to pick up these games just because a character from their favorite games made it in the ever-expanding roster. Despite being owned by Nintendo, Sakurai wanted the series to be a celebration of ALL things gaming, hence the presence of characters not owned by Nintendo, such as Cloud Strife (owned by Square Enix) and Mega Man (owned by Capcom).
Because Sakurai is a man who favors quality over quantity, there's only five games in the series despite debuting back in the 90's (Pokemon came out at the same time yet manages to pump out at least two games every year since). But the newest game, Smash Bros Ultimate is pretty much planned to be Sakurai's Magnum Opus. Featuring the largest roster yet, at 80+ playable characters (I wouldn't be surprised if the roster hits triple digits by the time the rest of the DLC comes out), over 100 different stages based off of iconic video game locales, a 30+ hour long story campaign, a plethora of mini games such as Home Run Contest and Stage Builder, over a 1,000 different collectibles, and various game settings to make it easier to prepare for competitive tournaments (just because the game is beginner friendly does NOT mean there are pros who practice daily and compete in tournaments, and are PAID to compete in tournaments).
So what's the story of Smash Bros Ultimate? Officially called The World of Light, the story campaign begins after every character in the game unite on a cliff side (the same one from Smash Bros Brawl's ending, by the way) to confront a literal army of Master Hands (Master Hand being the main antagonist of Smash Bros). Before the battle breaks out, our heroes (and villains) encounter an eldritch angel-like being known as Galeem, who absorbs the Master Hands into itself to charge up an absurdly powerful barrage of energy beams. We're treated to a visually stunning yet surprisingly depressing cinematic of every character trying to fight back, only to get blasted into nothingness one by one. And no matter what trick each character tries, the beams always hit their mark. There's also some morbidly funny jokes in this cinematic (such as Solid Snake trying to hide inside of his signature cardboard box, or Wii Fit Trainer trying to evade the beams by doing yoga), which either enhances or worsens the dire situation, depending on who you ask. The only character who survives the beam barrage is of course, Kirby. Interestingly, the decision to have Kirby be the sole survivor was an intentional design choice on Sakurai's part. Kirby has simple, easy to remember inputs for his abilities and is a jack-of-all-trades, meaning he's the perfect character to play as while you are still learning how the game works. Funnily enough, Sakurai stated that realistically, both Palutena and Bayonetta would also be able to escape Galeem's attack, the former because she is the Goddess of Light and controls all aspects of it, and the latter because of her ability to manipulate time itself. Ironically those are the very last characters you unlock in The World of Light.
From there, Kirby has to navigate a sprawling game board covered in Spirits, ghostly aberrations possessing statues made in the likeness of the other Fighters. Every time you, the player, defeats a Spirit, you can use it power up your current character. Oh yeah, the big thing about this campaign is navigating the board and rescuing each character in the game one by one. Because as it turned out, Galeem didn't kill any of the fighters with that beam. It only froze them solid so Galeem could essentially clone the Fighters and build an army modeled after some of the most famous video game characters in existence.
And... that's pretty much it in terms of story. While I do like the concept of Spirit Battles, in which the game uses characters from the playable roster as stand ins for characters that not playable (yet) and even setting up custom battle settings to emulate an experience involving the original character, I do feel that as a STORY campaign it has a few problems. Namely, it's really repetitive. You go to a space on the board not cleared out yet. You fight the Spirit in question, often with the help of another Spirit, and you repeat the process. There is some light puzzle solving and exploration, but most of it comes in the second half of the campaign, and when it does come, it feels like it's too little, too late. I think the main problem with the World of Light is that the first board is simply too large, and the numerous battles make navigating it somewhat of a chore. And it's not helped by the fact that the only time the characters interact with each other outside of battle is in the opening cinematic. While it is longer than the story campaign from Smash Bros Brawl (otherwise known as the Subspace Emissary), I do feel like that game handled the concept better. Of course, Subspace Emissary wasn't perfect either. The best parts of it were the boss battles and seeing all these different characters interact with each other (even if the result is like a silent art-house film). Between the character interactions and boss battles, the levels were split up into linear platforming segments that ranged from being "okay" to "WHY DID YOU PUT THIS NONSENSE IN THE GAME, SAKURAI!?". Honestly, the best way to get the best of both worlds is to keep the World of Light largely the same, but every time you rescued a Fighter, you would get a brief cinematic of the Fighter in question joining back up with the party and interacting with the rest of the team. Imagine how awesome it would be if after rescuing Mario as Kirby the two of them recreate the friendly handshake from Brawl's opening. Or after rescuing Little Mac he has a brief sparring match with Donkey Kong as a shout-out to the bonus round from Punch-Out!. I think that would have improved The World of Light greatly.
I will say that the finale was amazing, and I will concede that World of Light has a better final level than Subspace Emissary (spoiler warning, by the way). In Subspace Emissary, the final level was a maze made of all of the levels you cleared already, and navigating it was a long and time-consuming process that made the campaign grind to a halt, but it did have a visually impressive final boss. The final level of The World of Light? It starts off with you freeing the original Master Hand from Galeem's control, and even has a segment where you get to play AS Master Hand as he tears a hole in Galeem's army. You then pick three of your favorite fighters, ascend to the heavens Hollow Knight style and fight both Galeem and its shadowy rival, Dharkon (who is just as evil as Galeem, by the way), in a three way battle. Funnily enough, Galeem and Dharkon hate each other so much that with enough patience and dodging skill you can actually make Galeem and Dharkon kill each other. The campaign also has three different endings depending on whether or not you defeated most Light Spirits on the final board, mostly Dark Spirits, or a mixture of both. Note that the only good ending is if you defeat an even mix of Light and Dark Spirits. Committing to one side or the other will cause a downer ending where the entity you did not fight recharges the same beam attack from the intro, only now there's nowhere to run, and no chance of stopping it. In the true ending, both entities are destroyed, and all of the Spirits form a flaming spire (and what does the theme song mention? A "Spire of Flames". Hey-O!) as they move on to what I like to think of as video game heaven.
I will say that the finale was amazing, and I will concede that World of Light has a better final level than Subspace Emissary (spoiler warning, by the way). In Subspace Emissary, the final level was a maze made of all of the levels you cleared already, and navigating it was a long and time-consuming process that made the campaign grind to a halt, but it did have a visually impressive final boss. The final level of The World of Light? It starts off with you freeing the original Master Hand from Galeem's control, and even has a segment where you get to play AS Master Hand as he tears a hole in Galeem's army. You then pick three of your favorite fighters, ascend to the heavens Hollow Knight style and fight both Galeem and its shadowy rival, Dharkon (who is just as evil as Galeem, by the way), in a three way battle. Funnily enough, Galeem and Dharkon hate each other so much that with enough patience and dodging skill you can actually make Galeem and Dharkon kill each other. The campaign also has three different endings depending on whether or not you defeated most Light Spirits on the final board, mostly Dark Spirits, or a mixture of both. Note that the only good ending is if you defeat an even mix of Light and Dark Spirits. Committing to one side or the other will cause a downer ending where the entity you did not fight recharges the same beam attack from the intro, only now there's nowhere to run, and no chance of stopping it. In the true ending, both entities are destroyed, and all of the Spirits form a flaming spire (and what does the theme song mention? A "Spire of Flames". Hey-O!) as they move on to what I like to think of as video game heaven.
But that's pretty much the only thing I can criticize, aside from maybe roster choice. Everything else in the game has been lovingly hand-crafted to be the best game in the series. That's not even hyperbole. Ultimate manages to take the best parts of each game and pushes them to their logical extremes. You got the story and mini games of Brawl, the fast-paced combat of Smash Bros Melee, the roster quality of Smash 4, and the whimsical charm of the original Smash Bros.. Sakurai himself said that if he makes a sixth game in the series, it will never be as good as Ultimate. Granted, the main reason for that sentiment is because how much of a legality nightmare getting 80+ characters from different video game companies together in one game. So basically, aside from my criticism of The World of Light, which I view as a legitimate flaw, most of my other critiques are purely nitpicks that only apply to me personally.
| Incineroar used Sucker Punch! IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE!!! |
The roster in this game is not only huge, featuring every character from past games (including ones who haven't seen action in over a decade!), but the newcomers are all well-designed and fun to play as. In regards to returning characters, quite a few of them received changes from the transition from the previous games to Ultimate. Namely, Pichu was a complete joke prior to Ultimate. Now Pichu is so strong that Nintendo had no choice but to release a patch specifically designed to tone down Pichu's power and versatility. Link received tweaks to his move set to better emulate his abilities from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (previously he was using his gear from Ocarina of Time). And perhaps in response to the sheer brokenness of Bayonetta, she got nerfed so badly that she frankly isn't that fun to play as anymore. That might be my one complaint concerning the veterans. Everyone else feels great to play as. Even Cloud Strife, who was a similarly overpowered character that got toned down in Ultimate, still feels good to play as despite his reduced power. Trying to play Bayonetta in Ultimate is a painful, masochistic experience. So I salute the people who still use Bayonetta as their main. They are the true heroes of the Smash Bros community.
In regards to new characters, most of them feel like pipe-dream picks. The kinds of characters that you always wanted to see, but seemed to be getting further and further away from reality. King K. Rool sticks out the most in this regard. While the Ridley reveal was a pleasant surprise, I never felt like he was impossible. The "bUt RiDlEy Is ToO bIg!" argument always felt stupid and uneducated to me. First of all, the Smash Bros characters in the game already are not even close to their original sizes. Case in point, Mario's height is (according to his creator, Shigeru Miyamoto) 5 ft 1 inch. Captain Olimar is stated (and shown!) to be about 2 inches tall. Yet in Smash Bros, they are eye level with each other. Likewise, Bowser has been shown to be enormous compared to everyone else in his own games, but in Smash Bros, he's certainly the largest playable character, but rather than being the size of a skyscraper (which is his usual size), he's only slightly taller than Samus Aran (her height being 6 ft 7 inches, assuming she's in her armor). Second of all, Ridley's size is inconsistent within the Metroid games to begin with. In the original Metroid, Ridley is about the same size as Samus. In more recent games such as Metroid Prime he is large enough to scoop up Samus in one hand. Combine that with his status as the go-to villain for Metroid and you have a character whose inclusion was only a matter of time.
King K. Rool and Banjo-Kazooie, on the other hand, were character that haven't seen action in over a decade, in addition to being in legality limbo thanks to being created by Rare, not Nintendo. Rare is also owned by Microsoft, who were for a very long time Nintendo's biggest competitor. The two companies get along nowadays thanks to Microsoft heavily pushing Cross-Play functionality between Nintendo systems and the Xbox systems, but back in the day, most of their promotional material focused on bad-mouthing the other company (granted, Sony and Sega were even worse about this than Microsoft, but my point still stands). But we got both Banjo-Kazooie AND K. Rool in the game, complete with lore-accurate moves that pay loving homage to the source material (K. Rool's move set is a mixture of the attacks from his boss battles at the end of the first four Donkey Kong Country games).
King K. Rool and Banjo-Kazooie, on the other hand, were character that haven't seen action in over a decade, in addition to being in legality limbo thanks to being created by Rare, not Nintendo. Rare is also owned by Microsoft, who were for a very long time Nintendo's biggest competitor. The two companies get along nowadays thanks to Microsoft heavily pushing Cross-Play functionality between Nintendo systems and the Xbox systems, but back in the day, most of their promotional material focused on bad-mouthing the other company (granted, Sony and Sega were even worse about this than Microsoft, but my point still stands). But we got both Banjo-Kazooie AND K. Rool in the game, complete with lore-accurate moves that pay loving homage to the source material (K. Rool's move set is a mixture of the attacks from his boss battles at the end of the first four Donkey Kong Country games).
The DLC characters have so far been pretty awesome additions to the roster. I already mentioned Banjo-Kazooie, but we also got Joker from the Persona franchise, a literal Piranha Plant, The Luminary from Dragon Quest XI (No, I am not calling him "The Hero" and you can't make me call him "The Hero"), and... Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury? The last one confuses me slightly. Luminary and Joker, despite coming from relatively niche (by American standards) franchises, are at least big names in popular culture in Japan (which is Sakurai's home country, by the way). But Terry Bogard is the protagonist of an obscure arcade fighter from the 90's that only really took off in Brazil. Maybe his inclusion was meant to appeal to Brazilian gamers? But hey, Sakurai does have a track record of including obscure characters purely for the comedic "What the heck am I looking at?" factor. That is the entire reason why the Dog from Duck Hunt is playable.
There's also a ton of items to mess around with. I personally don't use items that often, because they can turn the game into a chaotic mess depending on the game mode (I prefer Stock matches). That said, every now and again, when I have friends over, I just flip onto a rule-set custom made for crazy, chaotic item fill matches. The trick is to set the game mode to Timed Match instead of Stock. It lets you use these crazy weapons and items that are normally banned in professional play but without the frustration of getting killed because a powerful item happened to spawn in right next to your opponent. My favorite items in the game would have the Banana Gun, for the sheer silliness of a banana that doubles as a pistol, and the Assist Trophies, which summon NPC characters to aid you in battle. The Assist Trophies are usually characters that Sakurai wanted to be playable, but either didn't have enough time or source material to justify creating a full move-set. Which means we get Assist characters like Alucard from Castlevania, the Shovel Knight, and Krystal from Star Fox: Adventures who feel so close to being playable it's actually kind of frustrating. Other characters, such as the Squid Sisters from Splatoon, I feel are perfect additions as Assist characters and I wouldn't mind if they stayed as Assist characters in future installments.
Classic Mode returns, and this is arguably the best version of the mode. Classic Mode has you fight through six themed matches, ending in a boss battle. Just like last time, you can adjust the difficulty of the mode on a scale of 0.1 to 9.9 (the higher the number the harder it gets). What makes this version of Classic Mode unique is that each character gets a different theme and their battles change based on what character you're using. Yoshi, a dinosaur, has you fight all of the reptilian Fighters, ending with a fight with Rathalos from Monster Hunter. Ridley, a space pirate dragon, has to "board" all of the stages based on space ships and defeat the crew of each ship. Luigi, a lovable coward, has to fight all of the darker, more serious Fighters while playing on the creepier stages, and ending with a boss battle with Count Dracula himself. Perhaps as a playful nod towards the infamous "Too many Swordsman" meme, Marth (the original video game swordsman) has to fight all the Fighters who use swords as their primary weapon. The only real negative I have about this mode is that only a handful of Fighters get unique boss battles at the end of the mode. Most of the time it's Master Hand, Crazy Hand, or both of them at once. I understand that there are only six unique bosses in total (eight if you count Galeem and Dharkon, but both of them can only be fought in World of Light), but if you do several characters' Classic Mode routes back-to-back, it gets repetitive when the final round winds up being yet another fight with Master Hand and Crazy Hand, on Final Destination, with items turned off. At least mix up the stage choice so it's still somewhat relevant to the them of the route! Donkey Kong's route is based off of the concept of World Tours, and ends with him "returning" to New Donk City just in time to fight Master Hand. Even though it suffered from reusing the Master Hand fight, that route actually mixed it up by replacing Final Destination with the New Donk City Tower stage. Like, I wouldn't mind Master Hand being the boss of over half the roster's supposedly personalized routes, if they had just swapped out the stages to keep it from getting completely stale.
Then we got Century Smash, a mini game with three modes. The normal version of the mini game is simple. Defeat exactly 100 Mii Fighters and see if you can beat your time. I guess I should mention you can use your Mii characters to make custom Fighters, which is how I and many others content ourselves once we give up hope on our most wanted characters ever making it to the roster (I'm still holding out hope for Shantae, Spyro the Dragon, the Hollow Knight, a Monster Hunter, The Wonderful 101, the stick-cowboy from West of Loathing, Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn, and many others). Anyway, this mode is nice, quick, and extremely cathartic. Because the Mii Fighters in this mode have their A.I. reduced and they take much more knockback and damage than in other modes, you can send several of them flying with a single blow. Then there's All Star Smash, where you fight every single playable character in the game, back to back, in the exact order their games were released. So Pac-Man and Mr. Game & Watch will always be first, due to both of their games coming out in 1980. This mode is more challenging, since the A.I here is actually competent, but it's still a great time. And then there's Cruel Smash. A "survival-endless" style mode where the only goal is to survive for as long as possible against a never ending army of buffed up Mii Fighters with smart enough A.I. to give even Zero (who is, for those of you who don't follow Smash Bros competitively, is the SINGLE BEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD) a run for his money. It's not uncommon for runs of this mode to last no more than five seconds. I am not even exaggerating. My record on this mode is currently 7 seconds.
Stage Builder and Home Run Contest were originally not part of the game, but were added in a free update. Stage Builder is exactly what it sounds like. Use a bunch of tools to make your own stages which can (optionally) be uploaded onto the Internet. Now I don't want to brag, but I am a bit of an artist, so when I saw this feature being brought back I knew what must be done... Recreate the mountaintop from the Dalamudur fight from Monster Hunter 4. Of course I actually ran out of room when detailing the Dalamudur itself, so now it looks like a generic giant snake. But evidently, Stage Builder has been given a mixed reception. Not because of the mode itself, but thanks to the fluidity and freedom of the Stage Builder mechanics, hormone'd-up teenagers began flooding the Internet with VERY inappropriate stages. Cue jokes about Stage Builder "being a mistake" and how Sakurai is never going to include Stage Builder ever again. That said, there are some stages built by actually talented people that not only look nice but are so evenly balanced (for ACTUAL GAME PLAY) you would be forgiven for thinking the stage was made by Sakurai himself. So the community kind of balances itself out.
Home Run Contest is honestly my favorite mini game. In it, you are given 10 seconds to rack up as much damage onto the Sandbag item as possible, and then send it flying with the Home Run Bat. It has three modes; Solo, which is self-explanatory. Co-Op, in which two players work together to launch the Sandbag. And Versus, where each player competes to see who can launch the Sandbag the furthest. It's a fun and creative game mode that serves as a nice break from usual combat. I will say that certain characters have an easier time than others with this mode. Ness can rack up tons of damage just by using his PK Fire ability over and over. Shulk can rack up just as much, and sometimes MORE damage thanks to his Monado Arts. But Incineroar has a much harder time because his strongest attack, the Alolan Whip, is a grappling move, and the Sandbag is completely unaffected by grappling. The Luminary, who normally has a random selection of magic spells to choose from, only has access to four very basic spells, none of which hit particularly hard. But other than that, this is a great mode.
Smash Bros Ultimate brings back the Amiibo feature from Smash 4. Basically, using a special figurine you can create an Amiibo Fighter, an NPC that grows in power and skill the more you fight with it. It works similarly to a Skylanders figure, but is completely optional for those who don't want to spend the $15. I myself don't any figures, but my good friend Vincent let me experiment with his Pac-Man figure for the review. Thank you Vincent! Anyway, the Amiibo Fighter grows and levels up as it fights, not only getting buffed up, but it adjusts its A.I. to counter its opponent. At the highest level, an Amiibo Fighter can fight better than a Level 9 CPU Opponent. And they have the option to keep learning even after hitting Level 50! They just won't get stat boosts from levels anymore. Now I know what you're thinking. "Why on Earth would I want to train up a CPU inside a plastic figurine?" The answer is simple. Make your own custom raid bosses! Or have them fight each other in a tournament to determine who is the best fighter among them! ...That's pretty much it. On the bright side, unlike Skylanders and other Toys-to-Life games (that genre is officially dead, by the way), Amiibo can be used with multiple different games, depending on the individual figure. Example, the Link Amiibo works with both Smash Bros Ultimate and Breath of the Wild (I also heard it works with The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, but I'm not sure on that). So the Amiibo figures are technically more worthwhile purchases than Skylanders characters, assuming you have every compatible game for that Amiibo. While training up an Amiibo was a fun experience, I don't really think I'll be getting an Amiibo myself, mostly because Skylanders burnt me out on that formula.
The last game modes to discuss are Smash-Down and Squad Strike. In Smash-Down, the players fight in multiple matches, with the condition that they are not allowed to use the same character twice. Once every character on the roster has been used, whoever won the most battles overall wins the mode. In Squad Strike, two players pick 3-5 characters and play Stock match where each character counts as a life. These modes are fun, but I don't use them as often as the other modes, mostly because they function a bit too similarly to regular matches. Oh, and before I forget. Concerning the roster, when you first get the game the only playable characters unlocked from the start are the original 8 characters from the very first Smash Bros (these characters have been in every game in the series and will probably stay in the series from now till the end of time). Every one else needs to be unlocked either through World of Light, playing multiple matches in any game mode of your choice, or by clearing Classic Mode with the characters you already have. I actually really like that you have to work for the rest of the roster. Fighting games nowadays have a bad habit of giving you the entire roster the moment you boot up the game, with only one or two characters that have to be unlocked. I understand that is an annoyance for tourney players since it requires the tourney to pump a ton of hours into the game to unlock all the characters just so everyone can use their main. But for a casual player, it creates a loop of content. You play the game, you unlock a character, you play around with that new character for a bit, and right when you might be getting bored and need something new, the game throws in a chance to unlock another character. One minor nitpick with the character select is that it is really disorganized. The characters are sorted not by the series they originate from, like in previous games, but in the order they were added to the roster. This only really works for the characters that were added in Smash 4 onward (aka the game where Sakurai started announcing newcomers ahead of the game's launch), and everything before that is kind of a mess because those fighters all debuted almost simultaneously. Part of me wishes there was someway to manually organize the roster placement. Nothing too crazy, but imagine an option in the settings to organize the characters based on series, or in the order their games were released, or alphabetically. Again, not really a flaw, just a minor nitpick that will only bother a very small minority.
Finally, we can talk about the presentation! This is probably the nicest looking Smash Bros game to date. The original Smash Bros, while a great game, has an art style that hasn't aged particularly well. Smash Bros Melee was better, with a more stylized presentation. Smash Bros Brawl was Smash Bros during a teen emo phase. While it didn't look bad, that game is infamous for its grittier, more realistic style, making it the black sheep of the series. Smash 4 was pretty much a more polished, less gritty version of Brawl. And then we have Smash Bros Ultimate. The art style is brighter than before, with more saturated colors and flashier particle effects. The characters now stand at an angle instead of completely horizontally, making it easier to see their entire profile. All the stages from Melee and Brawl were redone, and the remade versions of those stages are beautiful to look at (especially Kongo Falls and Fountain of Dreams). Several attack animations were redone to be faster and more energetic. The characters' facial expressions actually change depending on the situation, physically wincing when attacked, smirking confidently when in the lead, and some cases making some really silly expressions during specific animations (such as Luigi closing his eyes and blindly flailing his arms around for his Dash Attack). The Final Smashes, powerful finishing moves that have to be charged up (don't worry, you can turn them off in the settings), are all visually dynamic perfectly represent the character using them. King K. Rool has one of the best ones, since it lovingly recreates the Game Over screen from Donkey Kong 64, with K. Rool on his throne, laughing maniacally as his crocodilian tower unleashes a freaking laser beam that effectively nukes Donkey Kong Island.
Now for the music and sound. There's a lot of music in the game. How much music? If you were to listen to every song in its entirety back to back with no pause, it would take you 30+ HOURS. Seriously, there's almost a 1,000 songs in the game. Most of the music is good. There are some duds here and there (I don't care for the Animal Crossing songs, but I know people who adore that music), but I feel like on the whole, about 90% of the soundtrack is universally amazing, and the remain 10% are songs that are "okay" at worst, and enjoyable in moderation at best. I do feel that the opening theme song, Life Light, sounds better in Japanese than it does in English. Before anyone asks, no I'm not just saying that because of me being a dork who likes Japanese stuff, I'm saying that because I genuinely feel the lyrics have a better rhythm in Japanese than in English. But anyway, in addition to songs pulled straight from the original games, we also got plenty of remixes that frankly took some songs that I didn't really care for and made them amazing. Gangplank Galleon got this crazy, trumpet filled tune that sounds comedic, goofy, and energetic all at once, and it even has a rap verse! Vs Ridley is an epic electric guitar/metal song that highlights the brutality of Ridley's character in music form. And literally every song from Castlevania is magnificent. And we got a remix of MEGALOVANIA, the breakout song from UNDERTALE!!! Said remix was composed by the madman himself, Toby Fox. Speaking of, Toby Fox actually played Smash Bros with Sakurai while working on the remix. According to Sakurai, Toby Fox wiped the floor with him. So yes, the goofy music making video game funny man beat The Creator of Smash Bros, AT Smash Bros.
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| *You feel like you are going to have a bad time. |
There's also some voice acting to discuss, and I like most of the voices. Marth now speaks in English, being voiced by Yuri Lowenthal. Zelda has a new voice, but rather than having a British accent like in Breath of the Wild she just sounds like a normal, bubbly anime school-girl, which works with her "Look at me, I'm so Kawaii!" redesign. Fox McCloud had his lines redone. He still has the same voice, but now he doesn't have the nasally lisp from Smash 4. Which is a good thing, because the nasally lisp does not mesh well with Fox's characterization of being a cool, level-headed mercenary. It made him sound like a dork merely pretending to be a cool mercenary. Now his voice matches his character! Incineroar, to the surprise of no one, talks like a Pokemon, only capable of saying the syllables in its name over and over. What makes it funny is that whenever Incineroar uses its Down-Smash attack, it shouts "Incin!", but the way it shouts it makes it sound like "Fix It!" which I find greatly amusing. But then there's Wolf. Wolf O' Donnell is for all intents and purposes, the evil counterpart to Fox. Well, relatively evil. They are both mercenaries who will sell their talent for combat to the highest bidder. But while Fox is a fairly honorable warrior who gives his foes a chance to surrender, Wolf is a bully who kicks people while they're down. So why does his voice sound so lame? They gave him a new voice that's much deeper, and while this is SUPPOSED to be intimidating, it makes it difficult to understand what Wolf is saying, and when you CAN understand him, his lines just feel like lifeless rip-offs of his old lines. Back in Brawl, he was portrayed with a Brooklyn accent, and that accent choice alone breathed so much personality into his lines. Wolf doing a "Bring It!" gesture while saying "What's da mattah, scared?" is still, to this day, my favorite taunt in the whole series. Now that same taunt is just an generic, accent-less deep voice going "Aren't you afraid?" which doesn't really do Wolf justice. But that's about the only voice I actively dislike. Everyone else, from Pit and Palutena's meme-generating Guidance Conversations, to Ridley's nightmare inducing screeches, to Banjo-Kazooie's "Guh uh!" catch phrase, all sound exactly as they should.
In conclusion, Super Smash Bros Ultimate is in fact a fantastic game. Is it the best game in the series, as Sakurai intended? Yes. It's better than Brawl, it's better than Smash 4, it's better than the original game, it's even better than Melee, the one game in the franchise that is universally agreed to be "the best" game in the series. If the Smash Bros franchise were to end, have it end with Ultimate. End it on a good note. It's obviously not going to end. It's Nintendo's best selling anything ever and it serves as (almost) free marketing for lesser known video games. They are probably going to keep making Smash Bros games several decades from now, long after Sakurai's time. Probably after mine. But the point is, as brilliant as this game is, there is room for further improvement. With that being said, I give Super Smash Bros Ultimate 10 "Falcon PUNCH!!!"-es out 10.
P.S. The game supports online multiplayer, but I haven't really messed with it, since I mostly play Smash Bros for the mini games, single player content, and occasional game night shenanigans. From what I hear the matchmaking has had a mixed reception. Some people love the matchmaking system, others hate it with a passion and wish they brought back For Fun mode (anything goes, items on, etc) and For Glory mode (items off, stage hazards off, and using the same rules that most competitive tournaments use). So keep that in mind in case you want to play Ultimate for the multiplayer.
