While Brawl was a pure mess and a horrible user experience, Ultimate is much improved. Items sound great, too.īefore this review was published, I got a brief chance to try Ultimate online. The character voices, sound effects, and music are all top-notch. But Ultimate is really something else, even on the Switch's speakers. While I found Brawl to be less inspired than Melee, the whole sound design was so much better. Each Smash game has steadily sounded better as the hardware has improved. I want to briefly talk about the sound design for a second. I'm ashamed to admit it took me a bit to recognize some of the F-Zero racers, despite the hundreds of hours I dumped into F-Zero GX back in the day. Plus, you get the awesome fan service by seeing some of your favorite characters, or even ones you'd forgotten about over the years. They're a fun way to enhance your gameplay and truly expand your skillset. Spirits replace Brawl's stickers and the equipment system from Smash 4 to the disappointment of no one. They can give you the slight advantage you need in battle. Your primary spirits level up as you fight, gaining more power and strength as they go. There are primary spirits, which offer active bonuses, and support ones, which grant passive skills. Spirits galoreĪnyone like min/maxing? Then Smash has something for you: the spirit system. And a perfect Falcon Punch is still ever so satisfying! That's part of what makes Smash so much fun, those moments when you land that attack and send an opponent flying to their death. Fully charged smash attacks inflict a lot of damage, rewarding you the player for timing things just right. But despite the utter destruction, which is easy to get lost in, Ultimate feels precise and rewards skillful attacks. And if you are a Nintendo fan, there's something here for you to love.īattles in Ultimate are extremely chaotic, especially when eight combatants are fighting for supremacy. And with Ultimate, you don't even have to be a Nintendo fan because of how far the roster stretches. However, there is such a high skill ceiling (that's somewhat easy to achieve) that the franchise ends up catering to two wildly different audiences and doing so quite well. I think what gives Smash Bros its charm is the fact that anyone can pick it up, choose a fighter, and get playing. Nintendo crushed it this time around, and I honestly don't see where we can go from here. It's all around the best Smash has ever been, and I absolutely love the game. It's got a massive roster of characters, the best and smoothest gameplay yet, and just a ton going on. No gaming experience has ever been able to match that in my book - except maybe some of my Halo memories - and I look back at those times with great affection.īut here we are now, so many years later, and Smash has hit peak Smash-ness with Ultimate.
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I will say this: fewer of my memories are fonder than Melee tournaments on Fridays after school on the good ol' Gamecube. But everything I wrote came out dry, so I ended up abandoning the idea of talking at length about my history with this franchise.
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See, I wanted to express to you all how much I love the Super Smash Bros franchise - I played the original all the way back on the N64 and was a master of Melee. As I was sitting down and planning out this review, I scrapped so many intros.