Let’s see here. I’m short on ideas for video games to review right now and the stuff I am planning to review is taking longer than expected to finish. There aren’t that many interesting releases this year and the games that are gaining traction don’t seem to be pleasing me in the slightest. Instead of selling out and reviewing the latest trends I have decided to review a game with more than one hundred hours of playtime. One of the only fighting games I’ve ever played and will ever fully like. A game that I was so excited and hyped for that I was cradling in bed the night before it was released much like a majority of those excited for it as well. The game I'm talking about was none other than Super Smash Bros Ultimate. I guess we are technically selling out, because I’m reviewing one of the most popular fighting games of the current generation.
The original Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 64 was not expected to be a massive success. The game was developed by HAL Laboratory, who were the same folks behind the Kirby series, and directed by Mashahiro Sakurai. He was interested in making a fighting game that allowed for four player couch co-op as a majority of fighting games at the time only allowed two players maximum. His ideas weren’t original at first, but what he wanted were basic based characters. Ones that were easy to understand and hard to experiment with. He proposed his idea to Satoru Iwata, who was not only his co-worker but would later become the fourth president of Nintendo, and he approved of his idea. The game was planned to be titled Dragon King: The Fighting Game and would contain a roster of characters from Nintendo’s most iconic franchises at the time. However, he was worried the idea wouldn’t be approved as Nintendo wouldn’t allow all their properties to coexist in one game. That’s why Sakurai secretly worked on the game until he fully thought to himself that the game was well balanced. When he finally demonstrated a prototype to the heads of Nintendo showing legends like Mario and Samus clashing out on a small platform the company then approved. The project was a full go and would later be renamed as Super Smash Bros. When the game finally released on the Nintendo 64 it blew up like crazy. The game was highly addicting, easy to pick up, severely different from a majority fighting games, sold several copies, and helped Nintendo advertise several of their famed franchises.
The original is a little outdated to today’s standards, but it would be the foundation to one of gaming’s most acclaimed fighting franchises. A new Super Smash Bros game would come out everytime Nintendo unveiled a new console, and it would get bigger and larger in scope. Super Smash Bros. Melee expanded the roster of characters, added new modes, and contains long running favorite fighters in the community. It was also the most broken out of the entire franchise which made it the most experimental at the time. Super Smash Bros Brawl was bigger, added new mechanics which became staples, and contained a story mode which helped add more context to the universe. It was the point in the series where it was good for what it did, and a little bad for a few glaring issues. Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS ditched a ton of the problems Brawl had and was the most refined game up until that point. The game looked more polished, was much smoother to control, and somewhat showcased next generation technology. I mean compared to a majority of games that came out during the same time, the graphics of Super Smash Bros for Wii U look amazing and still do today.
I’m your typical modern millennial gamer, so I didn’t get into the series until Super Smash Bros for Wii U cuz I owned both a Nintendo Wii and Wii U at the time. The Wii U release was a few months away and I decided to pick up a copy of Brawl to see why the series was so amazing. My cousin grew up with Melee and stated it was one of her five most favorite games of all time. She poured dozens of hours into Melee and stated it would be a game I would pour hours into myself. I was a little skeptical at first and my time with Brawl was rough, but once Super Smash Bros for Wii U came out and I bought the game near release my mind was blown. The characters, the spectacle, how fluid the game controlled, and how satisfying it was to master a single fighter. I had become a Super Smash Bros fanboy and it even helped expose me to a few other of Nintendo’s franchises. It was one of the many games where I could lose myself easily and it’s embarrassing to think that I may have had more than two hundred hours in.
Almost three years have passed and there hasn’t been an announcement for another entry. I have finally stopped playing Super Smash Bros and moved onto playing other games like Doom and God of War. Until one fateful afternoon during a direct reveal, a secret trailer was revealed. A flaming outline of the Super Smash Bros logo hinting what was to come. I was hooked and my hype was further reinforced when at E3 2018 gameplay was revealed of Super Smash Bros Ultimate. All the fighters stretching across the entire franchise would return and this would be the most ambitious game Sakurai would direct. This was my most anticipated game back in 2018 and it absolutely did not disappoint. Looking back it may not be my most favorite game of that year compared to Octopath Traveler, God of War, Return of The Obra Dinn, Dead Cells, or Wandersong. Yet, I cannot deny what this game achieved. Today we’ll be looking at why I love Super Smash Bros Ultimate and why it’s my favorite fighting game of all time. Let’s choose our fighter, select a stage, grab some friends, and prepare for a motherf*cking smash.
Story
That’s right they decided to bring back the single player campaign that Brawl had and it’s much grander this time around. Now let me get this question out of the way before we move on with this review. Is the story of Super Smash Bros Ultimate a good one? To be honest the writing has never really been that good. Actually the game doesn’t have any writing at all. It’s just you embarking on an adventure through a wacky world full of craziness. Now it’s not in the same sense where a game like Bloodborne doesn’t have much of a main plot, but allows you to piece together where you are and what is going on by exploring the world and diving into the compelling history that makes the world building for these games so great. Otherwise in simpler terms, “Making the player forge their own personal adventure through self achievement”. It’s in a way you push forward and the game pats you on the back for playing the game.
There’s nothing compelling and the characters don’t share any emotions between each other. It’s a bland story with no memorable moments. Is this a bad thing though? No, because it’s awesome to see how they took multiple Nintendo properties plus a couple of third party properties and turn it into an epic crossover. The world of Super Smash Bros doesn’t feature the actual characters we grew to love. You aren’t witnessing the real Mario, Link, Mega Man, or Samus Aran. You're witnessing carbon copies of them and they must unlock the ability to think on their own. Their freedom and will to think of their own is what made them special, and that freedom would soon be taken by higher beings. A being of light known as Galeem has traced down where the fighters reside and threatens to destroy their world. The fighters meet up in one place to fight Galeem who has gained control of Master Hand and Crazy Hand. Two sentient hands who constantly return to fight each fighter for their self control. The fighters are ready to face the dangers ahead, but one of them being Shulk from the Xenoblade Chronicles series uses his powers to look into the future and sees all of them being wiped out. He’s about to warn them, but it’s too late. Galeem charges up a powerful ray of light and incinerates every fighter into oblivion. The only fighter that escapes is Kirby who rockets away using his flying magical star. The other residents of this world are incinerated as well and Galeem completely wipes out the world these fighters have set up. Galeem then creates his own world, the World of Light, and uses both the body of the fighter and spirits of the residents to create his own personal soulless army. Kirby crashes down into the World of Light and finds it teaming with unknown certainty. Wanting to get his friends back, he ventures through the World of Light hoping to free them from containment. One by one he breaks them from Galeem’s chains and together they form a resistance to fight back. Control whatever fighters you free, unlock new spirits that can assist you in battle, and prepare to fight for your freedom.
Gameplay
Now it’s time to move onto the main course. Better yet, call it the main buffet. The gameplay is the defining feature of the Super Smash Bros franchise and it’s what drives players to spend countless hours battling opponents. You pick your fighter, choose a stage, and depending on the rules you have to beat your opponent within a specific time. You could be playing a stock battle where everyone has a limited amount of lives and if you're the last one to be alive then you win. It could be a timed battle where you have to gain as many kills as you can before the timer runs. Stamina battles where everyone has a specific amount of health and once it’s fully depleted you're out of the competition. In the basic battle mode where you compete with friends you get to set up the rules. You can make a fight easier, harder, make your own modes, or find a way to make the game more accessible to whomever you are playing with. That’s the feature I’ve always liked the most about the Super Smash Bros franchise. The developers add in settings that allow the game to be accessible as possible.
Unlike a majority of fighting games where there are two fighters and they fight along a flat plane with small spacing, here in Super Smash Bros Ultimate there can be a total of eight fighters at once. Depending on the number of players you will have to choose a bigger stage to fit the amount of chaos going on. Unless it’s a stamina battle, rather than have a health bar each player has a damage percentage number. The higher the number is the farther they'll get knocked back with a powerful attack. The goal is to raise their percentage numbers to a point where you can knock them off screen using a powerful attack. Do this enough times and you’ll win each fight. Just by looking at your opponent’s damage percentage color you can tell when they're capable of being knocked out. When it’s red is usually the perfect time. There are items that can spawn on the battlefield to pick up and they come in various forms. They may give your fighter a status effect or buff, allow them to gain a melee attack only that weapon can perform, shoot projectiles, gain a one shot kill, or maybe you shattered the Smash Ball flying around the screen. Every fighter has a Final Smash attack and they can be used to instantly knock out your opponent depending on their damage percentage. Some Final Smashes cover the entire screen while others require precise timing. Your Final Smash can only be used when you obtain the energy a Smash Ball contains or if you have this one setting on where a meter builds the more you attack your foes.
I do want to touch on the single player campaign and how Spirits work in Ultimate. A new mechanical addition to Super Smash Bros Ultimate are Spirits, and in either the campaign or spirit battles they can offer buffs or ailments to the player. They can give them a fighting chance or make a difficult fight much easier. To unlock a Spirit you must beat them in a battle. These battles will use fighters that you play as and give them traits that fit the spirit they are using. Some spirit battles require pure skill while others will require spirits resistant to the battle conditions you have. For example a spirit may have wind that can blow the player off the stage if they are not careful. You can equip a support spirit that allows you to be resistant to said when. There are also your main spirits which determine your overall attack power and can be outfitted with support spirits. You can level these spirits up and the higher their level is the more power they will contain. There are also rarity levels with spirits symbolized with stars and rarer spirits are usually harder to defeat. Every so often a new challenger, otherwise fighter, will appear and if you defeat them in battle you can forever use them. In the battle mode you are challenged by a fighter every few matches, but in the campaign they are scattered throughout the world. Many players recommend grinding for them, but personally I went through the campaign to unlock them all as soon as possible. Personally, I believe it’s much easier to just go through the campaign and unlock them all because unlocking them in the campaign also unlocks them for every other mode.
Now what I should really be talking about are the fighters, because the key thing that makes Super Smash Bros ultimate stand out in the fighting game crowd is the amount of characters to play as. Stretching across multiple franchises are almost eight fighters each with their own attack, abilities, traits, ups, downs, and much more. The number of fighters may seem overwhelming to some, but what makes Super Smash Bros Ultimate amazing to play is mastering a character and finding ways to experiment with their moveset. Coming up with crazy combos that literally transforms you into what is basically a professional Doom Eternal player. There are lightweight fighters like Kirby and Fox who move around with ease, to heavy weight fighters like Donkey Kong or King Dedede who don’t move around as easily. Fighters who attack in quick succession with light damage attacks like Little Mac and Pit, to fighters who attack with slow but heavy damage attacks like Bowser and Ike. There are fist fighters like Captain Falcon, sword fighters like Link and Marth, and ranged characters like Mega Man. Some characters centralize on using support or special attacks like Olimar or Robin. There are a variety of attacks to use, but they all come down to a few. Basic attacks on the ground, aerial attacks to hit foes while in the air, special moves which offer some support, and smash attacks which can be charged to knock away heavily damaged opponents. It’s a simple game with lots of experimentation and customization. There’s so much else I want to touch on with Super Smash Bros ultimate, but that would lead to this review lagging on longer. Which already is by the looks of it. Let’s just wrap this with one final conclusion.
Thoughts
Super Smash Bros Ultimate can be summed up with three words. All three of them are practically synonyms to one another. Fantabulous, brilliant, and amazing. There is a lot to love about Super Smash Bros Ultimate. The amount of characters to fool around with. How satisfying it feels once you find your main fighter and learn the cool combos they can perform. Then move onto another fighter to master. My main back in Wii U was Mega Man, yes I know not many people like how Mega Man works but I’m a huge Mega Man fan, and this time around I went to Simon Belmont then Joker as my main fighter. Also remember I’m a Persona 5 fan. The controls and how tight they feel. Play this game with either a Switch Pro-Controller or a Gamecube Controller and you’ll see how responsive it is. Don’t use Joycons. That’s my only piece of advice. Not only do they get stick drift, but they are also very stiff and awkward to play with for a while. Especially with how violent you are going to be with the buttons.
The graphics look amazing and this may be one of the best looking games on the Nintendo Switch. Besides Octopath Traveler and Breath of The Wild. There are a ton of modes to play around with adding hundreds upon hours of playtime. The main battle mode, the campaign, classic mode, home run contest, all star mode, spirit battles, one hundred man smash, and so much more. The side content is also really good as well and adds reason to continue playing Super Smash Bros Ultimate. There are spirits to collect of fighters and spirits, achievements for reaching specific feats, upgrading spirits through either training or battle, and getting a high score in either classic mode or home run contest. This game is the perfect multiplayer title to play with friends and since the Switch is portable it means you can expose this game to whoever you find.
I love how some of the fighter's moves and skills pay homage to the franchises they are part of. For example, a majority of Mega Man’s abilities are weapons that the Robot Masters he defeated over the years used. Stretching across from Metal Man in Mega Man 2 to Galaxy Man from Mega Man 9. There are also a couple of minor features I want to bring up that I love about Super Smash Bros Ultimate. The amount of third party support and cameos they were able to get from studios and developers. Nintendo was able to cram in stuff from Street Fighter, Persona 5, Castlevania, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, and f*cking Sonic The Hedgehog.
Even outside of fighters they were even able to make cameos from other companies and independent developers. Two that I really like that are somehow in this game are Shovel Knight and Octopath Traveler which was added during an event. The amount of soundtracks you can unlock are jarring and there are special remixes that can only be heard from this game. You even have the option to plug in some headphones and carry the Nintendo Switch around like a MP3 even though that’s going to be very awkward and will probably damage your system. If only Nintendo sold some of these tracks as albums on Spotify or the choice app people used to listen to music.
I do miss having Trophies instead of Spirits, because you were given 3D models to look at and they often had descriptions to who they are and what significance they have to their franchise. The Spirits are still really fun to collect in my opinion and not so many are locked behind the achievements which are very hard to earn. I like the idea of Spirits and I hope they become a staple. Classic mode is still really fun, it’s nice each character gets their own miniature campaign now instead of randomized fighters, and it’s great there are newly added bosses so you don’t just fight Master Hand and Crazy Hand. Again, there is just a lot of content with this game and I can see why fans can pour hundreds of hours into Ultimate. This review can’t go without offering actual criticism on the game, so we better touch on the glaring issues Ultimate faces. I have one hundred percent the World of Light campaign two times now and overall it’s serviceable. It’s not bad, because it does have some replay value and the amount of stuff you can unlock at least covers almost fifty percent of what you can unlock in the overall game. However, it feels like there wasn’t much originality put into it and I miss the original levels that Brawl had. It is well made though. The first time through it was amazing, because I was learning how the game works and unlocking fighters. 2nd time it was grindy as you can’t visit certain points unless you are strong enough fighter.
Unlocking fighters is fun, but that can get grindy too as you only get the original eight characters from the Nintendo 64 entry. That’s why I recommend finding them in World of Light rather than spend hundreds of hours finding them. A majority of the fighters are great and Sakurai was trying to be experimental for each one, but at times they can be hit or miss. The echo fighters are unnecessary to be honest and felt like they were added to make it look like the game has a big roster. I don’t get why we need Chrom or Peach. Ike and Daisy are already good enough. The online aspect of this game I heard is buggy and is still buggy. For a company with millions of dollars you think they would fix the server issues and learn how to run more stable internet connections.
Now, my biggest complaint with Super Smash Bros Ultimate doesn’t have to deal anything with the core game itself. It’s with the community and the publisher Nintendo. Let’s start off with Nintendo first, because I have a history with them. Nintendo is one of those companies I both love and hate. I love them, because when they put their heart and soul into something they create pure brilliance. Innovation, enjoyment, quality, and above all great games. The Switch has been a hit with titles like Breath of The Wild, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Super Mario Odyssey, and Luigi’s Mansion 3. Nintendo is a company I also hate for how corporate they can be at times. There are times when Ultimate feels like it was made to advertise other Nintendo made products or stuff by other companies. Remember when Byleth was added into Ultimate to support the rapid success of Three Houses. Fans hated it not only because it was another Fire Emblem fighter when there were already enough, but because it was obviously Nintendo trying to market Three Houses rather than promote it. There is also how protective Nintendo is with their property and how they allow people to use it. Next is the community. Oh my f*cking god the community. It’s nice how the community is active and highly competitive with each other., but they can be really toxic though. There’s how people trash each other online. How the matchmaking won’t be balanced at times. The controversy that occurs in the community. Remember last year when it was revealed older members of the community were making out with underaged gamers? There’s the fans that get really ticked off when a character they don’t want is added into the game, or a character they do want isn’t added. I understand what disappointment is, but you don’t have to go to the extent where you have to roast the developers who worked hard to make sure the game works and the man who created this dream project for you. As cool as it would seem to characters like Dante, 2B and 9S, Solaire of Astora, Hollow Knight, Therion, or the Doom Slayer it’s also really scary to see the business practices Nintendo would go through. I especially do not want to see anything disrespectful to happen to FromSoftware to Team Cherry.
I love Super Smash Bros Ultimate, but it is not one of my favorite games of all time. It has the quality and passion, but it doesn’t have the heart and soul other games have. This is also coming from me, someone who has poured more than one hundred and thirty hours into the game. It is not in my top thirty range of favorite games of all time. There are just so many games that I would prefer to play over Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Games with more soul, heart, development time, thought, ideas, and above all intention. Games with better stories, worlds, philosophy, art styles, and combat. I know. Super Smash Bros Ultimate doesn’t have the best combat. How unexpected. No. Not really. A lot of people could probably admit that. You will reach that point where the in game AI gets predictable and the game will transform into tedium.
In the end, Super Smash Bros Ultimate is a must have for Nintendo Switch owners. May not be the most wholesome game to buy, but it is worth sixty dollars with the content you get. Even the DLC is worth it and you don’t see good season passes often. I would review Nintendo games more often on this site, but I want to reserve my time for more independent or underrated games worthy of your attention. I plan on doing a review on Fire Emblem: Three Houses one day and an essay on Breath of The Wild. An essay about why I don’t think the game is perfect even though it is still amazing, which I know is going to piss off a lot of gamers especially hardcore Nintendo fans. Until those articles come I hope everyone has a good day. I am going to give Super Smash Bros Ultimate a 9/10 for excellence at best. If they fix some of the problems then it would be a 9.5/10, but for now it’s a 9/10 which is a high recommendation in my book.
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