Smash Ultimate general impression

[nocturnal YL]

Fighters:

• I really like the many new Final Smash moves the fighters get. The additional support characters (Ness, Lucas, Shulk, Mega Man) are a nice touch too.


• Even though Smash Ultimate feels more like a tribute to Smash itself than to Nintendo games (unlike the older Smash games), I'm glad a lot of the fighters feel more like themselves now. 3DS/Wii U fixed a few (Kirby, Luigi, Ike…) but still had some out-of-character fighters like Falco (and Ganondorf, to some extent), and the situation has improved a lot here. They finally got rid of Landmaster, and Dedede now has a Final Smash that's actually from a Kirby game, Kirby Super Star Ultra.


• There are still many unknown Final Smash moves. I'm particularly curious about Young Link, who has never appeared in a Smash game with Final Smash before.


• I also want to see Meta Knight's Final Smash. I hope it's also from an actual game; the Planet Robobt version of Galaxia Darkness or Meta Knightmares seem to be good candidates.


• Meta Knight's Galacta Knight colour now makes it very obvious that it is indeed a Galacta Knight reference. Great!


• I like Mario's new taunts (the Cappy throw and the thumbs-up).


• I was worried that having Breath of the Wild Link would mean a lot of the Link moves are removed, as well as the loss of a left-handed fighter. Good to see Young Link's return to fill some of this void.


• Marth gets to be re-voiced by Midorikawa (something he's always wanted to do). Marth also speaks English in the overseas versions. Both should have happened in the last game.


• I'm glad to see all these new designs for the Zelda characters. Especially Zelda herself. 2D Zelda needs more love.


• I'm less thrilled on the return of Path of Radiance Ike. He's not ready to wield the Ragnell!


• On that subject, I hope to see an option to "save" my preferred alternate colours. I prefer some of the outfits over the original, including Radiant Dawn Ike, female Corrin, and Alph instead of Olimar.


• Speaking of Alph, I'm disappointed to see he's not a separate fighter. He and Rock Pikmin would fit the bill for Echo Fighters well.


• Ganondorf with a sword. I'm not too concerned about Ganondorf in general, but I definitely like this change.


• Custom moves aren't returning. I'm glad to see custom parts gone, but I'll miss custom special moves.


• I'm glad they removed Rock Smash instead of Flare Blaze. I can't think of any good use of Rock Smash outside of Home Run Contest.


• Wario's shoulder attack returns. I'm not upset about its removal in 3DS/Wii U, but I'm glad to see it back.

Other aspects:

• A very general theme with this game is that they're actually listening to the fans. The general gameplay is made faster and somewhat more Melee-like, and a lot of the fighter moves are changed to fit the fans' preference (Ganondorf's sword and such). Of course, some fans will always complain no matter what…


• The known new songs thus far (list of soundtrack here) is very impressive! Here's hoping Sonic the Hedgehog and FINAL FANTASY VII getting some remixes, or at least new songs. This one got me a bit confused; it doesn't sound like Destiny as the list says…


• 8 players in stages that don't previously support 8-Player Smash! I can finally have 8-player matches in Coliseum!


• And for that matter, I can finally have matches with 8 pairs of Ice Climbers!


• The Bomberman Assist Trophy makes me wonder to what extentare they going to include elements from the guest publishers' other series. Are we going to see something from, say, Ace Attorney, Monster Hunter, or even Puyo Puyo? Or Tales? Tekken?


• I wonder if they're going to revive the Assist Trophy characters in Brawl who didn't return. I want to see Isaac and Jill. Maybe also Barbara.


• I wonder if we'll be seeing new stages. From what it looks, they seem to be including new stages only for new games that are too obvious to omit (Super Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild). That's just like Project DIVA Future Tone DX, which has an ancient song list with only three songs from 2015 or later (the 2016 and 2017 songs were added for DX), but is advertised as a 2017 game. I hope to see more (especially from a Kirby game that's completely unlrelated to Sakurai), but I can't think of anything as big as those two.


• It seems that guest fighters will get only one stage, so Windy hill and PAC-MAZE will probably not return. Whose idea was it to keep PAC-LAND? That's, I'd say, the worst stage in the entirety of Smash history, worse than even Hanenbow.


• I wonder what would happen to the last few remaining old stages we've yet to see. I suspect Kongo Jungle is returning, and is the reason why Melee's Kongo Jungle is renamed Kongo Falls. I also want to see the return of Fountain of Dreams, Mushroom Kingdom (Melee), Wooly World, Orbital Gate Assault and Gamer.

[Manspeed]

I hope they fix up Fountain of Dreams' background to look more like it did in Kirby's Adventure. It was extremely garish in Melee.

[Da Robot]

-The shock that EVERY character returns
-The rebranding and strange public acceptance of clones to Echo fighters, I'm seen response of people wanting more of them now which is weird.
-Being able to KO Assist Trophies for points seems like an interesting new addition as well as having multiples of them on stage.
-Making the game faster and listening to the competitive side seems to have made the game better as well as finally including the stage hazard on/off switch which was overdue.
-N64 stage, Saffron City finally returns (long overdue), great to see the "Gotta catch em' all" vertical banner hanging in the background still.
-New character alts are nice
-Ganondorf finally has his sword
-Faster Final Smashes and removing transforming ones like the Landmaster and replacing them with better more (original series) accurate versions is a good change. While the removal of 3 Landmasters (with varying stats) and replacing them with a cutscene of their respective team spaceships attacking an opponent may seem like hypocritical because they will function the same (opponent gets blown up by 4 Arwings/Wolfen's laser fire) it is at least more accurate to their original Star Fox games instead of just Fox Landmaster (okay), Falco's flightly Landmaster with more hovering (sorta okayish but Falco would be better in an Arwing and at least lampshaded with the quote of "personally I prefer the air") and Wolf's "I stole and reversed engineered the Landmaster plans" for a more powerful tank but with with shorter on stage lifespan always felt like a completely cheap and lazy excuse for not making something original FS for Brawl.


Concerns
-While they keep saying it's a brand new Smash, it still feels like Smash 4.5, same returning announcer, same style of newcomer character intro trailers (like with Ridley, name above text pun involving the character).
-Balancing, Bayonetta seemed overpowered still, while Inkling may need to be buffed up.
-Kinda wish Lucina could actually wear her mask instead of just putting on/off quickly in taunt still.
-Dr Mario's Final Smash is still Mario's with megavitamins, could have at least made something PK Starstorm with falling downwards megavitamins (like the actual game) unless there's an unknown Dr Mario "bottle" stage we don't about that does that.
-Please don't make me play through the single player mode 66 times and then multiply that by 3. Yes, that worked in N64/Melee with the roster was smaller but it was starting to get tedious with Brawl and then having to do it twice in the span of a few months for 3DS and Wii U was kinda annoying and felt like too much work. We don't have as much time as when we were young to do this now.