Why I Hate Smash Gimmicks

[Shrikeswind]

Okay, so, I was thinking about a lot of the newer gimmicks to the Smash series, in particular Inkling's Ink, and I wanted to give my two cents on how absurd a few of these gimmicks are. So strap in, I'm getting snide. You know, like usual.

So let's start by picking out the gimmick fighters from Brawl, Smash 4, and Ultimate (before this point, there were really only 3 tops - Ness, Ice Climbers, and Zelda/Sheik, and none were too egregious.) From Brawl, we have Olimar (Pikmin), Trainer Red (Pokemon stamina), and Lucario (aura) From Smash 4...hoo boy. We have Rosalina (Luma), Robin (weapon decay), Little Mac (Star Uppercut), Wii Coach (auto-healing moves), Shulk (Monado Arts), Ryu (alternate inputs), Cloud (Limit Break), and Bayonetta (oh, where to start...Witch Time? Bullet Arts? Bat Within?). Ultimate now has introduced Inkling (Ink).

One thing you'll quickly notice about these gimmicks is that they fall into one of three camps: The character is horribly crippled without the gimmick (Olimar, Rosalina, Robin, and presumably Inkling), the gimmick makes them absolutely broken (Cloud, Lucario, Little Mac, and Mayonnaise), or the character could help an otherwise alright fighter but it has too many limitations to actually matter (Wii Coach, Shulk, Ryu). The big exception here is Red, who is something of a cross between categories 1 and 3 - the stamina mechanic doesn't cripple his Pokemon enough to render them inoperable, but it does hurt them when it activates.

Basically, all of this results in the gimmicks being more a pain in the ass than anything else. For the ones like Pedowitch (seriously, Smash devs, you programmed her into a game featuring no less than four children for her to fight and those were the taunts and animations you went with? Not to mention all the animals.) and Cloud, the gimmicks add a level of power which makes them annoying to go up against, while for the ones like Olimar and Robin the gimmicks' absence is practically a death sentence - when Robin gets back home I expect they'll have a few choice words for their blacksmith (Olimar, unfortunately, seems to be a lost cause here.) For Wii Coach, Shulk, or Ryu, their gimmicks could go either way, but for Wii Coach, scrap Deep Breathing and work that body into something more useful, and for Shulk? Bro, really, when you get a minute, find the settings menu on that thing and set it to "Select with stick." (Ryu can keep doing his thing since his gimmick doesn't waste any of his move slots.)

This is kinda a thing that gimmick mechanics do anyways, mind you, no matter what game we're talking about, but sometimes, it's just more of a hassle than it need be. I can already predict that Inkling is going to be unnecessarily annoying to play because of that Ink mechanic. Why was it included? To make the Inkling feel more like Splatoon? Because Zelda doesn't have a magic meter. Link doesn't run out of arrows/bombs. Pikachu doesn't have PP (someone should give the poor guy some water HAHA I AM SO CLEVER.) Zelda is actually a pretty good example in her own right, since she's got the same situation as Inkling, relying nigh-exclusively on a particular form of attack which has limited use in her home franchise but can be manually restored.

But that's enough of me rambling, partly because I can't think of anything else that need be said, and partly because it's I need to go to bed 8 hours ago. No, I'm perfectly healthy, why do yzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Da Robot]

Despite Rosalina's gimmick isn't she still top tier in Smash 4's fighter lists?
Wouldn't say Wii Fit Trainer's minor healing (only 2%) from Deep Breathing and Sun Salutation isn't much of a gimmick advantage (Ness/Lucas PSI Magnet heals more), WFT also has the unusual hitboxes when attacking.

I will say though that the Inkling's ink mechanic while a neat idea, really didn't seem to work that well from the E3 previews. Treehouse staff were saying Inkling would be a medium difficult character to use, but without spraying ink on an opponent first, you can't really damage them well or fast.

I can't say anything about the DLC characters as I still haven't brought them.

Gimmicks are a werid situation, they make a character unique and more accurate to it's original series but can hinder their playstyle and use.

[Shadrio]

I wouldn't call Rosalina's Luma much of a gimmick, since other fighting games also have the Puppeteer trope character, but as long as the gimmick isn't too invasive, I don't mind much. Reason why I don't mind little things like Wii Fit Trainer's Deep Breathing but scoff at Cloud's Limit Break meter, mostly because it's Little Mac's KO Punch, but more versatile and not on a counter to be used or wasted.

But Sweetspotted Ridley's tail stab doing 59% damage whaaaaaaaaa

[Shrikeswind]

I point out Wii Coach's healing moves and not Ness' PSI Magnet because PSI Magnet healing Ness is conditional on a number of factors, only one of which (using PSI Magnet) is in Ness' control, whereas Deep Breathing simply depends on her using the move successfully and Sun Salutation only requires she fire it fully-charged. Though like I said, her situation is that the gimmick just doesn't really have enough of an effect on anything to matter, except that Deep Breathing wastes a move slot that could be used to give her an attack that might help her more.

The reason I count Rosalina is because a major part of her play-style is that she has Luma - to quote SSBWiki, "She is drastically weakened without Luma, as her respective attacks' knockback values are among the most unimpressive in the game and both Luma Shot and Star Bits are rendered useless," and "although Luma will inevitably respawn, the 13 seconds it takes to do so can be more than enough time for the opponent to land a combo or score a KO on Rosalina." Ice Climbers would also count in this regard, though I've found that a lone Climber is better at keeping alive than a lone Rosalina. Regardless, the reason I didn't list them with the "crippled alone" group was because a) I wanted to focus on the newer games where gimmicky characters become more of a thing, and honestly b) it wasn't intended as an exhaustive list regardless - I knew I was missing a few and I was more interested in the gimmick I was really irked by, Inkling's Ink mechanic, and I felt it more useful to focus on situations where the absence really hurts a character (Olimar and Robin) since it's looking like that's exactly what's going to happen to Inkling.