90s video game commercials will always be something special to me. There were far more surrounding people in mascot costumes than I would have thought, considering the games they were advertising were showcasing this newfangled thing "3D graphics" which one would think would sell itself (ugly as these games look today, there was a time where their ugliness was exciting). Crash Bandicoot and Spyro both had people in costume with plenty of attitude, that very 90s trait that meant something was cool and youthful. Nintendo only did this once, as far as I can recall, and it was to get me unbelievably hyped for Super Smash Bros. In it, several of the playable characters in Smash skipped through a field of flowers before one of them is tripped and it descends into an all-out brawl. I remember thinking the commercial was funny at the time, but more importantly it seemed to realize that often debated schoolyard field of debate: the smash up. The idea of playing Mario against Pikachu or Link against Donkey Kong was extremely exciting, even if I wasn't totally clear as to who Samus or Kirby were. I didn't own a Nintendo 64 at the time, so trips to my friends' houses who had one became far more common. I never got any good at it, and it always seemed Kirby and Samus were always the favorites in any session I played, but it never stopped being fun. Something about blowing your friends off the stage instead of stressing over an ever-draining life bar seemed a more exciting fit for the fighter genre. For one, it allowed for a lot of staying power if you were skilled enough to return to stage, where as the usual fighter would have you out at the 100% mark. Here, 100% was where things started to get intense. This flexibility was very empowering, and very addictive as a party multiplayer title. As such, even in college, after two more titles for the series were released, we were still playing the original.
The quick rundown of the series (by most standards) are as follows: Smash 1 is great, Melee, the Gamecube sequel, is the unparalleled classic, Brawl on Wii is a disaster, and Smash 4 on Wii U and 3DS are much better, but still not up to the classic status of Melee. Melee is truly great, incredibly quick, and will put you to your test. Brawl I have a much more temperate position on. It was floaty and certainly not as competitive, but as I've never been particularly great at Smash, it did its job. Smash 4 I quite liked, but playing it primarily on the 3DS had its drawbacks as it always felt cramped in my hands and not ever quite what I wanted in Smash. After years of excitement draining with each new release, I was beginning to feel maybe Smash just wasn't for me, until I picked up Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with my Switch.
Ultimate is, in a word, tight. If you miss a dodge, don't properly bounce out of a fall, etc. the game is punishing. On the flip side, when done right you are rewarded with a quick return to an attack stance. It feels really good to play, and I have easily become the most competitive I've ever been in Smash. I'm not the best in the world, only really handling myself with an AI level of 7 or so, which may damn me as a poor perspective on this title's quality to the more hardcore, but considering I started at AI 3 when the game came out, Ultimate has done a tremendous job of motivating me to improve. Good game feel promotes the desire to get better, and a whole host of side content certainly helps quite a bit.
The big selling point of the new Smash is the large, 74-man roster, including every character from previous games as well as a host of newcomers like Ridley and King K. Rule. Rather than having to do specific things to unlock everyone, simply playing the single player mode or playing a local smash game will cause the "challenger approaching" event to appear every 10 minutes or so with a new character to unlock. Starting out, you only have 9 or so characters unlocked, so it can take quite a while to get them all. Many of the characters are clones of one another, but as Masahiro Sakurai has stated that clones don't take up spaces that new characters could have due to their inclusion being opportune rather than planned, I don't consider this a negative.
While the classic mode is still here, now with a unique progression per character, it is the Adventure mode, subtitled World of Light, that is the true focus of single player offerings. World of Light introduces spirits, which replace trophies from previous games and cause various buffs and debuffs to basic smash play. One spirit could make you resistant to poisonous ground, another can let you spawn with an item when you start a match. Spirits are separated into two camps: primary spirits, which give you an overall buff and contain slots, and support spirits, which give you the more particular buffs and fit into the slots of the primary spirits. World of Light is built around these spirits, using them to confront challenges created by other spirits, and unlocking those spirits if you win. The game mode has a board game type space where you beat spirits to unlock them and to progress on various branching paths. World of Light is enormous. Too big, really. Likewise, the amount of spirits here far outweighs the number of trophies in previous games, but I haven't been nearly as compelled to collect spirits as much as I was to collect trophies. Spirits feel like cheap trading cards that, while adding a little to your World of Light game, don't feel as substantial as 3D model trophies with descriptors about the games they are referencing. This is certainly a your-mileage-may-vary situation, but, as fun as spirit collecting is, it still feels like a step down from previous games.
It took roughly 20 hours before I felt confident enough to play the game online, and that confidence was horrible misplaced. I've won one game so far. Yeah, I'm not very good, but online play is still intoxicating. Playing against other players is the quickest way to truly tune up your play, find which characters people are excelling at, and generally give you that competitive thrill that playing AI characters alone just can't give you. But outside of the general thrill of online play, the online section is the most severely lacking aspect of Ultimate. Online games have connection issues about a quarter of the time, and only a few modes and settings are allowed. Connection problems are usually not so great that the match is ruined, but such a frequency of issues in this day and age feels like a mishandling on Nintendo's part, and a horrible oversight on a game as competitive as this. The modes and settings being limited is incredibly frustrating. No squad battle, no 4+ player free-for-all if two players are on the same console while online, no playlists, and only the most basic settings on "preferences" feel far more limiting than they should be. The preferences setting is particularly frustrating as a replacement for playlists, allowing you to suggest to the matchmaker what you'd like to play, but ultimately being victim to whatever the matchmaker decides to give you. It's not awful, but it's one of those things that feels incredibly dated in this day and age where matchmaking feels nearly perfected in most games.
Ultimate isn't the perfect package, but it very nearly is. With the exception of online limitations, the rest of my issues are entirely dressing to the core game, which is phenomenal and rewarding. The game is responsive and easy to pickup but insanely difficult to master. It's the kind of game you could play for ages without being bored, and the next chapter in the series is going to have to seriously blow me away to convince me to replace Ultimate as my go-to Smash title from here on out.
9.5
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